-The Hindu Not only is the death penalty barbaric and immoral and its deterrent effect unproven, it also contradicts the core objectives of the criminal justice system Advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the immediate aftermath of the sentencing in the Delhi rape case may appear morally dubious. What rights do people guilty of so heinous a crime lay claim to, and what do they deserve but death, you...

-The Hindu In many cases, witnesses turned hostile, or police statements didn't match victim statements The judge who convicted four men for the gang rape and murder of a Delhi girl had handed down only two other rape convictions in the last five years, court data shows. However, this record seems to raise more questions about the investigation process than the legal process. Supreme Court advocate K. V. Dhananjay with a team of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than three decades after carving out 'rarest of rare' category of cases warranting award of death penalty, the Supreme Court found a new mitigating factor - poverty -- to commute a convict's death penalty to life imprisonment. "Poverty, socio-economic, psychic compulsions, undeserved adversities in life are thus some of the mitigating factors, in addition to those indicated in Bachan Singh and Machi Singh cases," said...

-The Hindu Allahabad: Even as the Uttar Pradesh government blamed the circulation of a fake video on social media for aggravating communal violence in Muzaffarnagar, inflamattory and communally inciting material continued to be spread widely on social networking sites and applications. Newspapers reports, morphed with inflammatory headlines, were widely circulated through various groups on Twitter, Facebook and other mediums of social media on Monday. Two widely circulated posts were picture clippings from...

-The Hindu     Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka submits 100-page report to government Ashok Khemka, the Haryana IAS officer who cancelled a land deal mutation between Robert Vadra and real estate giant DLF Universal Ltd last October, has told the Haryana government that Mr. Vadra falsified documents and executed a series of sham transactions for 3.53 acres land in Shikohpur village of Gurgaon, thereby pocketing a hefty premium on a commercial colony licence...