Now Reading: Allahabad High Court: State must study crowd behaviour to prevent stampedes
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Allahabad High Court: State must study crowd behaviour to prevent stampedes
Allahabad High Court: State must study crowd behaviour to prevent stampedes
The Allahabad High Court has ruled that the right to life under Article 21 requires the state to actively prevent stampedes at large religious gatherings. In a case related to Mathura-Vrindavan events,…
The Story in Brief
The Allahabad High Court has ruled that the right to life under Article 21 requires the state to actively prevent stampedes at large religious gatherings. In a case related to Mathura-Vrindavan events, the court said institutionalising the science of crowd behaviour in academia, administration, and policy is a "constitutional imperative."
In separate decisions, the court held that a murder conviction cannot be based solely on "last seen together" evidence unless every link in the circumstantial chain is proved. It also ruled that disputed signatures on a photocopy cannot be sent for handwriting examination without producing the original document.
The Indian Opinion
The Allahabad High Court's push for crowd behaviour science is welcome but raises a practical question. Indian courts have made many such progressive directions, on prisons, pollution, or roads, that stay on paper. The blunt fact is: India has no credible national database of crowd incidents, nor an academic department studying them. Until a university actually starts a course or a ministry funds a pilot study, this remains a good idea without teeth.
Sources (2): livelaw.in, livelaw.in (2)
This story was synthesised by AI from the 2 sources linked above.
Updated: this story now draws on 2 sources.
