When Everything Becomes a Crime: Penal Excess and the Expanding Reach of Indian Criminal Law

Author(s)	Ms. Iram Sultan Khan
Country	India
Abstract	This article examines over-criminalisation in India the progressive expansion of criminal law beyond its legitimate constitutional and jurisprudential boundaries. Drawing on the Harm Principle, constitutional doctrine, and legislative analysis, it argues that Indian penal law suffers from the proliferation of vague offences, erosion of mens rea standards, weaponisation of preventive detention, and structural subordination of liberty to security. The article traces these pathologies through the Indian Penal Code 1860, special legislation, and the under-trial prisoner crisis, with particular focus on Jammu and Kashmir as a concentrated site of penal excess. It concludes that meaningful reform requires a principled recommitment to constitutional morality, proportionality, and the foundational purposes of criminal law.
Keywords	Keywords: over-criminalisation, Indian Penal Code, constitutional morality, preventive detention, Jammu and Kashmir, under-trial prisoners, penal reform.
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On	2026-04-13

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