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Pakistan: Rapist excused after allowing his sister to be raped by victim’s brother

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Pakistan: Rapist excused after allowing his sister to be raped by victim’s brother

In a bizarre and disturbing case of ‘revenge rape’ is Pakistan, 12 people have been arrested for arranging a ‘revenge rape‘. According to reports, the people agreed and arranged for the rape of a young woman by a man whose sister was raped by the later victim’s brother a day earlier.

The incident happened in Pirmahal police station’s jurisdictional area in the Toba Tek Singh region of Pakistan’s Punjab. According to reports, on March 20, a man in the Gharibabad area raped a woman. However, the man’s family approached the victim’s family and requested them not to press charges. The family of the victim allegedly agreed to reconciliation only if the brother of the victim is allowed to rape the perpetrator’s sister. 12 members of both the families allegedly agreed to the idea.


The families even prepared legal documents in agreement for not pressing charges against each other. The earlier victim’s brother allegedly raped the perpetrator’s sister on March 21.

A sub-inspector of Pirmahal police, Shaukat Ali reportedly became aware of the incident and reported to his superiors. On his complaint, an FIR has been filed by the Pirmahal police under sections 376, 310-A, 201 and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The sub-inspector got to know about the ‘revenge rape’ when the involved families were preparing legal documents of reconciliation stating they would not be engaging against each other on rape charges.

12 people of both the families including 4 women have been arrested by the Pirmahal police. The perpetrator’s sister who became a rape victim herself is also among those arrested.

This incident is the reminder of another similar incident last year when a village council allowed the rape of a teenage girl after the girl after the girl’s brother sexually assaulted another girl. The incident happened in Multan region in July 2017 and the members of the village council were arrested for the crime.

Fissures within the BSP-SP alliance after BSP candidate’s defeat in Rajya Sabha elections

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Fissures within the BSP-SP alliance after BSP candidate’s defeat in Rajya Sabha elections

After the Samajwadi Party failed to secure the Rajya Sabha seat for its ally Bahujan Samaj Party’s candidate, BSP supremo Mayawati has given indications of fissures within the alliance. Mayawati has stated that her party would not activate any of its cadres for any upcoming bypolls in Uttar Pradesh which means that the Samajwadi Party will have to contest the bypolls for the Kairana parliamentary constituency and Noorpur Assembly seats alone.

After Mayawati’s meeting with BSP’s district and zonal coordinators, the party said, “BSP will not activate its cadres in any bypoll in future, the way it did it in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.” Speaking after the defeat in the Rajya Sabha elections, Mayawati had said that Akhilesh Yadav had displayed political immaturity in depending on independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh for BSP candidate’s victory. She also said that had she been in Akhilesh Yadav’s position, she would have given first preference to the BSP candidate.

However, even after the Rajya Sabha defeat, Mayawati had assured that the result won’t affect the SP-BSP alliance. She had said at a press conference, “They may have defeated us, But the workers of BSP and SP will now work with even more force to stop them from coming to power in 2019.”

It appears that the road between now and 2019 general elections won’t be as smooth for the alliance as the opposition would want it to be.

Fact check: Did the BJP really know Karnataka poll dates in advance as alleged by some journalists?

OpIndia Staff
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Fact check: Did the BJP really know Karnataka poll dates in advance as alleged by some journalists?

The dates of the Karnataka elections were announced by the Election Commission on Tuesday, and have then become a source of a conspiracy theory which is being peddled by a section of the media.

Incidentally, at 11:08 AM, the BJP’s IT head Amit Malviya tweeted that the dates of the polls were 12th May (polling) and 18th May (counting) respectively:

Fact check: Did the BJP really know Karnataka poll dates in advance as alleged by some journalists?
Screenshot of the tweet by Amit Malviya

This soon was called into question by journalists, who pointed out that the dates of the Karnataka polls had actually not been announced by the EC yet:


This was spun into a narrative which questioned as to how did the BJP know the Karnataka election dates before it was announced by the EC:


Opposition politicians too soon jumped on the bandwagon to attack the BJP, by insinuating some form of a malpractice committed by the BJP:


CNN News-18 incidentally became so enthusiastic about the “conspiracy theories” that it reported Congress leader Milind Deora’s “questions” with unusual excitement:


So what is the truth of the matter? Did the BJP really manage to gain access to classified information, ahead of other so as to possibly aid its poll preparation? Unfortunately for the perpetrators of the said conspiracy, BJP seems to have had no such information.

Soon after the journalists started questioning Malviya, he clarified that his tweet was based on a claim by Times Now:


So did Times Now indeed report the Karnataka election dates, before the tweet by Malyiya? The answer is yes, as seen by the screenshots of its live news coverage attached below:

Fact check: Did the BJP really know Karnataka poll dates in advance as alleged by some journalists?
Polling Day dates by Times Now
Fact check: Did the BJP really know Karnataka poll dates in advance as alleged by some journalists?
Counting day dates by Times Now

As clearly seen above, Times Now broke the Karnataka election dates at 11:06 AM, before Malviya put out his tweet. This gives credence to the theory that Malviya was watching the channel and after seeing the dates promptly tweeted them after two minutes.

Another aspect of the “flawed conspiracy theory peddling” is that both BJP and Congress’s IT department, put out similar tweets around the same time, but the journalists only chose to target the BJP:

Congress IT cell tweet. Via @DowntownFunk_

Besides the evidence put forth, the narrative that the BJP somehow had access to inside information was anyway a fallacy considering the actual counting date was 15th May and not 18th as claimed by Times Now, Amit Malviya and Srivatsa. The only question which might be raised would be how did Times Now manage to get the partially wrong information which it chose to break.

Heavy violence in Bengal’s Raniganj, post attack on Ram Navami procession, BJP blames ‘minority community’

OpIndia Staff
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Heavy violence in Bengal’s Raniganj, post attack on Ram Navami procession, BJP blames ‘minority community’

Parts of West Bengal have turned into a melting pot following Ram Navami celebrations on 24-25 of this month. It has already been reported, how a Ram Navami stage erected by the BJP was attacked and set on fire in the town of Burdwan on Saturday, by alleged TMC goons. Union Minister Babul Supriyo, pinned the entire blame for the Burdwan incident on Trinamool Congress and alleged that Mamata Banerjee was deliberately “antagonising” Hindu sentiments for votes.

Now the epicentre of the violence seems to have shifted to Raniganj, a town about 100 KM from Burdwan. As per reports, the trouble began at the Hill Bustee area of the town when stones were pelted at a Ram Navami procession on Monday morning. This escalated into a clash between various groups which included bomb blasts and shots getting fired in various parts of the town.

The violence included various police vehicles getting set ablaze and senior police officers like DCP Arindam Dutta Chowdhury and ACP Ajay Chatterjee, getting seriously injured in a bomb attack. Local reports have claimed that one person was killed and 10 policemen, 30 individuals were injured in these clashes.

The situation in the town was at its worse from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM and the DM of Burdwan (West), Shasank Shetty, even wanted the army to be brought in. Things though cooled down in the evening, resulting in the deployment getting deferred.

Union Minister Babul Supriyo who is also the MP of that area has since then pointed his finger at the ‘minority community’ who he alleged were committing arson and assaulting Hindus with sharp weapons:


He further alleged that the ‘minority community’ goons were given a safe haven to escape following their attack. In a video he uploaded, an individual when questioned with regards to the Mamata government alleged that it was “supporting the Muslims”. Supriyo is also seen assuaging the locals and claimed that he was going to send the recorded videos to Rajnath Singh:


He also claimed that three people were gravely injured in this attack, who were now undergoing treatment in Durgapur’s Mission Hospital.

Besides Raniganj, clashes have also been reported from the Kakinara, where too a death has been reported.

Congress and JDS MLAs caught on camera distributing freebies to influence voters in Karnataka

OpIndia Staff
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Congress and JDS MLAs caught on camera distributing freebies to influence voters in Karnataka

The Karnataka assembly elections are approaching and political parties are reportedly getting desperate in their attempts to woo voters. Yesterday, a video showed the sitting MLA of K R Nagar constituency, SR Mahesh distributing money to locals in the area. Mahesh is the current MLA from Janata Dal (Secular) and according to reports, he was seen distributing cash to locals in the Doddakoppalu village.

Mahesh will be facing BJP’s Hosalli Venkatesh and Congress’s Ravishankar in the coming assembly elections. The local news outlets reported that former member of parliament H Vishwanath was present there with Mahesh too.

On the other hand, A Times Now report showed Congress and JDS MLAs giving out clocks and silk sarees to the public.


A few weeks ago the video of Mrinal Hebbalkar, the son of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee’s women’s wing President Lakshmi Hebbalkar went viral in social media where he was seen distributing goodies to voters in Belgavi constituency. The video showed Mrinal handing out boxes of pressure cookers to women and asking them to vote for his mother. Lakshmi Hebbalkar is expected to be the Congress MLA candidate from Belgavi.

According to reports, Bangalore’s famous Chikpet wholesale market has seen the purchase of sarees worth about Rs 250 crores by political parties. Chikpet has about 300 wholesale saree shops and political parties are in a rush to avail discount deals for sarees. Representatives of the political leaders have paid money in advance for the large orders and as the model code of conduct is yet to be announced, parties are in a big rush to woo their voters with free goods and cash.

VIDEO: ‘The Right Picture’ with Ashutosh Muglikar : On Congress and the Cambridge Analytica fiasco

OpIndia Staff
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VIDEO: ‘The Right Picture’ with Ashutosh Muglikar : On Congress and the Cambridge Analytica fiasco

The social media giant, Facebook, had recently suspended data agency Cambridge Analytica for misusing user data. Incidentally, this data agency was also rumoured to be hired by the Congress party for their elections management. We had earlier juxtaposed the methods of Cambridge Analytics and analysed the implications if the data agency had already breached our privacy at the behest of Congress. In this article, the author had written :

When asked what Cambridge Analytica was trying to do with so much data, Wylie explained the questionable methods of Cambridge Analytica, saying “We were going to combine micro-targeting, which was already existing in politics, and a new construct on psychology. And in order to scale that we’d be needing a lot of data on people, so that we could build a psychological profile of each voter in a particular region or in this case whole of United States”

He further adds, “We would know what kind of messaging you would be susceptible to, including the framing of it, the topics, the content, the tone, whether it would be scary or not. So, what you’d be susceptible to and where you are going to consume that and how many times we need to touch you with that in order to change how you think about something.”

Expanding further on the kind of team employed and the process followed at Cambridge Analytica, Wylie says, “In addition to having data scientists and psychologists, strategists, they also have an entire team of creatives, designers, videographers, photographers. They then create that content. That gets then sent to the targeting team, which then injects it into the internet. Websites would be created, blogs would be created, whatever we think this target profile would be receptive to. We will create content on the internet for them to find. And they see that and they click it and they go down the ‘rabbit hole’ until they start to think something differently.”

In effect, if reports of Congress and Rahul Gandhi hiring Cambridge Analytica is true, they will be doing something on the lines of what Wylie says these politicians are doing to destroy a democracy, “Instead of standing in the public square and saying what you think and then letting people come and listen to you and have that shared experiences to what you are, you are whispering into the ear of each and every voter and you may be whispering one thing to one voter and another thing to another voter. We risk fragmenting society in a way where we do not have any shared experiences and we do not have any more shared understanding.”

After BJP tore into Congress for this fiasco, in a strange twist of events, Congress app mysteriously vanished from Google PlayStore after it was exposed that Congress itself was misusing user data via this app.

While all of this information can be a little overwhelming and difficult to keep up with, in this episode of “The Right Picture”, Ashutosh Muglikar attempts to analyse the entire Cambridge Analytics data breach and Congress’ role in it.

We hope you enjoy the show!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBI91Kml5Yk]

You can watch the video on YouTube.

We thank Ashutosh for this collaboration and Prasad Karwa for doing a fantastic job with the video.

Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina says Bangladesh must ‘punish’ those who still love Pakistan

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Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina says Bangladesh must ‘punish’ those who still love Pakistan

Speaking at the Genocide Day event on Sunday, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that the people of Bangladesh must respond to those who have been lost in their love for Pakistan and must punish them. She further urged the citizens to help Bangladesh government to ensure that the ‘lovers’ should forget Pakistan for good. She even said that if they cannot do it, Bangladesh would cease to exist.

Recalling the assassination of her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, Hasina claimed certain leaders of rival political party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) founder Ziaur Rehman and wife Khaleda Zia are ‘lovers of Pakistan’. Accusing them of not wanting Bangladesh to progress, Hasina claimed the opposition parties were ‘implementing the agenda of Pakistani forces’.

She said:

“The entire history changed after 1975. Even the words ‘Pakistani occupation forces’ could not be uttered. People had to call them only ‘occupation forces’ in an effort to make them forget that the forces were Pakistani, such was the love for Pakistan,”

Last years, Bangladesh had declared 25th March as ‘Genocide Day’ in remembrance of the atrocities carried out by the Pakistani Army in the night of 25th March 1971 where the Pakistani Army had swooped on unarmed civilians to crush the Bengali rebellion. Bangladesh has been demanding that the United Nations declare the day as the World Genocide Day as a sign of protest against the genocides carried out around the globe.

However, the UN has recognised 9th December as International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime in September 2015.

Referring to the ongoing war crimes trials, Hasina said the trial on the soil of Bangladesh must continue and that they don’t deserve forgiveness.

Truck driver who ran over journalist in Madhya Pradesh arrested

OpIndia Staff
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Truck driver who ran over journalist in Madhya Pradesh arrested

The truck driver who is accused of the hit-and-run incident which killed investigative journalist Sandeep Sharma in Madhya Pradesh has been arrested. The 35-year-old journalist was investigating illegal sand mining in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind and had reportedly earlier approached police with complaints that he was facing threat to his life due to a sting operation.

The accident, where Sharma is killed by a speeding truck, was caught on camera.


The driver has been identified as Ranbir Yadav and he hails from Gadu Pura village who claims Sharma was mowed down while he tried to save a woman.

Sharma was a stringer for a Bhopal based channel, News World TV who, along with Vikas Purohit, the local bureau chief of the channel, had conducted a sting operation against a sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Indraveer Singh Bhadoriya which allegedly showed him asking for money to allow vehicles carrying illegally mined sand from the Chambal River to pass without checks.

A few days back in Bihar’s Bhojpur district, two Dainik Bhaskar journalists were crushed to death by an SUV allegedly belonging to former Panchayat Mukhiya Ahmed Ali. The duo was returning home after covering a Ram Navami march. It is reported that one of the journalists, Naveen Nishchal, had arguments with Ali and the FIR filed by his brother mentions Ali of nursing a grouse against Nishchal.

Modi govt starts the critical process of selling ‘enemy properties’ which could earn it Rs 1 lakh crores

OpIndia Staff
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Modi govt starts the critical process of selling ‘enemy properties’ which could earn it Rs 1 lakh crores

The Narendra Modi government has started the process of auctioning off more than 9,400 enemies properties in the country, which is expected to fetch it a whopping Rs 1 lakh crores. The government, as a result, has issued guidelines and directed the office of the “Custodian of Enemy Property for India” to submit the list of such properties within three months.

This news seems to be confirmation of reports published this January which speculated that such a move could be undertaken by the government. Enemy properties are basically the properties owned by those individuals who have migrated to countries like Pakistan and China and have also taken their citizenship. Specifically as per the act, ‘enemy property’ refers to any property belonging to, held or managed on behalf of an enemy, an enemy subject or an enemy firm.

This move came after the amendment to the Enemy Property Act in 2017 and 2018, which ensured that the heirs of those who migrated to Pakistan and China during Partition and later would have no claim over the properties left behind in India. The highest number of these properties are located in Uttar Pradesh numbering 4,991, followed by West Bengal with 2,735. Of the total properties, about 9,280 belong to Pakistani nationals and some 126 belong to the Chinese.

This one legislation had been stalled by the Congress party, the details of which can be read in this Swarajya piece. An extract:

It is with the case of Raja Mahmudabad that the tale of Congress’ treachery begins. The counsel representing the kin was the then minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid. After the case, the United Progressive Alliance government was forced to promulgate an ordinance that would essentially overturn the Supreme Court decision. Khurshid led a cross-party delegation and convinced the then prime minister Manmohan Singh to not only allow the ordinance to lapse but also to not table the bill (which was extremely diluted) in Parliament.

On 29 August 2010, Mohammed Adeeb, MP, wrote to the Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, and reminded him that around 41 MPs had met the prime minister on the day the Enemy Property Bill was set to be tabled. “He was very kind and had assured the MPs that the bill would not come through and indeed the bill was not tabled then. He had also assured us that the ordinance would be allowed to lapse.”

The ordinance lapsed on 6 September 2010. The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Second Bill 2010 was tabled in the winter session of 2010, but the bill didn’t even come up for discussion due to adjournment.

Now reports claims that the Home Ministry has now constituted a district level valuation committee, and an inter-ministerial disposal committee so that the whole process can be completed on time.

The valuation of these properties needs to be estimated by the district level valuation committee which will mark it by considering either a circle rate or a rate fixed by the district administration. The Enemy Property Disposal Committee would in turn advice the central government regarding the manner with which the property should be dealt with, which includes its possible sale and usage.

When it comes to a vacant enemy property, the custodian is authorised to sell it partly or in whole for the maximum possible price after taking prior permission from the central government. All the proceedings of the sale would go to the “consolidated fund of India”.

The enemy properties in this country and possible action on them has been a long-standing topic in India, with the enemy property act now passed by the Modi government facing stiff opposition from the opposition, especially the Congress party. This has resulted in the Congress getting criticised for possibly jeopardising India’s security interests vis-à-vis it’s positioning.

US government imposes sanctions on seven Pakistani companies for links with nuclear trade

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US government imposes sanctions on seven Pakistani companies for links with nuclear trade

In a blow to Pakistan’s ambitions of joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the United States of America has imposed sanctions on seven Pakistani companies on suspicions of having links with the nuclear trade. The US Bureau of Industry and Security imposed the sanctions on the 22nd of March by placing the companies on its “Entity List”. Inclusion in the list is considered the “highest level of red-flag” in the US export control regime.

The Bureau said in a report that the companies were “determined by the U.S. government to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” The companies will now be suffering strict controls on its exports which could prevent it from conducting international trade. Three of seven companies have been listed for “their involvement in the proliferation of non-safeguarded nuclear acti­vi­ties that are contrary to the national security and/or foreign policy interests of the United States”.

The relationship between the two countries has been in turmoil ever since Donald Trump assumed the seat of the President of the United States in 2017. Not too long ago, the Trump administration had blocked security aid worth over a billion dollars after the POTUS accused Pakistan of providing safe haven to terrorists. Consistent with Donald Trump’s approach towards Pakistan, the relationship between India and the USA has continued improving. The recent move by the US government to impose sanctions on the Pakistani companies could improve India’s chances of joining the NSG as well.

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