Prof. (Dr.) G.S. Bajpai

Prof. (Dr.) G.S. Bajpai serves as the Vice Chancellor of National Law University Delhi. He is equipped with more than thirty years of professional experience as an author, researcher, teacher and administrator.

He has previously served as the Vice Chancellor at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL), Punjab, and Registrar at National Law University Delhi. He has also served as Senior Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Law), Chair Professor at K.L Arora Chair in Criminal Law, and Chairperson of the Centre for Criminology & Victimology at National Law University Delhi. Before that, he served as Professor (Law and development) & Chairperson at the Centre for Criminal Justice Administration, National Law Institute University, Bhopal. He has also held positions at the Indian Institute of Public Administration (1989), Bureau of Police Research & Development (1989- 1995), Punjab Police Academy, Punjab and Department of Criminology & Forensic Science, University of Saugar, M.P. Under his guidance, as many as 12 students have already completed doctoral dissertations (Ph. D.). In addition to a Master’s specialisation in Criminology and Criminal Justice, he holds a doctorate in victimology and a post-doctorate in criminal justice from Leicester University, U.K., as a Commonwealth Fellow at the Department of Criminology, Leicester University, U.K.

He served as convenor of the Committee for Reforms in Criminal Laws set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, tasked with spearheading historic reforms in criminal law in India. Also, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Govt. of India has nominated Prof. GS Bajpai as a Member of the Committee for conferring statutory status to the ‘Right to Repair’ under the statutory framework of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

Prof. Bajpai is also the nominated Member of the Delhi Legal Service Committee of the High Court of Delhi. He is a Member of the Advisory Board for Development of Legal Education & Legal Profession of the Bar Council of India and a  Member of the Standing Committee of the Legal Education Committee of the Bar Council of India. He is also a Member of the Expert Committee of the UGC to frame guidelines for introducing the Course on Law for Holistic and Multidisciplinary Education. Prof. Bajpai has been designated a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.

Prof. Bajpai has authored twenty-two books/monographs, more than sixty papers, over a hundred op-eds in leading dailies like Indian Express, the Hindu, and the Tribune and thirteen project reports. His books (2011) ‘Witness & Criminal Justice Systems’, ‘On Cyber Crime & Cyber Law’, ‘Situational Crime Prevention & Crime Reduction’ and ‘Victimological Narratives on Gender Violence’ (2014), Victim Justice- A Paradigm Shift in the Indian Criminal Justice System” and “Judgments that Shaped the India Jurisprudence” published (2017) by Thomson & Reuters, ‘Living on the Edge’ and ‘Juvenile Justice’ (Bloomsbury (2019) have been well-received.His recent publications include ‘Handbook of Laws and Case Laws for Victims of Crime’, Thomson Reuters (2022), and Fast Track Courts in India Promise & Performance, published by Satyam Law International (2022) and ‘Hate Crime in India’ from Springer (2023) are noteworthy.

He is the editor of two prestigious international journals: Journal of Victimology & Victim Justice (published by Sage Publications) and Indian Journal of Criminology, a publication of the Indian Society of Criminology since 1972.

Awards

Prof. Bajpai has been conferred various awards and honours for consistent, high-quality research. He received the G. B. Pant Award for his book on Human Rights and Police. In recognition of his contribution to the growth of Criminology in India, Dr Bajpai was conferred the title of Fellow of the Indian Society of Criminology (FISC) by the Indian Society of Criminology (ISC). He was also awarded (2005) the coveted Prof. S. Srivastava Memorial Award for excellence in research/teaching in Criminology and the ‘Best Social Scientist Award’ of the Indian Society of Criminology (2014). He was conferred the prestigious Prof. K. Chockalingam Award in the Fourth International & Eight Biennial Conference of the Indian Society of Victimology in October 2014. Prof. Bajpai was conferred the ‘ISC-Kumarappa Reckless Award’, the highest honour and award of ISC, in recognition of his significant contribution to research, teaching and administration in the field of Criminal Justice Administration (2018). Sagar Ratna Award by the Govt. of Madhya Pradesh for his contribution to Higher Education, especially in Legal Education (2022). He has been conferred the Life Time Achievement Award (2023)  by the Commission for Other Backward Classes, Govt. of NCT. on the occasion of Teacher’s Day for distinguished services in the field of education.

Amicus

At the instance of the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi, he was appointed as Amicus Curiae for the following cases:

1. Babloo Chauhan Alias Dabloo v. State Govt. of NCT of Delhi, 30.11.2017 – Crl.A. 157/2013

2. Karan v. State NCT of Delhi, [2020] DLT 352

3. Sunil Tyagi v. State Govt. Of NCT of Delhi, CRL. MC. – 5328/2013 AND CRL. MA. 19244/2013

Notably, Prof. Bajpai is credited with having evolved the concept of ‘wrongful prosecution’ in the Indian context. Based on his report on the Babloo Chauhan case, the Law Commission, in its 277th Report, proposed amendments to laws to help the victims of wrongful prosecution. His report in the case of Karan v. State also introduced the concept of a “Victim Impact Report” and the procedure for calculating and granting compensation under section 357 of the Cr.P.C. In the third case of Sunil Tyagi v. State, his report gave valuable suggestions regarding proclaimed offenders, issuing of process and attachment of property.

As a significant achievement, Prof. Bajpai worked as the ‘Co-Principal Investigator’ of the MHRD-UGC, E-PG Pathshala Project and led the creation of online e-text and video lectures on 367 modules of fifteen papers for P.G. level courses in Law. He has also completed the E-PG Pathshala Project on Criminology as Principal Investigator, where he led the creation of 350 e-texts and a similar number of video lectures for twelve postgraduate-level papers on criminology. He worked as Principal Investigator to lead the creation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for various topics in law, where thousands of learners benefitted from these courses. Prof. Bajpai also contributed significantly to police training research. He successfully implemented a series of Vertical Interaction Courses for IPS officers and coordinated training projects with Sheffield Hallam University.

Distinctions & Achievements

Prof. Bajpai is the Secretary-General of the World Society of Victimology (WSV). He is the first Indian to be elected as Secretary-General of the WSV. He is also the Vice President of Victim Support Asia, President of the Indian Society of Victimology, and Vice-Chairman of the Indian Society of Criminology. He has also been appointed as a Member of BPR&D’s ‘Standing Committee on Research Methodology for Research Projects’ of BPR&D.

As a passionate criminal law teacher for over two decades, he is credited with designing and pioneering the expression ‘Critical Criminal Law ‘ in India, now an LL.M. Course in many universities. Besides, he is also credited with conceptualising the novel paradigms of “Victim Justice”, “Victim Jurisprudence”, and “Wrongful Prosecution” in the Indian context.

Assignments

Prof. Bajpai has held many prestigious international assignments for advanced criminal law and criminal justice research. He has been to the University of Paris (France) under the UGC Indo-French Cultural Exchange Programme (1999) to work on ‘Victim’s position in the French Criminal Justice System’. He also received the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship at the Department of Criminology, University of Leicester, the U.K., for advanced research and teaching (in Crime reduction) for 2003-04. Prof. Bajpai also visited the International Victimology Institute, Tokiwa University, Japan, to deliver lectures in July 2007. He was also selected under the Indo-Russia Cultural Exchange programme to visit St. Petersburg (2007) and the Indo-Hungarian Cultural Exchange Programme in Budapest (2009). In 2010, Prof. Bajpai was conferred a visiting fellowship of ICSSR under the Indo-NWO Exchange of Scholars. During this visit, he conducted significant research at the International Victimology Institute, Faculty of Law, the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. Besides visiting the International Criminal Court at Hague, Prof. Bajpai delivered key lectures at universities like V.U. University, Amsterdam.

He was identified by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, to author a case study on ‘Bhopal Gas Tragedy’, which was published with the Cambridge Press, U.S. He made a key presentation at the Asian Law Institute Conferences held at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur (June 2014), Manila (2017), Seoul (2018), New Delhi (2020) Asian Society of Criminology Conferences at Hong Kong (2018) and World Society of Victimology Conference (2019). He visited the Faculty of Law / Criminology at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, in January 2015 as a visiting professor under the German Academic Exchange Programme.

As a part of the academic collaboration, he has made significant presentations at the Centre for Criminology, the University of Oxford and the Department of Criminology & Law, Sheffield Hallam University U.K., on the issues of Post-Delhi Gang-Rape Legal Reforms and Victim Justice.