The 39A Podcast

The 39A Podcast

Project 39A is a criminal justice organisation based out of National Law University, Delhi, which provides pro-bono legal representation and engages in research on a variety of criminal justice issues. The 39A Podcast is our endeavour to make contemporary issues in criminal justice accessible. You can read more about us on our website, and follow us on social media

Episodes

T M Krishna: "Denying art is a justification of violence"

January 29, 2025 • 37 mins

Why is artistic practice and expression important for incarcerated individuals? Tune into The 39A Podcast's latest featuring T M Krishna (Sumanasa Foundation) and Anup Surendranath (Project 39A) to hear what they have to say about the place art holds in society, the role it plays in totalising spaces like prisons, and about our important collaboration through the 'Art in Prisons' initiative. You can learn more about th...

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The Pune Porsche Case: Law and Realities of the Juvenile Justice System

June 10, 2024 • 53 mins
Episode 26 of the 39A Podcast discusses the recent Pune Porsche case where a 17-year-old allegedly caused the death of two hapless victims while driving rashly and under the influence. The case has made waves in the media due to reports of preferential treatment and manipulation of evidence. However, the case also invokes questions of Juvenile Justice law which are largely unaddressed by mainstream media. In this podcast, Anup Su...
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Piecemeal justice: Inadequacy of equating punishment with justice for victims’ families

June 26, 2023 • 22 mins
Dr. Penelope Tong (Fieldwork Supervisor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences) discusses her doctoral research on the needs of families of murder victims in Mumbai, with Baljeet Kaur (former senior mitigation investigator at P39A). Dr. Tong’s research finds that most cases of murder arise due to escalation of interpersonal conflicts, particularly in socio-economically impoverished communities. Though the police are often approached a...
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Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts

May 11, 2023 • 34 mins
In this podcast, Project 39A's Director (Sentencing) Neetika Vishwanath speaks to Dr. Mayur Suresh (Senior Lecturer, SOAS University of London) on his recently published book 'Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi's Courts'. The book is an ethnographic study of Delhi's Tis Hazari court over 14 months during which Dr. Suresh followed 18 terrorism trials. In this conversation, Dr. Suresh reflects on the relevance of ethnography as a m...
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The Mandatory Death Penalty for Drug-Trafficking in Singapore: Effective or Excessive?

September 30, 2022 • 42 mins
In this episode of the 39A Podcast, Neetika Vishwanath is in conversation with Kirsten Han, journalist and anti-depth penalty activist based in Singapore. In the backdrop of an alarming rate of executions in Singapore in 2022, Kirsten gives the listeners a first-hand account. The Podcast discusses the anti-drug trafficking law in Singapore, the 2012 amendment and its problematic implementation, discriminatory use of the death penal...
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The Supreme Court’s PMLA judgement: Perspectives on the frailties of the PMLA

September 2, 2022 • 43 mins
The widely critiqued Supreme Court decision in Vijay Mandanlal Chaudhary is pending review. In this context, Shri Singh and Maneka Khanna discuss broader issues with the Supreme Court’s judgement and the money laundering law, particularly, the grave implications of a special law devoid of clarity, certainty and workability. Mr Singh is a criminal defence lawyer, with extensive experience litigating white-collar crimes and offences ...
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The Supreme Court’s PMLA judgement: Undermining the right against self-incrimination?

August 22, 2022 • 32 mins
In this episode of the 39A Podcast, Aditya Mehta speaks to Senior Advocate Aabad Ponda about the limits of the recent Supreme Court judgement in addressing an accused’s right against self-incrimination. Access our exclusive coverage of the PMLA judgement here - www.p39ablog.com/2022/07/27/pmla-explained/
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The Supreme Court’s PMLA Judgement: Insights for Defence Lawyers

August 18, 2022 • 43 mins
In light of the recent Supreme Court judgement in Vijay Madanlal Chaudhary, Harsh Srivastava speaks to Arshdeep Singh Khurana about navigating future money-laundering cases from the perspective of a defence lawyer. Mr. Singh represented a number of petitioners in this case, and has an extensive legal practice in the courts of New Delhi, and Punjab and Haryana.
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The Supreme Court's PMLA Judgment: The Paths Not Taken

August 11, 2022 • 43 mins
In light of Supreme Court's recent judgment upholding various provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 Shivani Misra of Project 39A speaks to Senior Advocate Aman Lekhi on what the Supreme Court could have done differently while balancing the rights of the individual against the State's power. Visit https://p39ablog.com/2022/07/27/pmla-explained/
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Access to safe abortion in India: A fraught reality

August 8, 2022 • 54 mins
In light of the Supreme Court quashing the Delhi High Court judgement disallowing the termination of pregnancy after 24 weeks; Anupriya Dhonchak speaks to Dr. Aparna Chandra about the undue barriers that hinder access to safe abortion in India. In the backdrop of the US Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, this conversation considers the impact of paternalistic state policies in undermining the bodily integrity and personal ...
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Women's Liberation And The Carceral Project

June 29, 2022 • 36 mins
Hrishika Jain and Prof. Aya Gruber discuss the carceral form of feminism's engagement with sexual violence, its implications for victims and feminism's own transformative goals, and the unfulfilled promise of the #MeToo movement as an alternative form of feminist politics.
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Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty

May 26, 2022 • 32 mins
In this episode of the 39A Podcast, CP Shruthi speaks to Professor Marc Tassé, from the Department of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University. He is also the Director of the Ohio State Nisonger Center, a University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Professor Tassé's clinical interests include the diagnosis of intellectual disability (ID), the assessment and tr...
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India’s Sedition Law: the story so far, and what happens now?

May 12, 2022 • 41 mins
In this episode of the 39A Podcast, Adrija Ghosh speaks to Lubhyathi Rangarajan, who is a lawyer and the Editor-Databases, of the Decade of Darkness, Article 14’s sedition database project, which makes data on all sedition cases registered under Section 124A of the IPC, since 2010, publicly available. They talk about the developments in the Supreme Court hearings on the batch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of Sectio...
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Deviant Female Sexuality And Criminal Law In India

May 6, 2022 • 42 mins
"In this episode of the P39A Podcast, Adrija Ghosh speaks to Dr. Durba Mitra, author of the book Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (2020). They talk about the idea of 'deviant female sexuality' that became foundational to modern social thought in colonial India, and continues to be used in contemporary India to regulate and control the lives and bodies of women and sexual minorities."
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Use of Facial Recognition Technology in the Criminal Justice System

January 31, 2022 • 27 mins
In this episode of the P39A Podcast, Devina Malaviya speaks to Philip Mayor of American Civil Liberties Union, Michigan about the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in the criminal justice system. They discuss the fallibility of the technology and how its use impacts the investigation process. They further explore FRT's tendency to give the colour of science to biases present in the system.
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Media Ethics and Crime Reporting

December 8, 2021 • 43 mins
In this episode of the P39A Blog podcast, Dr. Amrita Ibrahim, Dhanya Rajendran and Hartosh Singh Bal discuss the institutional incentives and assumptions that inform the creation of a media 'crime story'. The conversation explores the lens that the media adopts in reporting crime, and the perspectives it leaves out, and highlights possible paths towards a more sensitised and ethical coverage of criminality.
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Understanding Forensic DNA Profiling in India

August 31, 2021 • 38 mins
What is forensic DNA profiling? Can guilt be proved on the basis of DNA evidence? How is DNA profiling different from DNA databasing? In this episode of 39A podcast, Devina Malaviya is in conversation with Shreya Rastogi, head of forensics and litigation at Project 39A and Devina Sikdar, forensic biologist who is part of the Project 39A forensics research team. They discuss the science behind forensic DNA profiling and its scienti...
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Impact of the Pandemic on Criminal Law Practitioners

August 27, 2021 • 57 mins
How challenging has it been for criminal law practitioners in terms of effective access to clients and online court proceedings? In this episode of the 39A Podcast, Vibhor Jain is in conversation with Abhishek Dixit, Sahana Manjesh, Seema Mishra and Somnath Vatsa, criminal law practitioners in Lucknow, Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad respectively. They share their experiences on the varied approaches undertaken by each jurisdiction i...
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Effects of Covid-19 on the Prison System

August 18, 2021 • 55 mins
In this episode of The 39A Podcast, Professor Vijay Raghavan and Dr. Anup Surendranath discuss the institutional imagination of prisons in India and the manner in which it has interacted with the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation looks at whether the measures taken by prisons to control the pandemic were at best management strategies and failed to incorporate ‘right to health’ perspectives.
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Bail Under UAPA - Nitya Ramakrishnan In Conversation With Trisha Chandran [Ep. 8]

August 17, 2021 • 33 mins
In this episode of The 39A Dialogues, Senior Advocate and criminal law practitioner Ms. Nitya Ramakrishnan discusses what sets apart the stringent bail provision under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 and makes it almost impossible for an accused to secure bail once charged for offences of ‘terrorist activities’ and ‘terrorist organization’ under the Act.
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