Court: if it is suspicious, it should not be acted upon without corroborative evidence A dying declaration made by a victim, accusing a person of having been responsible for his/her death, cannot form the basis of conviction if it suffers from infirmity, the Supreme Court has held. A Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan said, “Where a dying declaration is suspicious, it should not be acted upon without corroborative evidence....

The National Mission to improve the delivery of justice is at work. In October 2009, on the basis of a Vision Document adopted at a judicial conference in New Delhi, the Government of India approved in principle a National Mission to reduce pendency and delays in the judicial system and enhance accountability through structural changes, higher performance standards and capacity-building. Many past attempts to achieve the goals did not yield results...

-BBC   Police in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have registered cases against 16 police officers nearly six months after they were accused of rape. The personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) are accused of committing the crimes during protests by farmers in Bhatta-Parsaul villages. Villagers had clashed with the police in May while protesting against the government acquisition of their land. Farmers said they were being forced to give up land...

The pointlessness of the debate over Indian measures of poverty becomes clear when we look at the country’s human development record. If per capita real incomes have risen so well during the last two decades since reforms were introduced, surely that should mean better lives for most Indians. Forget about catching up with China, there is increasing evidence of India falling behind Bangladesh in terms of key human development indicators...

-The Times of India   With the Bombay high court making it clear that it would grant no further extension to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) for passing the final order on Lavasa, Ajit Gulabchand, chief of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), now hopes of a green clearance. "We hope the MoEF will issue the order giving environment clearance by November 10," Gulabchand said on Tuesday. The additional solicitor general had informed the...