A court in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad sentenced former military dictator Pervez Musharraf to death Tuesday. A three-member bench of a special court, headed by judge Waqar Ahmad Seth and comprising judges Nazar Akbar and Shahid Karim, found Musharraf guilty of high treason under Article 6 of Pakistan’s constitution and meted out the death penalty. Article [...]
A court in the Pakistani city of Lahore indicted Hafiz Saeed, founder of the banned group Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT), on terrorism financing charges Wednesday. Saeed is the alleged mastermind of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Anti-Terrorism Court judge Malik Arshad Bhutta charged Hafiz Saeed with terrorism financing in different cities of Pakistan’s Punjab province. According [...]
India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is investigating alleged extrajudicial killings in Hyderabad, the capital of the state of Telangana. Four people accused in the rape and murder of Priyanka Reddy, a veterinarian whose killing evoked national outrage, were shot dead on Friday after what the Hyderabad police claim was an attempt to steal police [...]
A senior police official in Bangladesh said Thursday that the murder of a 21-year old engineering student in Dhaka will be investigated with the “highest level of professionalism and sincerity.” Monirul Islam, an additional commissioner in the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, vowed to put all accused on trial regardless of their political affiliation. Activists of the [...]
India’s Supreme Court on Monday directed the state government of Gujarat to pay 5 million Indian rupees (US$ 70,000) in two weeks as compensation to Bilkis Bano, a 40-year-old woman who was raped by a mob during an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. In April the court had ordered the Gujarat government to compensate Bano monetarily. [...]
The secretary to the Sri Lankan president said Monday that the country’s Supreme Court has ruled against holding provincial council elections in the absence of a report by the delimitations review committee. President Maithripala Sirisena had, in an invocation of the Supreme Court’s consultative jurisdiction under Article 129 of Sri Lanka’s constitution, asked the court [...]
A bench of India’s Allahabad High Court, the constitutional court of record for the state of Uttar Pradesh, declared Tuesday that all disc jockey performances lead to noise that is “unpleasant and obnoxious,” directing the Uttar Pradesh government to not permit performances by disc jockeys in the state. “Even if they operate at the minimum [...]
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court on Friday formed a bench comprising five judges to hear an application for a legal opinion filed by the country’s president. Jayantha Jayasuriya, chief justice of the court, will head the bench that has been asked to determine whether it is lawful for provincial council elections to be held in the [...]
India’s government introduced a bill in the upper house of parliament on Monday to cement the revocation of the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, a conflict-hit region claimed by both India and Pakistan. The move came hours after the country’s president promulgated an order revoking the region’s constitutional autonomy. Federal interior minister Amit [...]
India’s President, Ram Nath Kovind, gave assent Thursday to a bill criminalizing the Muslim personal law practice of “instant divorce.” The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s parliament, approved the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act on Tuesday. It was passed by the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) on July 25. [...]
