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by walt0 2185 days ago
No other country has such laws. It's against even the basic magna carta principles.

I know about "victims" who lie about the accusitions in these cases, the local community knows that its a lie but people are still guilty until proven innocent.

I disagree with this, even though I faced such discrimination.

P.S That does not mean discrimination does not take place or that there are no genuine complaints.

2 comments

> Because of atrocities against "lower" castes which wouldn't even be investigated

> I know about "victims" who lie about the accusitions in these cases, the local community knows that its a lie but people are still guilty until proven innocent.

Both of you are offering anecdotes, and I assume the former far outnumbers the latter, but we would find more anecdotes of the latter on HN, because most Indians here are not low-caste.

P.S That does not mean that discrimination does always take place or that there are no false cases.

Unfortunately for you I can back up my "anecdotes" https://asiatimes.com/2018/03/indias-supreme-court-accused-h...

>The court also referred to data released by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment showing that of the 15,638 cases decided by the courts in 2015, 11,024 resulted in acquittals or discharges. Another 495 cases were withdrawn and only 4,119 cases resulted in convictions.

Unfortunately that doesn't have to mean anything. If the courts are biased it is possible they are only convicting if the evidence is so strong they dare not. Or maybe some courts are honestly decided and others are corrupt...

I'm not in India so I have no idea what the truth is. I do know corruption is a problem there and corruption is a hard problem to solve.

There are in fact preumption-of-validity ("prima facie" evidentiary) laws outside of India. In the case I'm considering these don't directly apply to civil or criminal law, though they operate closely adjacent to these.
We have "prima facie evidentiary" laws in India too. The law the parent is talking about has nothing to do with it. FIR is registered irrespective of whether there is a case made out prima facie or not. That is the biggest problem with this law. It turns the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" over its head.
"Civil forfeiture".
But that is for property. Does not extend to a human being. That is the same everywhere. You are confusing the two things. Even in India authorities have legal rights to confiscate property they feel is being used in criminal activity. That is allowed and doesn't require a warrant. But do you, in the United States, have any law where you can be arrested without there being a charge-sheet or an arrest warrant or prima-facie evidence? Even the arrests that cops make in the US are based on prima-facie evidence: not providing information as asked for by law, hiding drugs or on the basis of suspicion. No where does anyone get arrested because someone else just complained about the said person.
So, I've been responding to several, often unclear and inconsistent, though absolute claims, made by several commentators in this thread, for which any counterexample would be sufficient refutation.

I'm also not defending the Indian law, only making clear it is not as fully exceptional as portrayed by some here.

Answering your specific question as to the US and detention without charge or due process: yes, definitely. Guantanamo Bay is an extraterritorial detention centre for supposed terrorists, held without trial and subject to torture, since the prison opened in January 2002. 779 prisoners are acknowledged to have been held at some point, 40 remain. I don't find a statement of longest detention, but that could be as much as 18 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_detention#United_St...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp

Tens of thousands of detainees are held by immigration authorities, with nearly 400,000 having been booked into ICE custody in 2018. Detentions are on the basis of (suspected) immigration status, not criminal disposition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_detention_in_the_U...