Daily News Capsules
1. SC acquits Surendra Koli in last Nithari killings case
The Supreme Court on Tuesday acquitted Surendra Koli in the last of the 13 criminal cases linked to the Nithari killings, holding that his conviction in this solitary case could not stand when he had already been acquitted in 12 others arising from the same set of facts and evidence. The court said retaining one conviction amid a series of reversals would be “inimical to the integrity of adjudication.” Koli, who was serving a life term, was ordered to be released “forthwith, if not wanted in any other case”. The Nithari killings, which came to light in 2006, horrified the nation after skeletal remains of several children were found in a drain behind the Noida home of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, where Koli worked as a domestic help. Both men were arrested after the grisly discovery triggered public outrage. Koli was convicted in 13 cases and Pandher in two. But beginning October 2023, the Allahabad High Court, and later the Supreme Court, set aside convictions in 12 of those matters, citing flawed investigations and unreliable evidence. Tuesday’s ruling erases the final conviction against Koli, bringing the long-running prosecutions to a close. A bench of Chief Justice of India Bhushan R Gavai and justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath noted that the surviving conviction rested on Koli’s purported confession under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code and certain recoveries under Section 27 of the Evidence Act, both of which had been judicially discredited in companion cases. “We find no principled basis on which the same statement can be treated as voluntary and reliable in this case when it has been judicially discredited in all others,” it said.
Possible Question
What institutional reforms can strengthen forensic and prosecutorial integrity in India’s criminal justice system to prevent wrongful convictions?
2. Looking for alternatives to hanging: Centre to SC
The Union government informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it is examining whether a less painful and more humane method of execution could replace hanging, though no final decision has been taken so far. Attorney General R Venkataramani told a bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta that deliberations were underway, and the Centre would require more time before it could present a concrete position. “There is no urgency. No hanging is taking place right now,” added Venkataramani, requesting a deferment. The bench adjourned the matter to January 21, 2026. The case flows from the petition of senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, challenging Section 354(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, now reflected in Section 393(5) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. This mandates that execution of a death sentence must be carried out by hanging. Malhotra has argued that the method is archaic, causes prolonged suffering, and violates the right to life with dignity under Article 21. More than 40 countries, he pointed out earlier, have adopted lethal injection or other modes considered less torturous. In its earlier affidavit before the court in May 2023, the government maintained that hanging remained the “safest and quickest” method of execution, arguing that it eliminates the possibility of a lingering death. Its affidavit rejected lethal injection as a viable alternative, citing data from the United States to point out that chemical executions have the highest rate of botched outcomes, and that trained medical professionals were unlikely to participate in such procedures. The Centre further emphasised that the death penalty is imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases, involving acts of exceptional depravity or brutality, and cautioned that making the process “overtly comfortable, and painless” could dilute its deterrent effect.
Possible Question
How does India’s constitutional commitment to human dignity influence debates on the method and morality of capital punishment?
3. Remove non-consensual intimate images online in 24 hrs: Govt SOP
Social media platforms and online intermediaries must remove or disable access to non-consensual intimate images within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in Standard Operating Procedures released on Tuesday. The SOPs, published on the ministry’s website, follow an October direction from the Madras High Court while hearing a plea filed by a woman lawyer whose private images had repeatedly surfaced online. Drawing from the Information Technology Act, 2000, the IT Rules, 2021, the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, and the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the procedures outline the removal process for non-consensual intimate imagery. The SOPs apply to intermediaries including social media platforms, content-hosting services, search engines, content delivery networks, and domain name registrars. Platforms must take down flagged content within 24 hours and acknowledge the action to the complainant. Significant social media intermediaries must deploy crawler technologies to proactively detect and remove re-uploads. They are required to generate hashes—unique digital fingerprints of reported images or videos—and share them with the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre via the Sahyog Portal to maintain a secure “hash bank” that prevents the resurfacing of the same material. Search engines must de-index such content from their results, while content delivery networks and domain name registrars must render it inaccessible within 24 hours.
Possible Question
Evaluate how India’s intermediary-liability framework balances the right to privacy with freedom of expression in the digital sphere.
4. David Szalay wins Booker for fiction with earthy novel ‘Flesh’
Canadian-Hungarian-British writer David Szalay won the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “Flesh”, the story of one man’s life from working-class origins in Hungary to mega-wealth in Britain, in which what isn’t on the page is just as important as what is. Szalay, 51, beat five other finalists, including favourites Andrew Miller of Britain and Indian author Kiran Desai, to take the coveted literary award, which brings a £50,000 ($66,000) payday and a big boost to the winner’s sales and profile. He was chosen from 153 submitted novels by a judging panel that included Irish writer Roddy Doyle and “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker. Doyle said “Flesh” — a book “about living, and the strangeness of living” — emerged as the judges’ unanimous choice after a five-hour meeting. Szalay’s book recounts in spare, unadorned style the life of taciturn Istvan, from a teenage relationship with an older woman through time as a struggling immigrant in Britain to unlikely denizen of London high society. Szalay said he wrote “Flesh” under pressure, after abandoning a novel he’d been working on for four years. Doyle, who chaired the judges, said Istvan belongs to a group overlooked in fiction: a working-class man. He said that since reading it, he looks more closely when he walks past bouncers standing in the doorways of Dublin pubs.
Possible Question
How does contemporary literature’s renewed focus on working-class lives reflect global inequalities in representation? In this context, assess how Indian writers have depicted class mobility and the aspirations of the ‘ordinary’ citizen in modern fiction.
5. Gig workers face hard reset after best festive spike
After record seasonal hiring during the festival period, gig workers stare at unusually lean period this new year. By the end of December, short-term contracts of thousands of gig and temporary workers hired by e-commerce, logistics, and consumer goods companies to handle the festive season demand will end. They will find themselves without jobs, struggling to secure their next opportunity. Hiring agencies predict that from January onward, the market will see an unusually large pool of gig talent available for recruitment. Many may have to accept lower pay or less favourable terms to stay employed. “Barely 5– 10% of the temporary staffing will get absorbed in the same company,” said Neeti Sharma, chief executive officer of staffing and talent solutions firm TeamLease Digital. “The gig workers move across platforms and after the festive season, the remuneration will see a 15–20% drop for them.” Temporary workers are on the staffing vendor’s payroll and deployed at the client company, with their contracts typically lasting 3 to 11 months. Gig workers are often hired for shifts that are limited to a few hours a day. The number of people seeking jobs after the peak hiring period is expected to be higher this year as agencies recruited about 20% more gig and temporary workers in 2025 than in the previous year. The intake had spiked as retailers and consumer brands anticipated a surge in demand after a shorter summer that caused an inventory pile-up of seasonal white goods.
Possible Question
Examine the need for a national social-security architecture for gig and platform workers in light of India’s changing labour market dynamics.
Editorial Snapshots
A. Underrepresented minority in politics
Justice BV Nagarathna has introduced a gender dimension to the conversation on political and social equality. While hearing a petition seeking a directive from the Supreme Court on women’s reservation in Parliament and state assemblies, she drew attention to the fact that women constitute the largest minority in the country, while clarifying that enforcement of the law is the executive’s responsibility. Justice Nagarathna, in line to be the first woman chief justice of India in September 2027, is right. Women make up almost 48% of the population, and, collectively, face discrimination that many social minorities do, particularly the lack of proportionate representation in public bodies, including in the judiciary. For instance, only 11 of the 284 Supreme Court judges have been women. The Constitution promises political equality, which must expand beyond the right to vote to include opportunity and representation. India fares poorly on both counts: According to UN Women, the lead United Nations entity on gender equality, the global average of women in parliaments is 27% while it is just 14% in India. It’s been over a year since Parliament passed the Women’s Reservation Bill (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam). The Act calls for one-third of all seats in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies to be reserved for women, but with the caveat that it will come into effect only after the delimitation of constituencies. That’s some way off since the delimitation exercise will follow the census, which is to be completed only in 2027. Clinging to this procedural aspect of the law will unduly delay redress to the gender imbalance in legislatures. Instead, political parties could field more candidates on their own, a path political parties such as the BJD and Trinamool Congress have pursued with significant success. Political parties have discovered that women respond positively in elections to tailored incentives and now perceive them as a vote bank. That’s not enough, though.
Possible Question
Discuss how institutional and political innovations—such as party-level quotas and constituency redesign—could accelerate gender parity in India’s governance institutions.
B. A country for the army, Rawalpindi asserts
A proposed constitutional amendment in Pakistan, ostensibly aimed at modernising the military by creating the post of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), is widely being seen as further consolidation of the pre-eminent position of the army in deciding foreign and security policy. The amendment, moved less than six months after army chief Asim Munir engineered his elevation to the rank of field marshal after a conflict with India, has cleared the upper house of Pakistan’s Parliament. Once it secures a two-thirds majority in the lower house , the CDF, who will always be the army chief, will have overarching control of all three services. Equally significant is the move to create the post of commander of the National Strategic Command, who will always be from the army, to oversee the nuclear arsenal. This will negate the National Command Authority that provides civilian oversight of nuclear assets. Since the era of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan army has perfected the art of controlling increasingly servile civilian governments without resorting to the coups of the past, since it obviates the need to deal with international opprobrium. The civilian-military equation in Pakistan never recovered from the damage done during the era of Zia-ul-Haq. The constitutional amendment will only strengthen the generals who have acted for decades with impunity. Unlike some of his predecessors who favoured reconciliation or détente with India, Munir has left little doubt about his anti-India stance. Munir has the added advantage of having inveigled US President Donald Trump into believing he is the real power in Pakistan and stitching together a mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. An emboldened Pakistan army chief operating with virtually no fetters only increases the risks for India.
Possible Question
Analyse how Pakistan’s evolving civil-military imbalance affects regional stability and India’s strategic calculus along the western front.
Fact of the day
Extreme weather in 30 years cost India $170 bn, killed 80k, says report: Extreme weather events in the past three decades caused economic losses of nearly $170 billion, killed over 80,000 people and affected nearly 1.3 billion people in India, according to the Climate Risk Index 2026, published by
Germanwatch, an independent development and environmental organisation based in Bonn and Berlin. The report, which coincided with the UN Climate negotiations (COP30) in Brazil, said India ranked 9th based on economic and human impacts of extreme weather. The Climate Risk Index (CRI) ranking indicates that, between 1995 and 2024, the top ten most affected countries by extreme weather during 1995 and 2024 were Dominica, Myanmar, Honduras, Libya, Haiti, Grenada, Philippines, Nicaragua, India and The Bahamas. In this period, there were direct economic losses of over $ 4.5 trillion (inflation adjusted) from more than 9,700 extreme weather events. Overall, around 40% of all people worldwide – over three billion – currently live in the 11 countries that have been most severely affected by extreme weather events such as heat waves, storms, and floods over the past 30 years. “The country has faced various extreme weather events, including floods, heat waves, cyclones, and drought. Floods and landslides resulting from heavy monsoons have displaced millions and damaged agriculture, and cyclones have devastated coastal areas, underscoring India’s diverse climate risks,” the report said.
