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The Allahabad High Court has ruled that parental support for a distressed wife does not absolve her husband of his duty to pay maintenance. With the above observation, the court allowed a criminal revision petition filed by the wife and her two minor children against an order of the family court, Bulandshahr. The family court, by its order passed in December 2023, had rejected the wife's claim for maintenance entirely while awarding Rs 3,000 per month as maintenance to each child. Allowing the criminal revision petition filed by the wife and her two minor children, Justice Garima Prashad observed that a wife cannot be denied maintenance from her husband under section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) merely because her parents support her financially during times of distress. The court emphasised that the income of the wife's parents should not be considered her income, and parental assistance cannot replace the legal obligation of the husband to support his wife. The wife
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday filed an application before the Madhya Pradesh High Court expressing regret for his allegedly defamatory statement about Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son Kartikeya Singh. Kartikeya Singh has filed a defamation complaint in a Bhopal court against the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. Gandhi's application, filed by his lawyer, said that his statement did not concern Singh. Kartikeya Singh filed the defamation complaint against Rahul Gandhi in the Bhopal court for cases against MPs-MLAs, alleging that during an election rally in Jhabua in 2018, the Congress leader mentioned his name while referring to the Panama Papers leak scandal, thus damaging his reputation. The court issued a summons to Gandhi for personal appearance, following which the Congress leader moved the Jabalpur bench of the High Court seeking to quash the summons as well as the defamation case. The High Court will hear Gandhi's petition on Thursday. The petition
The Madhya Pradesh High Court has lifted the interim stay on an arrest warrant issued against Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in a defamation case. The decision is likely to increase legal troubles for the TMC general secretary, who is already facing an investigation by the Enforcement Directorate on corruption charges. A single bench of Justice Pramod Kumar Agarwal on Wednesday dismissed Abhishek Banerjee's petition and lifted the stay, granted in November 2025, on the execution of the arrest warrant issued by a special Bhopal court. Former Indore MLA Akash Vijayvargiya, son of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and minister Kailash Vijayvargiya, filed the defamation case against Abhishek Banerjee in the MP-MLA court in Bhopal in 2021. The defamation suit alleged that Abhishek Banerjee called Akash Vijayvargiya a "goon" while addressing a rally in Kolkata in November 2020. The MP-MLA court had issued th
Observing that delay causes irreparable loss to litigants, the Supreme Court on Friday directed high courts across the country to pronounce judgements within three months from the date of reserving order. Underlining that faster decisions are required in cases of personal liberty, a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Baghchi said that orders in bail applications should be pronounced the same day, and if they are reserved, they must be pronounced and uploaded the next day. Issuing a slew of directions, the top court said that order of bail or sentence suspension should be communicated to the jail authorities as soon as it is pronounced and the undertrial/convict should be released preferably the same day or at most the next day.
The Bombay High Court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of the 22 accused in the 2005 case of the alleged fake encounter of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati. A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad dismissed the appeals filed by Shaikh's brothers, Rubabuddin and Nayabuddin, challenging the December 2018 judgment of a special court acquitting all the accused in the case. Among the 22 accused acquitted, 21 were junior-level officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan police, who were allegedly part of the teams that abducted the three and later killed them in staged encounters. The remaining one accused was the owner of a farmhouse in Gujarat, where Shaikh and Kausar Bi were allegedly illegally detained before they were killed. A detailed copy of the judgment would be made available later. The special court, while acquitting the accused, had observed that the prosecution failed to establish a cogent case to sugges
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition against the ongoing demolition drive in Gurugram, and asked the petitioners to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi disposed of the plea, granting liberty to the petitioners to make an urgent mentioning before the high court during the course of the day. The bench requested the high court's chief justice to entertain the mentioning either at 1 PM or immediately after lunch at 1.45 pm. Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, argued before the bench that the local authorities have been carrying out the demolition drive without issuing show-cause notices to the residents by misconstruing an interim order of the high court. The bench observed that if the high court's interim order was allegedly being misconstrued by the authorities, then the petitioners should approach the high court. "If the high court, in its constitutional
Two senior IPS officers of the Uttarakhand cadre filed a petition in the high court challenging their deputation to posts allegedly lower than their current rank in central forces. A division bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay, hearing the petition, sought a response from the government on the matter. According to the petition, through an order by the Union Home Ministry, Garg, a 2005-batch IPS officer, was posted as deputy inspector general (DIG) in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), while Joshi, a 2006-batch IPS officer, was appointed as DIG in the Border Security Force (BSF). Both officers are currently serving as inspector generals of police in the Uttarakhand Police and have challenged their deputation on the grounds that they have neither applied for central deputation, nor consented to it. The petitioners said that being transferred to the lower rank of DIG is also against service rules. The petition further states that the officers ha
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to examine the Centre's plea challenging a Bombay High Court verdict that struck down amendments to Information Technology Rules aimed at regulating fake and false content posted on social media against the government. The top court did not stay the 2024 High Court verdict, which struck down the amended Information Technology Rules and termed them "unconstitutional", even as a three-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi issued notices to the original petitioners, including stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, and the Association of Indian Magazines. The High Court struck down the rules amended in 2023 to empower the central government to establish a Fact-Check Unit (FCU) to identify "fake, false, or misleading" information regarding "government business" on social media. If the FCU flagged content under those rules, social media intermediaries such as X, Facebook, or ...