Insights

The Karnataka High Court has stated that filing of a common charge sheet for complaint filed by individual investors against the same accused in different Police stations is against the law and filing amalgamated charge sheet is impermissible under the CrPC. The Court held that the state CID had no authority to file a common charge sheet in different complaints, however the IO has to file a separate charge sheet on individual complaints.

The Kerala High Court’s division bench comprising of Justices A. Muhamed Mustaque and Kauser Edappagath has recently held that a false allegation of impotency or erectile dysfunction amounts to mental cruelty and hence is a valid ground for dissolution of marriage stressing on the fact that a malevolent intention is not essential to cruelty. Such conduct, even if it arises from minor mental illnesses, cannot be excused.

The Supreme Court of India has ordered the Punjab Police to provide protection to a couple in a live-in relationship whose plea for protection was turned down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court as the latter had found. such relationship to not being “morally or socially acceptable.”

While highlighting the economic and social adversities faced by orphans, a PIL has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking directions for the Centre to prepare a national level policy to deal with the legal and fundamental rights of the orphaned.

SC strikes down West Bengal's HIRA law owing to its encroachment upon the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 arriving at the conclusion that the WB-HIRA was repugnant to the RERA and hence unconstitutional. The 190 pages judgment mentions prospective striking down of the provisions of the HIRA under its extraordinary powers under Article 142 declaring that, in order to avoid uncertainty in respect of actions taken in the past, recourse to Article 142 is necessary wherein it was directed that striking down the law will not affect the registrations, sanctions and permissions granted prior.

In a plea before a Madras High Court bench headed by Justice N Anand Venkatesh, the Court has rendered protection to lesbian couples from their relatives. The Judgement ran into 104 pages capturing the outlook of society towards same-sex relationships and how the Judge himself opted to counsel himself to better understand the issue.