Former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Sunday said bail before conviction should be a matter of right, but asserted that it is a court's duty to examine a case in depth where national security is involved before granting such a relief. He made the remarks at the Jaipur Literature Festival in response to a question from journalist Vir Sanghvi, who raised the issue of the Supreme Court recently denying the bail plea of activist Umar Khalid in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case. "I'm speaking now not as a judge but as a citizen," he said. "It's about the right to bail before conviction. Our law is based on the presumption of innocence - every accused is innocent until proven guilty in trial. Pre-trial bail cannot be punishment. If someone spends five-seven years as an undertrial and then gets acquitted, how do you compensate for the lost time?" Chief Justice Chandrachud explained it with an example: a serial rapist-murderer arrested for seven ...
A small plane carrying two people crashed in the vicinity of a shopping mall in Philadelphia, resulting in multiple casualties on the ground, local media reported on Friday. The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, citing police, said the crash took place shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern near the Roosevelt Mall in northeast Philadelphia. At least one house and multiple cars are on fire, the newspaper reported. The Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management confirmed on social media that there was a "major incident" in the area of the reported crash, but provided no other details. The Philadelphia CBS affiliate showed images of a large fire and several fire trucks at the scene of the crash, and that the status of victims was not immediately known. Neither the Philadelphia police department nor the fire department immediately responded to requests for comment. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) fro...