The court said that witness statements show that both the activist and former police officer were “actively involved in the conspiracy” against against the then Gujarat government.
New Delhi: A sessions court in Ahmedabad on Saturday denied bail to activist Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat police officer R.B. Sreekumar, who were arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for allegedly fabricating documents to frame innocent people in the 2002 Gujarat riots cases.
Additional principal judge D.D. Thakkar said that both the orders are rejected. “On perusing statement of witnesses, it appears that both these applicants and others were actively involved in the conspiracy against against the then C.M. and Ministers, police officers as well as Bureaucrat etc (sic),” the court order read.
Judge Thakkar also said that it appears that Zakia Jafri’s 2006 complaint to the SIT investigating the Gujarat riots cases was “inspired and instigated” by Setalvad, noting that Sreekumar and other accused are “shown as one of the prime witnesses of the complaint”.
“… considering the rival contention of both the sides as well as affidavit and documents filed by both the sides, this court do not find it to be fit to exercise discretion in favour of the applicants-accused,” the order reads.
Setalvad and Sreekumar were arrested by the Ahmedabad crime branch on June 25, on the basis of a first information report (FIR) that filed a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence).
In its affidavit, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the case has alleged that Setalvad and Sreekumar were part of a larger conspiracy carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to destabilise the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi.
It has alleged that Setalvad was paid Rs 30 lakh at Patel’s behest soon after the Godhra train burning incident of 2002.
Sreekumar was a “disgruntled government officer” who “abused the process for damning the elected representatives, bureaucracy and police administration of the whole state of Gujarat for ulterior purposes”, the SIT claimed.
Another former police officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, was also accused in the case. He was already in custody for a custodial death case.
The FIR against Setalvad, Sreekumar and Bhatt was registered a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Zakia Jaffri challenging the Gujarat high court’s order that rejected a probe into Narendra Modi’s alleged role in the anti-Muslim Gujarat violence. Jaffri is the widow of Ehsan Jaffri, a former Congress MP who was killed during the violence.
Dr Raj Bahadur, the vice-chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, noted that he was humiliated by health minister Chetan Singh Jouramajra’s actions.
New Delhi: The vice-chancellor of a medical college in Punjab has resigned after state health minister allegedly forced him to lie on a dirty mattress at a hospital.
Dr Raj Bahadur, the vice-chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) in the state’s Faridkot district, submitted his resignation to the Chief Minister’s Office late on the night of Friday, July 29.
Hours earlier state health minister Chetan Singh Jouramajra had asked him to lie down on a dirty mattress during an inspection of Faridkot’s Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, which comes under the BFUHS.
A video clip of the incident that circulated on the social media, showed Jouramajra place a hand on the veteran surgeon’s shoulder as he pointed towards the “damaged and dirty condition” of the mattress inside the hospital’s skin department.
The minister then allegedly forced Bahadur to lie down on the same mattress.
Though the vice-chancellor himself did not confirm his resignation, highly placed sources in the health department confirmed the same to multiple outlets. When approached for comments, The Tribunereports that Bahadur said, “I have expressed my anguish to the Chief Minister and said I felt humiliated.”
Reports have it that chief minister Bhagwant Mann has expressed his displeasure over the incident and spoken to Jouramajra. Mann has also asked Bahadur to meet him next week.
Speaking toThe Indian Express, Bahadur additionally said: “I have worked in 12-13 hospitals so far but have never faced such behaviour from anyone till now. I shouldn’t have been treated this way… it affects this noble profession. It is very painful. He showed his temperament, I showed my humility.”
Bahadur is a specialist in spinal surgery and joint replacement and a former director-principal of Government Medical College and Hospital in Chandigarh. He has also been the head of the orthopaedic department at PGIMER, Chandigarh.
Asked whether new mattresses had been ordered for the hospital, he said: “Two firms sent their quotations and the rate finalisation needs to be done. It is a 1,100-bed hospital and not all mattresses are in bad condition. This mattress shouldn’t have been there but hospital management is the prerogative of the Medical Superintendent.”
Speaking to reporters at the hospital, Jouramajra said: “My intention was not to do any inspection. In fact, I am visiting various hospitals to see what the requirements are so that we can fulfil them.”
Various quarters, including the Indian Medical Association, have criticised Jouramajra.
PCMS Association, a doctors’ body in Punjab, to, in a statement, strongly condemned the “unceremonious treatment” meted out to Bahadur. PCMSA said the way the V-C was treated was “deplorable”, its reason notwithstanding.
The body expressed its “deep resentment” over the incident and said “public shaming of a senior doctor on systemic issues is strongly condemnable.”
Opposition parties also hit out at the AAP dispensation over the incident.
Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring demanded the Minister’s resignation.
“Punjab Health Minister @jouramajra’s humiliating behaviour with Dr Raj Bahadur is highly condemnable. Minister must apologise,” Warring tweeted.
I couldn't see eye to eye with Dr Raj Bahadur Ji, as there was helplessness in his eyes. It was not he who felt insulted and humiliated, but all of us together. Entire Punjab stands in solidarity with you, Sir. pic.twitter.com/CxPY2aU4Jp
— Amarinder Singh Raja Warring (@RajaBrar_INC) July 30, 2022
“The sort of behaviour meted by the Health Minister to VC Baba Farid Medical University Dr. Raj Bahadur is absolutely uncalled for. @BhagwantMann ji should take strict action against the arrogant Minister, senior Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition, Partap Singh Bajwa said in a tweet.
“Otherwise such behaviour will alienate our medical fraternity,” he continued in the same tweet.
Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal called out the minister for “reprehensible behaviour.”
“Have spoken to Dr Bahadur & expressed solidarity with him besides assuring full support to entire med fraternity which is being targeted by AAP ministers & MLAs,” Badal said in a tweet.
BJP leader Sunil Jakhar said the treatment meted out to distinguished Dr Raj Bahadur is shameful & totally unacceptable.
“Very sad that Dr Raj Bhadur (sic) has resigned, but he has done what any self respecting person would do, Jakhar said in a tweet.
Now it’s for @BhagwantMann to do what any conscientious CM ought to do-sack the health minister, if that’s what it takes to prevail upon Dr Raj Bhadur (sic) to withdraw his resignation, he wrote.
Dr Rajiv Devgan, a radiotherapist and Dr K. D. Singh, a microbiology professor at government medical college, also resigned from their posts as principal-director of Government Medical College, Amritsar and medical superintendent of Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, which is associated with Government Medical College, Amritsar, respectively, citing personal reasons.
Both sent their resignation letters on Friday, following the incident at Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital.
The complaint said that the book ‘Ret Samadhi’, whose English translation won the International Booker Prize, hurt Hindu sentiments.
An event in Agra to honour the 2022 International Booker Prize-winning Hindi author Geetanjali Shree was called off on July 29 after a complaint lodged with the Hathras police claimed that her work contained objectionable and obscene remarks. The event was supposed to be held on July 30.
The complaint was registered by one Sandeep Pathak, a resident of the Sadabad town in Hathras. Pathak said that the book Ret Samadhi – translated into English as Tomb of Sand and the winner of the International Booker Prize – contained objectionable depictions of the deities Lord Shiva and Parvati, which “hurt the sentiments of Hindus”.
He claimed her writing had “extremely obscene remarks” and shared the “objectionable” paragraph of the book on his Twitter account. He tagged the accounts of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and several senior UP police officials.
The organisers of the event, Anil Shukla of the Rangleela Social and Cultural Trust and Harvijay Bahia of the Agra Theatre Club, issued a joint statement expressing their sadness at the event being called off. They pointed out that Shree hailed from the state and her father was an IAS officer in the Agra division.
Speaking to The Wire, Shukla said that the organisers of the event and Agra’s civil society members would be gathering on Saturday to decide a new plan of action as well as protest against the turn of events. “We will have a protest. We were even planning to organise a Hindi katha-vachan (oral story-telling enactment) similar to a dastangoi based on Shree’s story ‘Private Lives’,” Shukla pointed out.
Although the police have yet to convert Pathak’s complaint into an FIR, Shukla informed that there was “a lot of tension created” over the past week. He added the members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad had attempted to foil an event organised by the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) on Wednesday, July 27. Since then, several groups have been “causing a lot of problems” and trying to stop the Agra event from happening, Shukla said. Shree is an alumnus of JNU.
Earlier in May this year, Shree, along with translator Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize for the translation of Ret Samadhi. The award marked the first for a Hindi and Indian language piece of literature. The book is about the story of an 80-year-old woman who visits Pakistan as a Partition survivor, and in the process also navigates questions of identity, emotional trauma, life and death, and various roles imposed as a woman in society. Shree has written five novels and five short stories.
The pope made the comment while flying back to Rome after a week-long trip to Canada, where he delivered a historic apology for the Church’s role in the policy.
Pope Francis said on Saturday that what happened at residential schools that the Roman Catholic and other Christian Churches ran to forcefully assimilate Canada’s indigenous children was genocide.
The pope made the comment while flying back to Rome after a week-long trip to Canada, where he delivered a historic apology for the Church’s role in the policy.
He was asked by an indigenous Canadian reporter on the plane why he did not use the word genocide during the trip, and if he would accept that members of the Church participated in genocide.
“It’s true that I did not use the word because I didn’t think of it. But I described genocide. I apologised, I asked forgiveness for this activity, which was genocide,” Francis said.
“I condemned this, taking children away and trying to change their culture, their minds, change their traditions, a race, an entire culture,” the pope added.
Between 1881 and 1996 more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide”.
The schools were run for the governments by religious groups, most of them Catholic priests and nuns.
“Yes, genocide is a technical word but I did not use it because I did not think of it, but I described …. yes, it is a genocide, yes, yes, clearly. You can say that I said it was a genocide,” he said.
Last Monday, Francis visited the town of Maskwacis, site of two former residential schools, where he apologized and called forced assimilation “evil” and a “disastrous error”.
He also apologised for Christian support of the “colonising mentality” of the times.
A tour of North America shows that the poetic giant’s movies and songs not only remain relevant but are gaining more appreciation across the world.
Gulzar. The name needs no introduction to any lover of Urdu or Hindi poetry – or films. Audiences across North America recently had the opportunity to see the legendary poet, writer and humanist live at a recent series of rare public appearances. For many, it was their first time seeing Gulzar in person.
One of the most remarkable things about the Mumbai-based 87-year-old is his humanism and compassion, and his courageous commitment to his roots in Dina, the village he was forced to leave behind as a teenager when it fell to the Pakistan side of the partitioned border in 1947. So overwhelmed was he at his first visit back in 2013 that he cut short the rest of his trip to Pakistan after going to Dina, saying that all he wanted was “a moment alone to sit and weep”.
The recent series of public events was titled ‘Ijaazat’ (Permission) after the famous 1987 musical romance film directed by Gulzar. The stage series featuring the maestro himself was produced by Mumbai-based filmmaker Ajay Jain, a project that took over a year to put together.
It kicked off on July 15, 2022 in Toronto. Gulzar – clad in his signature white kurta-pyjama – was accompanied on stage by the eminent Delhi-based writer, critic and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil, and accompanying singers Hrishikesh Ranade, Swarada Godbole and Jitendra Abhyanka from India who performed at all the shows, bringing Gulzar’s poetry to life.
The next show was in New Jersey, and after that, July 17, 2022, in Boston. That is where I was fortunate enough to catch the event, hosted by Eshani Shah, an Indian-origin philanthropist and promoter of performing arts.
What a treat it was to hear Gulzar recite lines from some of his own poetry, marked with his characteristic simplicity and humility.
Shaam se añkh meiñ namī sī hai Aaj phir aap kī kamī sī hai
(Since evening my eyes have been moist, Today again your presence is missed)
The series was also hosted in New York, San Jose, and Austin, Texas, culminating last weekend in Dallas.
Gulzar’s conversation with Jalil brought out so many aspects of his life and works. He made it a point to mention all the people who have touched his life and influenced him the most in his almost 60-year journey in Bollywood. He shared enthralling anecdotes about the people he has worked with – like actor Sanjeev Kumar, composers Salil Chowdhury, R.D. Burman, Vishal Bhardwaj and A.R. Rahman, singers Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and actors Naseeruddin Shah and Meena Kumari.
Sanjeev Kumar, said Gulzar, was a talented stage actor who for some reason was inclined to play roles of older men. At 22, he played the role of a 60-year-old with six children. That is when Gulzar first spotted him. He then cast Sanjeev Kumar in the roles of older men in four hit films Parichay, Koshish, Aandhi and Mausam. Sanjeev then requested a younger role but by then was too old to play a young hero. Younger heroines were not interested in playing opposite him despite his amazing talent. He always remained Gulzar’s first choice.
His evergreen songs ‘Beeti na bitai raina’, ‘Meri awaz hi pehchan hai’ and many others were rendered live on stage by accompanying singers Hrishikesh Ranade, Swarada Godbole and Jitendra Abhyanka, part of the professional team from India that performed at all the shows.
The songs performed live on stage, ‘Humne Dekhi Hai Un Aankhon Ki Mehekti Khushboo’, ‘Kajra re’, ‘Bidi Jalae re’ and the Grammy and Oscar award-winning ‘Jai Ho’, particularly received tremendous applause from the audience. The grand finale was in fact the live rendition of a medley of hit songs based on Gulzar’s lyrics.
Starting his writing career with a single song for Bimal Roy’s 1963 film Bandini, Gulzar has come a long way over the past six decades. He wears multiple hats with ease – poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, film director, dialogue writer, producer and more. Along the way, he has received 36 awards, including 22 Filmfare Awards.
Gulzar extensively discussed his directorial debut with Mere Apne, and also talked about his enduring classics of Hindi cinema like Parichay, Koshish, Aandhi, Mausam, Khamoshi, Angoor, Ijazat, Machis, Dil Se and others. These are memorable not only for their storytelling but also for their unforgettable songs.
One of his oft-repeated philosophical refrains was that the present is never complete without reflecting on the past. Not surprisingly then, the cinematic device of “flashback” formed an integral part of his narrative technique in films like Khushboo, Achanak, Aandhi, Mausam and Lekin.
Nor does he ever reduce the complexities in life to formulae. In the violence-ridden 70s, his films were refreshingly different. As Jalil remarked, Gulzar’s work always has a piquant appeal because it is peppered with a lyrical, but psychologically adept, examination of human sensibilities.
Ajay Jain, Rakshanda Jalil and Gulzar. Getting ready for Dallas. Photo courtesy: Ajay Jain
From his first break as a lyricist in Bandini, Gulzar’simagery started unfolding immediately with ‘Mora gora ang lai le’, while staringat the moon. It became only richer with each passing year and unsurprisingly, even established performers wanted to be associated with him to enhance their visibility.
Gulzar and Jalil also spoke extensively about the production of the Doordarshan national TV series Mirza Ghalib, scripted and directed by Gulzar in 1988, with Naseeruddin Shah in the central role of the iconic poet. Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh were an integral part of that production. Gulzar attributed the huge success of the series to three people – Naseeruddin Shah, Jagjit Singh and Mirza Ghalib himself.
Towards the end, Gulzar invited questions from the audience, responding with his characteristic wit and honesty. To the question of when he plans to retire, Gulzar said that it’s all about his “thirst”. The day he feels that he no longer has the thirst to create, he will stay at home.
About his “kaleidoscopic” mindset he explained that he loved to see the same object, place, person from different angles and positions. The same things look different, just as they do through a kaleidoscope.
Gulzar’s poem ‘Nazar Main Rehte Ho’, sung by Shankar Mahadevan and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, became the anthem for the peace campaign Aman ki Asha launched in 2010. His moving tribute to the legendary Pakistani ghazal singer Mehdi Hasan around the same time continues to speak for all those who yearn for a visa-free regime in the region:
Ankhon ko visa nahi lagta, sapnon ki sarhad nahi hoti Band ankhon se aksar sarhad par chala jata hoon milne, mein Mehdi Hasan se!
(Eyes don’t need a visa, dreams have no frontiers, With closed eyes I often cross the border to meet Mehdi Hasan)
Gulzar’s poetry continues to win more attention than his extensive directorial work. But most remarkable is his unquenchable thirst and capacity for work. A creative fountainhead like Gulzar cannot slow down. Not as long as there is a full moon night in his sight and a kaleidoscope in his mind.
Karachi-born, Boston-based Siraj Khan is a connoisseur of Southasian film music, a believer in using art and culture to build bridges between people and places.
The Delhi police’s charge sheet has claimed that the ‘gathered Muslim population confronted and attacked the procession with deadly weapons…on being attacked, the peaceful procession also responded…’
New Delhi: Delhi Police has claimed in its charge sheet on the communal violence at the national capital’s Jahangirpuri in April that while the Hanuman Jayanti procession led by Hindus had participants carrying firearms and other weapons, it was the attack by Muslims which led to the violence.
Indian Express has reported that in the charge sheet filed by the Crime Branch of the police at Rohini court on July 14, police claimed that members of the ‘Shobha Yatra’ on April 16 carried “firearms, swords and sticks”.
However, police have claimed that the march was “peaceful” until it reached the Jama Masjid at Jahangirpuri’s C Block.
“The gathered Muslim population confronted and attacked the procession with deadly weapons… on being attacked, the peaceful procession also responded and subsequently converted into unlawful assembly indulging into riot,” Express has quoted from the char sheet, of which the court has taken congnisance.
Four days after the incident, bulldozers arrived in the area and began demolishing properties. The Supreme Court later that morning ordered status quo on the demolition drive. However, despite the top court’s order, the drive continued in Jahangirpuri, The Wire had reported.
Police have claimed that the accused were part of a WhatsApp group where “hate speech” against “the other community/religion” were circulated. This WhatsApp group was created by the man named main accused by police, Tabrez, who is absconding.
Lawyers representing the accused have denied these allegations, noting that there are many “defects in the charge sheet.”
The Express report examines the charge sheet to conclude that police have made their case based on two messages – received by the accused on April 14 and 15.
Police have further claimed that Tabrez’s continued presence on the WhatsApp group in spite of receiving such messages “speaks volumes about his bent of mind”.
Express has also reported on a purported voice note police have claimed to have found, in which Tabrez is reportedly heard tutoring someone on how to make a “false” complaint. Another accused Ishrafil, police have claimed, allegedly tried to amass a crowd to counter the Shobha Yatra.
The Wire has earlier reported on Jahangirpuri locals having complained and moved court against what they feel is a partisan investigation into the communal violence on Hanuman Jayanti. Locals have spoken of alleged sustained harassment of Muslims in the area by investigating police – something which has allegedly caused many Muslim men in the area to leave Jahangirpuri.
Bellampally Municipality Commissioner G. Gangadhar issued a show-cause notice to some of his staff for allegedly skipping minister K.T. Rama Rao’s birthday celebrations.
Hyderabad: The Bellampally municipal commissioner who issued a show-cause notice to some of his staff for allegedly skipping minister K.T. Rama Rao’s birthday celebrations held in Bellampally town on July 24 was suspended on July 30.
An order issued on Friday night said Bellampally municipality commissioner G. Gangadhar has issued memos “due to overenthusiasm and without any orders from higher authorities” for not attending the minister’s birthday celebrations.
“Therefore, after careful examination of the facts and having due regard to the circumstances of the case, it is found necessary to place the services of G Gangadhar, Municipal Commissioner, Bellampally Municipality under suspension pending further enquiry in the matter,” N. Satyanarayana, Director of Municipal Administration said in the order.
Rama Rao, the minister for municipal administration and urban development, said in a tweet on Friday that he would not encourage such practices and asked the senior officials to suspend the Bellampally municipal commissioner for issuing notices to the employees.
The national animal and its symbolism in our national politics.
The National Emblem installed on the roof of the new Parliament building has ignited a debate. Are the newly inaugurated lions, roaring and muscular, distorted versions of the old Sarnath lion? Or are they the face of a strong new India?
This is not the first debate over the national animal in India. National icons have always been politically sensitive. In 1972, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her minister of tourism Karan Singh changed the national animal, replacing the lion with the tiger. Controversy erupted. In the Lok Sabha, the government cited tiger conservation in defence of the decision. Yet was this the only reason? Was there some additional symbolism at play? In the previous year, India helped to carve out a sovereign Bangladesh from Pakistan. Quite naturally, the self-image of India was much more confident and assertive. Was the decision to change the National Animal an attempt to change the aura of the state? (Of course, Mrs. Gandhi’s own assertiveness resulted in serious political excess in 1975, when she declared an Emergency.)
We also have a history of petty partisan politics regarding the national animal. In 1949, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent an elephant calf called ‘Indira’ to the children of war-torn Japan. In an accompanying letter, Nehru described the elephant as the symbol of India. It is calm yet mighty like his idea of India. In subsequent years, until 1955, he sent baby elephants to the US, Turkey, Germany, China and Netherlands gifts and representational greetings from India. Apart from being an obvious (if endearing) diplomatic stunt, this was also a political exercise in the creation of the idea of India. Scholars say the elephant also symbolised the country’s non-Alignment strategy.
Nehru’s elephant diplomacy led to a demand to make the pachyderm the national animal of India. But India already had one: the lion. The Gujarat National History Society, politically backed by the Congress Committee of Gujarat, opposed the move to replace it with the elephant and insisted that the lion be retained as the national animal. Gujarat, of course, was the only state where the Asiatic Lion existed, and the Nehru government had made it the National Animal of India in 1948. Christophe Jaffrelot points out that under Sardar Patel’s chairmanship, the leadership of the Provincial Congress Committee of Gujarat was conservative and critical of Nehruvian Socialism. Moreover, in the question of Gujarati cultural identity, the provincial Congress Committee of Gujarat even supported the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Sangh parivar. The defence of the lion, therefore, had a “don’t mess with Gujarat” dimension to it.
During the 1950s, when the aura of Nehru overpowered the politics in the Central government, K.M.l Munshi, V.P. Menon and the son of Sardar Patel,Dahyabhai, left the Congress. Later, Morarji Desai emerged as a prominent opponent of Indira Gandhi. The Congress split into two. The Morarji faction won only 16 seats in the 1971 election, of which 11 were from Gujarat. Mrs Gandhi won 352, a landslide. Emboldened and, perhaps, vengeful, she replaced the Gujarati lion with the more national tiger as India’s prime animal. Politically this step was significant and triumphalist.
A Bengal tiger. Photo: Pallavibarman10/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
In 2012, Parimal Nathwani, a businessman from Gujarat and an independent member of the Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand, made a demand to renominate the Asiatic lion as the national animal. The Congress was in power, so he got nowhere. In 2014, shortly after Narendra Modi – a former Gujarat chief minister – became the prime minister, Nathwani reiterated his demand. In 2015, Prakash Javadekar, the minister for environment, backed the idea but the National Board of Wildlife said no. The board insisted that the tiger remains the national animal, given its relative ubiquity in India. It is found in 17 states and the lion only in one.
The pro-lion camp pushed back, arguing that their preferred beast was on the national emblem and that it was the national animal before 1972. But this demand of the Gujarat lobby is not unanimous even within the BJP, where there is a move to promote yet another animal. Beginning in 2018, demands have been made by several right-wing organisations – and even a sitting judge of the Allahabad high court, Shekhar Kumar Yadav – to make the cow the national animal of India. This demand acquired fresh potency after Yogi Adityanath was appointed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Although Prime Minister Modi made the lion the mascot of his ‘Make in India’ project in 2014, the Gujarat “lion lobby” remains unhappy. A revived push for the lion may, in fact, be a short-lived phenomenon, tied to the rhetoric of the forthcoming Gujarat assembly elections. For the moment, the tiger remains at the symbolic apex. Will its roar be replaced one day by that of the lion? Or will the cow’s moo become our ‘National Sound’? Either way, get ready to be deafened by the debate.
Aryama Ghosh is a research scholar at the Department of History, Jadavpur University. Subhadeep Mondal is a research scholar at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Both are associated with Society for Research Alternatives
A fortnightly column from The Wire’s ombudsperson.
Within the journalistic universe the glamorous figures of intrepid reporters are juxtaposed with that generally unsung collective of sub-editors known by the rather wooden appellation of ‘The Desk’. Reporters in fact have an ambiguous relationship with The Desk, with some among them subscribing to the familiar witticism that sub-editors work assiduously to separate the wheat from the chaff in a story, only to end up keeping the chaff and throwing out the wheat. Yet deep down most reporters are grateful that somebody is actually going through their collage of facts and making sense out of them.
Professional media organisations came to realise over time that any information put out to the public must necessarily go through the sieve of critical scrutiny, contextualisation and cross-checking if it is to be rendered worthy of public trust.
The legacy media also quickly understood that winning ‘public trust’ was not just about morality, it made excellent business sense. In 1913, Ralph Pulitzer even set up a Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play with the catchline ‘Truth Telling is the Sole Reason for the Existence of a Press at All” – an early prototype of today’s fact checker.
Historically, this brave tribe sometimes has the instincts of a blood hound, going the extra distance to sniff out veracity. The story is told of an Egyptian fact checker who was so dogged that he decided to personally measure a palace wall to confirm its claimed height – and got punished for his pains.
As a young intern at The Times of India in Bombay in the late 70s, I remember an army of crotchety, somewhat elderly, men (most were male in those days), with blue ink in their veins. They always kept a well thumbed dictionary at hand and a close eye on the principles of readability, balance, clarity and, above all, accuracy in the reports submitted to them. One of them, I remember, held his pencil at a 90° angle to the sheet of typed copy I had handed in, and scored a diagonal line right through it. It took several diagonal lines over several sheets of paper before reports were seen to pass muster.
By the time these desk wizards got promoted to the onerous post of chief-sub-editor, their array of pencils – used relentlessly on the galley proofs sent to them from the printers’ deck below – had been reduced to stubs. In the 1920s, TIME magazine’s fact checker Nancy Ford used to personally visit the New York Public Library to get on with her job, but these Times of India gentlemen needed only to seek the services of a special archival team, tucked away somewhere in the innards of the Old Lady of Boribunder – whose express function was to maintain clippings of newspapers classified according to themes. This was a job that provided employment to a fair number of men and women, whose main task was to mark and clip the day’s papers, paste the clippings on sheets of paper; neatly label them in terms of theme, source, date; and file them away for easy retrieval.
Technology in the internet age rendered obsolete – with a click of a mouse – that entire sub-set of clippers and keepers. In a similar way, the sub-editors’ desk of yore, while it continues to be important, is longer adequate in order to keep tab of the way technology is enabling the falsification of information on an industrial scale. The older ways of checking and correcting disinformation/misinformation now needed to be supplemented with the interventions of a new tribe of fact checkers who understood the ways in which technology was being used to morph, alter, or even completely fabricate information for ends ranging from the political and commercial to the personal.
A good example of how technology can be weaponised to destroy the person targeted ironically involved a fact checker himself.
One of the attempts by the state of Uttar Pradesh to trap Zubair in what the Supreme Court rightly termed as a “vicious cycle of the criminal process”, was to dismiss his status as a journalist. Fortunately for him, this argument failed to persuade the Supreme Court, which saw no reason to prevent his bail application and his right to tweet “as a journalist”.
When asked about this later by The News Minute, Zubair explained why he, as a fact checker, was also a journalist: “By qualification, I may not be a professional journalist, but what I’m doing now is the job of a journalist. When journalists say that Zubair is not a journalist, I would say you are a journalist, but you’re not doing journalism. I may not be a journalist by qualification, but I’m doing what you’re supposed to do.”
It is during particularly portentous periods of a country’s existence – like a general election or a health crisis – that the significance of the fact checker becomes most apparent because these precisely are the periods when there is a spike in skewed information. Take the years 2020-21, when the COVID-19 crisis was raging across India and with it an epidemic of fake news that hawked spurious cures and scapegoated communities. Take the narrative of “corona jihad” of those days, put out through television chat shows and furthered by hundreds of thousands of WhatsApp forwards. Its impact on the ground was immediate with innocent Muslim vendors being boycotted, attacked and even incarcerated.
AltNews – the fact checking entity created by techies Pratik Sinha and Zubair, both of whom were working in the social media space – emerged in early 2017. The period preceding its launch had seen a spate of fast paced developments. Both the Pathankot and Uri attacks which broke the back of India-Pakistan relations took place in 2016. Also in that year, we saw repression unleashed on the JNU campus with the help of a morphed video that framed bright student leaders as anti-nationals; the unleashing of violence on young Dalits in Una; and the assassination by the security forces of Burhan Wani, commander of Hizbul Mujahideen who was also a social media icon.
The end of 2016 witnessed the announcement of demonetisation which triggered a nation-wide panic. It was amidst this flux that Reliance Jio made its appearance, with its welcome packages of free and cheap data that in turn saw the exponential rise in the use of platforms like WhatsApp, not just in the metros but in remote corners of the country. Pratik Sinha, speaking to journalist Sonia Faleiro for her 2021 piece on AltNews, ‘Fact-checking Modi’s India’, pointed to how in the India scenario, misinformation was spread largely through “two or three lines of text and an image, all tailored to WhatsApp.”
Over the years, AltNews honed methodologies that exposed the misuse of communication technologies for nefarious reasons. Their work has led many others to become fact checkers themselves. Among them was Meera Devi, a reporter with the Bundelkhand-based rural news portal, Khabar Lahariya, who even launched ‘ChunaviBukhaar, Savdaan! (Election Fever, Beware!)’ to take on the fake news being circulated in her region around the 2019 general election.
In Karnataka, amidst the recent surge of hate crimes in a state that had always generally been peaceful, a collective of concerned observers constituted ‘Hate Speech Beda’ to monitor the media sphere in which communal propaganda is being nested.
It takes courage for AltNews to continue with its work, despite being pitted against a hostile and authoritarian government along with an army of ideologues and trolls. The Wire investigation cited earlier points to how from 2018 onwards a network of 757 accounts linked to personal website of Vikash Ahir, Gujarat president of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, who was behind the recent Zubair arrest, had been attempting to frame the AltNews founders as “Hinduphobic”, while tagging local authorities to get them arrested.
The recent Supreme Court has ensured that Zubair got bail but he is still very much in the clutches of an unforgiving system. It needs to be widely recognised by the Indian public that his recent incarceration was unconscionable and a huge blot on Indian democracy. Today, he needs his freedom back and the courts should ensure that he can function as a fact checker-journalist without the threat of coercive action hanging over him.
§
State of denial
To a question raised in the Lok Sabha on India being ranked among the 30 worst nations out of 180 in terms of the World Press Freedom Index, the Centre responded in what appears as bureaucratese crafted in the highest traditions of Sir Humphrey Appleby from the British comedy shows, ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’.
It starts by discrediting the Index, going on to say that it “does not agree to the conclusions drawn by this organisation for various reasons including very small sample size, little or no weightage to fundamentals of democracy, adoption of a methodology which is questionable and non-transparent.”
If you thought the reference to the government’s concern that the Index gave “no weightage to fundamentals of democracy” was hilarious, what follows is an exercise in wool-gathering that would have had delighted Sir Humphrey!
“…In pursuance of its policy to uphold the freedom of press, the Government does not interfere in the functioning of the press. Press Council of India (PCI) a statutory autonomous body, has been set up under the Press Council of Act, 1978 mainly to preserve the freedom of the Press and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in the country. PCI considers complaints filed ‘by the Press’ concerning curtailment of press freedom, physical assault/attack on journalists etc. under Section 13 of the Press Council Act 1978 and processed under the provisions of the Press Council (Procedure for Inquiry) Regulations, 1979. PCI is also empowered to take suo-motu cognizance in matters on the pressing issues concerning freedom of Press and safeguarding of its high standards.”
The Government of India knows, better than anyone of us, that the Press Council of India has no powers of enforcement and has generally proved as good as a dead duck when it comes to protecting media freedoms. In fact, even the ‘autonomy’ that the PCI is claimed to have, has been undermined by the government (‘Centre’s New Rules Compromise Press Council of India’s Autonomy, PCI Members Say’, March 2021). Very rarely has PCI taken “suo-motu cognizance in matters on the pressing issues concerning freedom of Press…”
Meanwhile, in the real world, Indian journalists continue to be undermined in innumerable ways. Now, in addition to mediapersons being denied access to the Central Hall of Parliament, camerapersons and videographers have been informed that they will not have access to official events. This Independence Day, for instance, as the country prepares to celebrate its 75th year of independence, they will now be denied entry.
As for those journalists who show enterprise and pierce the veil of silence that is imposed on issues that potentially embarrass the government, they are left to face the ire of workers of the ruling party, as mediapersons working with a film and media collective, ChalChitra Abhiyaan, discovered. While trying to understand how the GST rate hike on items of daily use has affected the ordinary residents of Kishanpur Baral village in UP, they were set upon by a man who was allegedly a BJP worker. After the incident, the founder of this Collective, Nakul Singh Sawhney, put out a tweet that reflected the ground reality: “This is the state of press freedom and ground reporting in India” (‘UP: Journalists Threatened for Reporting on GST Rate Hike’, July 21).
In Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh, there is urgent need for the authorities to be sensitised “about the vital role of the free press in a democratic society and to deal with people who attack reporters with the full force of the law”, as a DIGIPUB statement on this assault put it. The government of India should also desist from occupying the high moral ground on India’s failing media freedoms and instead do something about them.
§
Sharp pencils
The power of the cartoon lies in its ability to encapsulate with a few swift lines the truths of the times in ways that are immediately comprehended by the ordinary viewer. A recent brilliant exposition of a reality we are presently living through was captured by this cartoon from PenPencilDraw.
It had consequences.
A Chennai-based blogger, Savukku Shankar, tweeted it along with a line of commentary which riled an hon’ble judge of the Madurai Bench of the Madras high court to such an extent that he promptly filed a suomotu contempt notice again Shankar. As a piece in the Medianama observes, “Citizens approach courts when their freedom of speech and expression is violated. But when the court itself curbs this freedom by initiating suomotu proceedings for trivial issues, it sheds a bad light on the state of fundamental rights in the country. Ironically, Justice Swaminathan’s order begins with the cartoon embedded below.”
Readers write in…
Desk alert
I received some feedback on typos and misinterpretations by the desk:
Also, the introduction to the piece, ‘Delhi HC Reserves Order on Appeal Against Denial of Copy of SC Collegium Decisions Under RTI’ (July 22), reads: “The petitioner sought details of a Collegium meeting on December 12, 2018 in which then CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Madan Lokur were to decide on the alleviation of two HC chief justices to the SC”. The word ‘alleviation’ appears instead of ‘elevation’.
Is this a case of auto-correct being given a free run, the mail asks.
[Editor’s note: We regret the errors. Both mistakes have now been corrected. ].
§
Age of graft…
Sumit Vadera, of Vaderas Interiors & Exteriors Ghaziabad, writes in:
“There have been reports on corruption cases and graft highlighted in the media recently. We are an MSME working in the infrastructure industry as a contracting firm. A payment of Rs. 62,40,141.00 (excluding interest) due to us since 01-07-2013 is pending with a public sector unit in the construction sector that is deemed a “Navratna enterprise”. We have with us the copies of the work order, passed bill and details of payments. We have received numerous written assurances that the payment will be made but unfortunately it has been denied to us under some excuse or the other… We have all the proof that this organisation has been denying us our legitimate payments with an ulterior motive and is not going to pay us our dues until their ulterior motives are catered to. We are a law-abiding organisation and our patriotism doesn’t allow us to entertain any illegitimate expectations.
“We would like The Wire, as one of the few media entities still standing for truth and honesty, to look into our harassment by a government entity since 2013.”
§
Brutal attack on peaceful protestors
The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development; CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation; Front Line Defenders; International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders; South Asians for Human Rights sent in this statement on the brutal attack against peaceful protesters by security forces in Sri Lanka (an excerpt):
“We strongly condemn the brutal attack against unarmed peaceful protesters by Sri Lankan forces in Colombo on in the early hours of 22 July 2022. Since March 2022, thousands of people including human rights defenders, journalists, and members of civil society have been protesting peacefully across the country against the government’s mismanagement of the economy amid a deepening economic and financial crisis that has led to skyrocketing prices and shortages of fuel, food, and other basic necessities. On numerous occasions, the authorities responded with unnecessary and disproportionate force, arrest, misinformation, and threats against protesters, including human rights defenders. The violence on 22 July 2022 occurred less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the country’s new President. Mr. Wickremesinghe succeeded Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country on 13 July and resigned a day later. The unnecessary and disproportionate force used against unarmed civilians is a clear violation of Sri Lanka’s human rights obligations under international law and is inconsistent with international human rights standards.”
In a system like ours, where the average person approaching the average police station does so without any great hope for justice, it is due process which is the most urgent need to protect life and liberty.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
Due process is a concept much needed in India. While recognised as a constitutional standard, the conversation around executive action, especially police action, is mostly around a rights-based framework. To put it simply, the conversation focuses on substantive rights such as liberty, privacy and freedom and broad declarations regarding these rights, rather than an engagement with the minutiae of the criminal justice process. The recent judgement of the Supreme Court, mainly on the constitutionality of the post-2015 amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, is notable in this respect. The petitioners, about 250 of them, did not challenge the entirety of the statute, but the exceptions that this Act carved out from normal criminal processes under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The PMLA, under which the Enforcement Directorate investigates and prosecutes the offence of money laundering, has some major departures from normal criminal procedure. ED officers are empowered to record admissible statements, have additional powers of search and seizure, subject to ratification by the Adjudicating Authority under the Act, and there are additional restrictions on grant of bail. All these and certain other aspects of the Act were challenged to circumscribe the powers of the Enforcement Directorate and its officers.
The Supreme Court has upheld all these aspects, stating that the PMLA is a code dealing with money laundering and ED officers investigating under this Act are not police officers, and as such, not bound by the restrictions applicable to the police under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Much has been made of the fact that the ED is staffed by senior officers and that such officers are assumed to be fairer in their conduct than the regular police. To be fair, the PMLA also incorporates penalties against erring officers for vexatious search. Such safeguards have been deemed by the Supreme Court to be sufficient to combat any misuse.
The effect of the judgment may be somewhat overstated, because the ED will likely continue to function in the same manner as it did before it was passed. While affirming its powers, the court has however reiterated the procedural limitations of this Act, including the necessity of a predicate offence before a prosecution for money laundering can be launched. A predicate offence is one mentioned in the schedule to the PMLA, which is the crime which gives rise to the ‘proceeds of crime’, which are then laundered. The clear reinforcement by the Supreme Court of the necessity of a predicate offence is going to help in circumscribing the misuse of the ED’s power.
The court has confirmed that even holding such proceeds of crime is a crime under this Act, and there does not need to be an active conversion of black money into white, so to speak, for an act to be considered money laundering under Indian law. Further observations regarding the necessity of establishing foundational facts and evidence before the reversal of burden of proof under the PMLA comes into effect against the accused are welcome, if not novel, observations.
The constitutionality of the provisions of the Act which were under challenge were always likely to be upheld, given the current environment. Besides, misuse of penal powers is unfortunately by itself not a ground for declaring a law as unconstitutional. The ED’s dismal rate of conviction is public knowledge. The amendments to the PMLA after 2015 are problematic in the wide powers that they give to the ED, which is essentially an untrained police force. A law may be bad, but not unconstitutional. The solution to this is not necessarily legal but political, in that Parliament will have to amend the law to make it more rational and commensurate with its stated objectives. To do so, the political Opposition will have to regain power and numbers in Parliament.
The current travails being faced by the Opposition at the hands of the ED should also serve to remind the political class of the need to ensure fair laws and procedures for all. In a system like ours, where the average person approaching the average police station does so without any great hope for justice, it is due process which is the most urgent need to protect the life and liberty of the poorest and most helpless. The ED, in a perverse democratisation, has brought this fear to the high and mighty. Let the reforms, when they happen, realise the need for due regulation of the ED and all other agencies performing investigative and penal functions. If that happens, this phase of misuse of agencies like the ED, could yet turn out to be an instructive period for the development of the compact between the state and the people of the republic.
