Supreme Court benches comprising Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana will hear four key cases on what is the CJI’s second last working day in the position. Other important cases, too, will be heard today in what appears to be a busy day for the apex court.

The remission and consequent release of 11 convicts on August 15 this year from Godhra sub-jail under the Gujarat government’s remission policy has sparked a debate on the issue of such relief in heinous cases.

A bench headed by CJI Ramana and comprising Justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath will hear the plea filed by CPI (M)leader Subhashini Ali, journalist Revathy Laul and activist Roop Rekha Rani.

A day ago, the Supreme Court took note of the submissions of senior advocate Kapil Sibal and lawyer Aparna Bhat on this.

“We are only challenging the remission and not the Supreme Court order. The Supreme Court order is fine, My Lords. We are challenging the principles on the basis of which remission was granted,” Sibal had said, seeking an urgent hearing of the plea.

Bhat also said that the apex court’s earlier order asking the state government to consider the remission aspect was not challenged.

The plea referred to the sequence of events of the case recorded in judicial files and said, “It is submitted that on such facts, no right thinking authority applying any test under any extant policy would consider it fit to grant remission to persons who are found to have been involved in the commission of such gruesome acts.”

“It is further submitted that it would appear that the constitution of members of the competent authority of the Respondent No.1 also bore allegiance to a political party, and also was sitting MLAs. As such, it would appear that the competent authority was not an authority that was entirely independent, and one that could independently apply its mind to the facts at hand, it said and quoted media reports to buttress its contention.

The apex court had earlier asked the Gujarat government to consider the plea of remission.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra has also filed a separate petition in the Supreme Court against the release of the convicts in the case alleging the remission completely fails to bolster either social or human justice and does not constitute a valid exercise of the guided discretionary power of the State .

A special CBI court in Mumbai on January 21, 2008, sentenced the 11 to life imprisonment on charges of gang rape and murder of seven members of Bilkis Bano’s family. Their conviction was later upheld by the Bombay high court and the Supreme Court.

Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped. Among the seven the convicts murdered was her three-year-old daughter.

Pegasus

A bench of the CJI, Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli will hear the Pegasus spyware case. It has been reported that the apex court- appointed technical panel, supervised by retired Supreme Court judge Justice R.V. Raveendran, has filed its report.

This expert committee was set up to probe whether Indian law enforcement authorities had procured and used Pegasus, a military-grade Israeli spyware product.

The probe is expected to shed further light on the findings of the Pegasus Project – a 2021 global media investigation of which The Wire has a part and which found traces of Pegasus on the phones of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, politicians in over 10 countries around the world including India.

In January 2022, the New York Times reported that India’s purchase of Pegasus was part of a broader 2017 contract and likely cost the Centre “millions” of dollars.

PMLA

The Supreme Court will hear the plea of Congress MP Karti Chidambaram who sought an open court hearing of his petition to review the top court’s last month’s verdict upholding the sweeping powers of Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) relating to arrest, investigation, and attachment of property under the PMLA Act.

On July 27, the top court upheld the ED’s powers relating to arrest, attachment of property involved in money laundering, and search and seizure under the PMLA.

A bench of Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar will hear the plea. Chidambaram has also filed an application seeking a stay of the operation of the July 27, verdict.

In his review petition, he has said that the verdict has an error apparent and is against the provisions of the Constitution.

The top court had on Tuesday in a verdict on the application of provisions of Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 observed that its judgement on the Enforcement Directorate’s powers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to take possession of a property before trial in exceptional cases leaves scope for arbitrary application.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana has said that the ratio concerning Section 8(4) laid down by the PMLA judgement needs further explanation.

In its July 27 verdict, the apex court has said that the direction under Section 8(4) for taking possession of the property in question before a formal order of confiscation is passed should be an exception and not a rule.

Section 8(4) allows the ED to take possession of the attached property at the stage of confirmation of provisional attachment made by the adjudicating authority.

“In Vijay Madanlal Choudary & Ors v. Union of India, this court dealt with confiscation proceedings under Section 8 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) and limited the application of Section 8(4) of PMLA concerning interim possession by the authority before the conclusion of the final trial to exceptional cases.

“The court distinguished the earlier cases in view of the unique scheme under the impugned legislation therein. Having perused the said judgment, we are of the opinion that the aforesaid ratio requires further expounding in an appropriate case, without which, much scope is left for arbitrary application,” the bench, also comprising Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Hima Kohli has said.

Another CJI Ramana-led bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli will pass an order on a plea by the organisation Lawyers Voice seeking a court-monitored probe into the alleged ‘security breach’ that took place during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Punjab in January this year.

Within a week of the alleged breach, the apex court appointed a five-member committee headed by former apex court judge Justice Indu Malhotra to investigate it.

On January 5, the prime minister’s convoy was stranded on a flyover for about 20 minutes due to a blockade by protesters in Ferozepur after which he returned from Punjab without attending any event, including a rally. The issue quickly turned political, with the BJP and Congress trading barbs on what actually happened.

Teesta Setalvad bail

A bench of Justices U.U. Lalit – who will assume duty as CJI next week – and Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia will hear the bail plea of activist Teesta Setalvad.

Setalvad was arrested in June for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame “innocent people” in the 2002 Gujarat riot cases.

Before this, on July 30, a sessions court in Ahmedabad rejected the bail applications of Setalvad and former director general of police R.B. Sreekumar in the case, saying their release will send a message to wrongdoers that a person can level allegations with impunity and get away with it.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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