India, July 24 -- Hours after Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant clarified in open court that no petition had been filed in the Supreme Court over the alleged police excesses during the July 20 crackdown on student protesters in the national capital, the court on Friday agreed to hear two freshly instituted petitions on the issue on Monday (July 27).

The development came in the afternoon when senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan mentioned two petitions before a bench led by the CJI, saying they had now been formally filed and assigned diary numbers. "There are two petitions dealing with the violence that took place across the country on the students' protest," Sankaranarayanan told the bench. He said the petitions had not been men...