Advocate Rakesh Singh

CDs are documents and can be considered as evidence under law: SC The Supreme Court has ruled that a compact disc (CD) is a document under Section 3 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The Court also held that a CD has to be exhibited/played by the trial court to enable the public prosecutor to admit or deny its genuineness under Section 294 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The decision was rendered by a Division Bench of PC Pant and Dipak Misra JJ. in an appeal against the decision of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in the case of Shamsher singh Verma Vs. State of Haryana. The appellant accused is on trial for molestation of his niece and is currently lodged in jail. He had sought to rely on the recording of a conversation between his wife and son, and the father of the victim. The appellant had  moved an application Section 294 of CrPC to get the CD played in the court for preserving a copy of the text contained, and therei...

One of the most conspicuous and significant outcome of the process of globalization and liberalization has been the opening up of economies of evidently all the countries around the globe. There has been mounting pressure from members of the WTO for opening of the legal services sector in India. On the other hand, there has been a strong apprehension of the Bar Association of India and particularly the Bar Council of India in permitting foreign law firms to enter India as according to them, it may lead to the shrinking of opportunities available to the domestic lawyer. As India is a signatory to the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), it has an obligation to liberalise its legal sector. It has not been able to make much headway on this due to stiff opposition from Indian lawyers' representative bodies Bar Council of India (BCI) and Society of Indian Law Firms (SIFL) and legal cases against allowing foreign law firms to practice international law in India. The ...

The legislative assembly of Bihar is scheduled to expire in November 2015. The state witnessed a big political crisis right since the start of the year as the former chief minister Nitish Kumar asked the ruling CM Jitan Ram Manjhi to step down but the latter refused and was subsequently expelled from the primary membership of JD-U. Though, Manjhi quit days later, hours before he was to go through a confidence motion in the assembly. The elections to the legislative assembly will be held in the 243 assembly constituencies of Bihar before 29 November 2015. In the previous elections held in 2010, the JD-U won 115 seats out of 147 seats it had contested. The BJP bagged 91 seats out of 102 contested. If the results of 2014 General Elections in Bihar are an indication to follow, then the BJP can be termed as the favourite to win. In the general elections, BJP won in 22 of the 40 parliamentary constituencies, while the LJP and RJD settled for 6 and 4 seats respectively. In 2015 th...