Meerut, Aug. 18 -- Muzaffarnagar's additional district and sessions judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar, who shot into the national spotlight in 2022 after ordering a videographic survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex in Varanasi in connection with a suit filed by five Hindu women seeking daily worship rights at the Shringar Gauri Sthal near the western wall of the mosque complex, has awarded death sentences to 22 convicts in 10 cases in four months between April and August this year. During his earlier posting in Bareilly, Diwakar awarded 13 death sentences. The total number of convicts sentenced to death by Diwakar now stands at 35. Diwakar, 46, has been serving as additional district and sessions judge in Muzaffarnagar since November 2025. A resident of Lucknow, he began his judicial career as an additional civil judge in Azamgarh in 2009. He was elevated as a civil judge in Sultanpur in May 2015 and was appointed a judicial magistrate around five months later. He holds BCom and LLM degrees. The first major batch of capital punishment verdicts in Muzaffarnagar came on April 6 when three convicts were sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Mohammad Sameer, a lawyer, in a 2019 case. On April 28, Diwakar sentenced four members of a family - a woman and her three sons - to death in another 2019 murder case. The court awarded a death sentence to a 50-year-old man on May 30 for the 2011 murder of a woman and her six-year-old son. On June 20, two men, Gajendra and Ramkiran, were sentenced to death for the murder of Rajendra Saini. On July 2, Diwakar awarded the death penalty to Deepak for the murder of home guard Ratiram while he was on duty. On July 6, former village head Pramod and his associate Sahdev were sentenced to death for the 2010 murder of 60-year-old Rajbir Singh. On July 17, four men were sentenced to death in a 2011 robbery-cum-murder case in Shamli district. On August 12, Diwakar awarded the death penalty to Shahnawaz for the kidnapping and murder of wood trader Saleem in a case dating back nearly 27 years to 1999. On August 13, four people - Ramvir, Rajiv, Rahul and Harender Kumar - were sentenced to death in the 12-year-old murder case of Pawan Kumar. The court also imposed a total fine of Rs 1.70 lakh on the convicts. During his tenure in Bareilly, Diwakar sentenced 13 convicts to death, including eight members of the Chaimar Hassen gang in a 2014 triple-murder and dacoity case. Under Section 407 (1) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), every death sentence passed by a sessions court must be sent to the high court for confirmation and cannot be carried out unless the high court ratifies it. Earlier, in August 2021, five Hindu women filed a plea in the court of the civil judge (senior division) Varanasi seeking the right to pray daily to Goddess Shringar Gauri near the western wall of Gyanvapi Mosque complex. In April 2022, the then civil judge senior division Ravi Kumar Diwakar ordered a survey of the premises and appointed Ajay Kumar Mishra as the advocate commissioner in charge of the exercise. The survey was completed on May 16, 2022. Hours later, the Hindu side claimed that a "Shivling" was recovered from the ceremonial ablution tank of the mosque and asked the civil court to seal the spot. The Muslim side rejected the claim. Raees Ansari, counsel for Anjuman Intezamia Masajid Committee that looks after management of Gyanvapi Mosque, said that the structure was a fountain. "Regular worship of Maa Shringar Gauri continued until 1993. After the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, bamboo-pole barricading was initially installed at the site in 1993, followed later by high-iron barricading," said Sohan Lal Arya, pleader for four of the five Hindu women who filed the Shringar Gauri case. In a routine reshuffle in June 2022, the Allahabad high court transferred 619 judicial officers posted in different districts of Uttar Pradesh, including Ravi Kumar Diwakar, who was then the Varanasi civil judge (senior division)....