Criminal Justice

The order removes facility gatekeeping over lawyer contact and restricts staff from intercepting or conditioning legal communications. Facility operations must change immediately to accommodate surprise visits and unmonitored legal phone access.

The law creates legal exposure for transgender people who use gendered public facilities, increasing the risk of arrest or prosecution for those individuals. Public institutions and private venues will face pressure to change access policies and exclude people based on birth-assigned sex.

Targeting the gangs' financial networks raises legal and operational risk for intermediaries and sponsors, making covert fund movement and laundering more difficult. That increases the likelihood that cross-border transfers and domestic collection points will be traced, investigated, or frozen, disrupting revenue flows that sustain extortion, kidnappings and trafficking.

The judgment places an enforceable duty on licensees to prevent minors from remaining on premises where intoxicants are sold, not just to avoid serving them. Law enforcement can investigate CCTV, supervisory safeguards and recordkeeping to determine whether statutory obligations were discharged.

The Court directed India's CBI and India's Enforcement Directorate to coordinate investigations into the acquisitions and alleged irregularities. That creates a legal requirement for joint investigative action targeting the 'Project Help' transactions.

Magistrates and judges must now reserve immediate custody for exceptional cases, restricting courts' ability to send short-term offenders to prison. The change reduces use of remand for cases likely to receive non-custodial penalties and shifts supervision responsibilities into the community.

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI took control of two Handala-associated domains and replaced site content with a seizure banner. Domains now under U.S. control prevent Handala from using those sites to publish claimed hacks or dox and are intended to disrupt ongoing malicious cyber operations. The seizure announcement states the domains were used to support malicious activity on behalf of a foreign state actor, increasing attribution and legal constraints on those specific infrastructure points.

Enforcement Directorate prosecuted the Faridabad-based SRS group under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act for alleged cheating and defrauding investors, homebuyers and banks of ₹2,216 crore. ED restored immovable properties worth ₹650 crore to 2,312 homebuyers and is verifying remaining claims from homebuyers, banks and other institutions. Prosecution proceedings are continuing before a special court; ED is taking steps for attachment, recovery and confiscation of proceeds of crime. ED secured non-bailable warrants, detained one accused who was brought to India on November 1, 2025 and lodged in Neemka Jail, Faridabad, and has initiated extradition proceedings for a co-accused reported to be in Georgia.

Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia in January and extradited to China, Beijing confirmed on 8 January. The US has indicted Chen on alleged multibillion-dollar fraud and the US Department of Justice seized $15bn in bitcoin linked to him. Singapore seized S$500m and Taiwan seized more than T$5.5bn in assets allegedly related to Prince Group. The Jin Bei casino in Sihanoukville is shuttered with its signage covered and its doorway blocked.

The Bill criminalizes conversions secured by coercion, fraud, inducement or marriage. Conversions effected through marriage carry imprisonment of seven years and a fine of ₹1 lakh. Conversions involving a minor, a person of unsound mind, a woman or a person belonging to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes carry imprisonment of seven years and a fine of ₹5 lakh. Mass conversions are punishable by seven years' imprisonment and a ₹5 lakh fine; repeat offenders face up to ten years' imprisonment and a ₹5 lakh fine.

The court declined to take cognisance of the Enforcement Directorate's prosecution complaint under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The court ordered detachment of all properties attached by the ED. The court found the allocation letter did not confer a direct financial benefit because no mining lease was executed and no coal was extracted. The court held the ED cannot treat subsequent commercial transactions, including a ₹3.08 crore share receipt, as proceeds of crime absent a demonstrable nexus with the scheduled offence; the accused had earlier been convicted by a CBI judge in 2016.

Cedric Ricks was convicted and sentenced to death for the May 2013 killings of Roxann Sanchez and her eight-year-old son. He is scheduled to receive a lethal injection after 6pm Central at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. The US Supreme Court issued a brief order rejecting his final appeal about potential racial exclusion of jurors roughly nine hours before the scheduled execution. Earlier appeals alleging ineffective counsel and seeking suppression of evidence were previously denied.