-Hindustan Times The changes empower the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so On August 8, 2019, the President assented to amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, introducing a set of changes to an already draconian law. The most fundamental of these changes empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so, leaving little to no recourse for them to protest...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a move to step up pressure on polluters as Delhi faces its annual winter bad air days, the Centre said on Saturday that criminal prosecution will be launched against violators failing to take action despite warnings and offenders will also be named and shamed on official websites. Noting poor compliance of its directives to check air pollution in Delhi-NCR, the Centre said the names of...

-Hindustan Times Adityanath was an MP from Gorakhpur when he allegedly gave an inflammatory speech outside the town’s railway station. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Uttar Pradesh government to explain why chief minister Yogi Adityanath should not be prosecuted in a case involving an alleged hate speech he had delivered before the 2007 Gorakhpur riots. A bench of chief justice of India Dipak Misra, and justices AM Khanwilkar and...

-PTI New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Wednesday decriminalised begging in the national capital, saying provisions penalising the act were unconstitutional, nearly three months after wondering aloud how it could be treated as an offence in a country where the government was unable to provide food or jobs. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar said the inevitable consequence of the decision would be that prosecution...

-The Indian Express The poor conviction rate in cases of child rape goes to show that death penalty - which comes at the sentencing stage, post-convictions — will mean little to a vast majority of the victims. Two telling sets of figures from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) put a question mark on the effectiveness of death as a deterrence for child rape. In 2016, of the 64,138 child rape...