'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime.
Indrani is clearly in charge in her little corner. She is speaking rapidly to a not-very-tall, pot-bellied, balding man, whom she repeatedly, decisively, asks, "Have you understood?" The tone is that of a boss talking to an employee. The words "cheque" and "two lakhs" float by.
Happy with her latest move, Indrani departed from Courtroom 51 with a spring in her step. The woman who hopped up into the jail truck was a cheerful one.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it would set up a high-level committee consisting of senior police officers to deal with issues relating to intervention in marriages by bodies such as khap panchayats.
Manu Sharma, undergoing life term for killing model Jessica Lall in 1999, was granted limited parole by Delhi HC to enable him to appear for his LLB first semester exams.
This week was the first time Peter and Indrani appeared in court no longer married, footloose and fancy free once again, even if in jail.
The Delhi HC termed the massacre "targeted killing" of unarmed and defenceless persons by the police.
Sanji Ram and Vishal Jangotra, who were chargesheeted by the crime branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police in the case, claimed that the police had miserably failed to conduct a "fair and effective" probe and alleged that "tainted" officers were part of special investigation team which probed the matter.
Ever since Indrani's bail plea was denied by the judge her security has been stepped up. The message was clear. If she felt that unsafe she could get all the security she needed. But in jail she stayed.
Delhi high court restrained the media from revealing the identity of the victim by any means.
When it came to his cross examination by Sanjeev Khanna's lawyer Niranjan Mundargi, Imtiaz Shaikh appeared to be afflicted by that peculiar gap-in-one's-memory or Choosy Memory Syndrome with his recall of other dates in his life, except those directly related with the murder, shaky or non-existent.
The appeal filed by Jagdish Kaur and Nirpreet Kaur, who had lost their close relatives in the carnage following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, has sought setting aside of the trial court's April 30 judgment. They have in their plea filed through advocate Kamna Vohra contended that the verdict was "erroneous" as the trial court had failed to appreciate that there was ample legally admissible evidence against Kumar to show he had allegedly "engineered" the murders of five Sikh persons in Raj Nagar area of Delhi Cantonment
The 25 odd witnesses that so far had given testimony had not come up with anything incriminating against Peter or the way Shivade characterised it -- "not even a whisper."
The extremist outfit has a tainted past and has been entangled in different legal cases for extortion, rioting and instigating violence
The attempts to unearth the document started getting more and more frantic. The clerks began to flip pages of files full of documents, some hand written, some bearing thick seals or multiple stamps, some in Hindi, some in Marathi. Several junior lawyers joined in, perusing different files and dockets. But in spite of the best of efforts the document was not to be found.
There it lay, a photograph on the desk under a stapler, and later a stamp pad, forgotten, done with, like its subject, a Mumbai Metro One employee who vanished overnight.
