Crime, Criminality and Punishment in Colonial Darjeeling District

Abstract

Crime is behaviour against the rules of the society by which it achieves the status of crime and individual is treated as criminal. In the pre-colonial period the concept of crime and criminality existed in an elaborate form in texts and scriptures. But the legal perception of crime and criminality in the British period is essentially a colonial construction. They adopted a new method of identifying crime and criminality and of punishment in colonial India. In this article the crimes and criminality in Darjeeling and the methods of imprisonment is highlighted.