Comments on the New Criminal Law Bills

Neha Singhal

Neha Singhal is a Senior Resident Fellow and leads work in the area of Criminal Justice, and is researching on the criminalisation of drug use in India. She has authored the report titled “From Addict to Convict – The Working of The NDPS Act in Punjab”. She was the Deputy Director of the Death Penalty Research Project at NLU, Delhi. She has also taught courses on legal history and humanitarian law at NLU, Delhi, She graduated from the National Law School of India University in 2008 and completed her Masters in Criminal Justice from the University of Kent, Canterbury in 2010.

Naveed Mehmood Ahmad

Naveed is a Senior Resident Fellow with the Criminal Justice Team at Vidhi. His work focuses on decriminalisation of India’s legislative landscape and reimagining India’s approach towards Crime & Punishment. Previously, Naveed has worked on criminalisation of drug use and evaluated the government response to increasing violence against women. Naveed holds an undergraduate degree in law from National University of Law, Punjab and a Masters in Law from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Ayushi Sharma

Ayushi is a Research Fellow in the Criminal Justice Reforms team at Vidhi. Prior to joining Vidhi, Ayushi worked at Nirma University as an Assistant Professor and National Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar as a Teaching and Research Associate. She has also worked with the Logistic Division, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and advised on issues related to Maritime Regulatory Framework. Ayushi graduated from Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab (RGNUL) in 2018 with a BA., LL. B (Hons.) and obtained her LLM degree in Constitutional and Administrative Laws from the Indian Law Institute, Delhi in 2019. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at National Law Institute University, Bhopal (NLIU) where her research is focused on violence against sexual minorities.

Aayush Mallik

Shriyanshi Bhatt

Sriyanshi is partaking in this deeply existential exercise to communicate that she has recently graduated from Jindal Global Law School with a Bachelor’s in Law. Before joining Vidhi, she briefly worked with Centre for Social Justice which provided her the opportunity to work in close collaboration with various stakeholders operating within the Criminal Justice and Human Rights delivery framework(s). She has also worked with the Centre of Justice, Law and Society as a Research Assistant predominantly focused on SRHR in South-East Asia, and its implications on vulnerable populations. Her interest lies in being frustrated with the rigidity of legal “rights-bearing” categories, and hoping to one day develop methods that allows the principle of certainty to accommodate for the sociological mess, which is an elaborate way to say that she has read 5 Critical Legal Theory papers