Rana mentioned the rape and murder of Manorama Devi in Manipur in 2004 and the anti-Army protests by women in the Northeast, pointing out that “we armed forces have misused the Armed Forces Special Powers Act”. He also said that any additional powers in the hands of the armed forces would be akin to the colonial Rowlatt Act.

Another contestant, Mayank Bhati, spoke for the motion and won the second prize in the English vertical. Bhati, an Assistant Commandant Executive in the CISF, argued that observing human rights would not only contain terrorism and militancy, but also create a “police-public model of security”.

Bhati said: “What my worthy opponents fail to realise is that the non-observance of human rights by the state and the security forces is one of the chief causes of militancy. Man did not enter society to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured.”

Bhati said the examples of the American War of Independence, French Revolution and Indian freedom struggle prove that law and order “cannot be maintained only through the fear of punishment”. “The concept of human rights might be a relatively new one to the Western world,” he said. “The idea of human rights has been a part of India’s cultural, moral and religious traditions that predate and transcend national identity.”