NEW DELHI : In a setback for RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, the Supreme Court on Monday set aside a Ranchi High Court ruling and ordered that he be tried in all the remaining five fodder scam cases.
 The Rashtriya Janata Dal chief has already been convicted in one of the fodder scam cases and his appeal against this is pending in the Supreme Court.   Setting aside the High Court order which said that since Lalu Prasad has already been convicted in one fodder scam case there was no need to try him in the other cases, a bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Amitava Roy held that the trial would take place in all the cases on all the charges.  The bench also directed that the trials be completed in nine months.  The apex court wondered how could the same judge on the same facts of the case take one view in respect of one accused and a contrary view in case of Lalu Prasad.   The bench also took exception to delay by the Central Bureau of Investigation in filing the appeal against the High Court order.  It ordered CBI Director to hold an enquiry and fix responsibility for the delay.

(With Inputs from IANS)

PARIS : Pro-EU Emmanuel Macron on Sunday became France’s youngest President with a landslide victory over far-right rival Marine Le Pen, a result hailed by European Union leaders.

 Wild celebrations broke out in Paris and across France as Macron, 39, bagged an overwhelming 66.06 per cent or 20.7 per cent of all votes in a closely and bitterly fought battle.

 Thousands of jubilant Macron supporters waving blue, white and red tricolour flags danced and cheered outside the iconic Paris Louvre museum. 

 A civil servant who became a millionaire investment banker and then a government minister, Macron founded the ‘En Marche!’ movement and went on to become the President despite not having a constituency of his own and without the backing of any major party.

 Anti-EU Le Pen, 48, got about 10.6 million votes in the Presidential election’s crucial runoff (33.94 per cent). This was almost double of what her more rabid father Jean-Marie won in 2002, the last time a far-right candidate made it to the runoff.  

 She told her National Front supporters that the new divide in France was between “globalists and patriots”. She continued to criticise Macron as an establishment candidate.

 In a speech to jubilant supporters, Macron said: “Tonight you won, France won. Everyone told us it was impossible. But they don’t know France.” 

 The new President vowed to fight “the forces of division that undermine France”, media reports said.

 He tweeted earlier: “As of this evening and for the coming five years, I am going to serve with humility, with dedication, with determination, in your name.”

 Macron acknowledged the anger of many voters and pledged to protect the weakest members of the society.

 “I will work to renew the links between Europe and its citizens… I will fight with all my strength against the divisions that separate us.” 

 Macron, who will take office on May 14, is now looking to use his popularity to lead his fledgling party in legislative elections in over a month from now.

 He is expected to meet stiff resistance from Le Pen’s National Front and others.

 European Union leaders heaved a sigh of relief over Le Pen’s defeat. She had threatened a “Brexit” if she won.

 European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said: “Happy that the French chose a European future.”

 European Council President Donald Tusk congratulated the French people “for choosing Liberty, Equality and Fraternity over tyranny of fake news”.

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “Macron’s win was a victory for a strong united Europe.”

 US President Donald Trump, who had earlier praised Le Pen, congratulated Macron for the “big win” and said he looked forward to working with him.

 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also hailed Macron’s victory.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had openly backed Le Pen, welcomed Macron’s victory. He urged Macron to bridge “deep rifts” and work together in the face of growing threats of terrorism and violent extremism.

 Macron’s triumph casts a shadow over British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit ambitions as the newly-elected President vowed to be “tough” on the UK earlier if it left the bloc. 

 Macron’s supporters admitted that he would face huge challenges, with a third of the electorate choosing Le Pen or abstaining or casting a blank ballot, the French and European media said.

 It was clear the traditional Left had voted for Macron — not because they loved him but because they feared chaos if Le Pen took charge.

(With Inputs from IANS)

PARIS : Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron was declared victor after he won 20.7 million votes, firmly beating Marine Le Pen, who took about 10.6 million in the French Presidential elections’ crucial runoff on Sunday.
  According to the official results announced, Macron wins 66.06 per cent of total votes. Le Pen got 33.94 per cent of the votes, BBC quoted the French Interior Ministry as saying.    The turnout in this runoff was nearly 74 per cent — the lowest in almost 50 years.  French media reported that Macron supporters came out on the streets in celebration while Le Pen called him up to congratulate him.   Thanking his supporters, Macron tweeted: “Let us love France. As of this evening and for the coming five years, I am going to serve with humility, with dedication, with determination, in your name.”  Earlier in the day, projections after the polls closed at 8 p.m. (Paris time) showed political novice Macron, who at 39 will be the youngest French President, had secured over 65 per cent of the vote, against his right-wing opponent, Marie Le Pen of the National Front, said the BBC.  “It’s a great honour and a great responsibility. I want to thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he had said.   He also acknowledged the anger of many voters and vowed to protect the weakest members of society  “I will work to renew the links between Europe and its citizens. My duty is to alleviate fears and rekindle optimism. I will fight with all my strength against the divisions that separate us,” he said.   Twice in his speech, the president-elect acknowledged the risks France was facing by climate change and ecological dangers.   Le Pen called him up to congratulate him. She told her supporters at her campaign headquarters that the new divide in France is between “globalists and patriots”.

(With Inputs from IANS)

Blame it on the soaring mercury or power going to their heads, the saffron brigade in Uttar Pradesh is cutting loose, much to the chagrin of the bureaucracy that is facing the heat of their misconduct.

And so, while it was initially dismissed as the handiwork of fringe elements and overzealous party workers by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the situation now is precarious with many of its lawmakers and ministers involved in such public incidents of high-handedness.
On Sunday, veteran Gorakhpur legislator Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, who is also a confidant of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, not only took on a woman police officer but publicly humiliated her, so much so that the woman in uniform broke down and was seen in TV footage wiping her tears. 
Charu Nigam, the Indian Police Service (IPS) officer at the receiving end, tried to explain her position in an altercation over a protest against a liquor shop, but Agarwal asked her to shut up and not make him lose his cool.
Not long ago, Raghav Lakhanpal, the young Lok Sabha MP from Saharanpur, led a mob involved in a violent attack on the official residence of the then district SSP Luv Kumar. Angered by the police not giving permission for a procession planned on the anniversary of Dalit icon B.R. Ambedkar, angry BJP workers had stormed Kumar’s high-security house and vandalised it.
While an FIR related to the violence during the procession does name the BJP MP, the honest and upright police officer was shifted to Noida. When a hue and cry followed the transfer, an official spokesman of the state government said this was a “promotion and not a punishment since he was given a better district”! Better in what terms, only the BJP would know. 
This apart, a mob of young party workers had not long ago manhandled policemen at Kannauj, the parliamentary constituency of Dimple Yadav, wife of former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
There have been other incidents as well where leaders of the ruling party have been caught on tape openly threatening police inspectors of dire consequences if they did not pay heed to matters raised by them. The police officers had secretly recorded the conversations and gave them to their superiors. In its defence, the BJP said its state leaders were only seeking justice for people, insisting that the tone and tenor of the conversation hardly mattered.
Last month, the brother of a senior cabinet minister openly humiliated a constable in Unnao, even telling him that he should mend his ways or else he would be disrobed in public. “Dalal kahin ka, purani sarkaar chali gayi hai, hosh mein rehna warna kapde utarwa doonga” (The old government has gone. Come to your senses or I’ll have you disrobed in public), he told a constable over the drowning of some youth in the Ganga river. 
Cow vigilantes are also active in villages and are allegedly hounding the Muslim community and threatening them with consequences if they stepped out of line.
Some time back, senior minister Satyadev Pachauri was caught on camera during an inspection making derogatory references to a disabled employee. When disabled people can’t work why are they recruited, he asked officials. 
To put this in perspective, some two years ago, in one his monthly radio chats, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested that the word “divyaang” be used instead of ‘viklaang’ for the differently abled and yet Pachauri called the man a “loola langda” (dumb cripple), which is definitely a pejorative. He later apologised, saying he had been misinterpreted.
BJP workers seemingly are not paying heed to the repeated advisories from party leaders asking them to be “in control and humble”. Party President Amit Shah, during his address at the state executive earlier this month, warned workers and leaders against any adventurism and said they should learn to be humble and more responsible. 
Adityanath, too, has on at least two occasions, asked workers to be good in their conduct. On one occasion he, however, blamed some “unscrupulous elements” wearing saffron scarves of indulging in hooliganism and bringing disrepute to the BJP.
Whatever be the case, the “elixir of power”, and that too after a long exile of 14 years, seems to be too much for the BJP workers and leaders not to be tempted with. What is even more ironical is the fact that the BJP romped home to power by highlighting the lawlessness by Samajwadi Party (SP) workers and promising change.

A Class 11 student here has built a device that enables visually-impaired people to read by providing them a 3D aural environment using the concept of binaural beats. It’s got him a grant of Rs 20 lakh from NITI Aayog to take it forward.

The “EyeScribe” device, developed by Gursimran Singh of the Amity International School here, facilitates reading and comprehension by dictating the text and allowing the user to create a mental picture of the subject.

A binaural beat is an “auditory illusion” created when two different tones that are close to each other in frequency are presented dichotically — one through each ear. The listener then perceives the auditory illusion of a third tone — the binaural beat.

“The device has two main functions — it has a camera attached with spectacles that takes pictures of the text that they want to read,” Gursimran Singh.

“All the processing happens in a micro-processive platform called Raspberry pie. The image goes under an optical character recognition (OCR) software. Then, the text is extracted and converted into audio with the help of a text-to-speech (TTS) engine,” he said.

He explained that the device dictates the text and helps blind people do without braille. “If it is connected to your smart phone it can be translated into other languages,” he said.

Singh’s inspiration came from the struggles of his grandfather’s blind brother who is no more.

“I spent a lot of time with him when he was alive. I closely observed him struggling with the challenge. His troubles gave me a push to do something for the blind,” he said.

He claims that his device is better than others that blind people use.

“EyeScribe is a wearable technology. It is handy, unlike JAWS that is used by the government in blind schools. It is quite cumbersome as you need a computer to use that,” he said.

“My device can be connected with a smartphone and thus translates the text into different languages,” he added.

Another feature of EyeScribe is the use of OCR and TTS together. “The two softwares have never been used together before this,” he said.

It took him quite some time to build the device, after which he approached many blind schools for testing its design and performance. Many refused, fearing it to be hazardous.

“I then went on to work closely with psychiatrists and eye specialists for a week, who tested EyeScribe on their patients and validated it fit for usage,” Singh said.

Till date, Gursimran has helped approximately 150 visually-impaired people with his device. He continues to improvise it based on user feedback and is committed to expanding its market to help more and more people.

He has managed to get a grant-in-aid of Rs 20 lakh and a makerspace from the NITI Aayog to develop EyeScribe at a commercial level for distribution across the country.

What is Singh’s message to fellow youngsters?

“Our life is like a web page. The brain sends us pop-ups every day and we should never block them. It is our curiosity which navigates and opens a new tab in our life. Be curious, be humble and always try to make your life memorable for others as well as yourself.”

For his extraordinary efforts in the area of community service, he was feted at the seventh Annual Pramerica Spirit of Community awards.

Singh is now in Washington representing India at the Prudential Spirit of Community Award Global Ceremony.

He will be participating in be a series of events at places like The White House, The Smithsonian National Museum and The Andrew Mellon Auditorium.

(With Inputs from IANS)

NEW DELHI : Sacked Delhi Water Minister and AAP leader Kapil Mishra on Sunday claimed that he saw Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accept Rs 2 crore in cash from Health Minister Satyendar Jain.

“Day before yesterday (Friday) I saw Jain handing over Rs 2 crore in cash to Kejriwal at his residence. I asked about the money but Kejriwal refused to answer,” Mishra told the media, a day after being sacked on Saturday.

Mishra said he has informed Lt Governor Anil Baijal about this and said he will provide details to investigating agencies.

“I asked Kejriwal to call all party leaders, ministers and members to explain about the money. I urged him to seek an apology. And now, I have been sacked,” said Mishra, and vowed to end corruption in the party.

He insisted he won’t quit the Aam Aadmi Party. “I will neither quit the party nor anyone can ask me to go.” 

(With Inputs from IANS)

WASHINGTON : At last Hillary Clinton is “out of the woods”, smugly telling Americans that had election been held 12 days earlier, “I would be your President” and not that brash billionaire Donald Trump.

She took “absolute personal responsibility” for her stunning loss to the political novice even as she claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin, FBI director James Comey and misogyny stole the election from her.

She was cruising to a victory before WikiLeaks started making embarrassing disclosures from her campaign chief’s emails hacked by Putin’s spooks and Comey reopened a probe into her own email saga, Clinton suggested.

But the former Secretary of State did not say why she did not campaign in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan or woo Trump supporters whom she dismissed as a “basket of deplorables.”

She also did not say why she used a “f—ing insane” private server, as a top desi aide Neera Tanden called it, as President Barack Obama’s top diplomat that led to the FBI probe in the first place.

Nor would she say why in the midst of the investigation hubby Bill by “chance” went over to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane last July to say hello and “chat about their grandkids” and golf.

That meeting was “the capper” for Comey, as he would tell senators a day after Clinton’s charge, when he decided that the Justice “department cannot, by itself, credibly end this”.

It was then that he publicly rebuked her for being “extremely careless” in guarding the nation’s secrets and yet letting her go scot free saying “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge her.

But Comey also told the Republican-controlled Congress that he would not hesitate to reopen the probe if and when new material turned up.

And so there was the “October surprise” just 11 days before the November 8 election when his team found thousands of “classified” Clinton e-mails on the computer of her trusted aide Huma Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner.

Clinton’s desi “second daughter” appears “to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails” to Weiner, under investigation for a sexting scandal, for taking out printouts for her boss, as Comey would later tell senators.

Faced with a bad or catastrophic decision to speak or conceal, he chose the former, Comey asserted, saying “concealment, in my view, would have been catastrophic” and “death of FBI”.

“It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election,” he testified. “But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”

But the top cop, who has been retained in his job by Trump, also declined “to say another peep” about an investigation into Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia “until we’re done”.

“That’s the way we handled the Clinton investigation, as well,” Comey claimed, dismissing Democrats’ charge of using double standards for the two presidential rivals.

Trump himself brushed aside Clinton’s claim with a tweet: “Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!”

“The phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election,” he asserted, “Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?”

Trump might have already hit the nail on the head when he thanked the Abedins when Comey’s October surprise suddenly lifted his stock. “Good job Huma, thank you Weiner,” he then tweeted.

The President then returned to his favourite pastime of undoing the Obama legacy with his first major legislative victory with the House passing a bill to repeal and replace his predecessor’s “disastrous” signature healthcare law dubbed “Obamacare”.

Using “The Art of the Deal”, he also won Congressional approval for a $1.1 trillion budget to keep the government going until end-September by foregoing funds for that “big beautiful wall” on the border with Mexico.

Pundits dismissed his “Trumpcare” victory as “pyrrhic” suggesting the Republicans would pay a high political price as some House Democrats waved them farewell with a pop song: “Na na na na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”

But a victory may remain a distant dream for the Democrats until they can say “Na na na na” to Clinton who has now styled herself “part of the resistance”.

(With Inputs from IANS)

The 92-year-old irrepressible Ram Jethmalani described at times as a maverick is acclaimed as the best legal brain in the country. He revels in controversy which has kept him in the spotlight and has vehemently opposed the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Married to two women at the same time which was accepted stoicly by Rani’s mother Durga, the family was patriarchal hailing as he did from Sindh in Pakistan. 

Sindhis from this region married four or five times. At the same time he has refused to talk about some of his escapades and dalliances when he was 19. 

The author Susan Adelman, a paedriatic surgeon and her husband Martin Adelman have been friends of Ram and his family for more than four decades. He loves to shock. If asked for his views about God, he may answer “God is a bumbling fool and a sadist. I am not even sure that he exists, but like a good lawyer, I give him the benefit of doubt”.  

His critics complain Ram fights institutional corruption but he defends the rights of criminals. He is a lawyer who stands up against oppression, fights injustice and is a guardian of freedom. 

Despite being in peril, Ram “waded in with 50 lawyers to intercept a bloody pogrom against Sikhs in Delhi after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984. His creative questions and original arguments are a matter of legend often offered to the great amusement of the court. He is the most pro-Israel politician in Asia. He was a strong champion of Israel when the government would not allow an Israeli embassy in India. 

He has never been sectarian and lectures widely about the peaceful beginnings of Islam. He has argued a landmark case in which he contrasted Hindutva with Hinduism. He believes in astrology and wistfully remembers the gentle sufis of his childhood in Sindh. He has been variously called the Father of Social Justice in India and overcame great odds to establish reservations to help backward classes. 

Sindhis are a minority community in India and that is probably why he vehemently defends the rights of all minorities. Ram shot into prominence during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977 when he was chairman of the Bar Council of India and a powerful opponent of the Indira Gandhi regime. In Washington DC he spoke eloquently about the Emergency before a Congressional committee. 

He was first elected a member of Parliament on his return to this country immediately after the Emergency was lifted and elections called. Above all he is the grand master of the rules of evidence and cross examination. He was the first person to receive political asylum in America during the Emergency. He recalls being impressed with Muhammed Ali Jinnah arguing three cases in court even though he lost them. After Jinnah graduated from Law school he went to a Hindu lawyer in Karachi to interview for a position with him. The lawyer told him his qualifications were excellent; then they began to talk salary. Jinnah insisted on Rs 100 a month but the Hindu refused to go over Rs 75, so Jinnah returned to Bombay (now Mumbai) which obviously provided a wider platform. “If the Hindu had not been a miser, there would not have been a Pakistan.” 

In many ways Ram’s law practice began in 1948 and his career is also the story of India. His family first found that Ratna Shahani had entered his life in 1952. She was the first female lawyer that he had ever met. Her persona contrasted sharply with that of Durga. He married Ratna in Delhi because bigamy was illegal in Bombay. 

Critics disparage Ram as a smugglers’ lawyer. He simply told people “when I see a man come into my office with his pockets bulging with smuggling money, I consider it my duty to relieve him of this wealth.” 

Less than ten years after he arrived in Bombay his first case was registered in the Supreme Court in 1957. This was a refugee matter that tested the constitutionality of the Bombay Land Requisition Act. 

Many of the other cases involved smugglers apprehended under various customs acts particularly the Customs Act of 1962. One of his former junior Sri Jaisinghani said smugglers once constituted 90 per cent of Ram’s practice. After 1962 smuggling soared and along with it a massive black market. 

India was rife with schemes to covert black money to white. It seemed that everyone knew how the rich spent their black money and where to get the best exchange rates. 

Ram uses his arts of rhetoric, cross examination and sly innuendo. There is no secret to his techniques beyond their cleverness, clarity and originality. He has encyclopaedic knowledge of the law. Even judges are in awe. Lawyers have heard a judge ask Ram on several occasions to give the exact language of a statute. He teaches students that “great milestones of the law have not been laid in cases of respectable people but with people who are disreputable.”  

About Israel, he has always explained that the Sindhis are the Jews of India. He has been highly critical of India’s posture against Israel especially during the Indira Gandhi government. Even though India extended formal recognition to Israel in 1950, Israel was not allowed to open an embassy in Delhi until 1992. His house was the de facto Israeli embassy in India.   

Ram’s life in Parliament combined politics with his law practice. He hoped to be law minister but Prime Minister Morarji Desai gave that portfolio to Shanti Bhushan. It was Ram’s belief that he was not appointed law minister because Desai was a teetotaller and he drank Scotch. He loved to jibe that even if Desai drank his own urine in the morning, he preferred scotch at dinner time. 

When Desai promoted prohibition, Ram said “I will keep drinking to keep my right to drink alive.” On one occasion when Desai chided him to behave, he replied “You stick to your pissky and I’ll stick to my whisky…” 

One of  the remarkable aspects of Ram’s career is how he moves easily among cases of criminal law, family law, contract law and constitutional law. It is widely believed he knows more law than any other lawyer in India. 

After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Sikh revenge was seen as malevolent revenge and by defending them Ram was seen to be on the wrong side, the public even signalling their displeasure with demonstrations against him. BJP requested Ram to resign as party vice president and he did. This time the resignation was accepted and this was the most disastrous move in his career. Otherwise he would have become the Prime Minister. He was satisfied with sacrificing his own interests for a cause. He often acts first on his gut feeling, and uses his brilliance later to justify his actions.  

After losing his parliament seat in 1985, Ram was in political wilderness. He returned to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka in 1988. He started a political party Bharat Mukti Morcha and disbanded it. He stoutly counters the criticism that he only defends reprehensible people. Even the lowest of society have the same right to constitutional protection as those in the higher strata. The job of a criminal lawyer is to defend criminals. “Where some may see a criminal lawyer without morals, others may see a social reformer fighting for equal rights.” He has told the media that his last remaining political aspiration is to get rid of India’s corrupt leadership and replace it with an honest government. 

His “larger and final objective” is to see the major democracies of the world — the US, Israel, India and Japan — unite to promote the ideals of democracy for all. He has given interviews observing “Today I’m living in the departure lounge, waiting for my delayed flight to leave.” A highly incisive and compelling biography of Ram Jethmalani always the rebel. 

Tata Trusts has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) for the construction of a state-of-the-art cancer centre in Tirupati. 

The proposed facility in Tirupati will be a comprehensive centre, with in and out-patient facilities, diagnostics, therapeutics, rehabilitation and other such support services. In a phased manner the centre will house Operation theaters, linear accelerators for Radiation Oncology, Brachytherapy and a Bone Marrow Transplant unit. The hospital will be constructed on 25 acres of land provided by the TT Devasthanams.

Tata Trusts have been working in cancer care for several decades across a spectrum of activities, ranging from the setting up of pioneering institutions such as the Tata Memorial Hospital in 1941 and Tata Medical Center, Kolkata in 2011, to providing medical relief grants to individuals suffering from this dreaded disease.

Recognising the centrality of infrastructure to cancer service delivery and the shortage of the same in the country, the Trusts are in the process of conceiving and setting up or upgrading various super specialty centres across the nation with the objective of decentralizing cancer care in the country. As a member of the National Cancer Grid, a forum of 106 cancer hospitals, Tata Trusts have access to experts across these centres to enable its various cancer initiatives. The Trusts plan to raise funds internally and externally to finance these not-for-profit hospital projects, a statement issued by the Trust said. 

 Â“The Trusts are pleased to bring state-of-the-art cancer care services to the region. We are grateful to TTD for this partnership. Our aim is to ensure the provision of equitable, affordable, high quality cancer care for the masses. We are positive that this centre will be a landmark institution in this part of the country, ” said R. Venkataramanan, Managing Trustee, Tata Trust. 

“We have had a great experience working with the Tata Group through our relationship with TCS in the last year and a half. TTD is happy to welcome an institution like Tata Trusts to work on this pressing issue of rising cancer prevalence in the region. We are certain that this project will go a long way in bridging the gap in affordable cancer care in the region,” according to Dr Sambasiva Rao, Executive Officer, TTD.  

Tata Trusts will set up a project management vehicle that will be responsible for all aspects of construction, execution and operationalization of the facility. The Trusts will also rope in a team of experts from Tata Medical Center, Kolkata and Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai to provide technical assistance to the project.

This state-of-the-art cancer care centre in Tirupati will address the increasing numbers of cancer cases in the region to begin with, and will evolve to become a renowned centre of excellence in oncology education and research as well. The centre will strive to provide affordable care to patients without denying care to those with financial constraints.

The Board of Trustees is constituted by members appointed by the government. TTD maintains 12 temples and their sub-shrines, and employs about 14,000 persons. TTD has a renewed focus on cancer and healthcare infrastructure and intends to take concrete steps to improve infrastructure & access to healthcare in Tirupati Tata Trusts is amongst India’s oldest, non-sectarian philanthropic organisations that work in several areas of community development. Through direct implementation, co-partnership strategies and grant making, the Trusts support and drive innovation in the areas of education; healthcare and nutrition; rural livelihoods; natural resources management; enhancing civil society and governance and media, arts, crafts and culture. 

The Apex Court has confirmed the death sentence for four rapists in the Nirbhaya rape case, which had shocked the nation on 16th December 2012. The four convicts – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh – had appealed in the Supreme Court after the High Court against the verdict of death sentence. Today, the bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra pronounced the verdict. 

10 Important Things to Know in Supreme Court’s Nirbhaya Case Judgement

1.”The dying declarations (by gestures)… do withstand close scrutiny and they are consistent with each other.”

2.”The present case clearly comes within the category of ‘rarest of rare case’ where the question of any other punishment is ‘unquestionably foreclosed’. If at all there is a case warranting award of death sentence, it is the present case.”

3.”It is absolutely obvious that the accused persons had found a 313 object for enjoyment in her and, as is evident, they were obsessed with the singular purpose sans any feeling to ravish her as they liked, treat her as they felt.”

4.”It sounds like a story from a different world where humanity has been treated with irreverence.”

5.”We are compelled to arrive at the singular conclusion that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances now brought on record.”

6.”The wanton lust, vicious appetite…have driven the appellant to commit a crime which can bring in a ‘tsunami’ of shock in the mind of the collective, send a chill down the spine of the society.”

7.”After throwing the informant and the deceased victim, the convicts tried to run the bus over them so that there would be no evidence against them. They made all possible efforts in destroying the evidence…” 

8.”The cruel manner in which the gang-rape was committed in the moving bus… and the coldness with which both the victims were thrown naked in cold wintery night of December, shocks the collective conscience of the society.”

9.”The gruesome offences were committed with highest viciousness. Human lust was allowed to take such a demonic form.”

10.”The evidence brought on record with regard to finger prints is absolutely impeccable.”