Stoner by John Williams (Book Review) by Bharat Chugh
September 12, 2026 Stoner is a most-remarkable story of a relatively unremarkable life. The author writes in a prose so clean, calm, simple and unhurried that it brings to mind Ishiguro and Tolstoy at their best and it shares – with these legends – the same refusal to raise their voice or get into grand proclamations of life. It has the same quiet-dignity and the…
Read more: Stoner by John Williams (Book Review) Paul Mason’s Reds (Book Review) by Bharat Chugh
September 7, 2026 Reds by Paul Mason tells the story of communism as one of history’s most fascinating ideas and, like many fascinating ideas, one of its great causes of misery. A case study, perhaps, in what Hayek called the fatal conceit: the belief that a single mind, theory or ideology can engineer society and reliably produce the desired outcomes. But Mason is fair and balanced,…
Read more: Paul Mason’s Reds (Book Review) Too young to judge! Is that the real debate though? by Bharat Chugh
August 30, 2026 First published on Bar and Bench here Over the past year, much of the debate around recruitment to the district judiciary has revolved around a number: how many years of experience should one have before becoming eligible to compete to be a civil judge or magistrate? The Supreme Court said 3 years in 2025. A few days back, the Court reviewed the…
Read more: Too young to judge! Is that the real debate though? Efficacy of Fast Track Courts : The Same Speed, Borrowed From Someone Else’s Case by Bharat Chugh
August 17, 2026 Fast-track courts are announced overnight, but they rarely add judges, prosecutors, or courtrooms — they only reorder the queue. Using the NEET-UG case as a lens, this piece argues that prioritising one category of litigants necessarily deprioritises another, raising a constitutional question under Articles 14 and 21.
My views on whether Fast Track Courts have delivered on the promise of Speedy Justice, with The Hindu by Bharat Chugh
August 2, 2026 First published in a piece The Hindu here with AARATRIKA BHAUMIK of The Hindu Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement to set up fast-track courts to hear paper leak cases has once again revived the debate over whether these specialised courts are the silver bullet to India’s chronic judicial delays. Following the announcement, the Delhi High Court has constituted a fast-track court at…
Read more: My views on whether Fast Track Courts have delivered on the promise of Speedy Justice, with The Hindu A Scandalous Amount of Time by Bharat Chugh
June 29, 2026 Spending countless hours in bookstores, I’ve amassed a library of over a thousand books, each a reflection of my soul’s complexities. From the randomness of my selections to the familiar comfort of certain authors, these books offer a window into my life, revealing both darkness and glimpses of hope.
Living Inside a Book : Reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Coorg. by Bharat Chugh
June 24, 2026 I read War and Peace over ten days in Coorg, in a red cushy chair overlooking a coffee plantation or a balcony above the misty mountains, with too much coffee, too much rain, and no real plan. I’d avoided this for years. It was simply too long, too many names to hold and juggle in my memory, too much history and Russia-specific…
Read more: Living Inside a Book : Reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Coorg. Book Review : Joe Sacco’s Palestine & The Once & Future Riot by Bharat Chugh
April 22, 2026 First, Joe Sacco’s Palestine Joe Sacco’s Palestine is deeply moving and tragic. Each page, each cartoon, each panel, makes you vicariously feel the pain so real and immediate. He shows, through these graphics, what it is like to live with enormous injustices in Gaza, without exaggeration and without undue sentimentality, and with a dark humour and irony. He shows the remarkable resilience…
Read more: Book Review : Joe Sacco’s Palestine & The Once & Future Riot Berlin by Jason Lutes & The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby (Book Reviews) by Bharat Chugh
April 12, 2026 Berlin by Jason Lutes (1) Ahead of a trip to Berlin & Munich in June later this year, I picked this up and it turned out to be exactly the kind of preparation no guidebook could offer. Lutes apparently spent nearly two decades on this book, and every page shows it. Berlin is a stunning portrait rendered in ink. It’s vivid, immersive,…
Read more: Berlin by Jason Lutes & The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby (Book Reviews) 100 Book Recommendations by Bharat Chugh by Bharat Chugh
April 2, 2026 People ask me for book recommendations often enough that I finally did the uncomfortable thing: made a list. I basically got a Large Language Model to process my Goodreads excel-sheet and reviews and filtered the same manually and came up with 100 that I really loved. And I – sort of – agree. But yes, with a big caveat that no list…
Read more: 100 Book Recommendations by Bharat Chugh Book Review : Tom Bingham’s The Rule of Law by Bharat Chugh
March 31, 2026 Nature has distributed its prizes unequally. Some are weak and helpless; some are rich and powerful. But thanks to the Rule of Law, there is protection for all. Law, always in theory, and sometimes even in practice, ensures precisely that. It ensures that even the Lambs amongst us can fight, and even prevail, over the Lions, provided they can deploy the law…
Read more: Book Review : Tom Bingham’s The Rule of Law The Mighty Pauper – A review of Francis Wheen’s Book – Karl Marx: A Life by Bharat Chugh
March 22, 2026 Like many other people who’ve changed the course of history, Marx lived a life of deep contradictions. Marx craved and was used-to the trappings of middle-class respectability, a decent house, a household that kept up appearances, the life of a Victorian gentleman-intellectual, and funded it entirely on Engels’s generosity, while remaining, in every other respect, ferociously, almost pathologically independent. He could not…
Read more: The Mighty Pauper – A review of Francis Wheen’s Book – Karl Marx: A Life On Giving Back by Bharat Chugh
March 19, 2026 by Bharat Chugh I have been thinking, lately, about luck. Someone defined it as the specific point where preparation meets opportunity. I have been thinking of opportunities. The opportunities I’ve been handed by this lottery called Life. And I’ve been thinking about my luck. Not the abstract kind. The specific kind. The kind with names. The teacher who saw something before…
Read more: On Giving Back The Library That Was My Storm and My Harbour by Bharat Chugh
March 17, 2026 Coming back from a matter today in Tis Hazari, I visited the Delhi Public Library today, after decades. This is where it all began for me. It’s 2003-2004, I had dropped out of school. I had to drop out of school. I knew I could do without the schooling but I still needed an education. My father told me about the Delhi…
Read more: The Library That Was My Storm and My Harbour Book Review : Hitler by Ian Kershaw by Bharat Chugh
March 9, 2026 Travels through Europe over the past several years have yielded experiences that are, in equal measure, enriching and deeply unsettling. The continent’s culture is extraordinary — its spires, cobblestone streets, bridges, lakes, mountain ranges, palaces, museums, and formal gardens speak to centuries of civilisational achievement. And yet, nestled within all of this, the horrors of colonialism and the Second World War are…
Read more: Book Review : Hitler by Ian Kershaw When the court sees only one side: The sad state of charge and disclosure hearings in India by Bharat Chugh
January 17, 2026 First published on Bar & Bench here Indian criminal procedure promises an early checkpoint and filter against injustice. The charge or discharge hearing is meant to be precisely that: a judicial pause, a moment to ask whether the material before the court genuinely warrants putting a citizen through the long, coercive ordeal of criminal process; a process that is the punishment itself. …
Read more: When the court sees only one side: The sad state of charge and disclosure hearings in India The Mamata Banerjee–ED Faceoff: From the Legal Lens by Bharat Chugh
January 12, 2026 The Mamata–ED standoff is not about personalities or politics. It exposes a deeper rule-of-law fault line. A law that allows searches without prior judicial oversight, on the agency’s own “reasons to believe,” risks harassment, irreparable harm, and federal conflict. Power to search must be narrowed, reviewed, and accountable.
The One-sidedness of Disclosure & Discharge hearings in India by Bharat Chugh
January 1, 2026 India’s discharge hearing—meant to filter out baseless prosecutions—is structurally one-sided. Courts rely solely on what the prosecution presents, while exculpatory material stays hidden. This piece traces the legal evolution of that imbalance and argues for a fairer, more transparent system grounded in global due process standards.
2025 in Books by Bharat Chugh
December 31, 2025 This year’s reading felt less like a sprint and more like a long, deliberate walk—through history, conscience, exile, law, love, and the quiet corners of human fragility. I moved from the moral and legal claustrophobia of The Trial to the aching tenderness of a lost child’s story in Foster; from the grand sweep of American history in These Truths and—arguably—the most accessible telling of world history in A…
Read more: 2025 in Books Book Review – Flesh by David Szalay by Bharat Chugh
November 14, 2025 This book doesn’t manipulate.
Its omissions are not laziness but craft.
A strategic silence in a negotiation.
An awkward pause at dinner.
A shadow that makes the body visible.
How courts distinguish between rape and consensual sex: Adv Bharat Chugh explains by Bharat Chugh
October 30, 2025 First published in the Indian Express here Written by Ashish Shaji. The Karnataka High Court recently quashed a rape case against a man in which the aspect of consent was argued. The aspect of consent often becomes a contentious point of argument in the cases of sexual offences with several constitutional courts ruling on the subject. Even as courts from time to time have…
Read more: How courts distinguish between rape and consensual sex: Adv Bharat Chugh explains Book Review: These Truths by Jill Lepore by Bharat Chugh
October 10, 2025 Jill Lepore’s These Truths is a sweeping yet intimate portrait of America’s 500-year journey—its ideals, contradictions, and constant reinvention. Part history, part moral inquiry, it reminds us that democracy, like truth itself, is never settled. Reading it, one understands America—and perhaps India—just a little more deeply.
The Question as a Weapon: How Suggestions Shape (or Misshape) Truth in a Criminal Trial by Bharat Chugh
October 7, 2025 Cross-examination is not mere questioning—it is confrontation with purpose. The duty to “put one’s case” ensures fairness, prevents ambush, and tests truth itself. From Browne v. Dunn to modern Indian rulings, the law demands not silence but speech—a disciplined challenge where suggestion becomes the voice of justice.
Lacuna in Section 8 of the BNS, 2023: The Missing Framework for Default in Community Service (Guest Post) by Bharat Chugh
October 5, 2025 Section 8 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 governs fines and imprisonment in default of payment — but it falls silent on what happens when a convict fails to perform community service, a new form of punishment introduced by the Code. This article highlights that silence: it neither defines how long imprisonment may last for such a default nor when it should terminate if the service is later performed. The gap may seem technical, but it strikes at the heart of fair sentencing and legislative coherence — and urgently needs rectification.
Litigating Lost Love & Affections ? – The revival of the outdated tort of Alienation of Affection by Bharat Chugh
October 5, 2025 The Delhi High Court’s decision to entertain a claim for “alienation of affection” — a tort abolished across much of the world — risks pulling Indian family law back into a moralistic past. Once common in Victorian England and early-20th-century America, these so-called “heart-balm” actions were outlawed for being intrusive, unprovable, and contrary to modern notions of personal freedom. India should not revive what the world has wisely buried: the idea that love lost can, or should, be compensated in damages.
Why Every Indian Trial Judge Needs a Law Clerk/LR | Strengthening the Foundation by Bharat Chugh
September 18, 2025 India’s trial courts decide the fate of millions yet carry nearly 90% of the backlog without any research support. Overworked judges juggle bail, dying declarations, and full trials alone. Law clerks could transform this frontline of justice — improving quality, reducing appeals, and restoring faith in the rule of law.
Bookshops in London & Edinburgh by Bharat Chugh
June 26, 2025 I’ve visited at least one bookshop in every city I’ve ever been to. For me, books—and by extension, bookshops—are sanctuaries of stillness. Travel, though exhilarating, can often be a sensory onslaught. There’s so much to absorb, so much that demands awe. Like a museum or gallery, the experience can be emotionally overwhelming—devastating even—in the best, most mind-expanding way. You find yourself empathising…
Read more: Bookshops in London & Edinburgh My take on the recent SC judgment on mandatory 3 years practice by Bharat Chugh
May 23, 2025 Drawing from experience as a young judge, Bharat Chugh critiques the push for mandatory bar experience before joining the judiciary. He argues that early judicial entry, with robust training, nurtures adjudicative skills better than a few years at the Bar—especially in a saturated, unequal profession where access isn’t guaranteed.
Equal Pay for Equal Work Prevails: Supreme Court Upholds RMSA Teachers’ Right to Parity by Bharat Chugh
May 21, 2025 In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court upheld the right of RMSA teachers in Nagaland to equal pay for equal work, striking down arbitrary wage disparities. Reinforcing Article 14, the Court held that the State cannot justify unequal treatment based on labels like “contractual” when the work performed is identical.
Applicability of Rule 4 of Delhi High Court (Original Side) Rules, 2018, legal uncertainty & resultant injustices. (Part 1) by Bharat Chugh
May 6, 2025 Rule 4 of the Delhi High Court (Original Side) Rules, 2018, has triggered a wave of uncertainty. While meant to streamline procedure, its rigid interpretation risks unjust dismissals and procedural unfairness. Conflicting judicial views now demand clarity—on whether the Rule is mandatory or directory, and its prospective or retrospective effect.
