The Fatal Accident at Biodiversity Flyover in Hyderabad - A Case Study

Urban disasters, Traffic is unavoidable due to increase in density of vehicles without adding more road space to the city. This is demanding for more flyovers, grade separators to avoid congestion at the junctions. Hyderabad is congesting with many junctions adding up to the heavy traffic and waiting time, energy, fuel and polluting the city with noise and air pollution. For economic benefit and decongestion of major junctions, Flyovers were planned and constructed. To meet this demand in Gachibowli and Hi-Tech city area, a flyover was constructed by MVR Infra projects near biodiversity junction. The present paper describes the incident of fatal accident taken place on November 23, 2019. The study also reveals aftermath actions taken by the government of Telangana and suggested various sections in the Indian penal codes for such incidents.

Sentencing multiple conviction offenders

Sentenced offenders who re-offend prior to serving their previously imposed sentence (multiple conviction offenders) are situated between multiple and repeat offenders. This article examines how they should be sentenced based on censure, consequentialist and desert theories. I conclude that these aims cannot be achieved if they are treated as repeat offenders, and neither can the requirement of proportionality. Censure is, similarly, communicated primarily via hard treatment not via sentence pronouncement. I further analyse all continental European penal codes; half of them do not have any provision governing the sentencing of multiple conviction offenders (tacitly treating them as repeat offenders) and only two countries provide detailed sentencing guidance. I conclude by offering recommendations for the principled sentencing of multiple conviction offenders.

7. Penal law

‘Penal law’ reviews Islamic penal law, the most controversial aspect of Islamic law that often prompts heated debate about its applicability in contemporary times. Classical Islamic law classifies crimes and their punishments into three main categories: hudūd, qisās, and ta’zīr. Substantively, the hudūd and qisās offences are specifically prescribed in the Qur’an and/or the Sunnah, while the ta’zīr offences are left to the discretion of the ruling authority or judges. There are a number of evidential requirements and standard of proving criminal offences under Islamic law. The classical Islamic penal rules are now codified into the current penal codes of a few Muslim-majority states, with necessary modifications.

Important issues in select European Union countries’ criminal environmental law in compliance with Directive 2008/99/EC

This article analyzes issues in criminal environmental law in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany, which implemented the provisions of the European Commission Directive 2008/99/EC. The provisions of this directive changed the scope of protection of environmental resources in these countries’ penal codes to varying extents. These three countries have been relatively successful in comprehensively implementing criminal directive provisions. This included changes in the special protection of Natura 2000 sites and ozone depleting substances. Legal systems are generally based on prevention and risk assessment, and the basic conditions of criminal responsibility for environmental crimes include “significant damage, causing damage to the health of another or animals and plants, damage to other property and also water, air, soil and environmental components which have significant value”. Additional aspects include environmental damage over larger areas and restoration costs. However, the greatest current problem is the vague definition of conditions of criminal responsibility, which makes it difficult to enforce legislation. The following postulates de lege ferenda were formulated: clarify the premises for offenses against the environment, specify the costs of remedying environmental damage, define critical emission standards for environmental crime, as well as specify activities in protected areas that threaten objects. This article emphasizes that an increased and better definition of the conditions of criminal responsibility for environmental crimes enacted by EU countries may contribute to more effective enforcement of infringements of environmental protection law.

National Courts Step Up

Following the discussion of the options for invoking the International Criminal Court (ICC) or creating a new international institution to address the crimes in Syria, chapter 7 explores the potential for domestic courts to fill this impunity gap. Principles of complementarity, including the incorporation of international crimes into the world’s domestic penal codes, have contributed to the emergence of more empowered and aggressive domestic courts when it comes to the prosecution of grave crimes of international concern. The chapter demonstrates the way in which classic principles of domestic criminal jurisdiction—territoriality, effects, nationality (active and passive), protective, and universal jurisdiction—could all be, and are all being, activated to address the presence of perpetrators and victims found outside the Syrian battlespace. This chapter offers a taxonomy of the criminal cases proceeding to date in domestic courts around the world, some involving the state’s own nationals, some involving perpetrators found within the territorial state, and some proceeding in various ways while the defendant is still in absentia. This chapter offers explanations for the developments afoot within states—and the European Union in particular—that have enabled domestic courts to emerge as the most promising venue for justice. While compiling a number of overarching observations about this collection of cases, the chapter also acknowledges their inherent limitations, in general and when it comes to Syria in particular, as well as sources of resistance to the expansion of these forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

ON THE JESUIT-MARONITE PROVENANCE OF LEBANON'S CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, effectively, criminalizes homosexual practices. Most commentators have claimed that its existence in modern Lebanon is a “colonial relic,” specifically of the French Mandate, 1920–1946. But since 1791, French penal codes have not criminalized same-sex relations. I argue, instead, that Article 534 was the product of native religious, legal, and moral thinking among the Maronites, reinforced by the Thomistic and post-Tridentine moral theology taught in Lebanon by the Jesuit missions. Thomistic and post-Tridentine moral theology classified same-sex relations as worthy of condemnation as “unnatural acts”—the same language used in Article 534. Therefore, as a product of Lebanese political and religious sectarianism, Article 534 is a specific case of a congenial collaboration of Jesuit moral theology and a conservative Maronite ethical and legal koine.