Chandigarh, April 7: A CBI court in Mohali on Monday sentenced Punjab’s former Senior Superintendent of Police Devinder Singh Garcha and former Superintendent of Police, Headquarters, Paramdip Singh Sandhu to five years of rigorous imprisonment each, in connection with the 2007 sex scandal in Moga.

Besides the imprisonment under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, the court imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh each.

Garcha and Sandhu were arrested and charged with blackmailing influential persons to extort money.

Former Inspector Amarjit Singh was sentenced to six-and-a-half years of rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 2.5 lakh, while former Sub-Inspector Raman Kumar was sentenced to eight years of rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 3 lakh.

Both were found guilty of implicating prominent businessmen in a false gangrape case to extort money from them.

CBI Special Judge Rakesh Gupta pronounced the verdict after convicting Garcha, Sandhu, Raman Kumar, and Amarjit Singh under Sections 13(1) (D) and 13 (2) of the PC Act on March 29.

Besides corruption, Raman Kumar was also convicted of extortion, while Amarjit Singh was convicted of attempting extortion.

The CBI court acquitted Barjinder Singh, alias Makhan, the son of former Punjab minister Tota Singh, and Sukhraj Singh of all the charges.

The CBI took over the probe on the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s direction on December 11, 2007. A day later, the central probe agency registered a fresh FIR in the case.

The sex scandal involved high-profile politicians and senior police officials extorting rich people by trapping them in a flesh trade case.

As per the investigation, the accused public servants abused their positions and entered into a criminal conspiracy to obtain undue pecuniary gain by corrupt and illegal means.

According to the charge sheet, two women, including Manjit Kaur, in connivance with the police officers and Barjinder Singh, extorted money from influential people by threatening to frame them in sexual abuse cases if they refused to pay up.

New Delhi, April 7: The pleas in the Supreme Court challenging the recent amendments introduced to the Waqf Act were mentioned on Monday before Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna for urgent listing.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal urged CJI Khanna to give an urgent hearing on the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025.

In response, the CJI, who is the master of the roster, asked the senior counsel if he had moved an email containing the mentioning letter. When informed that the same had already been done, CJI Khanna said, “I will get the letter and do the needful this afternoon.”

Several petitions have been filed before the apex court challenging the amendments immediately after the Parliament passed the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, on Friday.

After the legislation was passed in both Houses of Parliament, the Indian National Congress announced it would challenge the Waqf (Amendment) Bill before the Supreme Court. Congress claimed that it was an attack on the basic structure of the Constitution and was aimed at “polarising” and “dividing” the country on the basis of religion.

In his petition, Congress MP and party whip in Lok Sabha Mohammad Jawed contended that the amendments violated Articles 14 (right to equality), 25 (freedom to practice and propagate religion), 26 (freedom of religious denominations to manage their religious affairs), 29 (minority rights), and 300A (right to property) of the Constitution.

Similarly, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Akbaruddin Owaisi has moved the top court, saying that the impugned amendments are “ex facie violative of Articles 14, 15, 21, 25, 26, 29, 30, 300A of the Constitution of India and manifestly arbitrary”.

The concept of ‘Waqf’, rooted in Islamic laws and traditions, refers to an endowment made by a Muslim for charitable or religious purposes, such as mosques, schools, hospitals, or other public institutions. The government said that crores of poor Muslims will benefit from this legislation, and in no way does it harm any single Muslim.

Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju has said the legislation did not interfere with the Waqf properties, adding that the Modi government works with the vision of ‘Sabka Saath and Sabka Vikas’.

Kolkata, April 7: As West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee prepares to meet a group of job losers in state-run schools on Monday, following the Supreme Court’s order that annulled 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs last week, questions are arising about whether this is a political gimmick or a genuine effort to solve the problem.

The Chief Minister, as promised, will be present at the meeting to listen to these job losers about their contentions and suggest ways to resolve the looming crisis.

The first confusion is whether the “tainted” candidates, who reportedly got jobs after paying money, will also be present at the meeting along with the “genuine” ones who lost jobs because of the failure to segregate “tainted” from “genuine candidates.

Several reportedly “genuine” candidates, who have received entry passes for the proposed meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium in central Kolkata, said they had received the passes because they were the “genuine” ones and, hence, will not allow “ineligible” ones without entry passes to be present at the meeting.

However, another section, who have not received entry passes, claimed that since the entire panel of 25,753 jobs was cancelled because of the segregation failure, how can it be decided now — who is “genuine” and who is not?

The second complication or confusion over the meeting is where the entry passes for the said meeting were issued. While those who have received such entry passes have claimed that those were issued from the state secretariat of Nabanna, those who have not received such entry passes have claimed that they are not aware of who the actual organiser of the scheduled meeting was and hence who issued such passes.

However, officially, the state government has maintained that the convener of the meeting is an association of jobless people who are now deprived of jobs because of the apex court order, and the Chief Minister is going there to listen to them on humanitarian grounds.

Already, candidates — those having entry passes and those who do not have the passes — have assembled in front of the Netaji Indoor Stadium, and there have been several rounds of altercations between the two groups. A huge police contingent is already present at the spot, trying to keep the two groups at a distance.

The third complication is that an eminent painter and a prominent writer from West Bengal are also scheduled to speak at the proposed meeting. Political observers feel that the invitation to the painter and the writer is redundant since the entire matter of finding a solution is purely “legal” and “administrative.”