The Lawyers Collective is one of the leading public interest service providers in India with a proven record of setting high standards in human rights advocacy, legal aid and litigation. It was created to provide expert legal assistance to the underprivileged, especially women and children, workers in the unorganised sector and other members of marginalised groups.

El Lawyers Collective es uno de los principales proveedores de servicios públicos en la India. Ha establecido normas estrictas en cuanto a la promoción de los derechos humanos, de asistencia jurídica y de litigios. El colectivo fue creado para proporcionar una asistencia jurídica a personas desfavorecidas, especialmente mujeres y niños, los trabajadores del sector no-estructurado y otros miembros pertenecientes a grupos marginados.

Le Collective a été créé dans le but de fournir une assistance juridique aux personnes défavorisées, en particulier aux femmes et aux enfants, aux travailleurs du secteur non-organisé et autres groupes marginalisés.

Lawyers Collective

If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider contacting support. This list inventories suicide crisis lines around the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic is prompting extraordinary, unexpected and even contradictory responses by the health and criminal justice systems. On the one hand, some States are releasing thousands of prisoners in order to prevent the outbreak of infection. On the other, they are also expanding their repressive arsenal in the name of protecting public health.

In India, which has been under a lockdown since 24 March 2020, Police officers are arresting people for not wearing masks, for walking the streets in search of food or for trying to make their way back home from cities, where they’re facing destitution. These normal, rational human acts have suddenly become ‘wrongs’ to warrant a response from the criminal justice system.

In relation to drugs, Police action has also become absolutely baffling, as reported in a recent news article.

On 17 April 2020, a young man believed to have been living with drug dependence, died by suicide in his home in the North Indian city of Gurugram. The substance involved or the state of his health condition is not known. The reporter covering the story, however, noted:

According to the police complaint, the man was under stress for some time after three men did not give him anything despite taking his money after promising to supply him some narcotics. The police have booked the three men for abetment to suicide.’

A careful review of the facts shows that:

The young man was dependent on illicit drugs. The lockdown prevented him from procuring the substance from his regular supply-chain. Desperate and struggling with withdrawal syndrome, he reached out to some suppliers, who took money, but did not deliver the drug. Without recourse to help or treatment, the man ended his life. The Police filed a criminal case against unknown persons for 

The young man in Gurugram and others like him, who live with dependence, are undergoing terrible suffering under the lockdown. According to the National Survey on Extent and Pattern of Substance Use in India, the findings of which were released in February 2019, around 

people in the country live with dependence to opioid substances and another 

 need medical assistance for cannabis use.

Depending on the drug and the length of use, the lack of access can lead to the onset of painful and agonising withdrawal. If untreated, this stressor can trigger dangerous consequences, including death by suicide.

International human rights norms go to the extent of characterising the denial of medical care during withdrawal and the suffering inflicted on people who are drug dependent as acts of torture or ill-treatment.

While announcing the COVID-19 lockdown, the Government was under an obligation to make drug dependence treatment widely available and accessible. While health authorities issued an advisory on managing alcohol dependence, there was none for managing drug dependence.

The only guidance provided by the National AIDS Control Organisation was to allow take-home doses of Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) for a week for clients who are already enrolled in the HIV prevention programme. While accurate estimates are hard to come by, research suggests that OST coverage remains woeful in India.

The Government seems to have forgotten about the millions of people who are dependent on drugs but are not in treatment. Bereft of medical support, the restrictive measures of the lockdown can be a death sentence; like it seems to have been the case for the young man in Gurugram.

The other paradox in the case is that the Police have blamed alleged drug suppliers for 

 providing drugs! The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) criminalises, among other things, unauthorised sale and purchase of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. Surely, a person who does not supply illicit drugs is complying with the law and not violating it? Even if a supplier has taken money, an agreement to commit an unlawful act 

The Police seems to have forgotten that the drug market has been made illegal by public authorities. In this state of affairs, buyers and sellers are under no obligation to keep their ‘promise’.

For someone to be charged for abetting suicide, the prosecution must show that they instigated the victim to commit suicide or intentionally aided the commission of suicide through an act or illegal omission. The facts do not disclose any such thing. On the contrary, if the narcotic substance had indeed been supplied, both the dealer and the young man would be in jail for offences under the NDPS Act. All this is lost on the Police, who have done a quick fix by registering a case against the drug suppliers.

Addiction-related suicides in times of corona cannot be wished away, nor can they be blamed on people who supply drugs.

The unfortunate death of the young man in Gurugram calls for a reorientation of our health and criminal justice policies. The Government must become serious about securing effective, evidence-based treatment for people who use drugs, which is its constitutional and legal responsibility.

Authorities must also reassess the legal status of the drug market, before it can hold suppliers accountable for 

 people who use drugs in the country, policy shifts that prioritise health are long due.

Fixing responsibility or shifting blame? Drug policy and suicide in the time of corona

LONDON [27 JUNE 2019] – Harm Reduction International and almost 120 human rights organisations from around the world – including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists – published open letters today calling on the United Nations’ major drug control bodies to intervene and help stop Sri Lanka’s move to resume executions after 43 years.

President Maithripala Sirisena signed the execution warrants this week for four people convicted of drug-related offences.

The letters – sent to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – underscore that the death penalty for drug offences violates international human rights law. The signatories state that “Remaining silent as Sri Lanka puts an end to a 43-year de facto moratorium on executions would strike a blow to the INCB’s and UNODC’s commitments to human rights compliance as a core principle of international drug policy.”

Giada Girelli, human rights analyst at Harm Reduction International, said: “There is simply no evidence that the death penalty is an effective deterrent against the drug trade. President Sirisena’s move is a gross violation of human rights – UN bodies must urge authorities in Sri Lanka to reverse this and work to consign the death penalty to the history books.”

Harm Reduction International’s latest research shows that global executions for drug offences fell by almost 90% from 2015-18, in large part because of judicial reforms in Iran. Of the 35 countries that retain the death penalty for drug offences, only four carried out executions in 2018 (China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Singapore).

Over 100 human rights groups urge UN to demand Sri Lanka halt executions of drug offenders

LONDON (2nd August 2016) – Civil society groups from across the globe, 

have called on UN drug control authorities to urge an immediate stop to the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines. Since 10th May 2016, more than 700 people have been killed by police and vigilantes in the Philippines for being suspected of using or dealing drugs, as a direct result of recently-elected President Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime within six months.

Until now, however, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) – the UN agencies responsible for global drug control – have failed to condemn the Philippines for these gross human rights violations committed in the name of drug control.

375 non-governmental organisations today sent an open letter to the UNODC Executive Director, Mr. Yury Fedotov, and the INCB President, Mr. Werner Sipp, asking them to take immediate action aimed at putting a stop to the extrajudicial killings.

“We are calling on the UN drug control bodies to publicly condemn these atrocities in the Philippines. This senseless killing cannot be justified as a drug control measure”, said Ann Fordham, Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Consortium. “Their silence is unacceptable, while people are being killed on the streets day after day”, she continued.

The open letter asks the UNODC and the INCB to call on President Duterte to:

Immediately end the incitements to kill people suspected of using or dealing drugs,

Act to fulfil international human rights obligations, such as the rights to life, health, due process and a fair trial, as set out in the human rights treaties ratified by the Philippines,

Promote evidence-based, voluntary treatment and harm reduction services for people who use drugs instead of compulsory rehabilitation in military camps, and

Not to reinstate the death penalty for drug offences.

Senior Research and Communications Officer

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Key data on the Philippines drug policy crisis:

President Rodrigo Duterte was elected President on 30th May 2016 and began his presidential term on 30th June. He declared a war on drugs in which both police and civilians are encouraged to kill drug user/traffickers

704 people have been killed between the 10th of May 2016 to the 29th of July 2016 (ABS CBN News)

Communications Office Secretary Martin Andanar said 60,000 drug dependents have surrendered to authorities (Daily Mail).

Statements by international human rights groups:

Amnesty International, 10th May: Philippines: New President should break cycle of human rights violations, not compound them

Amnesty International, 30 June: Philippines: President Duterte must break the cycle of human rights violations

Human Rights Watch, 25th July: President Duterte’s Mixed Messages on Rights in the Philippines

Human Rights Watch, 12th July: Philippine Officials Shrug at Surge in Drug Killings

Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates & Citizen’s Council for Human Rights, 14th July: Stop the bloodshed, human rights defenders tell Duterte

Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates & Citizen’s Council for Human Rights, 14th July: Extra Judicial Killings: Normalizing Criminality Under the Guise of Peace and Order

Drug Policy Alliance, 25th July: Philippines President Makes Good on Pledge to Mass Murder People Who Use or Sell Drugs, Calls for "No Mercy" in State of the Nation Address

Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs & International Network of People Who Use Drugs, July: Philippines: An Entreaty to End the Killing, to End the Poverty and Exclusion

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Over 300 NGOs call on the United Nations to take immediate action on the hundreds of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines

The Lawyers Collective welcomes the passage of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2014 (“NDPS”) by Parliament late last week. The amendments make important, path breaking changes for medical access to narcotic drugs by removing barriers that date back to 1985, when the Act was first introduced. The amendments also include provisions to improve treatment and care for people dependent on drugs, moving away from abstinence oriented services to treating drug dependence as a chronic, yet manageable condition.

India is one of the leading producers of morphine, yet patients in the country could not access it owing to the stringent licensing requirements under the NDPS Act and Rules framed by State Governments. Statistics reveal that the medical use of morphine declined by 97% after the NDPS Act came into force.

This will now change as Parliament has adopted a new category of “

” in section 2(viiia) of the Act - a list, which the Central Government can notify on the basis of expediency in medical practice. Drugs identified as essential will be subject to Central Rules under section 9(1)(a), which will apply uniformly throughout the country, bringing to an end the unwieldy and inept practice of obtaining multiple State licenses for possession, transport, purchase, sale, distribution, use and consumption.

The amendments broaden the object of the NDPS Act from containing illicit use to also promoting the medical and scientific use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. The language incorporated in section 4, which is an overarching provision, reflects the principle of ‘balance’ between control and availability of narcotic drugs, which is at the heart of international drug control but has eluded the NDPS Act so far. This widening of scope, it is hoped, will pave the way for more research on the beneficial use of narcotics, which up till now, remained out of bounds for the medical and scientific community due to the overtly prohibitive nature of the law.

Importantly, medical use has not been specified and could include a variety of medical conditions, besides drug dependence and pain relief.

Health and rights of people who use drugs

Other salutary changes have been introduced in section 71, which significantly impact the health and rights of people who use drugs. The NDPS Act now allows for “

” of drug dependence, thereby legitimizing opioid substitution, maintenance and other harm reduction services. Secondly, it authorizes the Government to “

” treatment centres, which currently operate without license or accreditation, and inflict violence and torture on drug users. The amendments will allow for instituting evidence based and human rights compliant standards for drug treatment facilities, whether public or private.

The latest amendments introduce some changes in penal sentencing for drug offences.

Sentencing under the NDPS Act is dependent on the quantity of the drug found, with the scale of punishment varying from a maximum of 6 months for ‘small quantity’ to 20 years imprisonment for a first offence involving ‘commercial quantity’. The NDPS (Amendment) Bill, 2011 had proposed language that defined ‘small’ and ‘commercial’ quantity on the basis of the total weight of the contraband as opposed to the actual content of the narcotic or psychotropic drug in the seized substance. This would have led more people including persons who use drugs to be sentenced for ‘commercial quantity’, especially since street drugs are heavily ‘cut’ and rarely ever seized in pure forms. These provisions do not form part of the Bill cleared by the Parliament.

Another important change is the Parliament’s decision to recast the death penalty, which, until now, was mandatory for a subsequent offence involving a certain quantity of drugs under section 31A, as an alternative to imprisonment for 30 years under section 31. This is a welcome step but falls short of international human rights standards and constitutional principles that restrict the imposition of the death sentence to the ‘most serious’ and ‘rarest of rare’ crimes. Drug offences do not meet this threshold and should not attract capital punishment at all.

On the flip side, the amendment has increased the punishment for small quantity offences from a maximum of 6 months to 1 year imprisonment. Consumption of drugs continues to be punishable. This is regrettable as Parliament had the opportunity to review and reform punitive provisions against people who use drugs. In the last decade or so, a growing number of countries have moved towards the full decriminalization of use and possession of drugs, with no reported negative consequences on individuals and society. Some are boldly creating legalized markets for the distribution, sale, possession and use of certain drugs. The NDPS amendments seem regressive and out of step, against the grain of international drug policy reform.

The amendment opens the way for private sector involvement in the processing of opium and concentrated poppy straw.

It also offers some protection to persons engaged in licensed drug activities by raising the rank of officers who are authorized under section 42, to search and arrest license holders for alleged NDPS violations.

Parliament has also adopted changes to strengthen the forfeiture of property of persons arraigned on charges of drug trafficking.

The NDPS (Amendment) Bill 2014 was strongly influenced by recommendations of the Standing Committee on Finance, which reviewed the NDPS (Amendment) Bill, 2011 in its 50th report of March 2012. Civil society and sections of the pharmaceutical industry also advocated for change.

The Lawyers Collective made extensive written and oral submissions on the NDPS (Amendment) Bill 2011 to the Standing Committee on Finance and subsequently worked with palliative care activists and the Department of Revenue, especially on medical access to narcotics.

Indian Parliament passes the amendments to the bill on narcotic drugs, 2014: Many gains, some losses

India has a long history of opium and cannabis use, especially for medicinal, religious and recreational reasons. State regulation and community tolerance ceased after the enactment of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) in 1985, which created a restrictive regime around drugs. Clampdown on cannabis and opium in the late 1980‟s purportedly triggered more dangerous use – chasing and injecting heroin and other opioids.

The NDPS Act, 1985 is one of the harshest laws in the country. It prohibits cultivation, production, possession, sale, purchase, trade, use and consumption of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances except for medical and scientific purposes under license. The Act has been amended twice; in 1989 and 2001. The first amendments in 1989 leaned towards greater stringency by introducing mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years, restrictions on bail and mandatory capital punishment for repeat offenders. Following the amendments, persons caught with small amounts of drugs faced long prison sentences, without the possibility of release on bail. Courts criticized the harsh and disproportionate sentencing structure, which led to a fresh set of reforms in 2001 to rationalize punishment on the basis of whether the quantity of drugs involved is ‘small’, ‘commercial’ or ‘intermediate’ and provide some leniency towards drug offenders who also use drugs.

The narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances act: Ignoring health, infringing rights

 In an unprecedented decision, the Bombay High Court struck down the mandatory death penalty for drug offences, becoming the first Court in the world to do so. Announcing the order via video conferencing, a division bench of Justices A.M Khanwilkar and A.P Bhangale declared Section 31A of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) that imposes a mandatory death sentence for a subsequent conviction for drug trafficking ‘unconstitutional’.

The Court however, refrained from striking down the law, preferring to read it down instead. Consequently, the sentencing Court will have the option and not obligation, to impose capital punishment on a person convicted a second time for drugs in quantities specified under Section 31A.

The decision brings some reprieve to Ghulam Mohammed Malik, a Kashmiri man sentenced to death by the Special NDPS Court in Mumbai in February 2008 for a repeat offence of smuggling charas [cannabis resin]. Because of the mandatory nature of the punishment under Section 31A as it stood then, Malik was sentenced to death, without consideration of individual circumstances or mitigating factors. The High Court’s verdict came in response to a petition filed by the 

 (IHRN), a consortium of NGOs working for humane drug policies, who assailed mandatory capital punishment as arbitrary, excessive and disproportionate to the crime of dealing in drugs.

Reacting to the order, Director of the Lawyers Collective, Anand Grover, who led the case for IHRN, said - “the order marks an important advance in drug policy and anti-death penalty campaigns. We will examine the decision fully to assess whether striking down the death penalty, as was done by the Supreme Court for Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code would have been more appropriate”.

Across the world, 32 countries impose capital punishment for offences involving narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. Of these, 13 countries (including India until today) prescribe mandatory death sentences for drug crimes. In countries like Iran and China that actually carry out executions, drug offenders constitute the vast majority of those executed. In May last year, the Court of Appeal in Singapore upheld the mandatory death sentence imposed upon a young Malaysian for possession of heroin.“This is a positive development, which signals that Courts have also started to recognize principles of harm reduction and human rights in relation to drugs” remarked Luke Samson, President, IHRN.

Welcoming the decision, Rick Lines, Executive Director of Harm Reduction International, a UK based agency that specializes in drug control and human rights and the author of ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: A violation of International Human Rights Law’ (2007), said “The Court has upheld at the domestic level what has been emphasised for years by international human rights bodies – capital drug laws that take away judicial discretion are a violation of the rule of law. India’s justice system has affirmed that it is entirely unacceptable for such a penalty to be mandatory. This will set a positive precedent for judicial authorities in the region, which is rife with draconian drug laws.”

Lawyers Collective

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Translations

Related Content

Fixing responsibility or shifting blame? Drug policy and suicide in the time of corona

Over 100 human rights groups urge UN to demand Sri Lanka halt executions of drug offenders

Over 300 NGOs call on the United Nations to take immediate action on the hundreds of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines

Indian Parliament passes the amendments to the bill on narcotic drugs, 2014: Many gains, some losses

The narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances act: Ignoring health, infringing rights

Indian Court overturns mandatory death penalty for drug offences - first in the world to do so!

Indian Court overturns mandatory death penalty for drug offences - first in the world to do so!

Indian Court overturns mandatory death penalty for drug offences - first in the world to do so!

Indian Court overturns mandatory death penalty for drug offences - first in the world to do so!