After the government had come under severe attack form the Supreme Court while cancelling the 122 licences for 2G spectrum, the apex court was approached on Saturday for transferring to itself the two-year-old “excess spectrum” case against seven private telecom companies from the Delhi high court.

Stating that the Indian government is bound to “respect” the extradition orders of foreign courts as per the norms of international law, the Supreme Court on Friday admitted alleged mafia don Abu Salem’s petition for quashing the serious Tada charges in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case and stayed the trial against him in two FIRs registered in this connection.

On the raging controversy over delay in deciding mercy petitions of death row convicts by the President, the Union government, in an additional affidavit to the Supreme Court, has said that the demand for the “abolition” of the capital punishment was no ground for granting mercy to the convicts.

In a bid to sustain the death sentence to lone surviving Pakistan terrorist of 26/11 Mumbai attack, Ajmal Kasab, the Maharashtra government on Thursday placed on record a diary recovered from one of his nine accomplices killed by the security forces to show it as a “crucial” evidence how all of them were deeply involved in a conspiracy to wage war against India.

Industrialist Ratan Tata in an additional affidavit to the Supreme Court on Thursday blamed the government for its “failure” to protect his privacy while permitting its agencies to intercept the telephones of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and demanded the copy of income-tax department’s probe report in the 2G scam case, which also includes investigation into the Radia tapes.

The Maharashtra government on Wednesday was not ready to yield even an inch to Pakistan terrorist Ajmal Kasab in the 26/11 Mumbai attack and made a forceful plea before the Supreme Court that the death sentence was awarded to him by the trial judge under the “permissible” sentencing policy of the country provided under the Constitution and the law for such heinous crimes against the nation and the society.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday put probing questions on different aspects of Section 377 IPC, dealing with offences relating to various types of unnatural sex, in the wake of a Delhi high court order striking down parts of this section, which liberated consenting homosexuals from its ambit.

Pakistan terrorist Ajmal Kasab, sentenced to death in the 26/11 attack, on Tuesday pleaded the Supreme Court to convert his punishment into life imprisonment with his lawyer submitting that he was exploited by the masterminds of the Mumbai carnage in the name of “false and distorted religious ideology” to commit the crime and was not involved in the conspiracy to wage the war against India.

The Supreme Court has expressed serious concern over the governance deficit in states and Union Territories on implementing an important Central legislation enacted more that a decade ago for welfare of the most marginalised sections of the society and thus abridging their fundamental duty of enforcing the mandate of Parliament.

The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Central Empowerment Committee on forests to examine whether any case for CBI probe is made out against two private mining companies, Jindal Steels and Adani, for illegal mining in Karnataka under the patronage of some politicians and bureaucrats.