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The hand of an extremely fit person is a weapon in itself and can inflict injury and a “disproportionately light punishment” handed out to the assaulter frustrates the victim, the Supreme Court said on Thursday, sentencing former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu to a year’s rigorous imprisonment in a 1988 road rage case.

A fine of Rs 1,000 is grossly inadequate punishment for a crime involving the death of Gurnam Singh, the SC said, agreeing with review petitioner’s counsel Sidharth Luthra. “A disproportionately light punishment humiliates and frustrates a victim of crime when the offender goes unpunished or is let off with a relatively minor punishment,” the bench said.

Justices SK Kaul and AM Khanwilkar said, “While a disproportionately severe sentence ought not to be passed, simultaneously it also does not clothe the law courts to award a sentence which would be manifestly inadequate, having due regard to the nature of the offence, since an inadequate sentence would fail to produce a deterrent effect on the society at large.”

A Lucknow University professor was allegedly assaulted by a student on the university campus on Wednesday, days after he triggered a controversy by his remarks on the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

The incident occurred around 1 pm outside the proctor's office.

"Karthik Pandey, a student leader, came to me and started hurling abuses and casteist slurs at me and hit me," Professor Ravi Kant Chandan of the university's Hindi department said.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said if demands for setting up National Green Tribunal benches in every state capital is accepted, the low pendency of environmentrelated cases would leave judges twiddling their thumbs.

At present, the NGT has four regional benches with its principal seat in Delhi, which together have a cumulative pendency of 2,237 cases. The Principal Bench at Delhi has 621 cases, South Zone Bench at Chennai — 517, Central Zone Bench at Bhopal — 107, Western Zone Bench at Pune — 694, and Eastern Zone Bench at Kolkata — 298. Dismissing a writ petition by Madhya Pradesh HC Advocates Bar Association, a bench of Justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy said there is no comparison between over-burdened Central Administrative Tribunal and NGT, which has low pendency.

Kith and kin of some of those who died along with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the human bomb blast on the night of May 21, 1991, have criticised the Supreme Court order releasing Perarivalan, one of the life convicts in the case on Wednesday.

“Perarivalan is saying he lost 31 years of his life in jail. I was ten years old when my mother [Samudhini Begum, a widow and Congress worker) was killed in the blast. My mother's body was given to me in a bundle. Who will compensate for this? The court may set them free but there is God’s verdict. We endured pain,” said Abbas, a mobile repair shop owner from Chennai.

He questioned the celebrations including the bursting of crackers and the distribution of sweets over Perarivalan’s release. “Did he go to jail for the country?” he asked.

A leader of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Gujarat was arrested on Wednesday by the Ahmedabad police for allegedly making derogatory remark on Hindu deities on Twitter in connection with the Gyanvapi mosque row, an official said.

ACP, Crime Branch, JM Yadav said Danish Qureshi, a panelist on news channel debates, was arrested after his purported post on the micro blogging site on reports about discovery of a 'Shivling' inside Varanasi's Gyanvapi mosque complex during a court-mandated videography survey drew criticism from some quarters.