Posted on 07/29/2010 3:48:06 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
NEW DELHI: Right to self-defence is not only about using force to save oneself from an attacker but also extends to protecting one's property from being stolen or forcibly taken over, the Supreme Court has ruled.
"The basic principle underlying the doctrine of the right to private defence is that when an individual or his property is faced with danger and immediate aid from the state machinery is not readily available, that individual is entitled to protect himself and his property," it said.
But the force used by a person to protect himself or his property should not be grossly disproportionate to that needed to ward off the threat from the aggressor, a bench comprising Justices D K Jain and R M Lodha said in a recent judgment.
At the same time, the bench said it would be difficult to quantify how much force was justifiable in exercise of a person's right to self-defence.
"The means and the force a threatened person adopts at the spur of the moment to ward off danger and to save himself or his property cannot be weighed in golden scales. It is neither possible nor prudent to lay down abstract parameters which can be applied to determine whether the means and force adopted by the threatened person was proper or not," said Justice Jain, writing the judgment for the bench.
The court did not give any relief to petitioner Sikander Singh and his associates who had launched an attack on another set of persons and had received injuries when those attacked had retaliated. Citing the injuries on them, the petitioners had claimed that they had attacked in self-defence and requested the court to set aside their conviction.
On finding that the petitioners were the aggressors, the bench said they could not claim right to self-defence.
"The right to self-defence does not include a right to launch an offensive or aggression. In our opinion, therefore, the appellants have failed to establish that they were exercising right of private defence," it said.
Gun ownership laws trigger Indian debate
The National (India) | July 28. 2010 | Hannah Gardner
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2561323/posts
NEW DELHI: It’s 1.30 on a Friday afternoon and Tejinder Singh Ghei, the owner of a tidy, one-room gun shop near Kashmiri Gate in Old Delhi, has not had a customer all week.
An old plastic telephone on Mr Ghei’s counter rings and, after a short conversation, Mr Ghei hangs up with a sigh.
“That was a dealer in Amritsar,” Mr Ghei said. “He says there is no business there either. It’s dead everywhere.” Business has been bad for years thanks to ever tighter gun laws, Mr Ghei said, but since March, when the government introduced a new set of amendments, it has been even worse.
Along with highly restrictive curbs on the sale of ammunition and the creation of a national database of firearm owners, the new regulations also require gun-licence applicants to prove a “grave and imminent threat” to their lives in order to be approved. “Who can prove this? It’s ridiculous,” Mr Ghei said. “India is a dangerous place. We are all at risk, but we don’t get threats.”
He was not the only one angered by the recent changes. India’s gun owners are also outraged, and for the first time they are fighting back in a style similar to the US’s National Rifle Association.
In January, a small group of enthusiasts met in Delhi to found The National Association of Gun Rights India (Nagri) to lobby lawmakers and to fund legal cases that make it easier to own and carry arms in India. This month the organisation began a membership drive – and in doing so, they have provoked a debate about the role of fire arms in the land of Mahatma Gandhi.
“The bottom line is it’s about freedom,” said Abhijeet Singh, 37, an entrepreneur and one of Nagri’s founders.
“The first line of defence has to be the citizen. It always has been like that, it will always continue to be like that.”
Gun rights are an emotive issue in India because they are closely bound up with the country’s struggle for freedom. After the Mutiny of 1857 – known here as India’s first war of independence – the British banned all non-Europeans from owning weapons to prevent another uprising.
Even Gandhi, a famous proponent of non-violence, wrote in his autobiography: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
Thus in 1959, when the new Indian government drafted a law to replace the British one, it granted every citizen the right to bear arms, regardless of race or social standing.
Excerpted. Read more at link.
India is a place where ethnic and religious riots are never far away let alone crime. If we ever take back the whitehouse I would like to see a push for the right to bear arms make it into the UN list of human rights and defended globally.
Personally, I’d rather see the UN destroyed and people around the globe start working their own problems their own way.
The UN and its pretense of global authority is an abomination.
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