Over-Criminalisation with Respect to Defamation under IPC

Abstract

Crime is anything which is prohibited by under the criminal law and lays down the accurate test that is the ways of criminal proceedings differs from the civil proceedings. Criminologists provides the nature of crime in social context and lays that criminal law has a crucial social dimension and criminal law functions as important condemnatory functions in social life. But over-criminalisation on the other hand is the criminalisation of relatively trivial conduct, such as removing the tag on a mattress, which should be dealt with by civil provisions, or perhaps left to the good sense of the individual. Whether defamation under Indian Penal Code is over-criminalised?

Keywords: over-criminalisation, crime, defamation