Protecting the Accused: A Study of Rights Under Indian Criminal Law

Abstract

The rights of an accused person occupy a foundational place in any constitutional democracy that claims adherence to the rule of law. In India, these rights are drawn from a layered architecture comprising the Constitution, the criminal procedure code, the law of evidence, and a substantial body of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has, over seven decades, read expansive protective content into terse constitutional text. This paper undertakes an analytical review of the rights available to an accused person at the stages of arrest, investigation, trial, and post-conviction remedy under Indian criminal law, using a PRISMA-informed systematic approach to literature selection. It examines constitutional guarantees under Articles 20, 21, and 22; statutory safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure/Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Evidence Act/Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam; and judge-made doctrines such as the D.K. Basu custodial guidelines, the presumption of innocence, and the bail-not-jail principle. A comparative analysis situates the Indian framework against the position in the United States and the United Kingdom and against international human rights instruments. Drawing on National Crime Records Bureau prison statistics, the paper documents a persistent gap between the rights promised on paper and their delivery in practice, most visibly in chronic pre-trial detention. The paper argues that while India’s accused-rights jurisprudence is doctrinally rich and among the more progressive in the developing world, its practical realisation is undermined by systemic under-resourcing of legal aid, prolonged investigation and trial delays, and uneven compliance with arrest and custody safeguards. The paper concludes with policy-oriented recommendations for narrowing this implementation gap.