Review: Chaff and Grain by Vivek Sood
1 year, 9 months ago

Review: Chaff and Grain by Vivek Sood

Hindustan Times  

Books on and about law, especially in the non-fiction genre, authored by lawyers have seldom found acceptance among the non-legal community, unless, of course, the genre is legal fiction, which permits the author to free himself from the shackles of dreary legal procedures and take flights of fantasy within and outside the courtroom. Vivek Sood is a practising lawyer in the courts at the national capital and puts out a disclaimer right at the outset, that his book Chaff and Grain is a conscious effort to make his book “readable by people from all walks of life and not restricted to the legal community alone”. In seven chapters on subjects ranging from the abuse of criminal law and the abuse of the power to arrest and investigate to the age-old conundrum of jail versus bail and fake encounters, Sood has done a fair job of living up to his book’s primary objective, which is to demystify legal issues so they can engage the attention of non-lawyer readers. If our criminal courts were to strictly apply the legal principle applicable in English courts – “Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Ominbus” which means “If a part of your testimony is false, then the witness stands discredited and his entire testimony has to be rejected”, then hardly any crime will go punished as Indian witnesses are invariably influenced, in varying degrees by social pressures, inducements, threats. Those who have spent years in the legal profession may not necessarily find anything new in it but for those who are commencing their journey in the legal field, either as law students or as young law graduates, as well as those who are not related to the legal field but have a keen interest in the functioning and dynamics of the criminal justice delivery system, this book is a worthwhile read.

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