The special court judge hearing the Gulberg Society massacre trial has reserved his order till November 18 on the plea of the advocate of the riot victims to stay the proceedings till the Supreme Court–appointed Special Investigation Team submitted its final report. Advocate S.M. Vora had moved the court to stay the trial after the SIT refused to submit its report before the special court and informed last month that as...

The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine is a grey area: Justice Ganguly Supreme Court Judge A.K. Ganguly on Tuesday termed death penalty “barbaric,” “anti-life,” “undemocratic” and “irresponsible,” but “legal.” Expressing his “personal views” on the subject, Justice Ganguly said the constitutional guarantee of ‘right to life' could not be subjected to vague premises. The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine in death penalty cases “is a grey area as it depended on the interpretation of...

-The Hindu   Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, has issued the following clarification on his critical observations of the Indian media.   I have expressed my views relating to the media in several T.V. interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including many media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Many media people (including several T.V. channels)...

-The Hindu   With a view to laying down guidelines for disposal of mercy petitions, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Centre to file a comprehensive affidavit giving details of all mercy petitions filed by death row convicts pending before the President of India and the Governors of various States. A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya, while granting four weeks to the Additional Solicitor-General Harin Raval for filing the...

The parliamentary panel examining the Lokpal bill is learnt to have formulated a five-stage mechanism that separates investigation from prosecution, and maintains “equilibrium in the holy trinity” of CBI, CVC and the proposed Lokpal. On the question of whether to include the prime minister in the Lokpal’s purview, opinion in the standing committee, sources said, has narrowed to two points of view: keeping the PM out and, including the PM with...