'Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) security expenditure jumped 82% in just one year, but the number of security guards deployed on campus has seen a drastic cut, according to documents reviewed by HuffPost India. Campus security was overhauled four months ago, in September 2019, when a corps of close to 400 security guards with years of experience in JNU was replaced by just 250 former military troopers. The new employees were provided by a private security agency, Cyclops Security And Allied Services Pvt.
'India lost over $1.3 billion in internet shutdowns across the country — lasting 4,196 hours in 2019 — making it the third-most economically affected country after Iraq and Sudan, says a new study. The report, titled The Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns, in 2019 by internet research firm Top10VPN, worked on calculating the data in major regions of the world using the COST tool. The tool was developed by internet monitoring NGO Netblocks and advocacy group The Internet Society, and uses indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat, and US Census...'
'A huge protest march by students of Jawaharlal Nehru University -- bound for Rashtrapati Bhavan --- ended in lathicharge and largescale detentions by the Delhi Police this evening. Frantic footage from the spot showed slogan-shouting students being dragged away and packed into buses by the police. Several students were injured and three busloads of protesters were detained by the police.
'Last month, nearly 2,000 scientists and science students from around India signed a public letter condemning the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act as antithetical to the country’s constitutional principles. Since then, The Wire has learned that the heads of multiple institutes whose scholars had signed the letter were contacted by senior government officials and asked for confirmation of their scholars’ actions and, in some cases, possibly an explanation.
'After a ‘Free Kashmir’ poster at a Mumbai protest stirred controversy recently, a similar banner was seen at a demonstration at the University of Mysore (UoM), Karnataka, on Wednesday. The Mysuru police have registered a suo motu FIR in the matter and booked the organisers of the protest for sedition. The protest, against the violence at JNU, was organised by students, members of UoM Researchers Association, Bahujan Vidyarthi Sangha, Students’ Federation of India, Dalit Vidyarthi Okkuta, and All India Democratic Students Organisation in the University of Mysore campus.
'When BJP chief and Home Minister Amit Shah launched the party's door-to-door campaign to raise support for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act this week, it was expected to be an opportunity for pristine photo ops. However, on the first day of the campaign on January 5, Shah's visit to the Lajpat Nagar locality of Delhi was interrupted by two women shouting slogans from their apartment.
'On December 19, 2019, when Mangaluru police began dispersing protesters agitating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), a video clip of a man clutching his three-year-old daughter and jostling with the police was shared widely on social media. The man was resisting the attempts of the police to drag him and his daughter towards a bus parked nearby. The child is seen screaming while her elder sister and mother are also seen in the video clip appealing to the police to let them go...
'Dhanbad Police of Jharkhand has registered a case against more than 3,000 people on Tuesday under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including the law against sedition (124 A) for their involvement in a protest against the the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens... Notably, no violence and obstruction was reported during the protest. In fact, there is no mention of the same in the complaint. While there is a mention of inflammatory slogans, it does not go into what those slogans were.
'Police on Tuesday registered a case of murder, kidnap, gang rape and related charges against four persons in connection with the death of a 19-year-old Dalit girl whose body was found hanging from a tree in a village four days after she went missing on January 1. The FIR was registered under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and Scheduled Caste & Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act following protest by hundreds of people from the Dalit community in front of Modasa Rural police station since Monday night...
'Police thrashed her almost the whole night and told her she was “a Muslim who eats in India, gives birth in India but praises Pakistan”, social activist Sadaf Jafar said after she was released on bail on Tuesday. “Tum log khate India ki ho, bachche India me paida karte ho aur taarif Pakistan ki karte ho,” the Lucknow-based teacher quoted a policeman as telling her while thrashing and slapping her repeatedly. Sadaf was arrested on December 19 during the protests against the amended citizenship act although she had said she did not take part in any violence.
