The Supreme Court has struck down the 160-year-old law that sought to punish men for having sex with the wife of another man. Section 497 of the IPC has been held to be unconstitutional. It also said thinking of adultery as a crime is a retrograde step. “This means that in a matrimonial dispute, no […]
An order by Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud today issued detailed guidelines on the proposed live-streaming of court proceedings. The guidelines include the kind of cases that are prohibited from being streamed, and instructions on what can be and what should not be broadcast. The following are the instructions given by Justice Chandrachud today. First, […]
An engineer from Kerala working with a petroleum company in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment and a fine of around Rs 30 lakhs for his tweets. With this, Vishnudev, a native of Alleppey in Kerala, has become the first Indian to be punished under Saudi Arabia’s stricter anti-blasphemy laws that […]
The Supreme Court today directed the home secretaries of the states that have not filed compliance reports on anti-mob violence measures to personally appear before it after a week. Hearing a public interest litigation on rising cases of violence by cow vigilantes in July, the court had issued 12 guidelines for all state and the […]
Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s minister for law and information technology, said the government has got ‘good response’ from WhatsApp for its proposal to install a monitoring mechanism on the platform. The government has been pushing WhatsApp to put up a monitoring mechanism that would send out alerts when messages on any one subject starts going […]
A total of 1,104 people have died during clinical trials of various drugs and procedures in India in the last three years, according to the ministry of health and family welfare. However, not everyone who died during clinical trials are found to have died from the procedure through subsequent examinations. Only the patients who are […]
Ministry of Home Affairs today denied media reports that said that the center would set up a police force dedicated to fighting cyber crime. Law and order is a state subject in India, and currently cyber crimes are dealt with by state police forces. Earlier this year, media reports suggested that the home ministry had […]
Human Resources Development minister Prakash Javadekar today said that the government is still in the process of finalizing the draft of a new bill to set up a new higher education body in India. “The Ministry is in the process of finalization of the draft Higher Education Commission of India Bill, 2018 based on the […]
Government of India has faced questions from members of parliament on reports that it has asked state-owned refiners to get ready to stop importing crude oil from Iran in the face of pressure from the United States. A question from Lok Sabha MPs Supriya Sule and Mullappally Ramachandran sought to know “whether the Government has […]
The central government has consulted the Union Public Service Commission on the plan to recruit private citizens into the higher judiciary. The UPSC is tasked with recruiting officer-level employees of the Union. The center seems to be trying to clarify whether there is a legal requirement to involve the UPSC the latest move. “Advice of […]
The number of cases pending in various high courts in India has increased during the tenure of Narendra Modi as prime minister as close to 40% of the judge positions in the higher judiciary continues to remain vacant. While there were 39.3 lakh cases pending at the 24 High Courts in India at the end […]
The Union of India has submitted its affidavit before the Supreme Court on the controversial ‘unnatural sex’ law or Section 377. In the affidavit, the government has refused to either oppose or recommend the scrapping of the section that criminalizes all kinds of ‘unnatural’ sexual acts. It said it is leaving it ‘to the wisdom […]
Facebook has refused to block a ‘drinker’s group’ that the Kerala Police had requested to be taken down, according to local media reports. The social network reportedly told the police that the group was not in violation of its guidelines and cannot be taken down without proper justification. The Kerala Excise department is trying to […]
WhatsApp, India’s largest communication platform used by an estimated 65% of the country’s online population, has come under scrutiny for providing a conduit to distribute ‘fake news’ after multiple cases of lynchings came to light. While the company has urged ‘society and companies’ to help tackle the menace, the messaging application has some more to […]
The Supreme Court has asked the state of Uttar Pradesh to furnish details of the encounter killings that are taking place in the state. In a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties or PUCL, the court directed counsel Aishwarya Bhati to file details of the encounters taking place. Among the […]
The Supreme Court bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Sanjay Kaul has removed the ‘immunity’ enjoyed by Enforcement Directorate official Rajeshwar Singh and said the government can go ahead with any probe into his conduct, and remove him, if it wants to, from the investigation. Rajeshwar Singh, on his part, claimed that his life […]
Bharti Airtel has issued a letter on social media explaining its side of the controversy that broke out after an employee with an Arabic name was rejected by a customer on the basis of his possible affiliation to Islam, and the request was subsequently handled by someone with a Sikh name. Explaining the incident, the […]
Companies belonging to the Future Group, which runs India’s largest super market chain Big Bazaar, said they have not taken any decision on selling a minority stake to any global retailer. Their comments came in response to a clarification sought by the stock exchanges into a news report that quoted Future Group founder Kishore Biyani […]
Two Congress Party MPs refused to proceed the with their petition in the Supreme Court on the impeachment of the Chief Justice after the judges refused to share the order passed by the Chief Justice of India on the matter. The Chief Justice of India had, last evening, taken up the matter and allocated it […]
Chief Justice of India Deepak Misra refused to hear a petition filed by a Dalit activists’ organization seeking urgent relief from the a recent judgment by another bench that imposed restrictions on the powers of the police in cases filed under the SC ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. “If you have filed a petition, it […]
