'Seven persons were today arrested on sedition charges for allegedly raising pro-Pakistan, pro- freedom slogans in Kishtwar area of Jammu and Kashmir, a senior police officer said. "Seven people have been arrested and booked under sedition charges for raising pro-freedom, pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans soon after the commencement of the Eid prayers today," the officer told PTI...'
'How Hindutva Supremacists are rushing to give themselves Clean Chit in terror related cases.
Introduction
Whether investigations into Hindutva terror related cases are changing course? A series of apparently unconnected developments definitely strengthen the belief.
'In a major blow to the National Investigating Agency's Ajmer blast trial, 13 crucial prosecution witnesses have now turned hostile and gone back on their testimonies. In October 2007, a bomb blast in the holy Ajmer Dargah killed three and wounded more than a dozen. The Rajasthan Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) and later the NIA chargesheeted 12 people who were present and former members of the RSS, or belonging to fringe groups.
'In an exclusive first-person account to The Hindu, Christine Mehta recalls how she was forced to leave India ostensibly for her scathing report on the draconian AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir... On Friday, November 8, 2014, as I was leaving my house in Bengaluru with a friend, three police officers approached us. I knew why they were there. The night before, I had received a mysterious phone call from the Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Bengaluru. The woman official on the phone told me to report to the FRRO the next day, a holiday. I sought reasons.
'A detailed fact-finding report on the effects of Armed Forces Special Powers Act portrays a disturbing picture of Indian Army. In a report that called for an end to the use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir, human rights group Amnesty International has released a detailed report on the basis of 58 case studies of alleged excesses by the armed forces in the State.
'...Javaid Ahmad Magray is just one of hundreds of victims of alleged human rights violations committed by security force personnel that Amnesty International and other organizations, both local and international, have documented in the course of the past 25 years in Jammu and Kashmir. The words of his father reflect the frustration and despair felt by many families across the state at the refusal of the Indian authorities to hold to account those responsible for serious human rights violations.
'An Ahmedabad court today held that though Narendra Modi had committed an offence under RP Act by not disclosing his marital status while contesting Assembly polls in 2012, a petition seeking registration of an FIR against him cannot be entertained due to a time-bar prescribed for such cases.
"Are the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at loggerheads? If certain reports in the media are to be believed, Modi has been trying to contain the RSS' influence and rein in the hate-mongers in the larger Sangh Parivar. The truth isn't so simple. The RSS and BJP are complementary to each other. The few disagreements that the media has been citing, are completely superficial.
"Rohini Salian, Special Public Prosecutor in the case related to the Malegaon 2008 blasts in which four Muslims were killed during Ramzan and in which Hindu extremists are the accused, has said that over the past one year, since “the new government came to power,” she has been under pressure from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to go “soft” in the case... Soon after the NDA government came to power last year, she said, she got a call from one of the officers of the NIA — the agency investigating all the alleged Hindu extremist cases — asking to come over to speak with her.
"A recent study showed how home owners in NCR were discriminating against Dalits and Muslims. In an interview to Amulya Gopalakrishnan, Tarunabh Khaitan, associate professor in law at the University of Oxford and the author of A Theory of Discrimination Law, talks about the implications of segregation... Consider a hypothetical case: a landlady refuses to let her house to me because my zodiac sign is Capricorn. Her eccentric refusal does not affect my opportunities; none of us can claim to have a moral right to live in any particular house.
