LEXIS AND COMPANY

 More than 28 years after a man from south Mumbai was accused of raping an “adolescent” domestic help & fourteen years after the Trial Court delivered a guilty verdict, the High Court of Bombay has enhanced the original 3 years’ rigorous imprisonment to 7 years. The Court said that “A sentence should be proportionate to gravity of the offence. Social position of the accused is totally irrelevant". The High Court bench of Justice Sadhana Jadhav and Justice N J Jamadar directed the man to pay a fine of Rs 1.1 lakh instead of the Rs 10,000 imposed by the sessions court in 2006. The bench said Rs 1 lakh would be paid as compensation to the survivor. “Once the court finds the evidence of the victim to be trustworthy, conviction follows,” the HC said. “Passage of time will not be a justifiable reason to take a lenient view. Courts can’t be oblivious of the impact of such a heinous offence.” The man had challenged his conviction, & the state had challenged the “meagre sentence” t

 The High Court of Allahabad recently declined to quash the FIR lodged against a person who was accused of putting nude pictures of his wife on social media. Dismissing a writ petition filed by one Dhananjaya of Mathura district, a division bench comprising Justices Pankaj Naqvi and Vivek Agarwal said, “From the perusal of the FIR, prima facie it cannot be said that no cognizable offence is made out. Hence, no ground exists for quashing of the FIR or staying the arrest of the petitioner.” The state counsel had opposed the petition, saying that a commission of cognizable offence is made out against the petitioner. It was also submitted that even allegations of commission of offence are also prima facie made out as there is specific allegation of putting nude pictures of the informant (the wife who had lodged FIR) on WhatsApp. Therefore, merely because petitioner is husband of the informant does not constitute a valid ground to quash the FIR. Earlier, the lawyer for the petitioner had su

 IAS officers who are least bothered about the orders of the Court & are not doing their duty must be stripped of their posts, observed the High Court of Madras. The Court made the observations while setting aside the order of the Secretary of Municipal Administration in cutting down the pension of an employee. The issue pertains to TV Pallanee, working as the Commissioner of Tambaram Municipality, who was served a memo for executing emergency work to a tune of Rs 83,920 without calling for any tenders. Though the charges were not proved against Palanee during the enquiry, the secretary of the department chose to defer the findings made by the enquiry officer & also didn't disclose any reasons for the disagreement. The proceedings initiated by the IAS officer resulted in the punishment of cut-in pension Rs 200 per month. The lawyer for the petitioner argued that the secretary's defiance of the report made by the enquiry officer was totally unlawful. The state contended

 On Thursday, a Rohtak Court rejected an appeal seeking action against Aarti and Pooja, the sisters from Haryana who were hailed as ‘Rohtak Bravehearts‘ by media, for lodging a false sexual harassment case against three boys of Aasan village in Rohtak district in a matter that had hogged headlines in 2014. The appeal was filed by one Dr Subhash Vijayran. “The false complaint lodged by the Sonepat sisters has ruined the careers and prime years of Rohtak boys. I had sought legal action against the sisters so that it can be a deterrent for such bogus complainants and will pursue the matter till justice is delivered,” he asserted. The Court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Isha Khatri had earlier dismissed Dr Vijayran’s application regarding the issue, against which he filed an appeal before the Sessions Court. Now, after the Sessions court also turned down his plea, Dr Vijayran maintained that he would move the Punjab and Haryana High Court and challenge the order passed by the Roh

 Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has said that the State Govt will go to Supreme Court for getting vacated the stay in courts on distribution of house sites. Speaking after participating in prayers at the CSI church in Pulivendula on occasion of Christmas, he said he is saddened that he is not able to distribute house sites in his own constituency Pulivendula. He said the land allotted for the houses belonged to AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation. But someone has gone to court and got a stay on distribution of the land. “We will go to Supreme Court to get this stay vacated. We believe that good work will surely be blessed by God and the verdict will come in favour of the government,” Jagan Mohan Reddy said, pointing out that every poor family needs a house site for building a house. “Today is a good day. On one hand, it is Christmas. On the other, it is also Mukkoti Ekadashi. Yesterday, someone from Pulivendula went to court and got a stay on distribution of house sites. W

 The Karnataka High Court has recently directed a Station House Officer (SHO) to clean the road in front of the police station he is in charge of for one week. According to the reports, the SHO of Bazar Police station in Kalburgi was asked to do the community service for failing to register an FIR in connection with a kidnapping complaint. The Kalaburgi bench of the Karnataka High Court issued the order on December 17 after petitioner Tarabai moved a habeas corpus petition contending that her son Suresh had gone missing on October 20, 2020. A division bench of Justice S Sunil Dutt Yadav and Justice P Krishna Bhat while hearing a habeas corpus petition said that the entire development in the case after Suresh going missing disclosed that it was a very disturbing facet of the functioning of the police stations in this area of the State. The court observed that the problem, primarily, is one of the police officers not complying with the procedure prescribed under the Code of Criminal Proc

 The Supreme Court has issued a Show-Cause Notice to a convict for misleading it by producing a wrong copy of a trial court's verdict to get a favourable order which had allowed him to walk free on payment of a fine only in a graft case. The Top Court, while issuing the Notice to convict S Shankar, asked him why it should not recall the order sparing him the jail term and take "further suitable" action for the act of misleading it. The SC, had on July 23, 2019, allowed Shankar to walk free in the corruption case on payment of ₹1,000 after his Lawyer argued that the Andhra Pradesh High Court "wrongly construed" the operative portion of the judgement of a trial court delivered in the year 2000. It was argued the trial court had not awarded a jail term of one year to Shankar but had only imposed a fine of ₹1,000 for offences of criminal breach of trust and conspiracy under the IPC and some other charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act. "Since we find th