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Bhopal: Waqf board Hospital employee Hafiz Mohammed accuses director Mohsin Khan and his two associates of thrashing him and shaving off his beard

OpIndia Staff
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Bhopal: Waqf board Hospital employee Hafiz Mohammed accuses director Mohsin Khan and his two associates of thrashing him and shaving off his beard

A curious case of assault has surfaced in the city of Bhopal. A fellow employee was mercilessly thrashed and his beard was shaved off by the operator of the MP Waqf Board operated Shifa hospital after he was accused of misbehaving with an elderly patient admitted in the hospital, a report published in Dainik Bhasker said.

The victim, Hafiz Mohammed Ateeq, an ambulance driver, has accused the director of the hospital, Mohsin Khan and his two associates Mudassir and Shahroz, of locking him up in an operation theatre and ruthlessly assaulting him. He has also accused the trio of shaving his beard, alleging that it was a big crime as per his religion. Shaving a beard is a violation of Islamic principles.

Reportedly, a video of Hafiz allegedly misbehaving with an old patient was shot by another employee and shared with the director of the hospital. Angered by this, the director of the hospital and his two associates confined him in an operation theatre and beat the living daylights out of him.

Now, a video of the victim has surfaced on social media websites. In the video clip, Hafiz claimed his innocence and alleged that he was conscientiously doing his duty of serving the patients. He said he was being implicated under the conspiracy, and condemned the director of the hospital and his two associates for cutting his beard. He threatened that if the culprits are not punished, he would commit suicide. A case was then registered against Mohsin Khan and his two associates Mudassir and Shahroz.

Apparently, the incident took place two days ago at Shifa Hospital located in Bharat Nagar of Bhopal. Hafiz was given the responsibility of attending to the patients in the hospital a few days back. He alleged that one day when he was taking care of a patient who had slipped into a coma, and adjusting his bed, pillow, another hospital staff member secretly shot his video and sent it to the hospital management. He was accused of misbehaving with the patient. After the incident, the director of the hospital Mohsin Khan and his two associates locked him up in an operation theatre, assaulted him and shaved his beard.

Most of the hospital staff members have refused to take a side in the case and have stated that the truth will come out once the investigation gets over. Some of them said it was illegal of the hospital management to take matters into their own hands and punish a person perceived to be guilty. They argue that the hospital management should have fired the employee or filed an FIR against him, instead of assaulting him.

Nigeria suspends Twitter indefinitely after it had deleted President’s tweet warning secessionists against violence

OpIndia Staff
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Nigeria suspends Twitter indefinitely after it had deleted President’s tweet warning secessionists against violence

Nigeria has banned Twitter from the country for interfering in the country’s politics. The Nigerian govt on Friday announced that it has indefinitely suspended Twitter’s activities. The move came two after Twitter had deleted a Tweet by president Muhammadu Buhari warning against secessionist movements.

The decision was announced by Information Minister Lai Mohammed on Friday. He said, “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”. He didn’t elaborate further on how the suspension will be executed. According to Reuters, the Twitter website and apps are still working in the country.

The move is seen as a response to Twitter deleting the president’s tweet, and suspending his account for 12 hours.
Yesterday, Lai Mohammed took had slammed Twitter for deleting the tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari who issued a warning to troublemakers in Nigeria. “We have a country to rule, and we will do so to the best of our ability. Twitter’s mission in Nigeria is very suspect, they have an agenda. The mission of Twitter in Nigeria is very suspicious,” he had said.

In the now-deleted tweet, Buhari had made a reference to the country’s 30-month civil war in 1967-1970, and had warned “those who wanted the government to fail” to desist from fomenting trouble.

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigeria civil war. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand”, the tweet posted by the president on Tuesday night had said.

Twitter had deleted the president’s post on Wednesday, following criticisms from some social media users. Slamming the deletion, Lai Mohammed had said, “Twitter may have its own rules, it’s not the universal rule. If Mr. President, anywhere in the world feels very bad and concerned about a situation, he is free to express such views”.

He also said that Twitter allowing tweets by troublemakers and secessionists in Nigeria.

“When people were burning police stations and killing policemen in Nigeria during End SARS, a decentralised social movement, for Twitter, it was about the right to protest. But when a similar thing happened in the United States, it became insurrection,” Mohammed had said.

Dilip Chhabria says he was arrested by Mumbai Police for not paying ₹25 crore, paid ₹25 lakh to Sachin Vaze to save family from illegal arrest

OpIndia Staff
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Dilip Chhabria says he was arrested by Mumbai Police for not paying ₹25 crore, paid ₹25 lakh to Sachin Vaze to save family from illegal arrest

In a fresh allegation against disgraced Mumbai police cop Sachin Vaze and controversial former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, celebrity car designer Dilip Chhabria has said that he was arrested in fake cases for not paying extortion money to Mumbai Police. Chhabria has alleged that the cops had tortured him demanding Rs 25 crore, before arresting him in various cases. He has also said that he had made the payment to save his family.

Earlier on 17th May, Chhabria had filed the complaint against the cops Sachin Vaze, Riyaz Kazi, and Prakash Howal, where he had said that he was framed in multiple cases by his ex-business partner and the police. He has also named complainants in the cases against him, who are comedian Kapil Sharma, former business associates Kiran Kumar and Sayed Afaaq, and his supplier Indermal Ramani, accusing them of conspiring against him.

“In January when I was arrested, Vaze told me that if I don’t pay up Rs 25 crore he will file 15 FIRs against me and keep me in jail for two years. In the coming days, three FIRs were filed against me. Before my arrest I had filed a complaint in November 2020 against my business partner. Rather than acting on my complaint, the police arrested me,” Chhabria said in the complaimt.

In an exclusive interview with Republic TV today, Dilip Chhabria said that he was harassed by the police by making him stand for more than 3 hours in police custody, he was not given food, until he gave into their demands. He said that he was arrested without any notice or summons, and as soon as he was taken to the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) office, Sachin Vaze told him that they will not arrest him if he pays Rs 25 crore. But as he refused to do so, he was arrested after some time.

Dilip Chhabria said that he was still forced to pay Rs 25 lakh, as the cops threatened to arrest his family members too if the amount was not paid within ten minutes. He said that faced with such a difficult situation, he had made the payment to protect his family from arrest. Chhabria informed that the money was paid to API Riyaz Kazi in the parking lot of CIU office. He said that he has not mentioned about this payment in his complaint, and he revealed the same for the first time in the interview with Republic TV.

The car designer said that he believes that Param Bir Singh was behind his arrest and his extortion, as the complains were made to Economic Offence Wing (EOW), and the EOW reports to Param Bir Singh, not Sachin Vaze. He also said that the complainant was actually a front-man of his partner, and his arrest was part of a conspiracy.

The complaint filed by the lawyers of Chhabria had said, “Sachin Vaze and Riyaz Kazi along with Prakash Howal threatened our client to give the extortion money, failing which his senior Mr. Param Bir Singh, the erstwhile Commissioner of Police, would make sure that the whole Chhabria family would die behind bars.”

Dilip Chhabria said that he was arrested on a fake complaint, and the complainant has deep connections with the cops who had arrested him. He said that the complainant was seen in the CIU office all the time, and used to travel with Sachin Vaze. Chhabria said that the complainant used to come to the CIU office in the black Mercedes car which has been seized by NIA in the Antilia bomb scare case against Vaze.

In fact, as the company of the complaint is in NCLT, the resolution professional of the NCLT had complained to the NCLT court that the complainant spends the whole day at CIU and EOW, and he has the blessings of Param Bir Singh.

The renowned car designer famous for his DC branded customised cars is currently on bail after he was arrested by the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch led by Sachin Vaze. He was arrested in a cheating and forgery case on December 29, and later he was arrested in two other different cases. After his arrest in December, a spare parts supplier named Indermal Ramani had filed complaint alleging non-payment against supplies, and actor-comedian Kapil Sharma had registered a case against him alleging non delivering a vanity van after taking Rs 5.7 crore for the same. Two cases were filed against him by CIU, while one was filed by the EOW. Chhabria’s sister was also arrested by the cops. While she had secured anticipatory bail after his arrest, she was arrested in a different case.

Dilip Chhabria has rejected these allegations. He has that Kapil Sharma’s van was ready, but as the comedian didn’t respond about the final design, the work was delayed. The complaint by Chhabria says that CIU had summoned Sharma and forced him to file a complaint against the car designer so that he could be kept in jail for a longer time.

With Param Bir Singh alleging that former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh  had asked Sachin Vaze to extort money from businesses and later Sachin Vaze himself admitting the same, the allegations of Dilip Chhabria are significant. In view of the expose of the extortion racket run by  Mumbai Police in the aftermath of the investigation into the Antilia Bomb Scare case, it seems likely that the car designer was a victim of the same extortion racket. And as he didn’t pay the demanded Rs 25 crore, he was forced spend over 100 days in jail before being released on bail.

The Seeker: Meet the Indian man who helped find evidence for the Covid-19 lab leak hypothesis

Nupur J Sharma
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The Seeker: Meet the Indian man who helped find evidence for the Covid-19 lab leak hypothesis

It has only been 24 hours since Washington Post quietly edited its 2020 story where it branded any suspicion that the COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan lab as a conspiracy theory.

Senator Tom Cotton, along with former President Trump, had spoken about the possibility of Covid-19 originating from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, in 2019. Speaking to Fox News, Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton had pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a potential origin of the disease. “We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Cotton had said, adding, “We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”

In its article published on February 17, 2020, the Washington Post had described Senator Cotton’s claim as “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory.” 

Now, over 15 months later, as lab leak theories are gaining renewed attention, and with President Biden announcing a probe to look into the possibility of the lab leak of the Covid-19, Washington Post has quietly edited its previous report that questioned Senator Cotton’s similar claims. The correction by the Washington Post comes after multiple scientists and experts have said it was not possible to rule out the theory that the coronavirus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

Fauci has since publicly shifted his tone, acknowledging in recent days that the virus may indeed have come from a lab. Until recently, Fauci said it is “highly likely” that the coronavirus has a natural origin. However, a few days back, Fauci finally admitted that he was “not convinced” that coronavirus developed naturally. In fact, the Biden administration even constituted a task force to investigate the origins of the novel Coronavirus.

But what led to this change of heart? What led to the realising dawning upon the USA and several other entities that the Coronavirus could be, contrary to the theory being peddled for the past 15 months, a virus that came out of a lab in Wuhan?

Early in the year 2020, when the world was just about starting to come to terms with the global pandemic that had been unleashed on it, a group of people started doubting the popular narrative around the pandemic. While the mainstream media insisted that COVID-19 had originated in the Wuhan wet market and the virus had mysteriously jumped to humans, there was a discreet group, who called themselves DRASTIC, which started investigating the threads that would eventually lead the world to take note of the lab-leak hypothesis and doubt the popular narrative.

DRASTIC, abbreviation for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19, is a group of individuals interested in finding the true origins of Covid-19. They are not journalists or spies but engineers, entrepreneurs and individuals across various disciplines. The group works anonymously, unearths never-seen-before documents from the internet and puts them out in the public domain. Although the members have limited resources, they are motivated by curiosity and zeal to spend days in pursuit of the truth.

One of the people who belongs to DRASTIC, connecting the dots over the past 15 months and unearthing evidence that gives credence to the lab leak theory, is an Indian man who goes by the name ‘The Seeker’.

On the 6th of February 2021, The NewsWeek wrote an interesting article about how a group of amateur researchers were unearthing evidence regarding the origin of COVID-19 and ‘The Seeker’ was in the middle of it.

OpIndia looked him up recently, and got in touch with him via Twitter DM, trying to verify if it was indeed him who had been quoted by the NewsWeek. Armed with that confirmation, we spoke to ‘The Seeker’, and Indian man who is a part of an amateur group making global headlines.

‘The Seeker’, in his mid-20s, used to be a science teacher. From there, he studied architecture, painting and filmmaking. He told OpIndia that he had then moved on to a project that allowed him to follow his passion – working on audiobooks. He had even started working on that project in Delhi when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and he then moved back to his native place.

It was in April 2020 when ‘The Seeker’ stumbled upon a Medium post written by Canadian entrepreneur Yuri Deigin which led him to consider alternative explanations of how the pandemic started.

Rossana found that RaTG13 virus had similar genetic makeup to a virus called Ra4991 whose partial fragment was deposited in 2016. This further intrigued ‘The Seeker’, who then posted it on his Reddit account. After posting extensively and questioning the origin of COVID-19, Reddit decided to suspend ‘The Seekers’ account permanently.

“One day my reddit account was permanently suspended all of a sudden. I suppose the reason was that I posted a flurry of articles that suggested lab leak as a possibility”, he said. On being asked how he felt about the blatant censorship, ‘The Seeker’ said, “Honestly, the Reddit suspension was the best thing that happened to me. It made me migrate to Twitter. It was through Twitter that I met the other members of DRASTIC and other scientists which kickstarted my journey into researching the origins of the pandemic”. 

‘The Seeker’ says that at that point, there were about a dozen people in DRASTIC, who were looking into the origins of COVID-19. Now there are more than 2 dozens. He also says at least 3 people were censored by Twitter and their accounts were permanently suspended. 

“I suppose their account got suspended because they were saying that COVID-19 was a bio-weapon. You shouldn’t make such assertions and communicate it as a certainty. You have to keep it open ended and just give people the facts”, ‘The Seeker’ said.

After he started researching, he says that initially, he had several interactions with scientists from across the world over video-calls and that is where the brainstorming session started.

Over the next year, the team dug up a lot of information. The Seeker was convinced that the mystery behind SARS-COV-2 lay in the RaTG13 virus. He and other members of DRASTIC began crawling research papers of Wuhan Institute of Virology on the internet.

The genetic code of RaTG13 matched another genetic code posted by Shi Zhengli years ago. DRASTIC determined that the virus originated in a mineshaft in Mojiang County in the Yunnan Province of China in 2012. The team found that 3 out of six miners had died while three of them developed pneumonia. The team was left wondering whether this was a precursor to the pandemic. Although Shi Zhengli had accepted that she worked in the said mineshaft but claimed that the 3 miners died due to fungal infection.

Using his online research skills, The Seeker found CNKI, which is a huge database of Chinese academic journals and theses. Fueled by tea and occasional arcade games, he scrolled through the database for days until he struck gold. The Seeker found a 60-page thesis authored by a student at Kunming Medical University in 2013. Titled, “The Analysis of 6 Patients with Severe Pneumonia Caused by Unknown Viruses,” the paper found that the miners had died of SARS-like Coronavirus. He shared it on Twitter on May 19, 2020. 

In the same month he found a PhD thesis supervised by Gao Fu, the director of China CDC, and it became known that four of the miners had SARS-like antibodies. It also gave the GPS co-ordinates of the mineshaft.

He worked in close association a Madrid based data scientist named Francisco de Asis de Ribera. The Seeker found new pieces of the Coronavirus puzzle while Ribera fitted the pieces together. He discovered detailed plans of Wuhan Institute of Virology to test the infectivity of SARA-like viruses in lab animals and human cells, undergo cross-species mutation and genetic recombination of the viruses. He also stumbled upon a database hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology in China. The Seeker found that the theses were supervised by Shi Zhengli herself.

When asked to what extent he now believes that the COVID-19 virus was now a virus found in nature, The Seeker said that he was 80-90% sure. “I am extremely sure. But, I would like to keep that margin of error because the research is going to go on and I don’t want to claim anything with certainty.”

With his extensive research, we asked him why his name is surfacing only now and whether the mainstream media had got in touch with him at all. “I have had a numerous international journalists and authors get in touch with me, but hardly anyone from India until now. Maybe one or two”. He further said, “Indian journalists hardly seem to be interested in documenting the vast evidence that has come to the fore”. 

With such overwhelming evidence, one has to wonder why the scientists across the world, along with journalists, are so squeamish to talk about the lab-leak theory and the mounting evidence that circumstantially support it. ‘The Seeker’ attributes this strange phenomenon to former-USA President Donald Trump.

“If Donald Trump had said that COVID-19 suddenly jumped from animals to humans and had endorsed the wet market theory, then the media and the scientists would have focussed on finding the true origins of COVID-19. Since Trump suggested that COVID-19 came from a lab, everyone had to be contrarian. The media completely shut its eyes to what was right in front of them. Trump is largely to be credited for people talking about the origins of COVID-19 and the media shutting its eyes to it”. 

With months of research, ‘The Seeker’ believes that the most plausible theory about why COVID-19 came from a lab, he says that there is evidence to show that USA and China were working on a pan Coronavirus vaccine. ‘The Seeker’ spoke about Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group that ran a large international program to survey natural pathogens with the potential to cause a pandemic. Daszak had been collaborating for years with Shi Zhengli, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a renowned bat virologist. Daszak co-authored nearly a dozen papers with Shi and funnelled at least $600,000 of U.S. government grants her way. He was also someone who was working with WHO to investigate the origins of the virus. 

When doubts were being raised about the origins of COVID-19, Peter Daszak along with other scientists had written a letter condemning the speculations. In February 2020, the letter published in Lancet said, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”.

He says there are other papers that showed that the vaccine program was being worked on by the USA and China, and according to him, that is the most plausible explanation for why COVID-19 originated in a lab and could have leaked from there in the process.

‘The Seeker’ says that these pieces of the puzzle are just at the surface level and a lot of work needs to be done still to trace the origin of the virus, that originated in Wuhan, China and killed millions across the world.

Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci has made new extremely comments on Thursday regarding the virus in the mines. He said, “I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?”

“The same with the miners who got ill years ago . . . What do the medical records of those people say? Was there [a] virus in those people? What was it? It is entirely conceivable that the origins of Sars-Cov-2 was in that cave and either started spreading naturally or went through the lab,” Fauci said further.

Pakistan: Journalist Hamid Mir faces sedition charges for threatening to reveal military secrets after being taken off-air

OpIndia Staff
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Pakistan: Journalist Hamid Mir faces sedition charges for threatening to reveal military secrets after being taken off-air

Days after Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir was taken off air for his critical remarks against the ISI and the military establishment, a petition seeking sedition charges was filed against him on Friday (June 4) in the Lahore High Court.

As per Dawn, the contentious petition was filed before the High Court by one Sardar Farrukh Mushtaq through advocate Nadeem Sarwar. The petitioner alleged that the statement made by Hamid Mir on May 28 contained ‘serious derogatory remarks’ and allegations against the ‘discipline institution of Pakistan.’ Furthermore, he alleged that Mir’s behaviour amounted to contempt of society and the institutions. The Interior Ministry, Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Geo News journalist were added as respondents to the petition.

The petition read, “Sedition is a crime against the whole society, in all civilised countries and orderly governments. The integrity and preservation of state and its institutions is matter of great vital concern and is so sacred that no attempt at its disruption or weakening, directly or indirectly will be countenanced. In the present case the federal government has failed to lodge a complaint against Hamid Mir which is mandatory duty of the government. The act and inaction on upon the part of government functionaries amount to dereliction of duty prescribed by the Constitution and law.”

The petitioner claimed that the respondents failed to take action against Hamid Mir under Section 124A (sedition) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), 1860. He has asked the Lahore High Court to direct the government to file a complaint against the veteran journalist through an ‘authorised individual.’ Interestingly, the Court’s registrar noted in an objection sheet that the application was not first submitted to a relevant forum before being moved in the High court.

Hamid Mir ostracised over critical remarks against ISI, Pakistani army

On May 28, the former Geo News journalist had attended a gathering of Pakistani journalists for showing solidarity with fellor journalist Asad Ali Toor. The latter was attacked at his residence in Islamabad by three unidentified assailants on May 25 at 11 o’clock in the morning. Toor was then reportedly dragged to his bedroom and then brutally assaulted and gagged. According to the journalist, the assailants identified themselves as members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 

An agitated Hamid Mir had condemned the attack on Asad Ali Toor and threatened to reveal the secrets of the military establishment.  “If you are a man of courage, then, publicly acknowledge that you ambushed the house of Asad Ali Toor. But you are such shameless and cowardly that you cannot accept it. Instead, you claim that he was beaten by the brother of one girl. We are up against a cowardly enemy which believes that we don’t know them. We know who you’re,” he emphasised. Hamid Mir further stated that the establishment is miffed at the media for not giving in to their demands of establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and India.

Following his comments, he was taken off air by Geo News. The channel had said that the veteran journalist has been sent on leave for some time and that he will not be hosting his popular program.

UP Police arrests BJP leader Narayan Singh Bhadauria for helping wanted criminal Manoj Singh escape arrest

OpIndia Staff
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UP Police arrests BJP leader Narayan Singh Bhadauria for helping wanted criminal Manoj Singh escape arrest

A day after being removed from the post of Kanpur South President, BJP leader Narayan Singh Bhadauria has been arrested for helping wanted criminal Manoj Singh escape arrest.

UP Police on Friday arrested Narayan Singh Bhadauria from Noida, the satellite town close to India’s national capital and under the jurisdiction of the Uttar Pradesh government. Showing zero tolerance towards criminals and their abettors, the Yogi Adityanath government had ordered the arrest of the BJP leader after he was found helping a history-sheeter.

At the same time, Manoj Singh, the wanted criminal who was helped by Bhadauria in his escape, was also nabbed by the police. So far, five people have been arrested in the case. All five are being transferred to Kanpur for further questioning.

The incident pertains to June 2 when BJP leader Narayan Singh Bhadauria, along with his supporters, had attacked the police team that had come to fetch Manoj Singh. The police had come to arrest Manoj Singh from a paan shop. A birthday party of the BJP leader was also taking place nearby, of which Manoj was a part. When the police officials moved to arrest the criminal, the BJP leader and his supporters clashed with the police and refused to hand over the criminal. After this incident, one of the supporters allegedly helped Singh escape from the police jeep. The video of the incident had gone viral on the internet, pressurising the police administration to swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice.

It is worth noting that Manoj Singh has 27 cases registered against him. Besides these 27 cases, Singh was also accused in an attempt to murder case. After being dismissed from his post, Bhadauria tried to feign ignorance by releasing a video on Facebook in which he said he could not recognise the police officials who had come in plain clothes to arrest Manoj Singh.

BJP dismisses Narayan Singh Bhadauria of his post after he helped a history-sheeter escape police arrest

Earlier yesterday, BJP took stern action against party member Narayan Singh Bhadauria for helping a criminal escape and obstructing the police personnel from arresting him.

In a letter released on Thursday, BJP said, “Taking cognizance of the incident that occurred on June 2, BJP Kanpur South President Narayan Singh Bhadauria has been relieved of his duties with immediate effect. A three-member team from the district has been constituted, which will submit a probe report into the incident within 24 hours. This report will be shared with the party’s regional and state organisation.”

32 years later, China finds new excuse to justify Tiananmen Square Massacre as political divide in USA deepens

K Bhattacharjee
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32 years later, China finds new excuse to justify Tiananmen Square Massacre as political divide in USA deepens

The 4th of June this year marks the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre when the Chinese Communist Party crushed pro-Democracy protesters in a bid to secure its powers. The death toll is speculated to be in thousands even though officially, the figure was pegged at less than 300.

It was one of the most terrible instances of human rights violation when the CCP unleashed the might of the Chinese military on its own citizens. China has always sought to downplay the incident and silence critics who brought it up but on the 32nd anniversary of the event, it appears that they have found a new ruse.

Hu Xijin, the Editor-in-Chief of the state-backed Global Times, sought to justify the Tiananmen Square Massacre by drawing a false equivalence with the Capitol Hill riots at Washington DC on the 6th of January. “If you want to condemn “state violence,” condemn Capitol crackdown first,” said Hu Xijin.

Source: Twitter

First of all, there was no massacre of American citizens during the Capitol Hill riots. Only one individual died during the riots, a female veteran named Ashli Babitt. Unfortunate as the death was, it is by no means comparable to the scale of massacre observed during the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Secondly, the events of the Capitol Rights were by no means comparable to the massacre that the CCP committed 32 years ago. There is still confusion regarding the precise circumstances that led to the riots but what cannot be disputed that it was a law and order situation in a democratic country, not a human rights situation as in the other case.

Even then, there is good reason why the CCP feels comfortable using the Capitol Hill riots ruse now. And let us be clear, the words in the tweet are from CCP, Hu Xijin is merely voicing it.

The United States of America is going through a phase of deep political divide, which some have compared to the atmosphere during the run up to the Civil War. Under such circumstances, the CCP is looking to exploit internal divisions within the USA itself.

Concurrently, a culture of censorship has come to dominate USA with private entities leading efforts to censor the media and the academia playing a major role. Furthermore, there is great mistrust regarding the electoral processes in the country with a significant chunk of Trump voters feeling disenfranchised.

The culture of censorship that has come to dominate US is very much akin to the CCP mode of censorship, only with much greater arbitrariness and much lesser state backed punishment. The punishment is in the form of job loss and loss of reputation. It may not appear as gruesome as imprisonment but ‘Cancel Culture’ can often be equally devastating.

The censorship also tends to favour one party exclusively as the overwhelming majority of the ruling elite tends to vote Democrat in elections. Moreover, culture elites of USA openly admitted to engaging in a ‘conspiracy’ to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat in elections.

Thus, it is no wonder that vast sections of the American electorate considers elections fraudulent. This censorship was also evident in the manner in which the lab-leak hypothesis of Covid-19 was covered-up by the science establishment of the country with help from a pliant media.

The hypothesis was branded a ‘conspiracy theory’ in the media with social media platforms censoring it on the basis of sham ‘fact-checks’. It was motivated primarily by the fact that Donald Trump had endorsed the hypothesis. It was labeled ‘racist’, of all things.

Given the deep political divides, Hu Xijin, and the CCP by extension are looking to justify the Tiananmen Square Massacre using political talking-points that dominate the American politics. Earlier, China has used Black Lives Matter protests to shoot back at US allegations of human rights violations against China.

China has also used US regime change wars to deflect criticism of its own crimes against humanity. And expectedly, it worked because they were based on a healthy amount of truth. USA’s own record when it comes to human rights is not too great.

The USA has funded Islamic terrorists in an attempt to topple regimes not conducive to American interests, it has armed neo-Nazis to score foreign policy goals against Russia. More recently, it refused to condemn the killing of Palestinian children during the Gaza Conflict that ended with a ceasefire only days ago.

China has realised that it can respond to most allegations of human rights abuses against itself by pointing at USA’s own terrible track record. Similarly, with regards to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, it seeks to deflect criticism now by citing a political event unique to the American political context.

Punjab govt cancels decision to profit from vaccine selling after Centre’s notice, to recall doses from Pvt hospitals

OpIndia Staff
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Punjab govt cancels decision to profit from vaccine selling after Centre’s notice, to recall doses from Pvt hospitals

After a big political uproar over the Punjab government’s order that attracted allegations of profiteering from “one-time limited vaccine doses to 18-44 age group population through private hospitals”, the order has been withdrawn. The order for withdrawal of the stock was given on June 4 (Friday).

A letter signed by Vikas Garg, the state-in-charge for vaccination, said the order “has not been taken in the right spirit and is hereby withdrawn”.

“Further, it has been decided that the private hospitals should return forthwith all the vaccine doses available with them. The doses which they have utilised as of date should also be returned, once they get supplies from the manufacturers,” the order added.

Principal Secretary Hussan Lal said the government had supplied 40,000 doses and only 1,000 were administered by private hospitals. “We have taken back the remaining stock,” he said.

Union Health Ministry seeks response from Punjab Govt over allegation of ‘vaccine profiteering’

Just hours before, the Union Health Ministry had requested a response from the state. Referring to a report by NDTV, dated June 4, 2021, which stated that the Congress government in Punjab sold Covaxin bought by the state to private hospitals and earned Rs 600 per dose in the process, the Union Health Ministry requested the Punjab Government to confirm the veracity of the news.

The Union Health Ministry had told the state govt that the profiteering is against the Liberized Pricing and Accelerated National Covid-19 Vaccination Policy. They had sought immediate response from the state government over the matter.

Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal was the first to bring the matter to the fore

The NDTV report was based on a Tweet by Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal, who said Thursday stated that “vaccines procured at Rs 400 per dose (are being) sold to private hospitals for RS 1,060” – a “hefty margin” of Rs 660 per dose.

The Akali Dal leader had questioned Rahul Gandhi, who had batted for free vaccines for all. He asked the Congress leader to answer why a common man is being forced to pay Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000 for a single vaccine dose for his family in his party ruled state. “He should tell if he supports Punjab govt decision to force ppl to get vaccine doses for Rs 1560”, Tweeted Sukhbir Singh Badal.

It is pertinent to note here that the Punjab Congress administration has been accused of profiting Rs 660 per dosage by selling government-supplied vaccinations to private clinics in the state under the guise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In addition, because the consumer pays Rs 1,560 for each jab, the private hospital makes a profit of Rs 500 for every injection.

According to reports, the Punjab government supplied at least 20,000 vials of Covaxin to private hospitals throughout the state under the guise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at a cost of Rs.1,060 per dosage. It was sold from a batch of one lakh vials procured by the govt at the rate of Rs 400 per dose, the rate fixed by Bharat Biotech for state governments.

The state govt has justified the higher price charged from private hospitals by saying that they would have to pay that price if they had purchased the vaccine from the manufacturer directly.

Covid-19 lab leak theory: Indian scientists had flagged ‘unnatural insertions’ in its genome, were forced to withdraw study

Raju Das
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Covid-19 lab leak theory: Indian scientists had flagged ‘unnatural insertions’ in its genome, were forced to withdraw study

After vehemently rejecting the possibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus being leaked from a lab in China for more than a year, suddenly the American left-liberal has started to consider the possibility. When former president Donald Trump had suggested the possibility, it was dismissed as his wild imagination, but now that president Biden has ordered a probe into the possibility, the media is forced to wake up and question the national origin theory of the virus.

The lab-leak theory got another boost after thousands of mails of Dr Anthony Fauci were obtained under Freedom of Information Act revealed that Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching on increasing the infectious nature of the Coronavirus obtained from bats. The mails, and other studies that have surfaced recently, suggest that several people, including researchers, people in US administration and intelligence, wanted to probe the role of the Chinese lab, but they were overruled by Dr. Fauci and other, who had vested interests in the issue as they themselves were instrumental in US govt funding the study on the virus in the Wuhan lab.

One of such studies that was brought to the notice of Fauci was a research paper by some scientists from India. In January last year, researchers from Kusuma School of Biological Sciences in IIT Delhi and Acharya Narendra Dev College under Delhi University had published a paper, where they had found that the spike glycoprotein (S) of SARS-CoV-2 had four insertions which are not found in any other Coronavirus, and the insertions are similar to those found in HIV virus. The study had raised that possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have been bio-engineered using the existing Coronavirus and HIV virus.

The research paper, Prashant Pradhan, Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Akhilesh Mishra, Parul Gupta, Praveen Kumar Tripathi, Manoj Balakrishnan Menon, James Gomes, Perumal Vivekanandan and Bishwajit Kundu, had studied the all the available coronavirus sequences which are available at NCBI viral genome database.

The spike (S) glycoproteins enable the Coronavirus to enter the cells of human bodies.  Studies have shown that the glycoprotein has a specific shape that helps them to attach to host cells, and this ability is unique to the SARS-CoV-2, not found in other types of Coronaviruses like SARS-CoV. More specifically, the spike glycoprotein (S) of Coronavirus is cleaved into two subunits, S1 and S2. The S1 helps in binding with the receptor on the target cell, and the S2 subunit facilitates fusion with the cell membrane.

As this splitting of the glycoprotein in SARS-CoV-2 is unique to it, the Indian researchers wanted to study how this evolution happened. To do this study, they compared the spike glycoprotein sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV, and analysed the difference in them. On careful examination of the sequence alignment, they found that the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein contained 4 insertions, or 4 segments that are not found in the earlier less infectious forms of Coronavirus.

The four insertions found in the study are, GTNGTKR, HKNNKS, GDSSSG and QTNSPRRA.

4 insertions at SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein

After finding this, they then studied all available full-length sequences of the virus found in human bodies, and they found that the insertions were present in all of them. But most importantly, the found that these segments were not there in the spike glycoprotein sequence of the same virus found in bats.

When they further analysed these 4 segments to know its possible origin, they found that all four them match with segments in Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins. The first 3 segments match with segments of amino acid residues in HIV-1 gp120, while the fourth segment matches with HIV-1 Gag. Among the four, the first two are 100% matches, while the rest two have some gaps. These proteins are critical for the viruses to identify and latch on to their host cells and for assembly of new viruses.

According to the researchers, such matches of proteins in both SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 viruses can’t be random. They also say that as the segments were not there in the same virus found in bats or all other forms of Coronavirus, it is very startling, as it is quite unlikely for a virus to have acquired such unique changes naturally in a short duration of time. It may be noted that it is claimed that the virus jumped to humans from bats, either directly or through an intermediary animal.

Although the research by the Indian scientists had not claimed that the virus was engineered in a lab, it had concluded that it underwent an “unconventional evolution”. Due to this, the research paper had suggested further investigation on the origin of the virus.

While the preprint of the research paper was published January 31, 2020 on bioRxiv, an open-source portal hosting resources on biological research, it was withdrawn by the researchers on February 2, 2020. The note of withdrawal says they had intended to revise it in response to comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results.

While the lab leak theory was strong during the early day of the pandemic, it was not taken seriously by a large section of the scientific community and US administration. Despite President Trump raising the issue time to time, the theory was already by February 19, 2020, when The Lancet published a statement completely rejecting the possibility that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Published by such an influential medical journal, the statement signed by 27 scientists had effectively killed any meaningful study into the origin of the virus, as they had shut down one angle completely.

Now the Fauci emails show that when he was asked about this research paper by the Indian scientists, he had dismissed it saying it is “really outlandish”. Several other emails have also shown that Dr Fauci was warned that COVID-19 may have been ‘engineered’, but he had dismissed all of them.

Indian researcher still backs their study, says forced by vested interests to withdraw

OpIndia talked to Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, one of the researchers of the study. Earlier he had commented on Twitter that they stand by their conclusion that the SARS-CoV-2 is not natural. “We said this in Jan 2020, we are saying it again”, he had tweeted.

He reiterated the same while talking to OpIndia, and said that the paper was outlandish for those who wanted to prove the ‘natural origin’ theory for the virus. He said that their study had correctly identified sections of the genome that are giving this virus its speciality. When asked why they had withdrawn the paper, he said that was withdrawn due to the pressure from the people with vested interests.

Pandey also said that this paper was just a section of the different studies that they had conducted and they wanted to include the entire findings in the updated version. But the revised manuscripts were hard-blocked by the publishers. He said that in the revised manuscript, they have provided information on why the virus infection remains asymptomatic and why it infects human beings so easily. But it never was allowed to come out, he said.

Commenting on how a scientific paper is being blocked to favour a particular agenda, he said, “Science is the new medieval church, those who are popes of it censor at their will”.

Virus gene segments cut-paste is not unusual

While the Indian researchers didn’t claim that SARS-CoV-2 virus was created by using segments from HIV virus, and only wanted further study on it, the fact is that such studies are regularly done. In fact, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has done several such experiments in the past on Coronavirus itself.

Between 2007 and 2017, the lab had created 8 new chimeric coronaviruses with various receptor binding motifs in spike protein. Such research was still going on in 2019, which was also funded by the US govt. For example, this 2008 paper talks about Manipulation of the coronavirus genome using targeted RNA recombination.

A 2019 paper by scientists from Wuhan Institute of Virology and University of Minnesota in the USA had said this while describing the objectives of their study on Coronavirus: “In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding”.

It may be noted that “Infectious clone technology” means creating live synthetic viral clones. In vitro means study on micro-organisms done in test tubes, and in vivo means the same study done in lab animals.

Bokaro: Police recover 6 kgs of Uranium from a smuggling gang, 7 smugglers arrested

OpIndia Staff
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Bokaro: Police recover 6 kgs of Uranium from a smuggling gang, 7 smugglers arrested

6 Kgs of Uranium was recovered in possession of 7 miscreants, who were arrested by a special squad of the police team in Bokaro in Jharkhand following raids at different parts of the city on Thursday. The police were acting on a tip-off they had received about the group involved in the illegal smuggling of uranium.

“A police team conducted raids at various locations in the district on the directions of Superintendent of Police, who got information that a group of criminals were active to trade uranium…During the raids, seven criminals were arrested and six kg of uranium was recovered from their possession,” a statement from the Bokaro police said. 

The substance recovered from the miscreants has been sent for tests. Uranium is a highly radioactive element and is used in nuclear facilities. The police said the accused, suspected to be a part of the national gang involved in illegal trade, were searching for customers and had fixed its price at Rs 50 lakhs per kg. According to sources, a kilo of uranium trades at Rs 18 crores in the global market.

Those arrested have been identified as Bapi Da alias Bapi Chandra, Anil Singh, Deepak Kumar, Krishna Kant, Hare Ram Sharma, Mahavir Mahto and Pankaj Mahto. Police says they are residents of different parts of the district. The possession of uranium without a license in India is illegal and is contravention of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.

It is still unclear how the accused got hold of such a huge quantity of highly radioactive substance such as uranium. In their interrogation, the accused have been giving evasive answers when asked about how they procured uranium. At times, they claim they got it from a man from West Bengal and sometimes they claim they got it from Giridih and other places.

Two men arrested in Mumbai with 7-kg of natural uranium worth Rs 21 crore

This is not the first time that uranium has been seized from common citizens in recent times. Earlier in May 2021, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had arrested two men with 7 kgs of natural uranium worth Rs 21 crore in Mumbai.

Those arrested were identified as Jigar Jayesh Pandya and Abu Tahir Afzal Hussain Choudhary. The ATS had received a tip-off that the accused were searching for a potential buyer to sell the huge cache of the highly radioactive element. A trap was laid and the two were arrested.

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