STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

E SUDHANSHU RAO

Currently pursuing my final semester in law (under graduate), from The Tamil Nadu
National Law School, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India, I have always been
passionate about reading the law and building a career around it. For as long as I can
recall, I have dreamt of appearing in court alongside my father, who is a noted
criminal prosecutor.
As Mark Manson rightly said, “Who you are is defined by what you are willing to
struggle for.”

If asked, I would divide my life into four distinct stages where structural changes took
place that influenced my life choices. Right from the nascent stages of my schooling,
crime and thriller fiction struck my fancy. I was incredibly fascinated by the gripping
anecdotes that seemed to give me an adrenaline rush like nothing else. Being born
into a family of criminal lawyers, I was fortunate enough to have access to real case
files dealing with blue-collar crimes, which gave me a much needed jolt from fiction
into reality. As I grew older, I was able to comprehend far more than before and
began forming opinions about every case I read. Soon after my graduation from high
school, I was asked what I wanted to pursue as a career, and without any
apprehension, I knew I wanted to enter the legal fraternity and study criminal law in
specific. Right from my first year of law school, I began attending Moot Courts in
Criminal Law that gave me an insight into the world of litigation. I still vividly
remember my first moot, which specifically dealt with rape amongst other criminal
offences. The defence had comfortably proved their innocence beyond reasonable
doubt while the prosecution struggled to even put a case together, and predictably lost
the competition. This experience brought me to carry out more research that
eventually led to me to discover the striking similarity this competition bore to the
world outside. In India, criminal offences like rape have grown to become
exceedingly common. A weak prosecution in such cases, due to the lack of glamour
in appearing for the state, has also led India to have an unusually high acquittal rate.
This experience broadened my perspective. To become an adroit criminal prosecutor,
which is what I aim to be, I am required to possess a deeper understanding of the
criminal justice system which will in turn better equip me to tackle the existing
problems in the Indian society. In my opinion, this course is tailor made for me to
gain a better understanding of the penal system. I also firmly believe that pursuing my
LLM degree from a world class institution will not only fulfil my career objectives
but will also put me in a position where I can interact with people from different
ethnic backgrounds through which I believe I can gain access to a multitude of
perspectives.