-Express News Service   A special riots court awarded life sentences to 31 people, mostly landed Patels of Sardarpura village in this district, for killing 33 Muslims who were employed as their farm labourers and were their neighbours, to avenge the Godhra train burning of February 27, 2002. Of the dead, 17 were women and 11 children. Principal District Judge S C Srivastava convicted them for murder, rioting and promoting enmity between different...

-The Hindu   The Supreme Court has expressed serious concern over fake encounters by the police and said “tolerance of police atrocities would amount to acceptance of systemic subversion and erosion of the rule of law”. Upholding the life sentence awarded to four Punjab Police officers who were responsible for kidnap and killing of a human rights activist, a Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan said: “Police atrocities are always violative...

Mirchpur Dalit naib tehsildar can't be prosecuted due to his caste Drawing upon a couple of instances in the Mirchpur caste violence trial in which the Judge was constrained by two sub-sections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to sentence three convicted Jat men to life imprisonment offering no judicial discretion for a lighter sentence, and the neglect of duties by a Dalit naib tehsildar of Mirchpur...

Some of the recent cases in the higher courts bring into sharp focus the dilemmas on the death penalty. ON October 10, the Supreme Court Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and C.K. Prasad stayed the execution of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving assailant in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack, by admitting his appeal against the death sentence awarded to him by the Bombay High Court. The Bench wondered whether Kasab deserved...

We must not allow the pain and suffering of the Sikh victims to be transformed into a political instrument to mute calls for justice for the ‘other' victims of similarly orchestrated massacres. More than a quarter century on, not much remains of ‘1984' — shorthand for one of the largest pogroms in India's postcolonial history when thousands of Sikhs were massacred in retribution for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination — in...