Every year PUDR organizes a Dr Ramanadham memorial lecture on a topic of contemporary interest. Last year it was Urban Planning and Democratic Rights. The year before that it was on Judiciary and Democratic Rights. In 2008 the topic of the 22nd Ramanadham memorial lecture was Narco Analysis, Torture and Democratic Rights. In order to revisit the issue of police investigation, the focus of this year’s topic is on Digitization, Science and Criminal Investigation: Concerns for Democratic Rights.
PUDR’s work has shown the endemic nature of violence and torture inflicted in police custody in the course of criminal investigation. Given this context, and that the investigating agencies, and their attitude remain the same, what are the consequences of this kind of reliance on data, and ‘scientification’ of criminal investigation for democratic rights?
The main speakers included Jinee Lokaneeta, Professor in Political Science and International Relations at Drew University, New Jersey, USA and Apar Gupta, Delhi based lawyer, activist and Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation.
