-The Hindu Court says appellants deserve no sympathy but modifies death sentence Holding that the age of the accused and the possibility of their reformation were determining factors, the Supreme Court has redefined the ‘rarest of rare’ cases and awarded 30-year imprisonment to two accused who murdered four persons in August 2000. Giving this ruling, a Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said, “Age, definitely, is a factor which cannot be...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Friday accused the government of trying to frustrate the functioning of courts and quasi-judicial bodies by not providing them any facilities as they found these bodies upsetting their decisions. A bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya made this scathing observation as the Union government failed to live up to its repeated commitment to bring in uniformity in service conditions and...

-The Times of India A day after the Supreme Court questioned the government's wisdom over existing security cover to VIPs, the Centre on Friday said security to protected persons could be scaled down depending upon the threat perception. Even as a committee, comprising senior home ministry and Intelligence Bureau officials, has been working on rationalizing the list of protected persons, minister of state for home affairs R P N Singh said, "If...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Chief minister J Jayalalithaa on Friday declared that all districts of Tamil Nadu, except Chennai, were drought-hit. After a disastrous monsoon and with Karnataka proving intractable on release of Cauvery water, experts said the CM's statement appeared calculated to buttress the state's case in court for immediate relief. But Jayalalithaa injected the declaration with a sense of urgency, saying finance minister O Paneerselvam would lead a high-level team...

-The Hindu The Suryanelli case in Kerala cast its lengthening shadow over the Congress on Thursday, with the rape victim’s mother asking party president Sonia Gandhi to act against Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P. J. Kurien, whom she places at the heart of the 40-day-long nightmare her daughter underwent 17 years ago — a crime for which not one of the 42 accused persons has been punished to date. The woman...