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Kapil Sibal acquired land in Delhi worth crores by paying just 1 lakh rupees?

Nupur J Sharma
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Kapil Sibal acquired land in Delhi worth crores by paying just 1 lakh rupees?

Acquisition of land or property by politicians at throwaway prices has been a recurrent theme in controversies or corruption cases we have witnessed. Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are themselves accused of acquiring properties at cheap prices in the National Herald scam. Similar accusations about land deals are pending against Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and even Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has some controversies regarding land deals to her name.

Now the latest addition to this illustrious list appears to be senior Congress leader and well-known lawyer Kapil Sibal, who has been reported to have acquired a piece of land valued at 89 crore rupees in the New Delhi municipal area by paying much less amount for acquiring the holding company.

Kapil Sibal and his wife are believed to have bought 100% shares – both buying 50% shares each – in a company where they could have paid just one lakh rupees i.e. the paid-up capital of the company. The company – Grande Castello Private Limited – owns the land in Delhi that was valued at Rs 89 crores in the books of the company before the acquisition. This incident of owning a prime property by virtue of owning shares in the holding company is similar to the National Herald controversy.

Some details about Sibal’s acquisition of the aforementioned company and his dealings with a businessman named Piyoosh Goyal were first published in January this year by some investigative journalists based in South Africa. These journalists were part of a publication named Daily Maverick and a non-profit initiative for investigative journalism named amaBhungane. Strangely this story did not make it to the mainstream Indian media, though some other reports by these South African journalists did (as we will see later).

The South African saga

Incidentally, these journalists were investigating corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, the then President of South Africa who resigned in February this year after charges of massive fraud and impropriety. The charges against Zuma are similar to what Congress leaders and governments have faced back in India – crony capitalism, favouritism, nepotism, corruption, and misuse of power.

Zuma was accused of being involved in various fraudulent deals benefitting his family with the help of Gupta brothers – India born influential South Africa based businessmen with interests in computers, media, mining, and real estate.

Zuma’s son is reported to be a director in many companies of Gupta brothers, and thus Zuma was accused of granting undue favours to Gupta brothers as a result of which piling personal fortunes for himself and his family. For example, there was one instance where Bank of Baroda, through its South African operations, gave loan to Jacob Zuma’s fourth wife to buy a house. The loan was paid by companies owned by Gupta brothers.

Helping Zuma’s wife pay a housing loan is lesser of the charges levelled against the Gupta brothers. There have been reports that Guptas were so influential and powerful in South Africa owing to their proximity to the Zuma family, that they even used to offer posts in the central government to politicians (fixing cabinet berths a la Radia tape controversy back in India) apart from winning government contracts for themselves.

The South African journalists stumbled upon Kapil Sibal while investigating the deals by companies owned by Gupta brothers. The journalists focused on those business deals by the Guptas which they suspected to be attempts at money laundering. Among others, a company named ‘Worlds Window’ was alleged to have helped Guptas launder money in the range of tens of crores of rupees between 2010-2015.

The South African publications Daily Maverick and amaBhungane write about this company and their dealings with Guptas:

“The money included Chinese kickbacks for Transnet crane and locomotive contracts. The transactions moved money between South Africa, China, UAE and India. Many transactions appeared to lack commercial substance, although the source of the money was not always known. Worlds Window was founded by Indian national Piyoosh Goyal.”

OpIndia.com checked documents publicly available with the Registrar of Companies and a certain Piyoosh Goyal is indeed a listed as a substantial shareholder in “Worlds Window Impex India Pvt. Ltd.”

Kapil Sibal's friend is business partner of tainted Gupta brothers
Piyoosh Goyal’s connection with Worlds Window

Gupta brothers and Piyoosh Goyal

Piyoosh Goyal and Gupta brothers are reported to have begun their business relationship in 2010 and they appeared to enjoy good personal relations too.

Daily Maverick amaBhungane claim that family of Kapil Sibal – the Congress leader, his wife Promila Sibal, and his son Akhil Sibal, who is also a lawyer – and families of Piyoosh Goyal and Gupta brothers took a chartered flight from Delhi to Mumbai to watch the final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup between India and Sri Lanka.

Kapil Sibal was given free chartered flight to watch a cricket match
Kapil Sibal (next to superstar Rajinikanth) watching India vs Sri Lanka final match in the 2011 Cricket World Cup (Getty Images)

The flight was booked by the staff of Gupta brothers, the South African publications say, further claiming that the Guptas had paid for Akhil Sibal and his wife to stay at the luxurious Queen Victoria Hotel at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront over Christmas and New Year’s Eve later that year.

When the journalists got in touch with Sibals over these two favours granted by Guptas, both the father and the son Sibal denied that they knew Guptas or had any business relationship with them. However, Sibals confirmed that they knew Piyoosh Goyal, whom Kapil Sibal referred to as a friend. Akhil Sibal too confirmed that he knew Goyal for several years and he (Goyal) was his client.

Sibals claim that it was actually Goyal, whose hospitality they had accepted, both for the Delhi-Mumbai chartered flight and the Christmas holiday in Cape Town, however, the South African publications maintain that the money for both these events was paid by companies owned by the Guptas.

Piyoosh Goyal and Kapil Sibal

While Kapil Sibal referred to Piyoosh Goyal as his friend, documents show that they enjoy business relations too, which helped Sibal become the owner of a piece of Delhi land worth crores, possibly by paying just one lakh rupees.

Documents show that as on 31st March 2017, Kapil Sibal and Promila Sibal owned 50% shares each in a company called Grande Castello Private Limited, which was a 100% subsidiary of Worlds Window Impex India Pvt. Ltd, the company controlled by Piyoosh Goyal and allegedly involved in money laundering for Guptas as per the South African publications. However, there is no direct link of Kapil Sibal with Worlds Window’s dealings with Guptas.

Kapil Sibal and his wife buy an alleged shell company
From the auditor’s report (2016-2017) for Grande Castello

But Sibal’s dealing with Worlds Window for acquiring Grande Castello Private Limited and Grande Castello’s own dealings are a bit opaque.

Grande Castello, with no business in Financial Year 2013-14, commenced purchase of a piece of land, which eventually cost Rs 45.21 crores. To fund, this, the company raised interest-free loans and book overdrafts.

It is unclear from public documents, as to who provided this finance, and how could a company with nil business convince a lender to offer unsecured interest-free loans running in crores of rupees:

Balance sheet of Grande Castello Private Limited
From the auditor’s report (2013-2014) for Grande Castello

Once the land was registered in the company’s name in the Financial Year 2014-15, the company decided to revalue the aforesaid land based on the “Market Value” as per valuation report obtained from the ‘Government Registered valuer’, thus raising the value of the land by Rs 43.79 crores to Rs 89 crores, almost doubling the value:

The land of the company have been revalued on the basis of Market Value as on 31st March 2015 as per the Valuation Report obtained from the Government Register valuer and accordingly Rs. 43,79,35,615/- (Previous Year - Nil) has been added to the Gross Block of Land.
From the auditor’s report (2014-2015) for Grande Castello (click on the image for a bigger size)

The company’s auditor also qualified his audit report to this extent, stating that subject to this revaluation, the financial statements gave a “true and fair” view of the state of affairs of the company:

Auditor's opinion on valuation of land
From the auditor’s report (2014-2015) for Grande Castello

Oddly, in the very next year i.e. in the Financial Year 2015-16, the company changed its accounting policy and devalued the land, bringing back to its original cost. The company switched from “Market Value” to “Historical Cost Method” for a “more appropriate presentation of the financial statement of the Company”, even though a “true and fair value” was already arrived at in the previous year:

Land value lessened to benefit Kapil Sibal
From the auditor’s report (2015-2016) for Grande Castello

Incidentally, Kapil Sibal and his wife purchased the company in the very next year after this devaluation. As mentioned earlier, Sibal and his wife became the owner of the company by acquiring 100% of the shares, face value of which comes to 1 lakh rupees as the paid-up capital of the company. It is unclear as to at what value the shares were bought from Worlds Window – no publicly available document could confirm this – when the company owned valuable property in Delhi.

The argument can be made by Sibal that the company was bought cheap (possibly not more than the value of the paid-up capital of the company) because although the company owned land, it also had substantial liabilities. But if one considers the market value of the land, as stated by the company itself 2 years before Sibal’s entry, the company’s value shoots up:

Valuation of Grande Castello
Valuation of the company changed drastically within a couple of years in buyers’ favour before Sibals bought the shares.

As can be seen, based on the company’s own assessment of the value of the land, the company is worth anywhere between Rs 33.52 cr to Rs 37.50 cr when Sibal took over the company. And this is based on the market value of the land in Financial Year 2014-2015, i.e. 2 years before Sibal came in. The value could have further appreciated in the 2 intermittent years.

This also brings into focus: Why was the land devalued after revaluation just 1 year ago, just in time before Sibal came in? So that the net worth of the company goes below zero and acquisition of the company without paying any premium could be justified? These are some questions that needs explanation.

Piyoosh Goyal’s controversial past

Apart from his dealings with Gupta brothers that are alleged to be money laundering attempts, Piyoosh Goyal had run-ins with other controversies too.

In November 2013, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case involving bribe-for-loan against the then deputy managing director of State Bank of India (SBI) Shyamal Acharya and Piyoosh Goyal, who was accused of giving bribes to SBI officials to get a loan of Rs 400 crore disbursed in favour of Worlds Window group. CBI had seized cash, gold and other incriminating documents from the SBI MD’s residence, which presumably were used to pay bribes.

In 2011-12, Everest Global Metals, a company controlled by Piyoosh Goyal, got a loan overdraft facility of Rs 8.2 crore from Bank of Baroda, but the monthly interests for that loan were paid by companies owned by Gupta brothers.

A report by Hindustan Times published in February this year says that when Piyoosh Goyal’s Everest missed a payment in November 2012, a Bank of Baroda manager wrote directly to a director of several Gupta companies reminding him of the missed payment, hinting at the close association Piyoosh Goyal enjoyed with the tainted Guptas.

The omission by Hindustan Times

Interestingly the aforementioned Hindustan Times report, which talks about Gupta brothers and Piyoosh Goyal, makes no mention of the incident involving Kapil Sibal, who reportedly termed Piyoosh Goyal as his friend to the South African publications.

This omission by the Hindustan Times becomes pretty interesting given the fact that the Hindustan Times report mention both the South African publications – Daily Maverick and amaBhungane – as a source of information. Their report mentions about Piyoosh Goyal too, and his dealings with the Gupta brothers, but ignores Goyal’s dealings with Sibal, which was already written about by the two South African publications.

Hindustan Times shields Kapil Sibal
Hindustan Times mention the two South African publications as their investigative journalism partners but ignore their reports on Kapil Sibal.

Whether it was an inadvertent oversight or deliberate omission, only Hindustan Times can explain, however, it is nearly impossible to miss the Kapil Sibal part of the story after discovering about Piyoosh Goyal when your source of information is Daily Maverick and amaBhungane.

Even if one assumes that Hindustan Times decided to focus only on Bank of Baroda and their dealings with Gupta brothers in that particular report, it is indeed intriguing that they did not file a separate report on Kapil Sibal and his dealings with Piyoosh Goyal, something that would have been more relevant to the Indian readers.

Kapil Sibal stonewalls information?

Daily Maverick and amaBhungane claim to have reached out to Kapil Sibal and asked him about his dealings with Piyoosh Goyal and acquisition of Grande Castello, which they suspect to be a shell company. However, Sibal was not cooperative or forthright with his answers.

Even though documents show that Kapil Sibal had become a director in Grande Castello in February 2017, he reportedly told the South African publications, in January 2018, that “I have never been a director of any subsidiary company of any company.”

South African journalists then claim to have given him the documentary proof of him being the director, and in fact becoming the owner of the company in November 2016, further asking him about the unsecured loans in the account books of the company, but Sibal allegedly refused to correspond further accusing the journalists of having a “mischievous intent”.

OpIndia.com too has reached out to Kapil Sibal and has asked him to clarify his position on his dealings with Piyoosh Goyal and him becoming the owner of a prime land in Delhi by paying possibly just 1 lakh rupees. We did not get any response by the time of publication of this report. We will update this article with his response if we receive it.

Update: (11:00 PM, 28th March) The article was updated for language modification to make clearer why the company could have been bought cheap by the Sibals. For sake of transparency, we are also putting up below the set of six questions we sent to Mr. Kapil Sibal, which could have helped us know the truth of the matter. We are still awaiting the response:

Questions for Kapil Sibal
Questions sent to Kapil Sibal by OpIndia.com over the transaction

Update: Kapil Sibal has threatened to sue us for alleged defamation in this article, here is our response.

Cambridge Analytica scam has left liberals nowhere to hide

Abhishek Banerjee
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Cambridge Analytica scam has left liberals nowhere to hide

Simple words.

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And with these words, the entire Indian liberal campaign of lies, rumours, insinuations and propaganda should have come crashing down. One truth to beat them all.

How many times over the last four years do you remember some smug liberal, some academic water carrier of Sonia Gandhi, accusing “Bhakts” of believing in “Whatsapp History?” Journalists, intellectuals, academics, all of them united in opposing the scourge of “fake news,” which they say is the mainstay of the BJP regime.

If only people knew the “truth,” they say, the ruling BJP would have no place to hide. So, a string of news websites mushrooms across the internet, all of them speaking in exactly the same voice, spewing the exact same talking points. Every slimy character out there suddenly has the money and resources to start a “fact-checking website” that is heavily promoted both by traditional publications and the new left-wing digital media.

One serial fraudster, who has been in and out of jail for blackmailing people with fake videos, made a fake RTI. Got arrested and went to jail…again. When he came out on bail, this career criminal sat down for an interview with one of these websites, where he was introduced as a “senior journalist.” So what about the forgery? They put a spin on it saying he might have been trying to protect a source…

So what else was the new left-wing digital media engaged in? Digging out small-time BJP functionaries who may have gotten this or that photograph wrong. Ah, there … there goes the secretary of the IT cell of the XYZ morcha of some BJP district committee in Haryana. He/she has shared this pic about violence in Bengal which happens to be wrong. Let’s ignore the riot in Bengal and expose him/her.

Meanwhile, their side is possibly engaged with Cambridge Analytica, using social media to steal people’s private information so that they can be targeted with carefully tailored doses of fake news.

While liberals on Twitter rail about smalltime trolls doing propaganda, their side is likely using big money to manufacture big fake news. For every citizen, a personal profile to be created by stealing data from their social media presence. Then, everyone is to be matched with a customized packet of fake news to influence their voting behaviour.

And all this time, they were telling us that Aadhar is way too much. When you tell them that people are already sharing every minute detail about their personal lives on social media, they have the technical excuse ready. They say Aadhar is compulsory, whereas social media participation is voluntary. When you point out that this is a distinction in principle with no difference to the outcome, they don’t care.

Your privacy is dead anyway once you get on Facebook. This privately owned foreign company already has a minute by minute record of your life.  You might as well give the Government of India your name, date of birth and fingerprints.

No, they insist. Never.

So what do they have to say now? Turns out that this data was actually being stolen without our knowledge. Possibly to serve the electoral interests of a lazy crown prince.

The writing was already on the wall the day the Cambridge Analytica story broke across the world but liberals in India were quiet as scared children. If they had even the slightest excuse to link Narendra Modi to Cambridge Analytica, they would have pounced upon him instantly.

But they had a fairly clear idea of who Cambridge Analytica was working for and so they were silent. The whole “Destroy Aadhar” crowd didn’t give a damn about the loss of privacy as long as it served the anti-BJP agenda. The only reason they were against Aadhar is that Modi had made it a cornerstone of its policy. Plus, a class that had feasted for 60 years on the corruption had an instinctive problem with an anti-corruption measure.

So days passed and no one in the Indian media and/or intelligentsia had anything to say about Cambridge Analytica. Perhaps another case of “tyranny of distance.” Until the BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad decided to hold a press conference and demand answers. When the Congress deleted its app the other day, it was fairly clear that they knew the game was up.

Let me make this clear: every single pronouncement from every liberal is now in doubt. Remember the coordinated “Has Rahul come of age?” Campaigns? Remember the delirious liberals cheering on caste agitations in every corner of the country or sharing pictures of footwear supposedly worn by farmers? Every single one of those posts is now under a cloud. How many of them were acting on orders of Cambridge Analytica?

This morning, in a corner of Youtube, I saw a video posted by one sour-faced ex-TV anchor who saw his best days back when the Dynasty and Doordarshan were ruling the country. Now he works for one of these sinister left-wing propaganda sites I was talking about. He was spewing bile against the “Namo app,” hoping to scare people.

Ha! Too late uncle, too late. Cambridge Analytica has already spilt the beans. Your lies are past their sell-by date. Find something else to do. Kyunki, gali gali mein shor hai, tumhara malik data…

Radical Islamist outfit PFI spent Rs 1 crore on Hadiya’s case

OpIndia Staff
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Radical Islamist outfit PFI spent Rs 1 crore on Hadiya’s case

Islamist outfit Popular Front of India has claimed that they spent Rs 1 crore in pursuing the case of Hadiya, formerly known as Akhila Asokan in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of India has recently upheld the marriage of Hadiya with Shafeen Jahan which was annulled by the Kerala High Court last year.

The state committee of PFI, in a press release, has claimed that they have paid Rs 93,85,000 as fees to various lawyers and another Rs 5,17,324 have been spent as travel expenses. The statement, issued by PFI general secretary C P Mohammad Basheer has also stated that a sum of Rs 50,000 was spent for paperwork at the office of lawyer Haris Beeran.

Several senior and high profile lawyers have appeared for Hadiya in the case. Congress leader Kapil Sibal has reportedly appeared seven times. Indira Jaising appeared four times and Dushyant Dave three times. Marsook Bafaqi appeared once.

Haris Beeran, KC Naseer and KP Mohammad Sherif have reportedly represented the case for free.

The press release claims that PFI collected funds for the case from the public and in a collection drive launched in October, the workers collected Rs 80,40,405. Some of the money was transferred to their bank accounts and the rest was taken from the working funds of the organisation, it states.

Hadiya, formerly Akhila, had married Shafin Jahan back in 2016 and had converted to Islam. Her marriage was annulled by the Kerala High Court following allegations of ‘love jihad’ by the NIA. NIA has long been alleging that the PFI is involved in counselling of Hindu girls to convert them to Islam. They also claim that the PFI uses confinement, allurement and even coercion as their tactics to convert.

After the Supreme Court verdict, Hadiya has gone to meet PFI leaders in Kerala. Though the SC had upheld her marriage stating the marriage between two consenting adults cannot be annulled, it had allowed the NIA to continue its probe into the ‘love jihad’ angle.


Hadiya’s case has grabbed eyeballs nationwide from the very beginning. There were always rumours and questions on how they petitioners are being able to afford such high profile lawyers and meet legal expenses. In an interview with Opindia, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s lawyer Avinash Gupta too had echoed thoughts that there was a huge fund running of about Rs 100 crores to defend people who claim to have been falsely charged for terrorism on the basis of their religion. He had revealed that Sadhvi Pragya never got that kind of funds or activism to support her case.

PFI is an Islamist organisation and reportedly influenced by ISIS. It was banned by the Jharkhand government recently. They have been linked with several violent crimes in Karnataka and Kerala.

Kerala to declare nine out of fourteen districts drought hit

OpIndia Staff
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Kerala to declare nine out of fourteen districts drought hit

Nine out of fourteen districts of Kerala have been declared drought-hit by Kerala government. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan headed the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) meeting where Alappuzha, Kannur, Idukki, Kasaragod, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thrissur and Wayanad districts were declared drought-hit owing to rainfall deficit, a shortfall in availability of surface water and groundwater and salt influx.

As per reports, Vijayan has asked for immediate steps to be taken for distribution of drinking water to tide over the drought situation. According to the meteorological department, there was a shortage of rainfall during 2017 north-east monsoon that sets in during October-December. The central meteorological department has also warned of acute drinking water in these districts.

It is reported that steps will be taken on urgent basis for drinking water distribution in drought-hit districts. Water kiosks will be filled with water from tankers. If funds are not available from local bodies, the money from the state disaster response fund can be utilised for the purpose. While there is no drought situation in the hilly district of Idukki, it is brought under the list as it is expected that the main resources of water may dry up as summer intensifies.

600 TMC workers join the BJP in West Bengal claims the party’s state chief

OpIndia Staff
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600 TMC workers join the BJP in West Bengal claims the party’s state chief

In what might turn out to be a major embarrassment for Mamata Banerjee, about 600 workers from her party joined the BJP in West Bengal, if claims of BJP state chief Dilip Ghosh are to be believed:


As claimed above, these 600 TMC workers joined the BJP in a ceremony organised at Ashan Nagar in the state’s Nadia District. Of these 600 new members, some are also current Panchayat members of the TMC.

Such a defection raises the question whether political workers at the grassroots are losing faith in the TMC and possibly Mamata Banerjee, and whether they are starting to see the BJP as a alternate political force in the state.

Besides this incident there have been various other instances of people choosing to quit the TMC and in most cases heading over to the BJP.

One of the biggest high profile exits from the TMC, former union minister Mukul Roy joined the BJP in November 2017, after quitting his former party in September of that year. Former captain of India’s football team Baichung Bhutia too quit the TMC in February, but hasn’t yet associated with any other political party.

This exodus from the TMC has also extended to the state of Tripura.

In February, 400 TMC members from the state including 16 state committee members of the party had joined the BJP. This was preceded by three TMC leaders including the party’s founder chairman and incumbent vice-president in the state Arun Chandra Bhowmik joining the BJP.

No document or evidence to substantiate role of Sambhaji Bhide in Koregaon Bhima incident, says Fadnavis

OpIndia Staff
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No document or evidence to substantiate role of Sambhaji Bhide in Koregaon Bhima incident, says Fadnavis

The Devendra Fadnavis led Maharashtra government has given a clean chit to Sambhaji Bhide, the founder of Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan over his alleged role in the Bhima Koregaon violence, this January. As per reports, CM Fadnavis on Tuesday made a statement in the state assembly, that there was no proof of Bhide being involved in said Bhima Koregaon violence perpetrated on 1st January.

The violence chiefly broke out in the Pune district, prior to the 200th celebration of a British victory over the Peshwas. This ‘victory’ has been spun by leftist historians as a ‘victory of Dalits’, owing to the British army supposedly comprising of Dalits and other lower castes while the ruling Peshwas were Brahmins.

While replying during a debate on law and order situation in Maharashtra, Fadnavis also stated that Bhide and his associates hadn’t visited the violence-stricken area in the last six months and also wasn’t in contact with people in the area via phone during the strife.

As per Fadnavis, a woman had claimed that she had witnessed Bhide and Milind Ekbote instigating riots at Bhima Koregaon but this claim was negated during the resulting violence.

Other reports have quoted Fadnavis as asserting that, “There is not a single document or evidence to substantiate the role of Sambhaji Bhide in the Koregaon Bhima incident”. Until now the investigative agencies have checked the call records of Bhide for the past six months and his, his aides’ movements too were probed to ascertain their possible involvement in the violence.

Despite all this Fadnavis claimed that the inquiry has been kept open-ended, with any fresh information getting probed in the future.

Such a virtual clean chit for Bhide comes after a section of so-called journalists have intensely maligned him and also PM Modi via association:


It remains to be seen whether, in light of a lack of evidence against Bhide, these journalists would now tender an apology to him for jumping the gun and maligning his image.

Pakistan humiliated : PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi frisked like a commoner at US airport

OpIndia Staff
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Pakistan humiliated : PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi frisked like a commoner at US airport

Pakistan PM has been checked at a US airport while on a private visit to meet his ailing sister. He was checked like a common citizen. The Prime Minister also met the US Vice-President Mike Pence on an unscheduled meet. Reports suggest that he was told that Pakistan must do more to curb terrorism.

Twitter users mocked the Pakistan PM for this check as it was considered a humiliation for any leader of a country.


This was seen as a decline in respect for Pakistan in the world.


 

Some users saw it as Karma’s work in exchange for treatment given to Kulbhushan Jadhav’s wife and mother.


Whether this was a deliberate move by the US or an aberration is still unclear. This has seriously damaged the little reputation of the Pakistani Prime Minister on the world stage. At a time when the US-Pakistan ties are at its worse, this incident would probably deteriorate things further with the United States demanding Pakistan’s firm action against terror havens and Pakistan refusing to do so.

The United States has also recently imposed sanctions on 7 Pakistani companies for links with nuclear trade crushing any hope that the country had to make it to the elite Nuclear Supply Group (NSG).

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”.

Perhaps this incident will convince Pakistan to buckle up and act on state-sponsored terrorism, but we are not holding our breath.

IT Dept freezes Cognizant’s bank accounts over Rs 2500 crore unpaid Dividend Distribution Tax

OpIndia Staff
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IT Dept freezes Cognizant’s bank accounts over Rs 2500 crore unpaid Dividend Distribution Tax

The Income Tax department of India has attached bank accounts and deposits of Cognizant, the information technology major in Chennai and Mumbai. The attached financial assets are frozen to recover the Rs 2500 crore in Dividend distribution tax (DDT) that the company owes to the government.

As per the Income Tax Act, a company needs to pay DDT on any distribution or reduction of capital to the extent of accumulated profits defined as dividends. According to reports, the only way a company can gain an exception to the tax rule is the option of buy back under section 77A and the NASDAQ listed company was not covered under it. Cognizant has not paid the DDT from the financial year 2016-17 onwards.

According to reports, the allegations of DDT evasion is in connections with the transaction the Indian wing of Cognizant made while buying shares of the US and Mauritius wings of the company. The Mauritius and US companies of Cognizant owned 54% and 46% of shares of Cognizant Technology Solutions India Private Limited respectively.

Cognizant purchased its own shares from the two shareholders in May 2016 under the ‘arrangement and compromise’ scheme, described under Section 391-393 of the Companies Act.

Cognizant allegedly did not deduct tax while paying remittance to the Mauritius company and deducted 10% TDS on remittance to the US company. The company, however, has claimed that its transactions were in accordance with the relevant sections of the companies act and no DDT is payable to the government of India.

The Income Tax department has claimed that Cognizant has not declared any dividends since 2003-04 despite earning significant profits each year and any payment to the shareholders is a distribution of profits. The department has also alleged that there are irregularities in payments made by the company through an Indian company for setting up offices in India.

Cognizant has approached the Madras High court against the I-T department’s actions. The I-T department is also planning to prosecute the company for alleged fraudulent expenses claim in the Economic Offences Court in Chennai.

Shekhar Gupta and his website slammed for making open defecation a Hindu-Muslim issue

OpIndia Staff
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Shekhar Gupta and his website slammed for making open defecation a Hindu-Muslim issue

Journalist Shekhar Gupta who was once called a “wheeler-dealer” on live television has almost made it a habit of getting regularly slammed on Twitter. This has occurred yet again with Gupta and his website “The Print” of which he is the editor-in-chief, getting slammed for making open defecation a Hindu Muslim issue.

The website on Tuesday published an article titled, “Hindus are less likely to use a toilet than Muslims in India” which was also shared on Twitter by Gupta:


The article in question decided to bifurcate India’s open defecation stats into Hindus and Muslims to conclude that 25% of Hindus who have built toilets, don’t use them and this figure is 10% for Muslims. It also claimed that back in 2005, 68% of poor Hindu households defecated in the open and that the figure was about 43% for corresponding Muslim households.

Disregarding the absurdity and lack of logic for carrying out such a study, the figures quoted in the conclusion too might be misleading considering the report itself admits that in order to study the aforementioned patterns, the writers sought the help of a certain, “Sanitation Quality, Use, Access, & Trends survey”, carried out in North India back in 2013 and 2014.

So clearly the report’s “findings” might be based on older figures, back in a time before the whole “Swachh Bharat Mission” was launched, thereby possibly making the current figures much lower.

People predictably weren’t amused by the article and proceeded to slam Gupta and his website:


After managing to find a religious angle in people’s defecation statistics, it remains to be seen as to which is the next topic where Shekhar Gupta and company, manage to analyse via the religious lens.

Welcome to Bengal, where blood has flown like water

Abhishek Banerjee
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Welcome to Bengal, where blood has flown like water

Over the weekend, the Ram Navami celebrations in Bengal descended into the mayhem of murder and rioting. As per reports, a policeman got his hand chopped off.

Brutal!

I do not know the specific facts of this situation. This article is not about that. Rather this article is about the reaction on social media to the violence in Bengal. Not surprisingly, most people on social media were angry and disturbed about the situation.

This article is about dissecting that sentiment. Sadly, there are some truths about Bengal that people from outside the state need to know. I am sorry I don’t have good news to deliver.

Broadly speaking, the reaction on social media contained the following two themes:

(1) A sense of outrage over the violence in Bengal.

(2) A sense of shock over the violence in Bengal.

Now, the outrage part I totally agree with. But the shock part. I wish I could share your sentiment.

To a Bengali, here is what your shock and surprise over political violence in Bengal sounds like: You sound like someone who has landed in Europe in 1944 and is surprised to see so much violence around. Did you not know there was a World War raging since 1939?

So this article is intended as a primer for those from outside Bengal. The state of West Bengal hasn’t caught fire *now*, it has been burning for decades. You just didn’t know about it. Because the establishment could never find a way to blame BJP and Hindutva groups for Bengal’s political violence, they never told you about it.

But now that BJP has become a force to reckon with in Bengal, I expect you to hear more and more about the state in the coming days.

So, here is a short list of stories of political violence from Bengal that you never heard because the establishment media hid it from you. Read on if you dare.

In 1997, on the floor of West Bengal Assembly, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, then the Home Minister in the state, admitted that there had been 28,000 political murders between 1977-1996.

Shocked? We are just getting started.

That’s 1500 political murders a year or about 4 political dissenters that were murdered per day. Per. Day.

In Bengal, dissent was not just dangerous. In Bengal, dissent was death itself. The consequence of “dissent” was not getting trolled on Facebook or Twitter, followed by an instant celebrity status on the Thinkfest circuit. Dissent meant death.

You just never heard of it. Because for media and intellectuals and academics, there was no BJP to blame in Bengal until now. The river of blood had to be ignored.

Did I say ‘blood?’  My mistake.

In many cases, there was no blood. A former CPIM MP disclosed that Pinarayi Vijayan, now the Hon. CM of Kerala had once exhorted his comrades to adopt the ‘Bengal model.’

The ‘Bengal model’ consisted of picking up political dissenters and burying them alive with a sack of salt. See? No blood!

Sometimes, of course, there was blood. That is when the comrades would enter the house of a political rival, cut their bodies open and then make their mother eat the rice soaked in the blood of her sons.

I warned you before. The story of Bengal is not to be read by the faint of heart.

There is this famous landmark in Calcutta called “Bijon Setu.” I know it well. As a child, I would cross it often when we went to Calcutta for summer vacations at my grandmother’s house.

As an adult, I learned about what had happened at Bijon Setu. One fine morning in 1982, seventeen people (monks and nuns of the Ananda Marga sect) were burned alive on that big bridge in Calcutta in broad daylight. No arrest was ever made, of course.

How many such famous landmarks in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal are witnesses to forgotten massacres?

Here’s another. You may have heard of Jadavpur University. A great institution. Pride of all Bengalis. But you may not have heard the name Gopal Sen. He was one of the Vice-Chancellors of the university. One time he took a stand against an examination boycott called by Communist students.

Vice-Chancellor Gopal Sen was murdered, then and there, right on the campus of Jadavpur University.

Now you know why I am never fooled by liberal claims that Communist students at JNU are harmless children. Because I have been to Bengal.

I must apologize. I shouldn’t imply that Communists murdered the VC of Jadavpur University. Despite the murder happening on a well-populated campus, there were absolutely no witnesses and no leads for the police. It remains a complete and total mystery who murdered the Vice Chancellor in front of literally hundreds of people.

In 1993, there was a protest march to the famous Writers’ Building in Calcutta, home of the State Secretariat. There, right in the heart of Calcutta, the police opened fire and 13 people were killed on the spot. Mamata Banerjee must remember this incident rather well. After all, she was the one leading the procession.

This is the level of political violence that has been the norm in Bengal. Sometimes dissenters were buried alive, sometimes they were murdered and their blood was fed to their mothers. Sometimes, as in Marichjhapi, thousands of people were rounded up on an island in the Sunderbans, cut off from food and water for weeks and then the armed police would march in, massacre everybody and throw their bodies into the surrounding water.

Feeling numb yet? Just remember that all these big intellectuals and media houses, who track the minute to minute availability of Tunday Kabab in local Lucknow restaurants, never told you these stories.

Welcome to Bengal, where blood is cheaper than water.

And by the way, still feeling angry about that Lenin statue in Tripura? It goes without saying that what happens in Tripura is a corollary of Bengal politics.

My appeal to you is to stand up and question these intellectuals and the deliberate, dishonest silence they have maintained all these years. Take Rajdeep Sardesai, a well-known master of “political context.” He says that you don’t need to cover with intensity the murder of Bajrang Dal worker Prashant Poojary in Karnataka in 2015 because the murder had a “political context.” Go ask him whether the fall of Lenin statue in Tripura can be similarly “contextualized” and forgotten.

These people that were ruthlessly massacred in Bengal were your fellow citizens. Their stories deserve to be heard. And I dare say their stories deserve to be heard before we worry about a statue. Ask those who claim to be doing the “Journalism of Courage” why the story of political violence in Bengal was never a part of the ‘national mainstream’ until now.

For me, one of the most ironic moments was this recent bit on ABP News. In this, both the ABP news reporter and the anchor in the studio are worried that BJP’s Sunil Deodhar might be making unfounded baseless allegations about a skeleton being found in Manik Sarkar’s house back in 2005.

Which is weird, because the discovery of the skeleton was never in dispute; it was an accepted fact as reported by the Telegraph here. This is even more ironic when you realize that ABP group actually owns The Telegraph.

So what happened? Why was ABP News wondering whether the discovery of the skeleton was a baseless allegation?

I’ll tell you what most likely happened. Neither the ABP anchor nor the ABP reporter could believe that such an explosive piece of news could have remained practically unknown for so many years. A skeleton, allegedly that of a minor girl, found in a Chief Minister’s house? No way that media would have ignored such a piece of news. Except it did.

Indeed, our news media is compromised to such an extent that even the individuals in the media can sometimes fail to imagine how corrupt it is.

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