Now Reading: UP judge who gave 22 death sentences loses 100 murder cases
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UP judge who gave 22 death sentences loses 100 murder cases
Around 100 murder cases have been transferred from the fast-track court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, after he handed down 22 death sentences in four months. The cases were reassigned by administrative order to District and Sessions Judge Virendra Kumar Singh, officials said.
The district bar association president said lawyers and litigants feared the court would keep awarding capital punishment. The cases include the murders of a lawyer, a home guard and a farmer, and a highway robbery-murder. Trial courts across Uttar Pradesh awarded 28 death sentences in all of 2025, India Today reports, citing a NALSAR University study, meaning Diwakar alone accounted for nearly 80% of the state's death sentences.
Under Indian law, none of the sentences are immediately enforceable. Each must be confirmed by the Allahabad High Court before any execution can proceed.
Indian Opinion Analysis
Both sources report the same facts from PTI wire copy. The only difference is an editorial choice: India Today adds a National Law University statistic (28 death sentences in all UP trial courts in 2025), giving readers context that turns a local administrative transfer into a state-level data story. Free Press Journal omits that number, keeping the lens on the judge alone. A careful reader should register that 22 death sentences in four months from one judge is nearly 80% of the state's entire year's total, a statistical outlier that likely drove the transfer, not just lawyer complaints. The key date is the next High Court confirmation hearing for each of the 22 sentences, which will test whether the 'rarest of rare' standard was applied sentence by sentence.
Coverage: 2 sources, 2 neutral
Sources (2): freepressjournal.in (neutral report), indiatoday.in (neutral report)
This story was synthesised by AI from the 2 sources linked above. Methodology and corrections.
