Amnesty India launches website to document hate crimes
New Delhi: Amnesty International India on Thursday launched an interactive data website 'Halt the Hate in order to draw attention to alarming number of alleged hate crimes against marginalised groups in the country.
The website documents hate crimes against Dalits, Adivasis, members of racial or religious minority groups, transgender persons, and other marginalised people which are reported in mainstream English and Hindi media, the rights group said in a release
The first step to ensuring justice and ending impunity for hate crimes - where people are targeted because of their membership of a particular group - is to highlight their occurrence, said Aakar Patel, Executive Director, Amnesty International India.
"Our website aims to draw attention to some of these crimes by tracking and documenting them. Many of these incidents are deeply disturbing: Dalits have been attacked for merely sporting moustaches, and Muslims lynched for transporting cattle. Dalit women have been branded as witches, and raped and killed.
"Unfortunately, the extent of hate crime in India is unknown because the law - with some exceptions - does not recognise hate crimes as specific offences. The police need to take steps to unmask any potentially discriminatory motive in a crime, and political leaders must be more vocal in denouncing such violence," he said, as per the release.
The website documents alleged hate crimes from September 2015, when Mohammad Akhlaq was killed in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly killing a cow.
Cow-related violence and so-called ‘honour' killings were among the common instances of alleged hate crimes, it added.
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'Must stop': SC censures lawyers for filing 'bulky' appeals
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Thursday deprecated lawyers for filing "bulky" appeals which run into a number of pages and annexing unnecessary documents.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said, "What is this tendency? In synopsis, case law is cited, grounds are there in synopsis. And there is a very bulky compilation. Every matter we see now in Supreme Court, in first part of synopsis people cite quotations then the grounds of appeal are reproduced in synopsis. This must stop."
The bench went on, "What kind of bulky compilation is being thrown at us? The bulk of the compilation depends upon the monetary capacity of the litigant and capacity to engage senior advocate. This is happening everyday. We have forgotten the basic rule that pleadings should not contain law."
The top court expressed "shock" on finding in such compilations synopses of cases, grounds of challenge aside from case laws.
"We deprecate this tendency. A copy of this order shall we forwarded to the Supreme Court advocates on-record association," it added.
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