New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed interim bail petitions filed by two men – Radheyshyam Bhagwandas and Rajubhai Babulal – who had been convicted of raping Bilkis Bano and killing her family during the 2002 riots in Gujarat’s Godhra.

Bhagwandas and Babualal had sought temporary release till the top court ruled on a fresh remission plea. They have filed a challenge to the court’s January verdict that cancelled their release by the Gujarat government on Independence Day in 2022.

Bilkis Bano Convicts’ Appeal

In March, Bhagwandas and Babulal moved the court contending the January verdict contravened a 2002 order by the Constitution bench and asked that the issue – of their remission by the Gujarat government being cancelled – be referred to a larger bench.

They claimed an “anomalous” situation had arisen; i.e., two different benches of the Supreme Court, both of same strength, had taken diametrically opposite views on the state government’s policy of early release of prisoners.

According to the plea today, in May 2022 one bench directed the state to consider Bhagwandas’ plea for early release. However, the bench that delivered the verdict said it was the Maharashtra, and not Gujarat, that was competent to grant remission.

READ | 2 Bilkis Bano Case Convicts Ask For “Final” Order On Remission

“… if this is permitted then it would lead not only to judicial impropriety but to uncertainty and chaos as to which precedence (sic) of law has to be applied in future,” the plea argued, warning that the January 8 verdict could be used as legal precedence.

The plea sought a direction to the centre to consider the case for premature release and clarify which judgement – May 13, 2022, or January 8, 2024, – will be applicable.

“My lords… now with two court decisions… if I can be allowed to approach the authority,” advocate Rishi Malhotra, who filed the plea for Bhagwandas and Babulal, said.

What Supreme Court Said

“What is this plea… how is it even maintainable? Absolutely misconceived… How can we sit on appeal in PIL (public interest litigation),” Justice Sanjiv Khanna declared.

“There are two judgments… earlier judgment (the May ruling) was considered in the second (the January verdict) … under Article 32 (which gives every individual the right to move the Supreme Court for enforcement of fundamental rights) …” he said.

“We are not sitting in appeal…” the court ruled.

Court’s Bilkis Bano January Verdict

In the January judgment, the court had been extremely critical of its May 2022 ruling, delivered by Justice Ajay Rastogi (now retired), and said the Gujarat government should have sought its review.

READ | “Abuse Of Power By Gujarat”: Bilkis Bano’s Rapists To Return To Jail

It noted the release had been ordered based on a 1992 remission policy that had been superseded by a 2014 law and sent the 11 convicts back to jail.

In August 2022, the 11 convicts – serving life sentences – were granted premature release after the state accepted their remission pleas in keeping with a 1992 policy and cited their “good conduct”.

READ | “… Fraudulent Means”: Supreme Court On Bilkis Bano Case Order

Criticising the Gujarat government, the Supreme Court said it had “usurped” the power of its Maharashtra counterparts to grant remission to the convicts.

Bilkis Bano was 21 years old, and had been pregnant for five months, when she was raped. Her three-year-old daughter was among the seven family members killed.

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New Delhi:

The Supreme Court has refused bail relief to an Uttarakhand boy, who allegedly shot obscene videos of his 14-year-old classmate and circulated. The girl went missing from her home in October last year and was later found dead. She is suspected to have died by suicide.

The girl’s father said in his complaint that she died by suicide out of shame. The boy has been charged with IPC sections relating to abetment of suicide of a child and act intended to outrage modesty of a woman. Relevant sections under the stringent Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act have also been invoked.

Earlier, the juvenile justice board and the High Court of Uttarakhand refused bail to the teenaged accused, after which his mother approached the Supreme Court. The matter came up yesterday before a vacation bench of Justice Bela M Trivedi and Justice Pankaj Mithal.

“After carefully perusing the material placed on record, we are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order passed by the high court at this stage,” the bench said.

Denying bail to the teenager, the high court had said, “Bail may be denied if there are reasonable grounds for believing that his release is likely to bring the ‘child in conflict with law’ into the association of any known criminal, expose him to moral, physical, or psychological danger, or if his release would defeat the ends of justice.”

“Having considered the social investigation report, the medical examination report, the report from the school, this court is of the view that the best interest of the child would be served if he is not granted bail. If he is released on bail, it would definitely defeat the ends of justice,” the high court order states.

The Supreme Court’s denial of bail in this case comes amid the nationwide outrage on the relief granted to a 17-year-old accused of speeding a Porsche in Pune, leading to an accident that left two 24-year-old engineers dead. The teenager, who police say driving in a drunken condition, was granted bail within 15 hours of his detention. A local court let him out on some conditions which many have described as flimsy — he was asked to write a 300-word essay on accidents, told to work with traffic police for 15 days and asked to undergo counselling for his drinking habit. Pune Police have now approached the juvenile justice board for permission to try him as an adult.

The Supreme Court today rejected petitions seeking 100% verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines with paper slips generated through the VVPAT method. The two-judge bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta delivered concurrent but separate judgments.

“While balanced perspective is important, blindly doubting a system can breed scepticism and thus, meaningful criticism is needed, be it judiciary, legislature etc. Democracy is all about maintaining harmony and trust among all the pillars. By nurturing a culture of trust and collaboration, we can strengthen the voice of our democracy,” Justice Datta said in the judgment. He added that the court’s approach in this matter has been guided by evidence.

The Supreme Court, however, passed two directions for the Election Commission. The court said that after symbols are loaded into an EVM, the symbol loading unit should be sealed and secured in containers. The candidates and their representatives shall sign the seal. The sealed containers containing the SLUs shall be kept in the storerooms along with the EVMs at least for 45 days after the declaration of results, the court said.

The court further said that the burnt memory semicontroller in 5% of the EVMs that is the Control Unit, Ballot Unit and the VVPAT per assembly constituency per parliamentary constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from the manufacturers of the EVM after the announcement of results. This check will be carried out on a written request by candidates 2 and 3. Such a request is to be made within 7 days of the declaration of the results. The cost will be borne by the candidate making the request and expenses must be refunded if the EVMs are found to be tampered

The bunch of petitions before the court had sought a direction to cross-verify every vote cast on EVMs with paper slips generated by the VVPAT system. Currently, this cross-verification is done for five randomly selected EVMs in every Assembly constituency.

The Supreme Court had earlier said it is not the controlling authority for elections and cannot dictate the functioning of the Election Commission, a constitutional authority. It had also wondered if it can act on mere suspicion.

Responding to concerns raised by Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, the court said in the last hearing, “If you are predisposed about a thought-process, then we cannot help you… we are not here to change your thought process.”

In the earlier hearings, the petitioners raised the issue of public trust and drew comparisons with European countries that have gone back to the ballot voting system. The court shot down such comparisons, observing that the challenges here are different. The Election Commission, on its part, stressed that the current system is foolproof.

An EVM has a control unit and a balloting unit. These are connected by a cable. These are also connected with a VVPAT — Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail — machine. This machine enables a voter to see if the vote was cast properly and went to the candidate he/she supports.

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking review of its verdict which held that a person cannot be booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by invoking Section 120B of the IPC if the alleged criminal conspiracy was not related to a scheduled offence under PMLA.

Section 120B of IPC provides for punishment for a criminal conspiracy.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal dismissed the petition seeking review of the November 29, 2023 verdict that also said it is not necessary that a person against whom the offence under Section 3 of the PMLA is alleged, must have been shown as the accused in the scheduled offence.

“Applications seeking hearing of the review petitions in Open Court are rejected. Delay condoned. We have perused the judgement and order dated November 29, 2023 which has been sought to be reviewed. There is no error apparent on the record. Even otherwise, there is no ground for review. Review petitions are dismissed,” the bench ordered in its recent order.

On November 29, the top court held, “The offence punishable under Section 120B of the IPC will become a scheduled offence only if the conspiracy alleged is of committing an offence which is specifically included in the Schedule.” In the verdict, the top court had interpreted the provisions of the PMLA and said while giving effect to the legislature’s intention, if two reasonable interpretations can be given to a particular provision of a penal statute, the court should generally adopt the interpretation that avoids the imposition of penal consequences.

In other words, a more lenient interpretation of the two needs to be adopted, it had said.

“The legislative intent which can be gathered from the definition of the scheduled offence under clause (y) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the PMLA is that every crime which may generate proceeds of crime need not be a scheduled offence. Therefore, only certain specific offences have been included in the schedule,” it had said.

The bench had said that allowing criminal conspiracy to be a scheduled offence by itself, without any link to the scheduled offence included in the PMLA, would make the schedule “meaningless or redundant”.

“If section 120B of IPC can be treated as a stand alone offence to attract prosecution under the PMLA, by that logic, a complaint under the PMLA can be filed where the allegation is of criminal conspiracy to commit an offence which is not a scheduled offence,” it said.

The bench had said only because there is a conspiracy to commit an offence, the same does not become an aggravated offence.

“Conspiracy is an agreement between the accused to commit an offence,” it said, adding the interpretation suggested by the ED will defeat the legislative object of making only a few selected offences as scheduled offences.

The bench held, “It cannot be the legislature’s intention to make every offence not included in the schedule a scheduled offence by applying section 120B. Therefore, in our view, the offence under Section 120B of IPC included in Part A of the schedule will become a scheduled offence only if the criminal conspiracy is to commit any offence already included in Parts A, B or C of the Schedule.” The top court had pronounced the verdict in November, 2023 on an appeal against the Karnataka High Court order which had refused to quash the money laundering case against a woman, who was former vice-chancellor of Alliance University.

The ED had booked her under provisions of PMLA by invoking section 120B of IPC though the offences alleged against him were not scheduled offences.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court has taken strong exception to ‘media trials’ – referring to “biased reporting (that) gives rise to public suspicion the person has committed an offence” – and directed the Union Home Ministry to prepare guidelines for police to follow during press briefings in relation to criminal cases. The ministry has three months prepare a detailed manual.

The top police officers of each state and the National Human Rights Commission have been directed to submit suggestions to the home ministry within a month and the next hearing will be in January, a bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said, underlining the need to sensitise police personnel.

“Administration of justice is affected by ‘media trials’. Need to decide at which stage (of investigation) details should be disclosed. This is a very important issue because it involves interests of victim and accused. It also involves the interest of the public at large… media report on crime-related matters involves many aspects of public interest,” the court said.

“At a basic level… fundamental right to speech and expression is directly involved in the context of both the media’s right to portray and broadcast ideas and news… but we should not allow ‘media trial’. People have the right to access information. But, if important evidence, is revealed during the investigation, the investigation can also be affected,” the court argued.

The top court was hearing a petition relating to a 2017 instruction on the same subject; the court then had asked the government to frame rules for police briefings keeping in mind the rights of the accused and the victim, and to ensure those of both sides are not prejudiced or violated in any way. The court had then given six weeks to produce a draft report.

“The accused, whose conduct is under investigation, is entitled to a fair and unbiased investigation…. at every stage, every accused is entitled to presumption of innocence. Media reportage that implicates an accused is unfair,” the court said today.

In March, the Chief Justice had urged journalists to “maintain standards of accuracy, impartiality and responsibility in reporting” and said, “… selective quoting of speeches and judgments has become a matter of concern. This practice has a tendency to distort public’s understanding of important legal issues. Judges’ decisions are often complex and nuanced, and selective quoting can give the impression a judgment means something different from what the judge intended.”

READ | “Media Trials Make Person Guilty Before Courts Decide”: Chief Justice

A month before that the court had ordered police in Maharashtra to further investigate an alleged assault case.

READ | “Victim Has Fundamental Right To Fair Probe, Trial”: Supreme Court

On behalf of the government, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati today assured the court the government will frame and release guidelines regarding media briefings by the police. “The government will inform the court about it…” she said.

An annoyed Supreme Court emphasised the fact “media trials” violate the privacy of a victim or complainant, and that this is concerning if they are a minor. “Victim’s privacy cannot be affected. We also have to take care of the rights of the accused.”

“How should police be trained for media briefings? What steps has the Government of India taken (regarding) our 2014 instruction?” the court asked. Senior lawyer, Gopal Shankaranarayan, an amicus curiae, referred to salacious media reports surrounding the Aarushi case and agreed, “We cannot stop media from reporting but police need to be sensitive.”