Sedition Law: The Rationale And Criminal Justice - Exploring Through Soni Sori And Other Landmark Supreme Court Cases
- IJLLR Journal
- Oct 13
- 2 min read
Sharmistha Barai, BA LLB (Hons.) National Law School of India University (Bengaluru)
ABSTRACT
Sedition laws in India, having its origin in colonial legacy, used to be governed by S. 124-A of the Indian Penal Code and is currently criminalised under S. 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Sedition laws, like all other legal provisions were introduced into the criminal justice system with the rationale of deterrence, implying that the particular action of sedition is criminalised for the greater public good. Deterrence has been used as one of the common principles for the criminal justice system as a whole. This means that the criminal justice system and the provisions under it take a utilitarian approach and claim that the practice of punishing a particular offence is justified by the beneficial consequences resulting from the observance of laws. As per the rationale of deterrence, the punishment of an offence is said to be serving the purpose of ‘deterring others or oneself from committing the wrongful act. This article deals with the question of whether the punishment for sedition is serving the purpose of the rationale of deterrence and whether the punishment for sedition is to be made more reformative, for the benefit of the criminal justice system. This article deals with both the social and legal impact of sedition laws in the Indian criminal justice system, exploring the effects of S. 124A of the Indian Penal Code through landmark Supreme Court cases like Kedar Nath Singh v. Union of India, Binayak Sen v. State of Chhattisgarh, Balwant Singh and Anr. v. State of Punjab and Soni Sori v. State of Chhattisgarh. On a legal and social basis, this article establishes that sedition law has not been able to uphold the rationale of deterrence that it uses for its sentencing and has resulted in wrongful convictions, flawed implementations, increase in arrests; thereby obliterating all justifications behind the rationale of deterrence.
