Politics
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Muzaffarnagar judge awards 22 death sentences in four months
LawBeat··20 Aug
Additional District and Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar has sentenced 22 convicts to death in 10 cases at a Muzaffarnagar fast-track court since April 2026. The cases include murders dated from 1999 to 2019. Diwakar ordered the 2022 Gyanvapi videography survey while posted in Varanasi. He has served in Muzaffarnagar since November 2025. Several were called rarest of rare.
Prism
What It Means For You
- If a relative of yours is among the 22 named convicts, the trial court's death order is not the last step; the Allahabad High Court must confirm it before any execution can proceed.
- Anyone following Muzaffarnagar Fast Track Court No. 3 can note the listed dates run from 6 April through 13 August 2026 across 10 cases.
- If you are tracking older files, the same judge's Bareilly posting is reported to have added 13 earlier death sentences, taking the published total to 35.
What's Happening
- Diwakar has been additional district and sessions judge in Muzaffarnagar since 29 November 2025 after postings that included Varanasi, Bareilly and Chitrakoot.
- Recent orders include four deaths on 13 August in a 2014 Shamli firing and one death on 12 August in a 1999 ransom killing.
- In 2022, while a civil judge in Varanasi, he ordered a videographic survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex.
Which Cases The Court Treated As Rarest Of Rare
- LawBeat listed death sentences for the 2020 killing of home guard Ratiram, the 2011 highway robbery-murder of farmer Raj Singh, and the 2010 murder of Rajbir Singh over panchayat rivalry.
- On 30 May, 50-year-old Rahis was sentenced to death for the 2011 killing of Rajesh Devi and her six-year-old son Himanshu, prosecutors said, by blows with bricks in a sugarcane field.
- Under criminal procedure, a sessions court death sentence is submitted to the High Court for confirmation and is not executable on the trial order alone.
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