A day after a video showing the six accused in Bulandshahr violence being welcomed with garlands and loud chants after getting bail went viral on social media, the Uttar Pradesh deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya has distanced the government and BJP from the incident saying that they had no role to play in it.
Accusing the opposition of “making a mountain of a molehill”, Maurya was quoted as saying: “If supporters of someone who have been released from jail welcome them, the government and BJP has nothing to do with it. Opposition must not make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Six accused of instigating mob violence that led to the killing of police inspector Subodh Singh in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr on December 3, 2018, were welcomed with garlands after they were released on bail yesterday.
A video which surfaced yesterday showed supporters of these accused welcoming them amidst ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Vande Matram’. The six accused were Shikhar Agarwal, Hemu, Upendra Raghav, Jeetu Fauji, Saurav and Rohit Raghav.
The Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh had given its permission on June 28 to slap sedition charges on 44 persons accused of inciting violence in Chingravati area of Bulandshahr which claimed lives of two people, including that of one police personnel.
A bloodthirsty mob had run riot in the region after locals had discovered carcasses of cows in a field in Mahav village near Chingravati, Bulandshahr on December 3rd last year. Angered with police inaction even after repeated complaints, the mob had clashed with the police. The protest turned violent where the police inspector Subodh Singh accidentally shot Sumit, a 17-year-old boy. Inspector Singh too died after he was shot at by someone in the mob.
The leading famous Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, who is previously charged in the case of rapes of two women, has been accused of partaking in a gangrape of a journalist, French judicial sources said on Sunday.
The reports of the gang-rape accusation levelled by a 50-year-old woman on the Muslim academic and a member of his staff when she went to interview the academic at a hotel in Lyon in May 2014 were confirmed by French sources on Europe 1 radio and in Le Journal du Dimanche newspapers. The woman also alleged that Ramadan issued threats and intimidated the journalist from reporting the alleged incident to the police.
Ramadan, whose grandfather founded Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, worked as a professor at Oxford University until rape allegations surfaced against him during the peak of Me Too movement in 2017. He is alleged to have raped a disabled woman in 2009 and a feminist activist in 2012. The authorities in Switzerland are also probing rape allegations against him after a woman filed a rape complaint against him.
Ramadan was taken into custody in February 2018 and was held in jail for 9 months before being granted bail. In the latest allegations, the woman had alleged that Ramadan and his male assistants had repeatedly raped her in Ramadan’s room in Sofitel hotel in Lyon. The woman further stated that when she told Ramdan that she is going to file a complaint against him, the academic allegedly replied, “You don’t know how powerful I am”. The woman asserted that Ramadan had approached her via a messenger app in January 2019, two months after he secured the bail, claiming that he had some offer of “professional nature” for her.
At least two people have been killed and four injured in Tamil Nadu’s Kanchipuram district on Sunday when an unidentified object found in a temple pond suddenly blew up.
Reportedly, the incident happened behind the Gangai Amman Koil in Manampathi, near Tirupathur in Kanchipuram district. However, the police said the incident was not connected with the current terrorist alert in the state.
In the blast, a 22-year-old named Surya, and another person have succumbed to injuries while four others including Jayaram (28), Dileepan (25), Yuvaraj (25) and Thirumal (22) have been severely injured. They have been admitted to Chengalpattu Government Hospital.
“The pond, belonging to Gangai Amman Koil in the village, has not been used for many years. A few days ago some residents took the help of a private firm to desilt it. From there, the workers recovered an unidentified object. They were reportedly trying to open it when it blew up, killing a youth named K. Surya and injuring several others,” a police official said.
The police officer also said the blast did not have any connection to the current terror alert in the state. The state of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have been put on high alert following inputs on terrorists entering these two states to carry out a terror attack.
“We were initially shocked when we heard about the blast. But on coming here, it was clear this is a different kind of blast,” the police official added.
The injured have been admitted to a government hospital, he said. The samples have been collected from the blast spot by the Police to ascertain whether it was an IED blast or not.
Kancheepuram SP said that after the temple was recently cleaned, some objects were discarded and some people at the temple found a mysterious object and went to inspect it. The explosion took place after they tried to break or open it.
Some locals claimed that the box contained explosive used by the army. Meanwhile, the forensic teams are working to ascertain more details.
It contains a picture of a recent caste based indignity in Vellore in Tamil Nadu, where the body of a Dalit man had to be lowered from a bridge because the mourners were refused passage to the cremation ground. This shameful incident went viral and people were understandably outraged.
Now take a look at the accompanying text in this screenshot. Do you see what Scroll has managed to do here? They have managed to drag in RSS while discussing this incident. Remember that this happened in Tamil Nadu, a state where the BJP does not have a single MLA. Possibly never did.
Now you get the true picture of the brazenness of Indian ‘liberals’. How could any reasonable person possibly think of RSS while discussing social evils in Tamil Nadu?
How absurd. How infuriating. Yet not surprising. Indian ‘liberals’ have held power almost continuously for six decades. And yet, they manage to look everyone in the eye and act as if the long term opposition BJP is responsible for every problem in India. Without a trace of embarrassment or shame or irony. Even in states where BJP did not even get to sit in opposition benches, like Tamil Nadu. Somehow, it is all the fault of RSS and BJP, who had no resources, no power and no traction in the state ever.
This strategy is so unbelievably brazen that it sort of works.
The reason I am giving this example is so that the Hindu right does not get bullied by hypocritical ‘liberals’ who demand that BJP/Modi can no longer blame older regimes for structural problems with India.
The BJP has merely entered its second continuous term in office. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with blaming Nehru loudly and clearly for the problems in Kashmir. If ‘liberals’ are going to suggest that RSS is to blame for caste injustices in Tamil Nadu, it is absolutely fitting and absolutely relevant that the Hindu right lay the blame for Kashmir issues at the door of Nehru where it belongs.
Don’t even try the defense that Nehru has been dead for 50 years. BJP didn’t rule Tamil Nadu ever. BJP wasn’t even the opposition party in Tamil Nadu ever. Still ‘liberals’ are blaming them. Why can’t Nehru and Congress who ruled India for 60 years take responsibility and blame?
Let’s be clear: all the social problems with India, from gender issues to caste issues, every single thing is the fault of the Congress, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its political fellow travelers.
Hey ‘liberals’, did you know about this?
Tamil Nadu has highest manual scavenging deaths in India (February 2019)
The caste related aspects of manual scavenging is known to all. Who should I blame for this situation in Tamil Nadu? RSS?
Or did you know about this?
Bengal has highest child marriages (Feb 2019)
How many MLAs does BJP have in West Bengal? Maybe 3-4 out of 292, until recently. Who is to blame for this situation in West Bengal? RSS?
Haryana has the worst gender ratio among all Indian states. Who is responsible? Haryana got its first BJP CM only in 2014. And since then, the gender ratio has steadily gone upwards.
And yet you will see Indian ‘liberals’ who never fail to act as if problems of caste discrimination and patriarchal mindset somehow have something to do with RSS.
What the Hindu Right needs to learn here is not to get so easily bullied. Remember that Nehru created the catastrophe in Kashmir. Never be embarrassed to point out that the current problems in the economy have to do with the bad loans given by UPA under Manmohan Singh.
Do not give in easily to ‘liberals’ who act as if they have a saintly counter-argument: Stop blaming what happened in the past because it’s over. Except the ‘liberal’ side is happily blaming the Hindu Right for all problems all across India, even if those places don’t have a single BJP MLA.
Now it’s all very well to say that ‘blame games’ don’t help anyone. And they don’t. Isn’t it better to focus all the energy on doing things right rather than blaming those who did wrong? But such a blame game is a necessary evil in a democracy, where there is always a political game to be won. If you lose the political argument, then you lose all power to effect any positive change whatsoever. That’s worse, isn’t it?
So let’s get this clear. His Majesty Jawaharlal Nehru and all his heirs and successors are 100% responsible for India’s problems in Kashmir. Every bit of expense, every bit of suffering that India has gone through in Kashmir is due to their strategic blunders.
Every time they point one finger at RSS for things the RSS has literally nothing to do with, the Hindu Right should point four fingers back at Nehru. Until they stop telling lies about the Hindu Right, keep telling the truth about them.
Rajasthan Police has imposed Section 144 in Sawai Madhopur district’s Gangapur City in Rajasthan after members of the Muslim community pelted stones at the rally organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on its foundation day on Sunday. Internet services also remain suspended.
The rally, attended by over 500 members, was reportedly crossing the Fawara Chowk area when the Muslim mob started pelting stones at the VHP members from the Jama Masjid located in that area and from the houses nearby. Five people were injured in the clash.
As the incident was reported, the police reached the spot and drove the miscreants away by resorting to lathi-charge. According to Sawai Madhopur – Superintendent of Police, Sudhir Chaudhary: “The VHP workers were raising slogans at a procession when slogans started coming from the Jama Masjid side as well. Soon, the minority community started pelting stones on the rally leading to a stampede-like situation. Police had to resort to lathi-charge to disperse the mob, which vandalised six vehicles.”
It is believed that even on Sunday night, the police received reports of stone-pelting incidents, following which police made several arrests.
Police had to deploy additional forces to control the situation after communal tensions gripped the entire area following the incident. More than 1000 police personnel were deployed to bring the situation under control.
“Additional police force has been deployed in the city as well as in Karauli and Bharatpur and 25 people have been arrested,” confirmed Police.
VHP members staged a sit-in at Fawara Chowk demanding arrest of all accused. Additional Commissioner of Police Laxman Gaur has, however, confirmed that the situation is under control.
In a similar incident in Rajasthan, some Muslim groups had clashed with Hindus after the latter had organised a peaceful procession on the account of Ram Navami in the month of April. According to the report, the violence broke out when the procession entered the area belonging to the Muslim community. Following this, some people began to pelt stones at the rally, which resulted in further violence between two communities.
In an operation against illegal cattle smugglers, the Border Security Force (BSF) on Saturday killed a suspected Bangladeshi cattle smuggler in an encounter along the India-Bangladesh border in southern Assam’s Karimganj district.
According to the reports, the incident took place when more than 30 Bangladeshis tried to enter India by cutting the fences along the border, said Mahendra Deb Ray, Superintendent of Police (SP) Karimganj.
“As per the version of the BSF, 30-40 Bangladeshis suspected to be cattle smugglers tried to enter. There was a confrontation and one person died on the spot after being hit with pellets from a pump-action gun,” Ray was quoted in the report.
The police said that the identity of the killed person has not been confirmed. However, the police stated they have information that the person killed was Abdul Rouf from Moulvibazar in Sylhet.
“Border Guards Bangladesh have informally conveyed about a missing person. No official communication has been received yet,” said Debojit Nath, the Additional Superintendent of Police, Karimganj.
According to the report, a senior BSF official said that there was an intelligence input that cattle smugglers may try to infiltrate.
“A team was positioned on the other side of the border fence (there is a distance of 150 metres between the border fence and international border). At around 1 AM, a group of more than 30 cattle smugglers approached and when they noticed BSF one of them threw a dao (machete). In return, our men fired one round from pump action gun,” the BSF official said.
The group fled after the encounter, said the official while adding that when BSF team went to search the area, a dead body was found. Three daggers, one fence cutter and one mobile phone was found frok his possession. The BSF also seized a cow during the encounter.
In July, around 25 Bangladeshi cattle smugglers along the India-Bangladesh border had attacked a BSF jawan with bombs and injured the jawan on border duty.
Just a few days back, in an incident along the Assam-Bangladesh border, a BSF jawan had lost his life when Inspector Sanjay Kumar Sadhu fell into the Brahmaputra river in Dhubri while chasing cattle smugglers. In another incident, a jawan was critically injured after he was attacked by cattle smugglers near Gobardah border post in the southern region of West Bengal.
The porous border along Bangladesh is often used by cattle smugglers to illegally transport cattle from India to Bangladesh. Recently, the BSF discovered a new method adopted by smugglers to smuggle cattle across the border. Smugglers are using flooded rivers to send cattle to the other side. It is estimated that thousands of cattle are smuggled every year to Bangladesh through the 2216 KM long porous border.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has finished the auditing of the offset deals in the Rafale fighter deal with France and is likely to table its report in the winter session of Parliament, reports Times of India.
According to the reports, the CAG in its report will submit the details of the audit of at least 32 offset contracts of the three defence services between 2012-13 and 2017-18.
The audit to be tabled will not be a standalone review of the Rafale offset deal but the review of 31 other offset deals between 2012-13 and 2017-18. The CAG in its audit has looked into pricing and other terms of offset contracts with a comparative study of the impact it will have on the overall cost of the jets. The auditor initially took up 42 such offset contracts for review but finally selected 32 for audit, including the Rafale deal.
Earlier, the CAG report on the Rafale deal was tabled in Parliament in February. The chief auditor had not reviewed the offset audits as he did not want to combine it with the offset audit. The offset deals reviewed include purchases of the Army, IAF and Navy. The auditor has also received detailed responses from the defence ministry on some of its observations.
The CAG separated its review of the offset deals from the Rafale report on IAF acquisitions as these offsets included Army and Navy, reports the Times of India.
In its report, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had said that the deal struck by the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the purchase of 36 French Rafale fighter jets was cheaper than the one negotiated by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the opposition parties, especially Congress party along with their media cronies had invented a scam out of the Rafale deal to propagate a narrative ahead of the elections. With CAG establishing that NDA government had in fact saved the taxpayers money by negotiating a better deal than UPA and a clean chit given by the Supreme Court, the opposition parties including some media had faced huge embarrassment.
The first Rafale fighter, part of the Rs 59,000 crore-36 aircraft deal with French manufacturer Dassault Aviation, will be delivered next month. French defence giant Dassault Aviation had agreed to provide all 36 fighters in a flyaway condition between 36 to 67 months from the date of signing of the IGA (inter-governmental agreement) in 2016.
In a major setback for the UPA stalwart and the former finance minister P Chidambaram, the Supreme Court of India dismissed anticipatory bail plea filed by him against Delhi High Court order denying him protection from CBI arrest in the INX Media case. The court said that after Chidambaram’s arrest, the matter is now “infructuous”.
Breaking – INX Media : SC Dismisses Chidambaram’s Plea For Anticipatory Bail In CBI Case As ‘Infructuous’ https://t.co/L7Kw1YfBrX
However, the court has granted liberty to the UPA era finance minister for approaching an appropriate court for regular bail. A bench comprising of Justices Bhanumati and A S Bopanna observed that the petition for anticipatory bail has become “infructuous” as Chidambaram has already been arrested and remanded to CBI custody. Granting Chidambaram apply for a regular bail at relevant courts, the bench added that the trial court must not be influenced by the observations made by the Delhi High Court.
Apart from the INX Media case, the Enforcement Directorate filed another case for alleged money laundering transactions. The court is separately considering the bail plea moved in the ED case. Chidambaram’s lawyer Sibal had alleged that the ED had leaked documents to the media. However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta rejected the claims saying his client ED did not leak the said affidavit.
Representing P Chidambaram, Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Dr AM Singhvi contended that the petition didn’t become infructuous as the petitioner was arrested when his petition was pending in the SC. They argued that the CBI could not have arrested him on August 21 as his petition was listed to be heard on August 23. Both Sibal and Singhvi argued that the court has the authority to restore the status quo ante with regard to P Chidambaram.
However, the bench remained unmoved by their persuasions and upheld its order to reject the petition.
The INX Media case relates to discrepancies and alleged shady dealings in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance given to the media group for international investment funds worth several hundred crores. Chidambaram was the finance minister at that time. As per reports, the ED is hopeful of getting Chidambaram’s custody following which he could be questioned on the source of money through which his son and Congress MP Karti Chidambaram bought various properties in India and abroad including a tennis club in Spain, cottages in the UK. These properties are reportedly valued at Rs 54 crore.
A prisoner in Tihar jail has alleged that the superintendent and his associates tortured him and branded ‘Allah’ on his back with lime. The matter is currently being investigated. However, the additional IG at Tihar claimed that the prisoner had done this to himself deliberately in order to vitiate the communal atmosphere inside the jail.
The jail authorities have registered a complaint against the prisoner. Meanwhile, he has been shifted to a high-security cell. The Police are also trying to find out how did the lime with which the crime was supposedly committed find its way into the jail. The CCTV footage is also being looked at for clues into the entire series of events.
Coincidentally, the prisoner is lodged at jail no. 3, the same where Afzal Guru, convicted for the terrorist attack in the Parliament and consequently hanged to death for it, was lodged at.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened at Tihar jail. In April, an inmate, Nabbir, had branded himself with the ‘Om’ symbol and accused the prison authorities of torture. Later, with the help of CCTV footage and other evidence, it was discovered that the inmate had gotten his associate to brand him with the symbol. He had done so with the intention of falsely implicating the authorities.
Continuing its war against corruption, the Narendra Modi led NDA government has decided to sack 22 senior government officials of the rank of superintendent in the finance ministry following serious corruption charges against them.
According to the reports, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has compulsorily retired 22 senior government officials in “public interest” on charges of corruption and misconduct under Rule 56 (J).
In a similar move, the government had retired 27 high ranking IRS officers in June this year, including 12 officers from CBDT, also on charges of corruption, harassment, bribe and extortion in June this year.
The officers fired by CBIC include KK Uikey, SR Parate, Kailash Verma, KC Mandal, MS Damor, RS Gogiya, Kishore Patel from various central GST zones. They all were at the level of a superintendent. The sacked officers included officials dealing with Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Customs in various zones across of the country.
A statement by the CBDT said that “the CBIC has compulsorily retired yet another 22 senior officers of the rank of Superintendent/AO under Fundamental Rule 56 (J) in the public interest, due to corruption and other charges and CBI traps”.
Reportedly, sources at the Finance Ministry said that the decision to sack corrupt officers is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to clean up the tax administration so that honest tax-payers are not harassed. The latest batch of officers who were sacked were dealing with Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Customs from across various zones of the country.
The Central Board of Indirect Tax and Customs (CBIC) has maintained that the tainted officers have been expelled from the service in the public interest.
“The CBIC has compulsorily retired yet another 22 senior officers of the rank of Superintendent/AO under Fundamental Rule 56 (J) in the public interest, due to corruption and other charges and CBI traps,” an official said.
Last month, days after sacking a handful of tainted officers from service, the Modi government passed a directive to all departments and ministries to prepare monthly reports identifying officials facing charges of corruption and other wrongdoing against them.
