Drunk on Power: A Study of Excise Policing in Madhya Pradesh
Uploaded: over 2 years ago; Last updated: over 2 years ago ; Date of Publication: 14-August-2021
Madhya Pradesh
2018 - 2020
English
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Our report seeks to examine the criminal justice system through excise policing in Madhya Pradesh (‘MP’). We study who is policed, which activities are particularly targeted under the MP Excise Act, 1915 (‘Excise Act’), and how narratives of criminality are constructed through the excise regime. This study is especially relevant given the large number of excise-related arrests in MP and the casteist implications of such arrests.
Research Report
In August 2021, the MP Legislative Assembly passed an amendment to the Excise Act to include death penalty and fines of upto ₹50,00,000 for certain offences. An examination of how this legislation is implemented is more crucial now than ever before. As part of this study, we analysed arrest records from 20 districts across MP; and First Information Reports (‘FIRs’) filed under the Excise Act from three districts in MP
