Absence of law tied the hands of SC, will it be freed by Parliament?

Absence of law tied the hands of SC

 Will it be freed by Parliament?

New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Monday, 21^st December 2015, dismissed a plea to block the release of the juvenile convict in the 2012 gang rape case citing absence of law in this regard, even as the victim's parents protested at Jantar Mantar for more stringent guidelines to tackle criminals like him.

Meanwhile, all members in Rajya Sabha, irrespective of parties supported the passing of  the Juvenile Justice Bill soon. Tthere was consensus among parties on the need to discuss the Juvenile Justice Bill and bill is listed for Tuesday, 22^nd Tuesday, 2015.

"We share your concern," the apex court's vacation bench of Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit said, dismissing the Delhi Commission for Women's plea and observing that "everything has to be in accordance with law, we have to enforce law".

"We need to have a clear legislative sanction," the court said, making it clear that given the law as it stood today, it (DCW) could not ask for further detention of the convict, who is now aged 20.

Expressing disappointment, deceased victim Nirbhaya's parents said they knew the Supreme Court won't be able to help them as there has to be a new law to deal with a situation like this.

"I had no hope from the Supreme Court. I didn't go to the court today (Monday) since I knew the verdict (in advance that it cannot block his release)", the victim's mother told reporters at Jantar Mantar.

Badrinath, father of the para-medical student who was gang raped and brutalised in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, told reporters they were being let down by the Narendra Modi government but people were stiil with them.

"People are still with us. It's the government which has failed us. I have no hope of justice from Modi," he said.

They also said that they would fight for a new law so that criminals like him do not get away because they were not of a certain age when the crime was committed.

"We will continue our fight to get the bill passed on the issue," Badrinath said.

The parents of the victim also expressed fear that the Supreme Court ruling on the issue would encourage more such crimes to be committed against women.

"There is no provision (to convict juveniles) or to punish them. They (courts) are more concerned about the accused. Women have been cheated and they continue to be cheated. Nobody wants to do anything about women's safety," Nirbhaya's mother said.

The juvenile, who was under 18 years of age when he was arrested for the brutal rape and brutalisation of the para-medical student who died of her injuries later, was tried under the Juvenile Justice Act.

He was put in a remand home for three years, the maximum permissible under the legal provisions.

Jaitly- Kejriwal Lock horns in Legal Fight now

Jaitly- Kejriwal Lock horns in Legal Fight now

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitly on Monday, 21^st December 2015, filed a Civil & Criminal defamation suit against Delhi Chief Minister Aravind Kejriwal & other leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and sought Rs.10 crore in damages for accusing him of corruption when he headed the DDCA. The suit entails a punishment of upto two years in jail. Kejriwal retorted that he and his AAP can't be intimidated.

Even as a combative Jaitley defended himself in parliament against the corruption charges, fellow BJP MP Kirti Azad, who has been alleging major financial bungling in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) for years, demanded to know why the minister had not sued him.

The Delhi High Court said it would hear on Tuesday the defamation suit slapped against Kejriwal, who took on Jaitley from the day the CBI raided his principal secretary Rajendra Kumar for alleged corruption.

A week after a CBI raid on the Chief Minister's secretariat against his principal secretary that triggered allegations by AAP against Jaitley in the affairs of the Delhi's cricket body DDCA, the minister took the legal recourse saying the AAP leaders' "malicious and defamatory" campaign was causing irreversible damage to him.

The others who have been named in both the petitions are Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai.

The Patiala House Courts in the heart of the city saw the rare spectacle of a union minister walking amidst a jostling crowd of BJP supporters, who shouted slogans against Kejriwal, to enter the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal to file the criminal complaint.

Jaitley came to the court a little after lunch at 2.05 pm and the proceedings lasted 35 minutes.

A phalanx of union ministers, including M Venkaiah Naidu, Smriti Irani, Dharmendra Pradhan and J P Nadda, also came to the court and later said they were showing solidarity with Jaitley describing him as a man of impeccable integrity.

The complaint was filed under various sections of the IPC including 499 (defamation), 500 (punishment), 501 and 502 (printing and sale of defamatory matter).

Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, who appeared for Jaitley, himself an eminent lawyer, pleaded for immediately recording the minister's statement but the court just took cognisance of the complaint and posted the case for January 5 when Jaitley will record his testimony.

Earlier in the day, Jaitley filed a civil suit in the Delhi High Court against Kejriwal and five others AAP leaders for issuing allegedly false and defamatory statements against him and his family members.

Jaitley's counsel advocate Manik Dogra said the civil suit, in which he has sought Rs 10 crores as damages, will come up in the normal course of listing

Gangrape: Juvenile convict released, parents of victim detained

Gangrape: Juvenile convict released,

 parents of victim detained

 New Delhi: Juvenile Convict of 2012 December 16^th Gang rape at Delhi on a medical student was released today even as Supreme Court has decided to hear the SLP filed against the release of the convict on Monday 21^st December 2015. Meanwhile police on Sunday, 20^th December 2015 detained the parents of Gang rape victim along with other protestors who held demonstrations against the release of juvenile convict.

People in huge number gathered at India Gate on Sunday evening to protest the release of the juvenile offender in the horrific December 16 gangrape. According to reports, the police have imposed section 144 at India Gate to avoid violence.

The juvenile convict was released and sent to an NGO at an undisclosed destination with police no longer guarding him.

The freedom for the 20 year-old convict came as parents of the gangrape victim continued their protest for the second day today along with activists protesting against his release and demanding death for him.

“We have left him with an NGO,” police sources said.

Protesters alongwith Nirbhaya's parents detained from Rajpath while protest against release of juvenile convict.

According to reports, the rape victim’s mother was injured when police tried to take her away from the protest venue

According to police sources, the juvenile convicted for the 2012 gang rape, along with five other men, is out of the correctional home. However, they said they were not aware of his whereabouts at present.

A Delhi Police official told that  the juvenile was shifted out of the correctional home around 4-5 days ago. "The juvenile was shifted from the reformation home around 4-5 days back. He was taken to an undisclosed location and was under the observation of an NGO," Deputy Commissioner of Police (North District) Madhur Verma told.

The juvenile, who was under 18 years of age when he was held with five other men for the brutal rape and murder of the paramedical student on December 16, 2012, was tried under the Juvenile Justice Act. He was put in a remand home for three years, the maximum per missible under the legal provisions.

Of the six, one was found dead in Tihar Jail. A trial court had awarded death penalty to the other four rapists which was upheld by the high court. Their appeals are pending before the Supreme Court. Court will hear the Special Leave Petition filed by Delhi Commission for Woman (DCW) against release of the Jevenile on Monday, 21^st December 2015. 

Sonia, Rahul appear in court, granted bail

Sonia, Rahul appear in court, granted bail

Patiyala: Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday, 19^th December 2015, appeared in a trial Court here in the National Herald case filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and were granted unconditional bail.

Outside, the party engaged in a political battle, attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "targeting his opponents" and terming Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy his "stooge."

The top two Congress leaders appeared at 3 p.m. before Metropolitan Magistrate Loveleen in the Patiala House courts in the case filed by Swamy.

The party rallied behind its leaders with former prime minister Manmohan Singh and party's leaders in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and Ghulam Nabi Azad present in the court. Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Gandhi  Vadra was also there.

Congress workers had been thronging the party's central office on 24, Akbar Road since morning to express solidarity with the leaders. They later expressed their joy at the two top party leaders getting bail.

Shortly after returning from the court, both the Gandhis accused Modi of seeking to bend his opponents and said they were not afraid and will fight back. The BJP hit back, terming the Congress as closely linked with "corruption."

Kapil Sibal, who appeared on behalf of the Congress leaders, told reporters that the court rejected Swamy's plea to impose restrictions on the travel abroad of Congress leaders.

"We moved an application on behalf of all the accused for grant of bail. The court was kind enough to grant bail without conditions except for furnishing security in the sum of Rs. 50,000 on behalf of each of the accused which were furnished," he told reporters after the hearing.

The trial court also granted bail to Congress treasurer Motilal Vora, Gandhis' family friend Suman Dubey and another party leader Oscar Fernandes who also appeared before it.

Congress leader A.K. Antony gave surety for Sonia Gandhi while Priyanka Gandhi gave surety for her brother Rahul Gandhi.

Another accused Sam Pitroda, a former chairman of the National Innovation Council was granted exemption from personal appearance after he moved a plea for the same.

The court fixed the next date of hearing for February 20 at 2 p.m.

The Delhi High Court this month dismissed the Gandhis' plea to quash the summons issued to them by the trial court on June 26, on Swamy's complaint about "cheating" in the acquisition of Associated Journals Ltd., which published the National Herald newspaper, by Young India Ltd., "a firm in which Sonia and Rahul Gandhi each own a 38 percent stake".

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi disembarked a few metres before the court premises and walked inside amid tight security.

Death sentence to 5 persons for gangrape and murder

Death sentence to 5 persons 

for gangrape and murder

Keonjhar (Odisha):  Five persons were on Monday, 23^rd November 2015 awarded death sentence by a court in Keonjhar district of Odisha for gangrape and murder of a minor girl over three years ago.

Additional District and Sessions Judge, Champua, Jadumani Mishra pronounced the death penalty for the five persons for gangraping and killing the 13-year-old girl in a forest near Belkundi village under Barbil police station jurisdiction on August 1, 2012.

The girl, a class 8th student in the Municiality High School at Barbil, was returning home from tuition when seven persons forcibly took her away to a nearby forest and gangraped her, the prosecution said.

When the girl did not return, the family members and others carried out a search and her body bearing injury marks was found a little away from the village.

While five of the accused persons - Mata Munda, Mangal Purty, Jiten Munda, Biswanath and Harjit Singh - were arrested two others are still at large.

Countdown for Yakub Memon's hanging

Countdown for Yakub Memon's hanging 

NAGPUR: With the Supreme Court rejecting relief to Yakub Memon, and President rejecting the mercy plea second time,  the countdown for the hanging of the only death-row convict of 1993 Mumbai blasts case on Thursday, 30th July 2015 at 7 am has started at the Nagpur Central Prison. However the lawyers of Memon in a last effort to save him, filed a petition in Supreme Court seeking 14 day's stay to exucution of the death conviction. Chief Justice will hear it tonight.

The rejection of the mercy petition has cleared the deck for Yakub's hanging, that is scheduled take place on Thursday.  Earlier during the day, President Pranab Mukherjee sent the fresh mercy petition of 1993 Mumbai-blast accused Yakub Memon — filed on Wednesday as a last ditch attempt to escape the gallows — to the home ministry.

Memon is all set to be hanged to death as per the TADA court's order tomorrow on his 53rd birthday. All the preparations were complete, prison sources said. Top police officials on Wednesday visited the prison to supervise the security.

Additional director general of police (prisons) Meera Borwankar arrived from Pune to oversee the preparations. She is being assisted by deputy inspector general of prisons Rajendra Dhamne and jail superintendent Yogesh Desai.

Desai had overseen the hanging of Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab at Yerwada jail in Pune during his stint there.

Commissioner of Police S P Yadav, Joint Commissioner of Police Rajwardhan and zonal deputy commissioner Ishu Sindhu visited the jail in the evening. 

He escaped from Indian Courts permanently..!

He escaped from Indian Courts permanently..!

Warren M Anderson, former  Chairman and CEO of  Union Carbide Corporation, who was wanted in India in connection with 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy which killed thousands of people and injured millions of people escaped from the Indian Courts permanently. He died on September 29 at the age of 92.

According to New York Times report, Anderson died on September 29 at a nursing home in Vero Beach, Florida but his death was not announced by his family, However it was confirmed from public records.

Warren M. Anderson, a Brooklyn carpenter's son ascended to the top of the Union Carbide Corporation, where he grappled with the ravages of a poisonous gas leak at the company's plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984 that killed thousands in one of history's most lethal industrial accidents.

The Indian government made multiple requests to extradite him, and officially labelled him a fugitive. A judge also called him an “absconder”.

Anderson reached Bhopal four days after the accident, where he was immediately arrested. But after quickly paying bail, he never returned to face trial.

The Bhopal horror began around midnight on December 2-3, 1984, when a chemical reaction in a plant that made insecticides caused a leak of toxic gases that swept through the surrounding community.

The Madhya Pradesh government confirmed 3,787 deaths as a result, But according to unofficial reports   deaths exceeded  10,000.. More than a half million people were injured, with many dying from illnesses, including lung cancer, kidney failure and liver disease.

In 1989, Union Carbide paid USD 470 million to the Indian government to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. But the Indian public, cheered on by politicians and the news media, never stopped urging the prosecution of Anderson, and arrest warrants were periodically issued.

With the support of the United States government, he escaped extradition. And he eluded subpoenas in civil cases by living quietly and migrating between his homes in Vero Beach; Greenwich, Conn.; and Bridgehampton, NY.

The Indian government and Indian activists contended that slack management and deferred maintenance caused the disaster. Union Carbide blamed sabotage. The company further pointed out that it owned just 51% of the company, and left oversight to local executives. It denied that it had been mixing dangerous chemicals in India to save money; it would be less expensive, the company said, to make the pesticide in the United States and sell it in India.

Union Carbide insisted that the settlement agreement ended any possibility of prosecuting Anderson.

Anderson had devoted his life to climbing the Union Carbide corporate ladder, arriving at work at 7am and frequently moving from city to city. His major concern before the accident was disappointing financial results: In 1979, when he was president and chief operating officer, the company had predicted its sales would reach $13 billion in 1983. In fact they were around $9 billion, and earnings dropped more than 90%.

After he became chairman and chief executive in 1982, he improved productivity and sales, and acquired several companies, including STP Oil. Ecologists said Union Carbide began shaking off the reputation as a polluter that had long dogged it. Anderson ruled over an empire with 700 plants in more than three dozen countries.

Then came  Bhopal. For the first time in his life, Anderson couldn't sleep; at one point he holed up for a week at a hotel in Stamford, Conn. He and his wife, Lillian, spent evenings reading newspaper articles about the tragedy to each other. When they went to restaurants, he was afraid to be seen laughing because people "might not think it was appropriate," he told The Times.

But he told The Associated Press that he was determined to find something positive in the darkness. Although he acknowledged that "people look at me and think I'm out of my mind to say that this may be a good event," he envisioned the disaster leading to new safety procedures.

Life History: Anderson was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 29, 1921, to Swedish immigrants who lived in the borough's Bay Ridge section. They named him for Warren G. Harding, who was the president at the time. He helped his father, a carpenter, install floors, and delivered copies of The Brooklyn Eagle.

He won football and academic scholarships to Colgate, where he majored in chemistry. After graduating in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy and trained to be a fighter pilot, but never saw combat. He played football for a Navy team that had the legendary Bear Bryant as coach. After his discharge, he made the rounds of chemical companies and took the first job offered him - by Union Carbide.

He started as a salesman and later oversaw operations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. He worked in the company's chemicals, plastics, gas, metals and carbon businesses. While working for Union Carbide, he earned a law degree from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) in 1956.

In 1986, at age 65, he retired from Union Carbide. In later years he gardened and fished with his wife, who survives him, and baked Swedish bread, following an old family recipe.

His death passed almost unnoticed until an article appeared in Vero Beach 32963, the weekly newspaper of the Vero Beach barrier island.

In 1984, an article in The Times said that in dealing with Bhopal, Union Carbide, which is now part of Dow Chemical, had to find a balance between "the instincts of human compassion, the demands of public relations and the dictates of corporate survival."

Helplessness: In an interview with The New York Times five months after the tragedy, Anderson spoke of his feelings of loss and helplessness. "You wake up in the morning thinking, can it have occurred?" he said. "And then you know it has and you know it's something you're going to have to struggle with for a long time."

Anderson was highly praised for his courage in going to Bhopal four days after the accident, where he was immediately arrested. But after quickly paying bail, he never returned to face trial.

In 2010, after eight low-level Indian executives of Union Carbide's Bhopal subsidiary were convicted of negligence, a writer for rediff.com, an Indian news site, visited Anderson's immaculately landscaped home in the Hamptons. Reflecting Indian public opinion that he deserved punishment as the ultimate culprit, the writer imagined a future that never happened: "10 to 20 years in a dirty, overcrowded, rat-infested Indian prison."

With the unnoticed death, Anderson really escaped from Indian Courts permanently !