'The Ahmedabad education department has issued a circular to all “government-grant-in-aid and self-financed secondary and higher secondary schools to arrange special lectures, debate, essay and elocution competitions and group discussions on the subject of Article 370 and Article 35A during the school assembly on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday on September 17.”... Not taking any risk with the suggested debate, the said “circular” takes care to lay down what is to be said in the “debate”.
'A police constable was beaten on Friday evening in Vadodara city allegedly by the religious hardliners of the majority community... The victim, Arif Ismail Shaikh (44), said that he was attacked without any provocation when he was travelling back to home at around 8.30 pm. “I made a mistake by not covering my face this time,” said Shaikh, adding that he usually covers his face while stepping out of his home. Shaikh is a constable with the Gujarat Police... The FIR was registered after hours of tussle.
'A Dalit man was allegedly hacked to death by his upper-caste wife’s relatives in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad district on Monday night, PTI reported. Eight men, including his father-in-law, have been booked for murder and are on the run. The murder took place in the presence of officials from state-run women helpline Abhayam. Haresh Solanki had sought the helpline’s assistance to bring his wife Urmila back from her parents’ house to his home in Kutch district, The Indian Express reported...'
'A special Central Bureau of Investigation court in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat on Thursday sentenced former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Dinu Solanki and six people to life imprisonment for the murder of Right to Information activist Amit Jethwa, ANI reported. Jethwa was shot dead outside the Gujarat High Court on July 20, 2010. The court ordered the seven to pay a penalty of Rs 60 lakh, of which Rs 11 lakh has to be set aside as fixed deposit for Jethwa’s family members, The Indian Express reported.
'On 5 July, a Supreme Court division bench led by the judge Arun Mishra overturned a 2011 judgment of the Gujarat high court. The high court had acquitted 12 men accused of murdering Haren Pandya, a former home minister of Gujarat, in 2003. In the acquittal, the court condemned the Central Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the case—the agency had linked Pandya’s murder to the killing of a Gujarat-based leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and said that the murders were an international conspiracy supposedly led by a Muslim cleric to spread terror among Hindus.
'In a nation known for its collective amnesia, it is important to restate names, characters and situations. Forgetting these can jeopardise free thought and the very idea of justice. One such name is Babubhai Patel alias Babu Bajrangi. He is a member of the Gujarat unit of the Bajrang Dal and his notoriety lies in the fact that he confessed (during a sting operation) to have actively participated in the killing of men, women and children in Naroda Patiya – an Ahmedabad neighbourhood witness to the worst rioting in February 2002, leading to the deaths of 97 people.
'While crimes against SCs registered an increase of 32 per cent, the crimes against STs increased by 55 per cent in the period between 2013 to 2017... Despite higher number of criminal cases committed against the marginalised sections of the society, the state authorities have failed in bringing the culprits to the book. The data furnished by vigilance and monitoring committee of social justice and empowerment suggest that the state has miserably lagged as far as the conviction rate is concerned. The state registered a 3.78 per cent conviction rate in 2017 and 2018...'
'Khambat, a communally sensitive coastal town in Anand district was gripped in tension on February 24, at around 3 pm when a group of men gheraoed homes of Muslims in Akbarpura area, pelted stones, and burnt the homes down. “Akbarpura area is a slum area flanked by bus station on one side and railway tracks on another with only one outlet. The residents of the slums are all daily wage earners who come from Machimar or Kharwa community, belonging to both [Hindu and Muslim] the religions.
'On July 16, 2016, seven people belonging to a dalit family were flogged in public in Una, Gujarat. The incident was videotaped and circulated by men belonging to upper caste. The trial of the case that had begun more than two years later in August 2018, now stands the risk of witnesses turning hostile. Dipendra Yadav, the Public Prosecutor in the case has been repeatedly writing to concerned authorities demanding an office for himself to prepare the witnesses, and security for witnesses but in vain.
