The Supreme Court on Tuesday posted for final hearing on Thursday a Special Leave Petition filed by death-row convict Mahendra Nath Das, whose mercy petition was rejected by the President after an inordinate delay of 12 years and whose plea for commutation to life imprisonment on this ground was dismissed by the Gauhati High Court. A Bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik and Justice Swatanter Kumar, without passing any order on his...

Bench says it runs counter to constitutional law and ultra vires Constitution The Supreme Court on Wednesday declared unconstitutional Section 27 (3) of the Arms Act, which provides for mandatory Death sentence to an accused charged with an offence under this provision. Section 27(3) says: “Whoever uses any prohibited arms or prohibited ammunition or does any act in contravention of Section 7 and such use or act results in the death of...

Here is a fundamental question to friends and supporters of Salman Rushdie: Is the right to speech and expression absolute, without any restrictions, in any democratic society? The right to freedom of expression is recognised as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 goes on to say that the exercise of this right carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may “therefore be...

The people are not always right - though they usually are. Socrates was sentenced to death in a direct democracy by popular vote in a popular jury. He was the greatest man Athens ever produced and was unquestionably one of the noblest men of all time. The Treaty of Versailles was a link in the chain of events that led to the decline of the great civilisation of Europe. Yet...

-The Telegraph   BMW hit-and-run key accused Sanjeev Nanda, who is a free man now, today urged the Supreme Court not to use his case to settle the law on whether culpable homicide not amounting to murder or criminal negligence charges should be invoked in such cases. Those accused in hit-and-run cases are routinely slapped with IPC Section 304A (causing death by negligence), which carries a maximum jail term of two years or...