The Bench and the Bar

Court No 4 witnessed interesting arguments concerning the scope of India’s secularism before justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant, in the case of The State of Gujarat and others vs Islamic Relief Committee, Gujarat (IRCG) and another.

On 25 August the Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf) hosted a meeting with journalists and Arun Jaitley, finance and information and broadcast minister.

The Kerala Government’s senior counsel, Kapil Sibal, who resumed his arguments at 10.30 a.m. yesterday (August 25) in Court No.11 of the Supreme Court, completed his arguments at 2.30 p.m. As the justices Vikramajit Sen and Shiva Kirti Singh queried him about the basis of classification of four star and five star hotels for the purpose of grant of licences to the latter, Sibal asked what is so irrational about classification.

A death row prisoner, convicted of killing four policemen, was hanged on Tuesday in Pakistan, a media report said.

The execution took place in Punjab province’s Bahawalpur city, Dawn online reported

Zulfiqar was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of killing four policemen in 1997.

Pakistan lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in all capital cases on March 10.

Initially executions were resumed for terrorism offences only in the wake of a Taliban massacre at an army-run school in Peshawar which claimed the lives of over 150 persons, mostly children, on December 16, 2014.

The words of an alleged rape and kidnap survivor, reported by The Ladies Finger in a must-read account of how criminal complaints against sexual violence can go:

It’s been a year now, and filing this case is something I regret all the time. It’s traumatic enough when the assault occurs, but what you have to deal with afterward is worse. To those who are afraid to stand up for themselves after what happened to them, I completely understand what they are going through. All this time has passed, yet no trial date has been confirmed for my case. There is so much corruption involved; this is not something I still want to deal with a year later.

When you’re involved in a case like this, you either have a choice to stand up and fight for your rights, or you can choose to shut your mouth. If I could go back in time, for the sake of my life, my peace, my sanity, I would choose the latter option. Yes, I might have been emotionally scarred, but I would not have had to deal with the trauma of the press, the cops; being asked the same question a hundred times over.

Read in full at The Ladies Finger.

The Delhi high court on 21 August 2015 released the final merit result of candidates prepared by the selection committee after the selection process started in June 2014.