'On September 29, Tathagata Roy, retweeted a tweet with the headline, “Muslims rape 16-year-old Hindu girl, who begs them ‘Please leave me for your Allah’s sake’.” The original tweet was by Robert Spencer, the founder of the extremist Islamophobic propaganda blog, Jihad Watch, which based the news on a report by another propaganda website – one inspired by Hindutva – the Hindu Post. Roy’s Twitter timeline is replete with tweets of this nature: incendiary, hate-filled communal propaganda. Why are we talking about Roy?
'The police in Alwar, Rajasthan on Sunday (October 6) morning arrested two men for forcing a Muslim couple to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and harassing them. According to the Hindustan Times, the couple, from Haryana, was waiting at a bus stop in Alwar at 11:30 pm on Saturday when two men on a motorcycle stopped and harassed them. “According to the FIR, they forced the couple to chant Jai Shri Ram and one of the men flashed before the woman,” police said...'
'Two years after the deaths of 63 children in Gorakhpur’s BRD Medical College, a state government probe has absolved Dr Kafeel Khan of all charges against him as well as commended him for doing everything in his power to help save lives. The deaths had taken place in August 2017 after an alleged shortage of oxygen in the government-run hospital. Khan, a paediatrician in the hospital, had been suspended soon after. He was jailed for nine months after a criminal case of medical negligence, corruption and dereliction of duty was filed against him.
'When I read in the newspapers that the Alwar trial court had acquitted the cow vigilantes accused of lynching Pehlu Khan – which, to me, had appeared an open and shut case from the newspapers – I was curious to find out on what grounds it had done so. Having worked in the legal field where it is commonly believed that a judge who has written a perfect judgment is yet to be born, I did not expect it to be perfect. But most certainly, I expected to see from a senior judicial officer a judgment on a standard format supported with sound legal principles.
'...Noorjahan Mandal*, a 33-year-old domestic worker from Mumbai’s Reay Road area, sits listlessly among the crowd, clutching a huge pile of documents that she has meticulously assembled over the past nine years to help her prove her nationality. A matted ration card issued in early 2000 shows that she has been living in Mumbai for close to two decades. Her school-leaving certificate claims she has studied till Class Seven in a district-run school in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas. Her laminated Aadhaar card too declares her a Mumbai resident...
'How India's most widely read newspaper published a highly misleading and inflammatory article... On September 19, readers of Dainik Jagran, the most widely read newspaper in the country, woke up to a disconcerting headline: “Having lost one daughter to love jihad, second one now in danger”. This appeared in the city section of the newspaper and concerned a series of events that took place in Sangam Vihar — a densely populated low-income neighbourhood in South Delhi. “The roots of love jihad are fast spreading in the tense lanes of Sangam Vihar,” read the opening line.
'Communal clashes broke out at Jokaha of West Champaran following manoeuvred incitement by majoritarian antisocial elements. However, the arbitrary arrests, torture and indifference that followed the vicious cycle solely targeted minorities... NewsClick presents a ground report from the region. “As our procession entered the Mazar (mausoleum ground), stones began to be hurled at us …we didn’t know from where it was coming…the peaceful gathering turned into chaos…,” recalls Zumdin Miyan, 60, who has been booked for ‘rioting’ and similar offences.
'Addressing a gathering organised by Hindu extremis outfit, Sri Ram Sene in Bengaluru on September 15, K S Eshwarappa, Minister Rural Development and Panchayati Raj in Karnataka said, “Hindus of this nation are not ‘Napunsakas’ (impotent). We have been fighting for Ram Mandir for decades now. Babri Masjid was demolished and a Ram Lalla Mandir has been built in its place.
'Almost a month after an Alwar court pronounced its judgement in the Pehlu Khan lynching case, a similar case is lined up to have its day in court. In this case too, self-styled gau rakshaks, apparently convinced of Muslim men being cattle smugglers, thrashed him to death. Rakbar Khan was killed on the night of July 20, 2018, when he and his friend Aslam Khan were brutally attacked by a mob while they were transporting milch cows on foot to their home in Haryana’s Kolgaon from a village in Alwar...'
'The Jharkhand police has dropped murder charges against the 11 people accused of lynching 22-year-old Tabrez Ansari. Ansari was beaten by a mob who apparently thought he was a thief, and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman’ on June 18 this year. He died days later, in police custody. Reports say that the police have used the final post-mortem report, which says Ansari died of “cardiac arrest”, to drop the murder charge. The chargesheet again the 11 now only includes culpable homicide not amounting to murder...'
