On Tuesday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court came to the rescue of a couple who had eloped to get married against the wishes of their fami...
On Tuesday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court came to the rescue of a couple who had eloped to get married against the wishes of their families. The court asked the police to consider remedial measures to protect the couple.
However, the court did not stop there. Having looked at the photographs of the wedding produced by the couple, the judge noticed that they were not wearing face masks during the ceremony. He proceeded to impose a fine of Rs 10,000 on them.
His decision shows how seriously the courts are taking the precaution of physical distancing to curtail the spread of Covid-19, a disease that has already affected 203,000 people in India and claimed close to 5,700 lives.
But for the police and law enforcement agencies, the Covid-19 pandemic has become an opportunity to cynically pursue prosecutions, given how difficulty it is for people taken into custody to access legal aid. This has allowed the police to act without any real scrutiny.
In Delhi, under cover of the pandemic, the police has arrested scores of activists and students, sometimes the same person several times, in cases related to the February protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the communal violence that ensued in the city between February...
