History will not forgive BJP for Kashmir: Sena

New Delhi, Jan 29: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed the plea by Mukesh Kumar Singh, one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by the President.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice R Banumathi said that expeditious disposal of mercy plea by the President doesn't mean non-application of mind by him.

The court also said that alleged sufferings in prison can't be grounds to challenge the rejection of mercy petition.

The bench said all relevant material including judgments pronounced by trial court, high court and Supreme Court were placed before the President when he was considering the mercy plea of the convict.

The bench also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna rejected the contentions of the counsel appearing for Singh that entire materials of the case were not placed before the President when he was considering his mercy plea.

The bench, while referring to two files placed before it by the Centre on Tuesday, said that as per the January 15 covering letter which was sent by the Delhi government to the Ministry of Home Affairs, all relevant documents were sent.

The bench noted that detailed judgements of trial court, high court and the Supreme Court, curative petition filed by Singh, his past criminal history and his family background were sent to the Home Ministry by the Delhi government.

"All the documents were taken into consideration by the President while rejecting the mercy petition," the bench said.

The bench also dealt with submissions advanced by the convict's counsel, who had argued that the mercy plea was rejected at "lightning speed".

The bench said that if a mercy petition is expeditiously dealt with, it cannot be assumed that it has been adjudicated upon in a pre-conceived mind.

Thrissur, Mar 23: Kerala police on Monday has booked a Catholic priest for violating the Covid-19 advisory against conducting Holy Mass in which more than 100 people attended.

Fr. Pauly Padayatti, vicar of Nithya Sahaya Matha (Mother of Perpetual Help) church at Koodapuzha near Chalakudy in Thrissur district has been arrested by the police.

Despite the strict restrictions of the health department and the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) to temporality suspend church services involving laity in churches, the vicar conducted the Holy Mass on Monday.

The police have also registered case against the devotees for violating the guidelines by attending the service.

The top church leadership including Cardinal Mar George Alencherry repeatedly urged the laity not to go to churches for Holy Mass or other services.

The faithful have been asked to participate in the online streaming of Holy Mass by bishops and priests and pray from their homes.

Bengaluru, Jul 1: A day after the Government banned several Chinese apps, popular short-form video app Mitron reported that its daily traffic jumped up by more than 11 times.

Just 5 days after crossing the 10 million (1 crore) downloads milestone, Mitron has now announced that the app has been downloaded by 17 million (1.7 crore) users in India. Mitron app has been one of the most downloaded apps in India during the last two months.

"It is incredibly exciting to see the rapid adoption of Mitron by Indian users. 11-fold jump in traffic, immediately after the ban of Chinese apps, was beyond our expectations," said Shivank Agarwal, Founder, and CEO, Mitron.

Anish Khandelwal, Founder and CTO said, " We have built a solid backend infrastructure and our platform is now completely scalable and autonomous and that is helping us to cater to the sharp rise in traffic on Mitron App."

Mitron has been rapidly enhancing the product with several improvements for the users including an updated video upload process that is much easier, enhanced audio library with a wide choice of Indian content, and a feature that enables users to flag any inappropriate content easily.

Users uploaded millions of videos in 10 different languages and the number of videos viewed on the platform increased sharply to cross 30 million video views per hour.

Shivank added "We are a young company and we are hiring some of the best product & engineering talent to scale up Mitron rapidly. We are confident that we can build Mitron into one of the best apps in the short-form video space. Our focus is on building features and content that uniquely resonates with Indian users, while being sensitive to community standards and local laws in India and we believe that will help us build Mitron into a very large business."

Founded by two Computer Science engineers, Shivank Agarwal (alumnus of IIT Roorkee) and Anish Khandelwal (alumnus of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology), Mitron app is a short-form video app that allows users to create, upload and view entertaining short videos.