INDIA SUMMARIZED

Naroda Patiya: Maya Kodnani jailed for 28 years, Babu Bajrangi gets death TODAY,  August 31,Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Maya Kodnani was sent to jail for 28 years, while Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi was sentenced to death for their role in the Naroda Patiya massacre that took place in 2002. Kodnani will serve first ten years in jail for her conviction under Indian Penal Code Section 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), after which her life imprisonment under Section 302 (murder) and other sections, which is for 18 years, will begin. While 31 convicts in the 2002 post-Godhra case have been awarded a life term, one of the absconding rioters will be sentenced on a later date. Special Court Judge Jyotsana Yagnik had earlier convicted them on charges of conspiracy and murder in the case, even as 29 other accused were acquitted. Kodnani, who is the first BJP leader to be convicted in a riot case, was the sitting MLA when the mas...

It is a matter of great regret and shame that HJS website has been banned by the UPA ! - Mr. Narain Kataria, President, Indian American Intellectuals Forum, USA It is a matter of great regret and shame that www.Hindujagruti.org website has been banned by the UPA Government headed by Sonia Gandhi. It is an atrocious and irreprehensible act which we denounce with all the might at our disposal. This action, we believe, is actuated by the malicious design to demoralize Hindus and terrorize them into submission. It is a flagrant violation of the fundamental right of freedom of speech guaranteed under India’s Constitution. It is a well known fact that Muslims create disharmony and mayhem not only in India but also all over the world. In the last 15 days, Hundred of Hindu houses were burnt by Bangladeshi Muslims in collusion with Assami Muslims in Assam. In Mumbai, 1000 Muslims, armed with petrol cans and plastic bottles, hockey sticks, iron rods and bamboo sticks, vandalized The War M...

A Delhi court today issued summons against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray for his alleged hate speeches against north Indians and instigating violence against them on various occasions. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Manish Yaduvanshi directed that summons be issued against Raj Thackeray for September 28. The court’s order came on three different cases lodged against Thackeray, one of which pertains to attack by MNS supporters on north Indian students, including students from Bihar, appearing for the railways’ entrance exam in Mumbai on October 20, 2008. The case was registered on a complaint by an advocate Murad Ali. It was pending in the court of CJM in Betiya in Bihar before being transferred here. Two other cases lodged by one Sudhakar Ojha relates to MNS chief’s alleged remarks against “Chhath Pooja,’ a Hindu festival celebrated especially in Bihar, calling it a “drama” and “show of numerical strength”. The three were among the seve...

CRIMES against women in Pakistan increased by 7% this year as 57 districts reported 982 cases in May 2012 compared to 922 in the same month last year. However, over the last two years, a 31% increase was reported in such crimes with 746 FIRs lodged in May 2010, says a Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) report. The report, released on August30, said it could not be ascertained if this increase was due to occurrence of more crimes or an enhanced reportage in certain parts of the country, or both. The report is based on data collected from District Police Offices (DPOs) in May 2010, 2011 and 2012 on FIRs registered for six categories of crimes against women in 57 districts. The crime categories include honour killing, forced marriage, offences relating to marriage, rape, attack on modesty and insult of modesty through word, gesture or act. Twenty one of the monitored districts were in Punjab, 16 in Sindh, 15 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), four in Balochistan and one in Is...

What can be said of civil society in Gujarat when its minister for women development and child welfare is convicted of rioting against women and children? On August29, for the first time in India, a sitting MLA was found to have instigated violence in the worst of the 2002 incidents. Twelve people testified to minister Maya Kodnani assisting and egging on the rioters in the Ahmedabad suburb of Naroda Patiya. A total of 96 Muslims were killed that night, 34 children including a newborn, 32 women and 30 men. Kodnani supplied the killers with kerosene and swords, according to testimony. Judge Jyotsna Yagnik found 32 people guilty for the massacre. The fearsome Babu “Bajrangi”, the man accused of forcibly undoing marriages of Hindu girls to Muslim boys, has also been convicted in the case. Kodnani, a Sindhi whose family migrated at Partition, was an MLA when she participated in the violence. Despite the grave allegations against her, Kodnani was made minister by Modi later. When ...

Now going to the press, BJP has claimed that Police as well as Maharashtra Home Department had "credible" information about possibility of violence at Azad Maidan during the August 11 protest organised by minority community groups, but they failed to take any step to prevent it, Opposition BJP claimed on August 25,2012. Where has Narendra Modi’s criticisers gone? 'A woman residing in suburban Bandra had intimated Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 8 and 9) on August 9 through a letter that she has got credible information that some anti-social elements would indulge in violence (during the protest),' state BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari said at a press conference. He showed the letter, written in Marathi, to the media persons, but declined to reveal the identity of the woman. The letter says members from the Salim Lightwala gang were planning large-scale violence at the venue, to drive home the point that the riots -- in which two persons were killed and...

While discussing the death penalty for Ajmal Kasab on Wednesday, prime time TV discussants, including the anchors, kept repeating one name: Afzal Guru, the prime accused in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack case. The context was predictable and popular: will Kasab go in for presidential pardon and manage to stay alive as Afzal Guru has done. Or in other words, if Kasab too will be able to “manipulate” our glorious judicial system as Afzal Guru has allegedly done. They spoke about Afzal Guru as if he was the only person, who should have been hanged to death, but for the indecision of the President of India. Perhaps inadvertently, most of them hid the fact that Afzal Guru was one of the many others who have not been executed because the President hasn’t decided on their mercy petitions. According to an ibnlive report, there are 52 prisoners who are waiting for a decision on their mercy petitions to the government of India. Seven of them have escaped death for 12 years while six...

A gynecologist who was always more keen on politics than on her medical practice, Maya Kodnani’s fall from being a poster girl for the RSS in the state after being implicated in the 2002 Naroda Patiya massacre has been rapid and finally ended in tears on Wednesday. On August 29,2012, Kodnani achieved infamy when she became the first woman and sitting MLA to be convicted for her involvement in the 2002 massacre in the Naroda Patiya area of Ahmedabad in which 97 people were killed in broad daylight. An Indian Express report speaks about how Kodnani, the daughter of a staunch RSS worker who immigrated to India due to Partition, studied in a Gujarati medium school and joined the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti before entering Baroda Medical College where she became a doctor. Kodnani had set up a maternity hospital in Kubernagar in Naroda, but then quickly began her political ascent with victories in the Ahmedabad civic elections in 1995 and by 1998 she had become an MLA. In 200...

THE sheer arrogance, insolence and impertinence shown by a section of Muslims in Mumbai in the matter of the sponsored riots is nothing short of an insult to secular India, and not only does it need to be strongly condemned, but firm action needs to be taken against those who organised the disturbances. We are noticing that certain Muslim groups can get away literally with murder and arson. The riots in Mumbai were obviously preplanned. So were the SMSs threatening citizens from the North-East settled in places like Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore with dangers to their lives. The agitation in Mumbai was reportedly organised by an organisation called the Raza Academy with the support of the All India Sunni Jamiat-ul-Ulema and the All India Jamat Raza-e-Mustafa and others of their ilk. Their complaint is that violence against Muslims has been poorly covered by the media. Two points need to be made in this connection. One is that the Central Government is stationed in Delhi and no...

In this post-Anna, post-Baba Ramdev phase, it seems there is no limit to the brazenness of our netas and babus when it comes to corruption. But then, salt cannot be made more salty. There is an advertisement, often shown on TV, in which a young boy exhorts his father to be honest and pay taxes, since the money will help the government build infrastructure, etc. Unfortunately, there is no ad showing the daughter of a government official or politician encouraging him to avoid taking bribes. Everyday corruption is breaking the backs of the aam aadmi, including the much-reviled middle class. The index of middle-class misery can be measured by adding up the official tax rate, the inflation rate and the corruption rate. In this article, we attempt to estimate the real cost of bribes and corruption using various calculation methods and assumptions. And here’s the big number: the informal “taxes” we pay in the form of bribes probably add up to Rs 4,00,000 crore annually – nearly 6 p...

As allegations go, it had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Towards the end of her press conference along with BJP leader Arun Jaitley late on Monday on the scandal involving the UPA government’s allocation or coal blocks, Sushma Swaraj deployed her words for maximum effect. “Mota maal mila hai Congress ko” (The Congress has received hefty payoffs), she said. Her choice of words, she reiterated, was deliberate, and she was making the allegation with all the responsibility she could summon up as the Leader of the Opposition. And in fact, anodyne English translations of that dehati phrase – “mota maal” - don’t quite capture the spirit of what she wanted to convey about the magnitude of the scandal, she added. Embarrassing details that are now tumbling out of how coal blocks were allotted establish the validity of Sushma Swaraj’s allegation. Coal blocks were allotted, on the basis of falsified documents, to – in some cases – manufacturers of CDs and, bizarrely, gutka. Of the142 al...

With over 200 convictions by now, including many life sentences, the latest verdict of a Gujarat court in the Naroda Patiya massacre is proof that justice is being delivered in the Gujarat 2002 communal riots. No communal conflagration anywhere and at any time in India has ever seen so many convictions and decisive verdicts. But even with mass convictions for mass murder, the only question the media will be asking is: what about HIM? In media trials outside Gujarat, justice for Gujarat’s victims has come to mean the prosecution of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. After the Naroda Patiya verdict, and the Supreme Court’s observations yesterday on Modi’s colleague Amit Shah, Modi’s detractors must be smelling blood. Naroda Patiya saw the largest single case of mass murder – 97 people were killed by Hindu mobs – and the 32 convictions announced today include, for the first time, a former BJP minister and MLA, Maya Kodnani. Modi can’t but be affected by this conviction of a former ...

NEW DELHI: Eighteen months after the Mumbai High Court handed out the death sentence to 24-year-old Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab for the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai, the Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the sentence. Kasab is the only survivor among the 10 terrorists who carried out the bloody 26/11 attacks in Mumbai that left 166 dead and hundreds other traumatised. The Mumbai High Court had upheld the death penalty to Kasab on February 11, 2011 for the terror attacks. Kasab, who hails from Faridkot in Punjab province of Pakistan, has been confined to jail since his arrest on November 26, 2008, when he was caught alive at Girgaum Chowpatty in South Mumbai. Nine others, who had come with Kasab, from Karachi in Pakistan by sea route, were gunned down by security forces at terror sites -- Hotels Taj Mahal and Oberoi-Trident and a Jewish guest house Nariman House in South Mumbai. Hang Kasab chorus gets louder  as leaders welcom...

India has a long legal history of religious tolerance Pakistan is often in the news for its blasphemy laws and the arrest and persecution of people under it. How different is the case in India and why? Let’s have a look. On 27 May 1953, the Tamil reformer EV Ramaswami Naicker smashed an idol of Lord Ganesha in public at the Town Hall maidan in Tiruchirapalli. Naicker, who was angered by Hinduism’s caste system, made a speech announcing his intention to do this before breaking the idol. Veerabadran Chettiar, an offended Hindu, filed a case under two laws. Section 295: Whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class of persons with the intention of thereby insulting the religion of any class of persons or with the knowledge that any class of persons is likely to consider such destruction, damage or defilement as an insult to their religion, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused the Taliban on Monday of beheading 17 villagers, including two women, in volatile Helmand province, in a gruesome attack recalling the dark days of the hardline group's rule before their 2001 ouster. He ordered a full investigation into the "mass killing", which a local official said was punishment to revellers attending a party with music and mixed-sex dancing. "This attack shows that there are irresponsible members among the Taliban," Karzai said in a statement. The Taliban denied they had taken part in the attack, which Karzai's office said took place in Kajaki district in the southern province. "The victims were killed for throwing a late night dancing and music party when the Taliban attacked," Nimatullah, governor for neighbouring Musa Qala district, told Reuters. Men and women do not usually mingle in ultra-religious Afghanistan unless they are related, and pa...