Sidharth Luthra, senior advocate and former MPhil student at the Institute of Criminology, accepted the K L Arora Chair at the National Law University in Delhi in July 2025.
This chair was created to promote teaching, research and advocacy of criminal law in India. It is named in honour of the renowned Senior Advocate Shri Kundan Lal Arora. It was established by Arora’s family, in the hope of continuing his legacy.
The chair has been largely inactive since the COVID-19 pandemic, but Luthra aims to revive it and use it for new research. He has planned nearly 40 public lectures on different aspects of criminology, by speakers ranging from criminologists to philosophers and psychologists.
Criminal justice research
Luthra also has much bigger plans for the K.L. Arora Chair. He is currently developing several projects around issues within India’s criminal justice system. These include a comprehensive audit of the Tihar Jail, India’s largest prison complex, beginning in February 2026. This audit comes in response to a review by the UK High Court, which criticised the Tihar Jail for keeping inmates in substandard conditions.
“In the last few decades, a number of high-profile persons accused of offences have left India,” he explains. “UK courts have held that our prisons don’t provide the necessary safety and standards to ensure the civil rights of prisoners. So, it is important to properly understand whether we are lacking, what we are lacking, and what we can do right.”
Luthra is also conducting a review of matrimony offences in India. Such offences are often brought before one of India’s High Courts, which are based in individual states. There is concern that the number of these offences brought before the High Courts, and the frequency with which witnesses recant or block the courts’ docket, impact the courts’ ability to carry out other work.
“Sometimes, the solution India has found for specific problems is worse than the original problem,” he says.
His review aims to find the percentage of matrimonial offences taken to the High Courts. If it proves to be a large number, this will provide an argument for reclassifying matrimony offences as civil or matrimonial law. Doing so could free up the backlog of cases for the High Courts, allowing them to focus on other issues.
Lastly, Luthra plans to conduct a review of probation and plea bargaining in India’s justice system. Both are supposed to be the first approaches taken by courts for various crimes. Yet records show that both are rarely granted. Luthra’s research aims to make the case for plea bargaining and probation to be used more frequently.
Gathering evidence
Luthra’s research projects are collecting data from the Delhi Police, 8 of India’s High Courts, and their subordinate courts. Sourcing this data is proving challenging, as India’s justice system has no central storage site for its data. Moreover, this data often provides only basic information. Luthra’s research projects serve another purpose in this regard: to synthesise this disparate data in one place.
“We are hopeful that we will be able to come out with comprehensive research papers before the end of my two-year term,” he says. “We will be able to publish write-ups about all these aspects, which are very important for India going forward.”
Many of India’s criminal procedural laws are unchanged since India’s independence. Some are even left over from British rule. But Luthra’s research could help update these laws for the 21st century.
Changing attitudes
Luthra began studying law in the 1980s. At the time, evidence-based law was barely discussed in India.
“The study of law was completely centred around the professional and academic aspects,” Luthra recalls. “But it was purely law. It did not give you an understanding of the interface between law and other subjects.”
The Criminology MPhil allowed him to engage in multidisciplinary research, facilitated by staff from a variety of subjects. Luthra recalls being taught by academics with backgrounds in sociology, philosophy, and psychology among others.
He believes that this teaching gave him the holistic understanding of law and criminal justice that underpins his current work. After graduating in 1991, Luthra became an advocate in India, progressing to Senior Advocate in 2007. In 2012, he became Additional Solicitor General at the Supreme Court of India and represented both the Union and State governments in matters ranging from juvenile rights to electoral reform.
In this time, Luthra has seen some promising changes in India’s legal system. He highlights an awareness of victim’s rights, and willingness to acknowledge issues of gender and race. However, he also laments how India’s criminal justice system often ignores academic research. He fears this is causing India to adopt stricter policies around imprisonment, without proof of their effectiveness.
“In India, the justice system often treats academic work as foreign, and Indian academics have often not been acknowledged,” he explains. “Our constitution provides for an academic or jurist to be appointed as a judge of the High Court. Yet we have never had a single academic or jurist being appointed as a judge to either the High Court or the Supreme Court.”
Yet Luthra is optimistic that his work on the K.L. Arora Chair can help promote the value of research and evidence-based policy.
“Until we have a strong theoretical and practical research base informing our decision making and jurisprudence, [India] will be lacking,” he says. “The way forward is to have an amalgamation of both”.