Legal briefs

Claim on Red Fort by kin of Bahadur Shah dismissed

• A woman claiming to be the widow of the great-grandson of Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar-II moved the Delhi HC on Monday seeking that the Red Fort which was illegally taken over by the British be handed over to her
• Dismissing the plea, the judge said there was no justification for the inordinate delay in approaching the court after over 150 years
• Petitioner Sultana Begum said she is the widow of the late Mirza Mohammed Bedar Bakht who died on May 22, 1980, and as such she is the legal heir to the property
• The petition claimed that the family had been deprived of its property by the British following the first War of Independence in 1857, after which the king was exiled and the Red Fort was taken away from the Mughals
• The court also rejected the submission made by the petitioner's counsel that she was an illiterate woman due to which she could not approach earlier

Gang rape: SC stays death sentence of convict

• The Supreme Court has stayed the execution of capital punishment awarded to a man, convicted of raping a seven-year-old minor girl in Madhya Pradesh in 2018
• A bench passed the order while hearing a plea filed by the convict against the Madhya Pradesh HC verdict, which had upheld the death sentence awarded to him and one other convict by the trial court for gang-raping the minor
• The apex court directed the state to place before it by March 1, 2022, the report of the probation officer relating to the convict and also the report of jail administration about the nature of work done by him while in prison.

SC grants bail to woman in human trafficking case

• A tribal woman accused of driving her cousin sister into prostitution has been granted bail by the Supreme Court which took note of the fact that she has been in incarceration for the last 18 months and delivered a child there
• A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana termed it as a fit case to grant her bail and rejected the vehement plea of Delhi Police that the accused not be allowed to walk out of jail on bail
• On Dec 4 last year, the Delhi HC had rejected the plea for regular bail after taking note of the status report of Delhi Police in two similar cases lodged under the law on human trafficking against her

HC declares demand for nokkukooli illegal

• The Kerala HC on Monday declared as unconstitutional the demand for nokkukooli (charging fees without doing any work) by trade unions or registered headload workers or any person in any form or manner
• The high court directed the state govt to carry out the necessary amendments to the Kerala Headload Workers Act in a time-bound manner so that this industry is organised and regulated to some extent
• Even as it declared the demand of gawking wages as illegal, the court also expressed concern over the plight of the workers who carry loads of 55 kilograms or more on their heads and resultantly suffer from various health issues
• To prevent the health problems of workers and better equip them to do their work, the court said modernising the sector was the answer