by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Mumbai : A Mumbai court on Saturday remanded in police custody till August 31 an accused arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in connection with a terror plot unearthed after seizure of an arms cache, official sources said on Saturday.
The accused, Avinash Pawar, 30, an employee with a prominent government ship-building company, was nabbed from Ghatkopar in north-east Mumbai late on Friday night and was produced before a court on Saturday afternoon.
Pawar has been charged under the Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosives Substances Act, Explosives Act, pertaining to terror, criminal and terror conspiracies.
Seeking his remand, the ATS contended that he was linked with Hindutva organisations since over two years and the police had recovered a computer CPU, mobile phones and other articles from his home.
The investigators want to probe his exact role in the terror plots targeting Mumbai, Pune, Solapur and Satara, which came to light after the interrogation of those arrested following the Palghar swoop on August 10 and whether Pawar got weapons or explosives training.
Pawar’s is the fifth major arrest after the Nala Sopara (Palghar) crackdown leading to the recovery of bombs, explosives, arms and ammunition that were allegedly intended for the terror strikes around important festivals.
Besides Pawar, the ATS has arrested Hindu right-wing activists Vaibhav Raut, Sharad Kalaskar, Sudhnava Gondhalekar and a former Shiv Sena corporator, Shrikant Pangarkar, from Palghar and Pune.
According to the investigators, all of them are linked with prominent Hindutva groups in Maharashtra.
The ATS is exploring a multi-state right-wing terror network, probing their links with right-wing organisations in other states like Uttar Pradesh and Assam, and suspected connections with the sensational killings of several rationalists like Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M. M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Rahul Gandhi has had another of his escape-velocity-of-Jupiter moments.
His reference to the massive gravitational force of the solar system’s largest planet was in the context of “explaining” how much velocity was required by a spacecraft to lift itself from the surface of Jupiter compared to what was required on earth — 60 km/sec against 11 km/sec.
According to him, this was the kind of stupendous “effort” which the Dalits needed to “escape” from their present lowly socio-economic conditions.
Following that foray into space science, the Congress president has now offered an economic “explanation” for the lynchings in India during a speech in Germany by arguing that the unemployment caused by demonetisation, which hit small businesses, is behind the mob violence.
Moreover, the traders and entrepreneurs have also experienced grave difficulties because of the “badly implemented” Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The link, however, between demonetisation and lynching is tenuous. For one thing, the people in general showed exemplary patience in lining up for hours before banks and ATMs after the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were withdrawn from circulation.
For another, the cow-related lynchings of Muslims are widely believed to be the outcome of the atmosphere of hate created by the longstanding anti-minority propaganda of the saffron brotherhood, which has gained traction with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assumption of power.
Demonetisation and GST have nothing to do with the attacks on Muslims for consuming beef or transporting cattle.
After this flawed interpretation of communal incidents, Rahul Gandhi ventured into another dicey area by linking the rise of the Islamic State in West Asia to the US intervention in Iraq and the resultant insurgency caused by the stalling of the “development process”.
If the Congress president’s point is that the absence of adequate economic opportunities for Muslims and Dalits can breed terrorism in India, he can only be said to be grossly exaggerating.
He had earlier acknowledged during a visit to the US that he is not as good a speaker as Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now he has shown that his arguments are not always credible.
Little wonder that the BJP is cock-a-hoop with joy, for Rahul’s speech has reinforced, in its view, his Pappu image which he had been gradually shedding.
In the present highly charged political atmosphere, there is every need for public speakers to weigh their words with care lest the slightest slip enables their opponents to trip them up. No quarter is given at the moment, which is perhaps as it should be, for the age of gentlemanly parry and thrust in politics is over.
For Rahul Gandhi and the national opposition, there are any number of issues on which the BJP can be criticised. These include, among other things, the insecurity of the Muslims as a result of the lynchings and the perception among Dalits of being oppressed, which has been reinforced by the prolonged incarceration of one of their top-ranking leaders, Chandrashekhar Azad “Ravan”.
The fear among the Muslims and also peace-loving Hindus have also been heightened by the possibility of violence caused by various diktats of the Hindutva lobby such as banning animal slaughter on the occasion of Eid or the provocative shows of strength with the brandishing of arms by saffron groups during Navaratri which used to be earlier always observed peacefully.
Apart from these flashpoints, there are also the problems of unemployment and agrarian distress. There is no need, therefore, to range further afield by referring to the Islamic State, especially when the Muslim community in India has always shunned terrorism except for a few who have gone to Syria.
If anything is to be highlighted, it is this spirit of forbearance and tolerance for which the country has always been known rather than the possibility of deprivation leading to the adoption of extreme measures.
India is on the brink of a seminal change. The two opposing political forces facing each other — the BJP on one side and the Congress and the national opposition on the other — represent two virtually diametrically opposite “ideas” of India.
While one is avowedly Hindu-centric, the other emphasises the country’s composite culture.
As one of the leaders of the latter group, Rahul Gandhi has to demonstrate that he and his party are ready to put behind them the ignominious past of being able to win only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and are ready to take on the BJP’s formidable election machinery and its highly articulate orator, Narendra Modi.
To do so, Rahul Gandhi has to choose his words with care whether speaking at home or abroad and concentrate on the BJP’s obvious weak points instead of looking for parallels from world events.
Since the BJP has the advantage of having a domineering “presidential” figure at its helm, it is keen on turning the next year’s general election into a one-to-one contest with Rahul Gandhi in mind since there is no other leader in the non-BJP camp with a pan-India appeal as his not inconsiderable 27 per cent approval rating compared to Modi’s much higher 49 per cent shows.
But to make it a battle of equals, Rahul Gandhi must not neglect his home work.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday alleged that several people from a certain community fled BJP ruled-Jharkhand to Bengal after police firing on them on Eid al-Adha and are being treated at hospitals in her state.
At least a dozen persons, including five policemen, were injured after villagers clashed with police over reports of alleged cow slaughter in Jharkhand’s Pakur district on Wednesday during Eid celebrations. Cow slaughter has been banned in Jharkhand since 2015.
According to police, the clashes took place after a police team arrived at Dangapara village and tried to stop animal slaughter in public.
“Several people belonging to a specific community were shot at in Jharkhand on Eid. They fled to Bengal and were admitted in our hospitals for treatment. Why would the BJP shoot people of a specific community just because they are the ruling party there? Isn’t it inhuman?” Banerjee said at the state Secretariat Nabanna here.
“It is mentioned in the United Nations’ convention that one has to give shelter to the refugees, whether they come from across the state or across international border. So, we are treating them here. But such incidents should not happen,” she said.
Accusing the BJP of trying to regulate people’s food habit, Banerjee dared the party to ban beef in northeastern states.
“Tribals and people from the northeast eat beef. Several Christians in European countries also eat it. I dare the BJP to ban beef in the northeast. Why can’t they do it there?” she said.
“We have no right to dictate what others will eat. Plants also have life. What will happen if someone raises questions about eating vegetables like potato? This is not right,” she claimed.
Banerjee alleged that the BJP was intimidating and buying off news channels while politicians of other parties were being threatened by misusing central agencies.
“We are living in an autocratic situation. The Centre’s ruling party (BJP) is deciding which agency will conduct raids in whose house, which television news channels should be stopped from broadcasting or which reporter should be sacked from a newspaper,” she said.
“The agencies conducted raid at the house of Karnataka Chief Minister Kumaraswamy’s officer yesterday (Thursday). They also raided the office of Delhi Chief Minister Aravind Kejriwal recently. Such things never happened in the country before. But their advantage is that they have bought off the entire national news channels,” she added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
Patna : An FIR was filed by an Urdu daily journalist here after he was threatened with death for a social media post that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would seek votes in the 2019 general elections in the name of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a police official said on Friday.
Seemab Akhtar, who works at ‘Farooqui Tanzeem’ published from Patna, was repeatedly threatened by an unidentified man for his social media post in Hindi: “Dekh lena agle chunao mein Modi Atal ki tasveer lekar roenge, aur bolenge bhai-behno inke naam pe dedo vote unka sapna pura karna hai… (in the next elections, Modi will carry Atal’s picture and shed tears asking for votes to fulfil the former PM’s dream).
According to Akhtar, he received threat calls and was asked not to post anything against the Bharatiya Janata Party on the social media. “I was threatened with death if I continued to write against the BJP.”
Bajpatti police station incharge Kanchan Bhaskar said that an FIR had been filed.
Sanjay Kumar, a Professor at Motihari Central University in east Champaran district, was beaten up by a group of people last Friday for his comments on the social media that appeared to criticise Vajpayee. A seriously injured Kumar was first admitted in Patna hospital, but later shifted to AIIMS in Delhi.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News, Politics
London : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist organization, and said the RSS wanted to “capture” every institution of the country.
The RSS was trying to change the very nature of India, he alleged.
Rahul Gandhi was speaking at an event in London in the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). Gandhi said: “We are fighting an organisation called the RSS, which is trying to change the nature of India. There is no other organisation in India that wants to capture India’s institutions,” he added.
Gandhi said: “What we are dealing with is a completely new idea. It is similar to the idea that exists in the Arab world in the form of Muslim Brotherhood. And the idea is that an ideology should run through every institutions, one idea should crush all other ideas.”
Citing a few examples, he said: “You see the response of four Supreme Court judges, who came out and said ‘we are not being allowed to do our work’. You see Raghuram Rajan (former RBI Governor) and the shock of demonetisation. You can see India’s institions being torn down one by one. That requires a response, a response that has to include all who value what India has achieved,” he said.
Gandhi said the decision on demonetisation bypassed every single institution. “Demonetisation was an attack on small and medium businesses, which is India’s real power,” he said.
“It took a week for economists to figure out what has been done (by demonetization). The RBI was not spoken to, the finance minister didn’t know of it. The cabinet was locked up. The idea came from the RSS directly,” he said.
On lessons learnt from the electoral defeat in 2014, Gandhi said: “That you have to listen, the leadership is about listening, leadership is about empathy. At a party level, I think there was a certain degree of arrogance that had crept into the Congress. So, never forget that the party is actually the people. That’s a lesson for every body in the Congress,” he added.
—IANS
