Victim’s poem gets murder convict life term
NEW DELHI: A 19-year-old murder convict will spend the rest of his life in jail for killing his 17-year-old school junior. The court hinged on two pieces of evidence — a poem of the victim girl and a YouTube song in which a youth kills his girlfriend — to deliver this verdict.
Additional sessions judge Virender Kumar Bansal called Sarthak Kapoor a “jilted lover” who wanted the girl back at any cost. And on watching the song, which was placed on record by the prosecution, the court said, “This clearly shows and depicts his motive and also what he is going to do and ultimately he did.”
Police had said that Kapoor had pressed the victim Shreya Sharma’s neck against the wall with her elbow as shown in the song.
The poem was reproduced by the court in its sentencing order after forensic tests confirmed it was hers. It took note that Kapoor had been harassing Sharma much before he killed her. “It was a well-planned, cold-blooded murder. He communicated to her on Instagram his intentions to kill her and executed the same as a professional in a cold-blooded manner without using a weapon,” the court said. Kapoor was also slapped with a Rs 2-lakh fine.
Sharma, a Class XII student, was found dead near her house in Rohini's Sector 17 after she went missing on August 16 last year after going for coaching classes. When all efforts to find Sharma proved unsuccessful, the parents called up the police. Upon inquiry, Kapoor confessed to his crime and took the police to the spot where Sharma’s parents identified her body.
There were instances of harassment and injury that came out during investigation. In April 2017, the first instance of harassment had come to light when Sharma’s chemistry teacher had informed her parents that Kapoor would inflict injuries on her outside the coaching centre. During the trial, one of Sharma’s friends had testified that Sharma had been “disturbed” and “depressed” due to the harassment.
The police had also relied on CCTV footage showing Sharma’s final moments with Kapoor. The footage, judge Bansal ruled, wasn’t tampered with and Sharma and Kapoor were seen together around 5.01pm. “The postmortem report also confirms the time of death as around the time when they were last seen together... I found that firstly, a black bag is visible in the CCTV footage... The pendrive in which the CCTV footage was taken is proved... From CCTV itself it is clear that Shreya at that time was carrying one bag,” the judge held.
The defence counsel submitted that evidence was planted on Kapoor and nothing was recovered from his house. “Police knew where the body was and they manipulated the entire story,” it was submitted. The court disagreed. “Even otherwise it is quite natural that a child going for tuition must be carrying with her...a small bag which was being carried by Shreya also,” the court said.
It sentenced him to rigorous life imprisonment and specified that it would be for the remainder of his life.
courtesy : timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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