New Delhi: A district judge in Muzaffarnagar, western Uttar Pradesh, has handed out his 23rd death sentence in five months, saying he is “no coward”. Additional District and Sessions Judge (ADSJ) Ravi Kumar Diwakar said he would “rather die” than change his approach to legal interpretation, sentencing and delivering orders, reports the Hindu.Last month, 100 cases before ADSJ Diwakar’s court were handed over to another judge as per an administrative order. Government counsel Kuldeep Kumar had told PTI at the time that matters involving offences punishable with death or life imprisonment were removed from his fast-track court. That decision came after he gave a series of death penalty orders in three months.ADSJ Diwakar’s latest death sentence is against a man in a case of bride burning, a category for which independent India has not carried out any execution. The death penalty is reserved for the “rarest of rare cases” and the Muzaffarnagar judge has reportedly described the case before him as falling in that category. A lower court’s death sentence must be confirmed by a high court.The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 6,156 police cases related to dowry deaths registered in India in just one year, 2023. In 2019, 7,141 such cases were registered. The conviction rate in 2019 was 36%, and the conviction rate in 2023, the last year for which data is available, was 35%.The primary cause of death for women due to non-natural causes is burning/fire. Around 60% of women who die due to non-natural causes perish in a fire, NCRB data shows, which makes it a commonplace occurrence rather than rare, despite the clearly gendered fallout – of the 1.5 to 2 total lakh burn deaths, more than half are female.During the course of the trial in ADSJ Diwakar’s court, the deceased woman Shahzadi’s own family turned hostile, saying she faced no dowry harassment.The Hindu reports that the judge strayed beyond the facts of the case after mentioning this fact, and dwelled in his order on the “alleged influence of the mafia and gangsters on the judicial system, especially in western Uttar Pradesh”.He said he knew why criminal cases were withdrawn from his court but chose not to disclose them at this stage, citing the “dignity of the office”, the publication reports.“I would rather die than be called a coward judge,” judge Diwakar said, adding that he would continue in service as long as he could follow his principles, and would resign if he could not.He also referred to the Gyanvapi case and said he and his family were threatened after his order but local authorities in Varanasi did not provide him with adequate security – in fact reduced it, he alleged. A NIA court had requested in 2024 that he be provided security, reports say. His mother in Lucknow was also provided with security, say reports. It is unclear if the security was upped or lowered.Diwakar was a civil judge in Varanasi when a few Hindu women seeking rights to worship Shringar Gauri and other deities in the Gyanvapi compound came before his court in April 2022. He had permitted a “court-appointed commission survey” of the mosque compound, videography of the site and other actions.A Supreme Court of India ruling, which many regard as contrary to the Places of Worship Act, 1991, was delivered by former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud in 2023, saying the 1991 Act disallowed changing the nature of a religious site but did not forceclose ascertaining its religious nature.Earlier, the Allahabad high court had turned down the mosque management’s plea against the survey of the Gyanvapi compound. The SC later transferred the Gyanvapimatter to another civil judge in Varanasi.