According to reports coming out of Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, some members of the Naxal group Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) ended up fighting each other over the distribution of their illegally earned money. This fight culminated in the death of 6 TPC members including three commanders.
The incident is believed to have happened on Saturday night at the Hendegir forest surrounding Ranchi and Hazaribagh. After the incident the TPC members cordoned off the area, rendering the police or administration unable to reach the spot immediately.
It is believed that TPC’s Zonal commander Sagar Ganzu, Area commander Manish Mahato and Commander Johnson are those among dead. This attack was reportedly carried out during the core committee meeting of the TPC by some members named Anil Uranv, Chotan and Vinod.
It was also reported that two TCP members were injured in the gun battle. The whole dispute seems to have stemmed from a disagreement over the distribution of Rs 60 lakh, which in most cases is earned via taking ransom, protection money from citizens and businessmen, and other such means. It was also reported that after the incident, about 150 Naxals reached the spot and took away the dead and injured.
On Sunday morning the police arrived at the spot and found articles like blood stained clothes, boxes, a human head among others. They later were reported to have launched a search operation for the Naxals.
This internal feud has now prompted the Naxals and their supporters to go into a rampage mode. It was reported that they have been going around burning JCBs, tractors, generators etc. of construction companies which are carrying out road and bridge construction in the area. They have also beaten up 2 supervisors, 7 laborers, 1 driver and 2 guards in the process.
This isn’t the only time Naxals have ended up killing each other after getting into a personal dispute. In 2014, it was reported that an encounter had taken place between the TPC and the CPI (Maoists), in which at least 15 TPC members had died. A couple of years prior to that, TPC members had reportedly ended up killing 10 Maoists.
In yet another significant step forward in expediting development push in Red corridor, the Union Power Ministry is working out an action plan to electrify the Maoist affected areas of Chhattisgarh.
“A separate plan would be designed to take electricity to the villages affected by Maoist activities in Chhattisgarh,” Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal was quoted as saying. The Central government is also considering a plan to produce electricity through renewable source of energy. It is pertinent to mention that these Maoist affected areas are critical from a communication and security point of view.
It could be mention that the electrification work in the Maoist-affected villages in Sukma, Dantewada and Bastar and in Chhattisgarh are yet to be taken up after seventy years of Independence. The government has reportedly identified 191 villages where electrification work was stranded, thanks to Maoist activities.
Sukma, the hotbed of Maoist activity where the Leftist terrorists have killed 37 CRPF personnel in the last two months, has the highest number of villages where electrification work could not be taken up.
The issue of electrification work in the Maoist-affected pockets across the country was taken up at a high-level review meeting earlier this month, convened by Union Home Ministry, of the states affected by Left-Wing terrorism.
Chief Ministers of six Maoist-infested states attended the meeting presided by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, Director of Intelligence Bureau and paramilitary forces and intelligence agencies, Director General of Police of the Maoist infested states, District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police of 35 worst-hit Maoist-affected districts were among those who attended the meeting.
Opindia.com has earlier reported that the Centre has been focusing on carrying out development activities in the Maoist affected areas. The Union government has decided to spend a whopping Rs 11,000 crore for providing road connectivity to 44 Maoist-affected districts, including Sukma. The project will be implemented under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). Under the project, there will be construction or upgradation of 5,411 kms of roads and 126 bridges. Out of these 44 Maoist affected districts, covered under the scheme, the maximum are located in Chattisgarh.
The Union Cabinet, last year, had approved the centrally-sponsored “Road Connectivity Project for Left Wing Extremism (LWE) Affected Areas” scheme. The Union Home Ministry has given a go ahead for the construction of a 5,412 km-long road connecting 44 Maoist-affected districts.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has launched a probe following evidences emerging about Kashmiri separatist leaders receiving funds from Pakistan-based terror outfits and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The amount received by the Kashmiri separatists from Pakistan in last one year, to keep the turmoil in Kashmir active, could run into several hundred crores. The funds are used for attacking security forces by carrying stone pelting, burning schools and other government buildings.
The Kashmiri separatists, who want to disintegrate Kashmir from the rest of India, claim to represent the “political views” on Kashmir. They depute stone pelters to attack security forces. A stone pelter is generally paid Rs 500 to Rs 1000 every day. This is an open secret that the separatists work in tandem with terrorists operating in the valley. The separatist-stone pelters-terrorists nexus is also getting political patronage. In the run up to Srinagar Lok Sabha bypoll, National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah said those who pelt stones are just fighting for the nation.
Reports quoting officials at the North Block state that the funds from Pakistan, which is directly monitored by Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, comes via gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and other places before it reaches to the separatists through hawala route.
Separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Naeem Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar, Gazi Javed Baba are under NIA radar. The NIA team will question Geelani and other Hurriyat leaders soon. The NIA will check the bank accounts details of the separatist leaders to ascertain the exact amount they received from Pakistan.
The NIA probe came days after an expose done by India Today television channel showed several separatist leaders confessing to receiving funds from across the boarder. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said that the fact that Hurriyat leaders were taking money from Pakistan was already known in “informed circles” and they have to be treated as insurgents.
The separatists are basically superimposing terrorism by radicalising youth with the help of Pakistan. In its annual report for 2016-17, the MHA had stated that the year 2016 saw a change in Pakistan’s tactics following strategy of superimposition of militancy over “civil resistance” through radicalisation by vested interest groups and social media.
Reports suggest that terror masterminds across the border are covertly planning a new terrorist organisation in J&K, with focus on ex-Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa. Recently, Musa had threatened to chop the heads of separatist Hurriyat Conference leaders “if they create hurdles in the path of making Kashmir an Islamic state”.
In the wake of widening conflict between key stakeholders of violence in Kashmir, Pakistan is reportedly trying to rebrand its Kashmir uprising strategy. Reports further suggest that Pakistan is attempting a repeat of its Kashmir strategy of the 1990s, when the only terror organisation —Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) — was eventually replaced with many new outfits by 1993-94.
According to intelligence estimate, 250 terrorists are currently active in Jammu & Kashmir. South Kashmir is turning into the hotbed of home-grown militancy with around 100 terrorists reportedly operate in the area. Recently, the Army launched ‘Operation Clean Up’ to flush south Kashmir of terrorists.
The horrific gangrape and murder of a young woman in Rohtak raises, yet again, chilling questions about the security of women in our country. It goes without saying that the BJP government of Haryana has a lot to answer for. And comparisons with the case of ‘Nirbhaya’ are quite justified. Rape cannot be a partisan issue.
Both the accused were arrested and I hope they get the punishment Nirbhaya’s rapists and murderers got. Further investigations reveal that the main accused was harassing the victim for long for marrying him, which further underscores the fact that the signs of such behaviour have to be nipped in bud.
I wish these issues were debated in the media and people sensitized about it. But as always, the media had its own agenda to push.
And, like peas in a pod, elite media organizations all kept bringing up the fact that the victim was a Dalit. Here’s The Hindu.
And of course, the Hindustan Times. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
We have seen in the recent past how this kind of “monkey-see-monkey-do” style chain reporting has led to embarrassing situations for big name media houses. But there is absolutely nothing funny about this story. It’s a brutal gangrape and murder. And irresponsible reporting that drags caste into the crime is no joke at all.
So, is there a caste angle?
The Hindustan Times lets slip this fact later in their article.
Pathetic.
If at all any caste angle has to come into play in this incident, it should have been about administration’s approach if it was found lackadaisical. But our liberals are too lazy in following their own agenda. They just inserted ‘Dalit’ the moment they found an ‘opportunity’.
The perpetrator is also a Dalit, so what purpose the insertion of caste in the news reports was achieving? Subconsciously, it was feeding into the mind of the readers that the perpetrator was from higher caste.
For god’s sake, you don’t need to invent things about atrocities on Dalits when there are real incidents of the same. Have the journalists not heard about the boy who cried wolf? This lesson was not part of Maths or Science, so the journalists shouldn’t have missed it. Yet, they indulge in such behaviour.
However, the real disturbing question here is whether liberal media outlets are consciously and deliberately using what should now be called the “Pakistan line” on India’s Dalits.
Last year, the Pakistani senate had created a policy document with guidelines on how to deal with India. One of the most disturbing recommendations made in the document, which was analysed here, ran as follows:
“India’s own fault-lines in their alienated Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits as well as the growing Maoist insurgency be highlighted.”
While liberals have been practising this approach before on their own (please see here for a particularly egregious example of media inventing a caste atrocity), the appearance of such a policy in an official Pakistani government document is frightening.
Now take a look at how Shivam Vij, Deputy Editor of The Huffington Post India, codifies the new liberal agenda in his Facebook post.
Here is an observation. Try going over this passage again, replacing “left-liberals” with “Pakistan”. You will see that it reads eerily similar to the policy document from the Senate of Pakistan.
Possibly enthused by the response to his Facebook post, Shivam Vij went on to describe the new agenda in greater detail. This he did in an article on the Huffington Post, which is even more disturbing in its content.
Just so you know, this article above was written in the context of the fracas involving Sonu Nigam and a thuggish fatwa wielding Maulvi from Kolkata. It should have been a simple matter for “liberals” to support Sonu Nigam’s right to free speech. But for Indian liberals, nothing is about principles any more. It is all about a battle between left and right. They lost on the tiny issue of Sonu Nigam’s tweets. For revenge, they want to burn this nation again in the fires of Mandal!
This Huffington Post article (policy document?) was received very warmly by other liberals and Shekhar Gupta himself shared it for wider dissemination. Here is a report on the same.
Now please think about it carefully. Who gains from burning India in the fires of Mandal? Who would have such a diabolical agenda?
It is clear that there has been a shift in the way liberals think about their political adversaries. The new rhetoric suggests they think that they are at war with us. Much like Pakistan.
Has there been a meeting of minds at some level between these two forces based on the twin principles of “Enemy of enemy is my friend” and “Everything is fair in love and war“?
We don’t know. But it is important to find out.
I have heard these words before. “Everything is fair in love and war“. Little surprise that Pakistan would openly embrace this principle. Now it seems that liberals are going down the same path. But is everything really fair in love and war?
The other day, I happened to catch the movie Jolly LLB 2. One of the most powerful punchlines from that movie translates as follows: “If everything is fair in love and war, then those who chop off the heads of jawans on the border are also in the right and so are those who throw acid bulbs on the faces of women for turning them down.”
This Rohtak gangrape story was also about one such “lover”. It was gruesome. That “lover” needs to go to the gallows.
But what about the war that the “liberal” media has declared against their imagined enemies? Will they continue to use the “Pakistan doctrine”? Can our journalists introspect a little?
Prohibition in Bihar, which was enacted from 1st April 2016, is turning out to be a completely different animal. According to reports, about 35,000 people were arrested in Bihar till 6th February this year after being suspected of possessing alcohol and the Bihar administration was planning on expanding prisons to accommodate the new occupants.
Under Bihar’s prohibition law, there are draconian provisions of jail sentences of as much as 5 to 10 years for someone who is caught possessing alcohol, whether or not he intends to sell it. There are even provisions for punishment being meted out to a group (such as a family or a locality) for one man’s crime. With the main opposition BJP also supporting it and the mainstream media generally being soft on Nitish, the laws have not attracted any substantial protest.
The alcohol ban in Bihar is now in the news again with reports claiming that a CRPF jawan named Soham Singh lost his life in judicial custody after he was caught possessing alcohol. What added a twist to the story was that the family members of the CRPF jawan reportedly came out with a doctor’s certificate, which had an alcohol prescription for the jawan as he had served in high altitude conditions.
The incident pertains to Vaishali in Bihar where the jawan was reportedly caught by the excise department on the evening of 17th May. The jawan then was reportedly in a drunken state and 2 liters of country liquor was also seized from him.
He was then produced before a court on Thursday where he reportedly started to bleed from his nose. Then he was admitted in a hospital where he lost his life at around 11:15 PM.
Family members, according to media reports, have filed a case of torture against the excise department officials. They are claiming that they had shown the alcohol prescription to the officials but they refused to accept it. They further alleged that the officials had also demanded money from him.
It has been reported that the jawan was posted in Ladakh but was back in Bihar for a holiday. But the acting SP of Vaishali has claimed that Soham was actually a deserter against whom a case regarding the same was registered at Chakradharpur police station in Jharkhand on November 26, 2016.
Now a medical board has been constituted to probe the matter and will carry out a postmortem of the body to ascertain the truth.
Television journalist Sagarika Ghose is known to write inane things that has often exposed her hollow understanding of various issues. But of late, she has picked up the distinction of spreading lies and propaganda on Twitter.
In the past three weeks, she has been involved in at least three incidents (first, second, third) where she played a part in spreading lies and propaganda. These are only those ones that OpIndia.com could compile reports about, else there are definitely more instances of her erring on this count in the same period and beyond.
Continuing her current form, last night, Sagarika Ghose tweeted claiming that Muslims were being killed all over India:
The controversial tweet, now deleted by Sagarika.
She didn’t give any reference to any incident or data to back her sensational claims, which incite communal passions. She was possibly referring to (and exaggerating beyond sensible limits) the incident in Jharkhand, which was twisted as anti-Muslim story by HuffPost.
The incendiary tweet by Sagarika Ghose shocked many people on social media who asked her to not make any baseless claims. When it elicited no response from Ghose, many users tagged the Home Ministry and the police departments asking them to take action against her:
It should be noted that the Indian laws have provisions for punishing speech that can create enmities between communities or disturb law and order, especially if the speech is not based on facts. Sagarika’s tweet was deemed as provocation that could have led people to take law into their own hands.
Not just ordinary social media users, even senior activist and author Madhu Kishwar announced that she would file a police complaint against Sagarika Ghose for her incendiary tweet:
If Government doesn’t take action, I will certainly file a police complaint against Sagarika Ghose https://t.co/dxjryvn5Ge
— MadhuPurnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) May 20, 2017
Following such tweets warning her of police complaint, Sagarika deleted her tweet and issued an apology:
Have deleted my tweet on attacks on Muslims & apologise if sentiments were hurt. However I remain a vigilant observer of communal violence..
The fact that Sagarika never cared to apologize or clarify on earlier occasions but did so on this occasion makes one believe that it was the fear of a legal action against her that led her to delete the tweet and offer apology. Perhaps she realized that she had crossed a line and this time she may have to face consequences as people were willing to take legal resources
However, her sham apology took a moral high ground and hinted that she will continue to tweet irresponsibly. Perhaps she will continue to, unless people learn not to ignore and seek legal recourse even in the future.
Lt Ummer Fayaz, who was a newly commissioned officer in the Indian Army, was abducted by terrorists on 9th May while he was attending a cousin’s wedding in South Kashmir’s Shopian district and his bullet ridden body was found the next day.
He was unarmed at the time of the abduction. His cold blooded murder shocked the nation and it has now prompted BJP Delhi’s spokesperson Tajinder Bagga to put in a request so as to etch him (Lt Fayaz) into public memory.
As announced by him on Twitter, he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi’s MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Naresh Kumar the Chairman of New Delhi Municipal Corporation, requesting them to rename ”Babar Road” in New Delhi as ”Lt Ummer Fayaz road”.
One such letter sent by Tajinder Bagga
In the letters dated 19th May, Bagga pointed out how the entire nation was mourning the death of Lt Fayaz. The Delhi BJP spokesperson further stated how, as a true patriot Lt Fayaz took a firm decision to join the army in order to fight the menace of terrorism demonstrating extraordinary valor and courage.
Bagga justified his request by claiming that renaming the road would keep Lt Fayaz’s story alive and would serve as a reminder to all countrymen about how a young man selflessly sacrificed his life for the nation.
Renaming of roads is not new. NDMC had renamed Aurangzeb Road, Race Course Road and Dalhousie Road as APJ Abdul Kalam Azad Road, Lok Kalyan Marg and Dara Shikoh road respectively in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
According to reports, a senior official of the NDMC has placed it on record that a decision would be taken as per the given procedure once the letter is received.
On Friday, the India website of Huffington Post (now re-branded as HuffPost) came out with an article which was headlined “Three Muslim Cattle Traders Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children”:
The headline clearly tried to insinuate as if the religious and professional identity of the lynched men had some connection with the unfortunate incident where a frenzied mob became bloodthirsty.
What drilled home home the point further is that Indian media recently has been focusing a lot on alleged incidents of cow vigilantism. The article mentioned incidents of cow vigilantism in the body, even though the incident had got nothing to do with it even by the article’s own account.
This headline was enough for the rogue elements in the mainstream media, who have been regularly found guilty of spreading lies, to indulge in further fear mongering:
Mobs are hunting and killing Muslims across India and THERE IS NO JUSTICE FOR THE KILLERS! WAKE UP, GOI!
Child trafficking rumours, cattle smuggling accusations are excuses. Let’s face it, they were lynched for being Muslims. #NewIndiahttps://t.co/7ThlbqXcSH
Now that the propagandists have spoken, let facts speak up.
According to reports, two such incidents of lynching were reported on Thursday. In the 1st incident on Thursday morning, the three Muslims plus another of their associate named Sheikh Halim whose body was found on Friday were killed by mobs in tribal dominated area of Rajnagar near Jamshedpur after rumours of child lifting gangs spread in the area.
The second incident was reported from a nearby area of Bagpeda where Gautam Verma, his brother Vikash Verma and friend Gangesh Gupta were beaten to death by a similar mob after reportedly being accused of being child lifters as they were returning back to Jamshedpur in their car. Reportedly there were five persons in the car including their elder brother Uttam Verma who suffered serious injuries and their 80 year old grandmother who had to watch the whole ordeal.
Uttam while speaking to media persons in a Jamshedpur hospital claimed that they were just in the area to identify spots to put up hoardings of the Swaccha Bharat Abhiyan as they had started a toilet installation business. Uttam also claimed that the police had reached the spot as the mob was getting aggressive but did nothing to stop the attack.
So going by the reports there was no such ‘communal’ flareup which had prompted the attack. Even the police denied any religious angle in the lynching. Both Hindus and Muslims had died in such incidents, but HuffPost decided to ignore the death of Hindus and focus only on the Muslims.
This fact later (this morning) acknowledged by HuffPost which proceeded to change the heading to:
6 People Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children
They also issued a clarification that:
An earlier version of this story, which said three Muslim cattle traders were lynched by a mob, has been updated with the latest details.
But the damage was already done before the article was edited. It was already spread on the social media as another cow related attack on Muslims in a BJP ruled state.
There’s a concerted effort to build fear pyschosis by pushing a narrative of uncontrolled violence & hint of worse to come pic.twitter.com/DjerDEbXWq
What is extremely unfortunate is the fact that the very serious matter of a frenzied mob going on a murder spree based only on rumours was provided a communal colour by a section of the media without addressing the grave issues at hand.
This isn’t the first time such lynching incidents have come to light from that area. Reportedly two men were killed under similar circumstances on May 12th and 13th in the nearby Jadugora and Asanboni areas, again suspected of indulged in child trafficking.
Jharkhand has since long been reported to have been one of the biggest victims of human trafficking. According to this report from 2015, around 4000 children have gone missing from the state in the last 10 years and 1000 of them hadn’t been traced until then. It was also reported that a massive 42,000 girls have also been trafficked from Jharkhand to various metropolitan cities in India.
With two grave issues at hand – human trafficking and mob justice – all some journalists could focus was on religion. With such communal spins becoming more routine, one wonders if there is an organised attempt to incite communal riots in the country for petty political and ideological gains.
This morning, the following tweet by an assumed journalist of the New York Times, who is the newspaper’s South Asia bureau chief based out of New Delhi, caught my attention:
Update: The above tweet, originally posted in the morning of Saturday, was deleted a few hours after this article was published.
She terms a correction in the textbooks as “disturbing whitewashing”. And calls Gujarat riots of 2002 the worst communal riots since Independence.
Perhaps the foreign correspondent, who most certainly is fed information about India only by the ‘liberal’ Lutyens journalists of India, is not aware of the Godhra carnage of Feb 27, 2002. She could be reminded of this if she talked to the unwashed masses, but that will be so uncool. But let me remind her that Godhra is part of Gujarat and that Gujarat riots started on an anti-Hindu note, so that change in textbooks is correction not whitewashing.
If she really wishes to educate herself about what constitutes a “disturbing whitewashing”, she should read about victims of Godhra carnage. But as we will discover later, she does not need to, for she is part of this disturbing whitewashing.
In case you too have forgotten, 59 Hindus were burnt alive in a single incident of Gujarat 2002 riots. You know, those stepchildren of Indian history. Even if you are guilty of the crime of being aware of this gory anti-Hindu massacre, perhaps you are not aware of how the ‘disturbing whitewashing’ of this crime happened.
Do you remember how the left-liberal complex tried to implicate the victims of the Godhra carnage in their own murders?
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This was published in the Outlook. It’s supposed to be a “Report to the Nation” by an “independent fact finding mission”.
As many as 59 human beings perished in the fire on that fateful day in February 2002. The left-liberal complex did not hesitate to spread rumors about these unfortunate victims. Some said they didn’t pay for tea, some said they had pulled a Muslim man’s beard, some even spread rumors that they were assaulting women.
59 human beings are burned to death and the liberal “fact finding mission” reports that some of them may have unpaid debts of Rs 5. Just FIVE rupees.
In the eyes of a liberal, that’s how cheap human life, nay, a Hindu’s life can get. You must be familiar with the name of a JNU Professor called Kamal Mitra Chenoy; he was one of the members of this “independent fact finding mission”, who now appears in TV debates and newspaper columns giving lectures on equality and justice.
Some of the lies spread about the victims were even more fantastic in nature, appearing to defy even physical notions of time and space. Here is Arundhati Roy explaining that the kar sevaks in 2002 were on their way back from demolishing the Babri Masjid in 1992!
Sick.
Anything… absolutely anything to tarnish the unfortunate victims.
No liberal went to interview the family members of the Godhra victims. No liberal “fact finding mission” wanted to know who these people were and what were their hopes, dreams and aspirations that were burned inside the S-6 coach on Feb 27, 2002. Did anyone want to tell their stories and know them as fathers, daughters, mothers and husbands?
You know Bilkis Bano, you know Zakia Jafri, you know Zahira Shaikh, you know Qutubuddin Ansari, you know many more such names from Gujarat 2002. Do you know the name of a single person who was burnt alive in Godhra? They are forgotten. They are reduced to numbers. Heck, they are reduced to criminals who deserved this punishment.
The dignity and courtesy that is denied to the victims of Godhra is ‘liberally’ extended to Kashmiri stone pelters shot by security forces, Lashkar operatives like Ishrat Jahan, dreaded criminals like Sohrabuddin, and shockingly even Osama bin Laden!
The inconvenient victims of Godhra were supposed to be lumped into a corner and forgotten. Almost literally, because there was even a lot of liberal heartburn over an allegation that some of the dead bodies had been displayed in Ahmedabad. I don’t know if this actually happened, but so what if it did? Why is it so important to liberals that these victims be denied their one last chance to rock the conscience of the nation? Will the liberals who later took selfies outside Akhlaque’s house in Dadri let me know?
Then 2004 happened. Under UPA rule began one of the most shameful chapters of Indian history, where the government got actively involved in the effort to deny justice to the victims of Godhra. Then Railway minister Lalu Yadav created a special “U C Banerjee Committee” to “investigate” the Godhra incident, the result of which was a foregone conclusion.
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The last bits of humanity and decency were shredded when Lalu Yadav went ahead and waved copies of the Banerjee panel report at his election rallies in Bihar:
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There was no uproar in the liberal press at this attempt to deny justice to Godhra carnage victims. No intellectual returned any award. Perhaps they were waiting for BJP to come back to power to show their spirit of “dissent”. No eminent persons signed any open letters. Perhaps they were saving their energies to lobby for leniency to Yakub Memon years later.
And I can say with confidence that the U C Banerjee panel was malafide. I have the words of the Honorable Gujarat High Court to back me up. Yes, not only did the High Court find the Banerjee panel to be illegal, but it also said this:
Don’t forget to read the last sentence. The UPA did not withdraw in shame when their intentions were exposed by the High Court. The UPA was so determined to deny justice to Godhra victims that it actually went ahead and challenged the decision before a division bench. And so deeply compromised was our liberal intelligentsia that we did not hear a single voice of “dissent”.
In case you are wondering, this shameful appeal was finally withdrawn in Aug 2014 by the Central Government after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India.
But it never really mattered that the Banerjee panel was found to be illegal and malafide. The lie had been seeded and it was now left to the liberal establishment (both in India and abroad) to make sure that the lie lives on forever. Here’s the BBC:
Here is the New York Times in 2016, incidentally written by the same bigoted ‘journalist’ whose tweet I quoted in the beginning of the article, as many as 11 years after the UPA seeded the lie:
Of course, it will never matter that the courts actually convicted the accused in the Godhra carnage:
Didn’t you hear Arundhati Roy in the video above saying “the train caught fire; nobody knows who set fire to the train?”
That’s the way it is always going to be. This is what came out in the Hindustan Times on February 27, 2017.
Yes, they’ll go soft even on Osama bin Laden on his “death anniversary” and tell stories of him as a father and husband. But the Godhra carnage victims deserve nothing. They are to be forgotten at best and condemned at worst. Here is what they will get, as the HT article goes on:
Yes, the liberal complex has gotten more and more diabolical with its theories over the last 15 years.
Back in 2002, the theory was that the kar sevaks were responsible for their own deaths because they provoked Muslim vendors at the railway station. But this explanation left the liberal argument vulnerable. It is difficult to sustain the case that 59 people deserve to be burned to death because someone didn’t pay Rs 5.
So, somewhere between 2005 and 2010, this theory was discarded in favor of the accidental fire theory patronized by the UPA government. The advantage of this theory is that there is no moral responsibility to fight for justice to the Godhra victims.
But the liberal establishment didn’t stop there. As you can see, the new theory in town is that the carnage was a “a classic agent provocateur operation that went out of hand”. This time the liberals not only get to deny justice to the Godhra victims, they actually get to put the blame on a whole new bunch of innocents from the political parivar they despise.
It’s called having your cake and eating it too.
We know what happens next. Hopefully, at least some of the death sentences of the Godhra accused will be confirmed by the Supreme Court at some point in the future. The mercy petitions will then come up before the Union Cabinet. That’s when the liberal ecosystem will reactivate and tell us touching stories of the lives of these convicts as devoted sons of headmasters, fathers and husbands. Should any of these death sentences be carried out, some liberal newspaper will come up with a headline like “And they hanged…”.
As you can see, there is more humiliation in store for the Godhra victims. I am reconciled to this truth.
I have only one little appeal for our ecosystem of eminent liberals : now that you have decided that the fire was an accident or a conspiracy by the right wing, you no longer need to create a justification for the actions of any Muslim mob. That means you no longer need to smear the long dead victims with the accusation that they didn’t pay Rs 5, which made them responsible for their own deaths. So, why don’t you let this one rumor go? See if you can find it in your hearts…
But perhaps my appeal will have no effect. Because our “liberals” have graduated from “A good Hindu is a dead Hindu” to “Even a dead Hindu is not a good Hindu”.
The Hague based International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Pakistan to stay the execution of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav until further notice. Jadhav was given death sentence by a Pakistani military court on concocted charges of espionage and sabotage activities in Karachi.
India is celebrating the ICJ order calling it a “big diplomatic victory”. Undoubtedly it is. But there is nothing much to celebrate about the order.
As things stand now, the ICJ has not set aside Kulbhushan Jadhav sentencing all together and he is still in Pakistan’s custody. But simply speaking, the ICJ order is an essential first step forward in the path of justice for Kulbhushan. India can only breathe a sigh of relief for now. But there is a long way to go and a long legal process to come through.
Obviously, the ICJ order is a firm vindication of India’s stand. At the same time it has come as a serious indictment of Pakistan’s judicial system.
India sought consular access for Jadhav 15 times, but Pakistan has turned down India’s request every time. It could be noted that Pakistan had kidnapped the 46-year-old former Indian Navy officer from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the service. But Pakistan is blatantly lying claiming that it had arrested Jadhav from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. India was not informed of Jadhav’s detention until long after his arrest.
Now Pakistan says that the ICJ order has not changed the status of Kulbhushan Jadhav case in any manner. Pakistan foreign office has made it clear that it can’t accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction in matters of “internal security matter”.
“If any country says I don’t accept the ruling… it is the country putting itself in a position that it is guilty of such a heinous crime violating all canons of international norms,” Defence Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters in Srinagar.
If Pakistan does not abide by the ICJ order, it would be in clear violation of Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It is pertinent to mention that both India and Pakistan are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna convention on consular relations (VCCR). The protocol states that any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ.
Even as legal experts suggest that the final order of the ICJ will ultimately go in favour of India, the ICJ has its own limitations and it does not have the statutory power to execute an order.
It could be noted that it was the US which ignored the ICJ orders in two precedents with Germany and Paraguay. But Pakistan is not the US. But as a rogue state, it may have the audacity to ignore the ICJ.
“The ICJ does not have any agency to enforce its order, It can’t compel,” said senior Supreme Court lawyer and noted legal luminary KTS Tulsi while speaking to Opindia.com.
If Pakistan defies the ICJ order, then what options India has. We can move to the United Nations Security Council to seek justice for Kulbhushan. The Article 94 of the Chapter XIV of the International Court of Justice reads, “Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court, the other party may have recourse to the Security Council, which may, if it deems necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgment.”
But Tulsi said, “The ICJ can refer the matter to the Security Council if the order is defied. Now, the question is how to enforce the order? There are only two means of enforcement by the ICJ to the Security Council. In Security Council, they can either impose economic sanctions or impose military sanctions. But that decision can also be vetoed by one of superpowers who have the veto power. If China chooses to veto, it would a fait accompli.”
So, in order to set free Kulbhushan, India has to handle the matter very diplomatically at every step.
