Actor Rajinikanth defends Govt on CAA, says it won't affect Indian Muslims

Los Angeles, Jul 14: US officials on Monday found the body of "Glee" actress Naya Rivera in the Californian lake where she drowned last week during a boat trip with her four-year-old son.

Rivera's body was retrieved and an initial examination found no evidence of foul play or suicide, Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub told a press conference.

"We are confident the body we found is that of Naya Rivera," said Ayub, pointing to the location, appearance, clothing and condition of the body.

Her body was being taken to a medical examiner's office for a full autopsy and confirmation of her identity from dental records, though no other missing persons have been reported at Lake Piru, he added.

Rivera, 33, is believed to have accidentally drowned after renting the boat with her young son at the camping and recreational hotspot around an hour's drive northwest of Los Angeles.

She vanished on Wednesday afternoon, and a massive search involving divers, patrol boats and helicopters was launched after her sleeping son was spotted drifting alone in a boat on the lake.

The son later told investigators that Rivera had helped him into the boat before "he looked back and saw her disappear under the surface of the water," said the sheriff.

Ayub pointed to the lake's strong currents as a possible cause of a fatal accident.

"The idea perhaps being that the boat started drifting -- it was unanchored -- and that she mustered enough energy to get her son back onto the boat, but not enough to save herself," he said.

The lake has been closed to the public since Wednesday, with around 100 personnel, including the US Coast Guard and rescuers from neighboring counties, joining the search.

Search teams used footage from video messaging calls Rivera made from the boat before her disappearance, as well as interviews with her son, to scour portions of the lake bed for her remains over six days, with no success.

"We believe she was concealed within some of the shrubbery on the floor bed of the lake" before eventually floating to the surface due to natural decomposition, said Ayyub.

With less than one foot (30 centimeters) of visibility underwater in daylight, the recovery operation was a "complex search effort" even with use of sonar equipment, he said.

Rivera was best known for her role as high school cheerleader Santana Lopez in "Glee."

She starred for six seasons in the wildly popular musical television series set in a US high school that ended in 2015.

The "Glee" cast has been struck by tragedy before.

Actor Mark Salling took his own life in 2018, weeks before being sentenced for possession of child pornography.

Canadian castmate Cory Monteith died in July 2013 of an overdose of drugs and alcohol.

New Delhi, Jan 14: The curative petitions of Vinay Sharma and Mukesh, who were sentenced to death in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, was on Tuesday rejected by a five-judge Supreme Court Bench led by Justice N.V. Ramana.

In a three-page order, the Bench concluded, after an in chamber consideration that began about 1.45 p.m., that there was no merit in their pleas to spare them from the gallows.

“We have gone through the curative petitions and relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra versus Ashok Hurra. Hence, the curative petitions are dismissed,” the court held.

Curative is a rare remedy devised by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in its judgment in the Rupa Ashok Hurra case in 2002. A party can take only two limited grounds in a curative petition - one, he was not heard by the court before the adverse judgment was passed, and two, the judge was biased. A curative plea, which follows the dismissal of review petition, is the last legal avenue open for convicts in the Supreme Court. Sharma was the first among the four convicts to file a curative.

The Bench also rejected their pleas to stay the execution of their death sentence and for oral hearing in open court.

Besides Justice Ramana, the Bench comprised Arun Mishra, Rohinton Nariman, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

Curative petitions were filed in the Supreme Court by both convicts on January 9. The petitions had come just days after a Delhi sessions court schedulled the execution of all the four convicts in Tihar jail on January 22.

Sharma and Mukesh, in separate curative petitions, argued that there was a “sea change” in the death penalty jurisprudence since their convictions. Carrying out the death sentence on such changed circumstances would be a “gross miscarriage of justice”.

In his plea, Sharma said the Court had commuted the death penalty in several rape and murder cases since 2017, when it first confirmed the death penalty to the Nirbhaya convicts.

“fter the pronouncement of judgment in 2017, there have been as many as 17 cases involving rape and murder in which various three-judge Benches of the Supreme Court have commuted the sentence of death,” the petition contended.

The Supreme Court recently dismissed a review petition filed by Akshay Singh, another of the four four condemned men, to review its May 5, 2017 judgment confirming the death penalty. It also refused his plea to grant him three weeks' time to file a mercy petition before the President of India.

A Bench led by Justice R. Banumathi had said it was open for the Nirbhaya case convicts to avail whatever time the law prescribes for the purpose of filing a mercy plea.

Akshay (33), Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Sharma (24) had brutally gang-raped a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012. She died of her injuries a few days later.

The case shocked the nation and led to the tightening of anti-rape laws. Rape, especially gang rape, is now a capital crime.

One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board. He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.