Upset over his father’s drinking habit, a young man committed suicide on Wednesday by hanging himself in Tirunelvelli district of Tamil Nadu, police said.

In his suicide note, M. Dinesh, 18, said that he was upset over his father Madasamy’s alcoholism and pleaded with him to quit drinking but to no avail, putting the family in financial distress.

Dinesh said his father should not participate in his funeral.

The young man also wrote that one has now to see whether liquor shops are shut down in Tamil Nadu or not after his suicide, adding that if it did not happen then “my spirit will close these shops”.

Reacting to the suicide, PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss said the state government should implement total prohibition in the state.

Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar said that the state had closed down 1,000 liquor shops, adding that the problem of alcoholism could be resolved only when people decide to abstain from drinking.

Press freedom in India has deteriorated in 2018 and three journalists have been killed in the first four months, media watchdog The Hoot said, stating that “journalists continue to be vulnerable”.

The number of killings documented by the Hoot report for the first four months was the same as in the whole of 2017.

“They were killed in connection with their reporting, judging by what initial investigations show,” it said.

India ranks 138th among 180 countries on this year’s World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders. India’s rank was 136th in 2017 and 133rd in 2016.

The number of documented attacks on journalists and media workers across the country during the period was 13. It includes three in West Bengal. In 2017, documented attacks stood at 46.

Apart from these, there were defamation cases that came to trial. A sedition case was filed against a journalist. There was also a clear push by both the State, Centre and the judiciary — through regulatory policy as well as judicial orders — to curb free speech, The Hoot said.

“Media freedom continued to deteriorate in the first four months of 2018 in India,” said the non-profit watchdog.

“There were also around 50 instances of censorship and more than 20 instances of suspension of Internet services as well as the taking down of online content,” it added.

All three journalists killed in the January-April period were mowed down by vehicles.

On March 26, two Dainik Bhaskar journalists — Navin Nishchal and Vijay Singh — were killed when their bike was hit by an SUV in Bhojpur in Bihar.

Police said the vehicle was driven by a village leader and that a heated argument between him and the reporters over a news report had preceded the “accident”.

A day later, television reporter Sandeep Sharma was mowed down by a truck in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh. Sharma, who had done a sting operation on a sand mining mafia in Bhind, had told police that he had received threats to his life, it said.

Hoot’s investigation revealed that politicians, businessmen, members of Hindu right wing groups, police and paramilitary forces, government agencies like the film certification board, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, state governments, lawyers and even media groups had acted to undermine freedom of expression.

India’s record on press freedom has remained poor and has been deteriorating over the last couple of years.

The Hoot report, however, said: “Despite the ominous number and range of attacks on freedom of expression, the ongoing struggle to resist these curbs does yield results.”

In April, an injunction on the publication of a book on yoga guru and businessman Baba Ramdev was lifted by a district court in Delhi.

The two-day open hearing session in Gandhinagar for cases of human rights violations, including those of SC/ST victims, in Gujarat and the adjoining Union Territories of Daman and Diu, and Dadara and Nagar Haveli will culminate on Friday (April 27).
NHRC chairman Justice (retd) H L Dattu and other members will today hold a joint sitting for some of the important cases. Senior government officers would be present during the public hearing.
During the two-day long session, began by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Thursday at the Gujarat Police Academy in Karai village near Gandhinagar, about 155 cases from various parts of Gujarat and the Union Territories will be taken up for open hearing and camp sitting separately.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

Convergence among various entities vital: JS Agriculture
Ashish Bhutani, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India has said that there is a need for a convergence among various entities involved in farmer-related initiatives as gaps in transmission impacts implementation of such schemes.
He was addressing a national conference on ‘Enhancing Credit Flow to Agriculture’ organised by FICCI.

“Agriculture credit outflow is increasing every year and in the current financial year the target is Rs. 11 lakh crore. Close to 50-60% of credit outflow is to small and marginal farmers which is a positive sign but we need to monitor where is this money going”, added Bhutani.

He said, “states have to come on board in order to synergise and sync all the issues to form a comprehensive plan to ensure that small and marginal farmers are brought under the ambit of institutional credit system.”

R Amalorpavanathan, Deputy Managing Director, NABARD said there is a need for integrated financing system for the farmers. “Ultimately, credit is a function of trust and distress emanates from the squeezing of the profits of the farmers.”, he said.

Dr. BB Pattanaik, Chairman, Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA), Government of India, said that warehousing can be a game-changer in improving profits of the farmers. “Huge private sector participation has helped in creating high-end, mechanised storage system for the agriculture sector”, he said.

He also informed that WDRA has a seamless online process for registering a warehouse, “Only those warehouses that plan to issue negotiable warehouse receipts, have to register with WDRA. But for proper remuneration to farmers, there has to be as many registered warehouses as possible”.

Pravesh Sharma, Advisor- Agriculture, FICCI, in his theme address, said that agriculture in India is rapidly commercialising, but without risk mitigation, more than three-fourths of the farmers rely on the informal market for credit which provides credit at higher interest rates. “Of small and medium farmers, which comprise 86% of total farming population, only 15% have access to institutional credit”, said Sharma.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

The Gujarat High Court on Friday acquitted former BJP Minister Maya Kodnani, saying there was absence of sufficient proof of her presence at the crime scene in the Naroda Patiya massacre case of 2002.

The court also upheld the conviction of Bajrangi Dal activist Babu Bajrangi, who was sentenced to imprisonment for life by the trial court.

The Bharatiya Janata Party Minister was one of the key accused in the riot case and was convicted by a special SIT court in August 2012. She was sentenced to 28 years in imprisonment.

The judgment was pronounced on the appeals filed by the former BJP Minister and others against their conviction by the SIT court.

The Division Bench of Justice Harsha Devani and Justice A.S. Supehia upheld the conviction by the special court of Babubhai Patel alias Bajrangi, a prominent leader of the Bajrang Dal Hindu outfit.

He was a key conspirator in the massacre in Naroda Patiya area, where 97 Muslim persons were killed in the Godhra aftermath.

The Naroda Patiya riots was one of the worst incidents during communal conflagration that engulfed Gujarat, following the train burning incident on February 27, 2002, at Godhra in which 59 Kar Sevaks were killed.

The High Court in August 2017 had reserved its order after the hearing concluded against the judgment of the special court.

The special court had sentenced 32 people, including Kodnani and Bajrangi. Seven others were given enhanced life imprisonment of 21 years, which they will serve after undergoing 10 years’ imprisonment under IPC section 326 (causing grievous hurt).

The remaining accused were given simple life imprisonment of 14 years.

The trial court’s acquittal of 29 other accused in the case, for want of evidence was challenged by the SIT, even as those convicted had challenged the lower court’s order in the High Court for respite.

Government counsel Prashant Desai said: “It is clear from the Gujarat High Court’s judgment that the court has gone on no witness theory.”

“Twelve accused have been convicted. Besides Babu Bajrangi, Prakash Rathod and Suresh Chara alias Suresh Langda have been convicted under the IPC 120 (B) as key conspirators.

“The sting operation by the Tehelka was not taken into account by the court. The 12 have been convicted with 21 years imprisonment without remission.

“Whatever Babu Bajrangi did was no different from what the others did, so his conviction was on parity. Court believed police witnesses.”

“On Maya Kodnani, there were contradictions in the witnesses’ testimony against her presence at the crime scene. None of the police witnesses have said that they saw Kodnani at the scene.

“The SIT will have to appeal within 90 days to the Supreme Court if they want to challenge the Gujarat High Court verdict,” added the counsel.

Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel said: “Our minister Kodnani was wrongfully implicted in the Naroda Patiya massacre case. But today after the Gujarat High Court acquittal, she has been found innocent.”

“We are happy with the verdict and welcome the decision. She has worked hard for the party and definitely she will be given an active role in the party if she wishes to continue.”

Meanwhile, the state BJP president Jitu Vaghani has blamed the Congress party for arraigning Kodnani in the case. “The Congress wrongfully involved our former minister.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea for a Special Investigation Team probe into the alleged mysterious death of special CBI Judge B.H. Loya.

Loya allegedly died of a cardiac arrest while in Nagpur in Maharashtra on December 1, 2014 when he was attending a wedding there.

(IANS)

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday directed that a compensation of Rs 20 lakh be paid to the wife of a Shiromani Akali Dal leader of Punjab who was killed in 2015 in a shootout by the police who mistook him for a gangster.

The high court ordered the compensation to Mukhjit Singh Mukha’s wife Harjit Kaur. She had approached the high court against the Punjab government.

Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain gave the order as the court found the Rs 5 lakh compensation given by the then state government was inadequate.

The victim was only 38 years old when he was waylaid by a team of the Punjab Police in Amritsar district on June 16, 2015, and was indiscriminately fired upon.

Mukha received 23 gunshot wounds and died.

The Punjab Police later set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the incident. The police team responsible for the shootout admitted that they mistook Mukha to be a gangster.

The Akali Dal was in power when the incident took place.

The then Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president, Sukhbir Singh Badal, who was also the state Home Minister, announced the Rs 5 lakh compensation. He also promised a government job to the victim’s wife but it was not given.

(IANS)

A woman gave birth to the baby boy while traveling on Jan Nayak Express on Monday night.
Suman Devi, 30, was traveling on the train with her husband to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh for her delivery when she developed labour pain. As the train approached Sitapur, her condition worsened, a railway official said.

Her husband Hari Om approached Station Officer – Government Railway Police (GRP) Sitapur, Suresh Yadav, for help. The official promptly attended to the situation with the help of who a doctor and a woman constable.
Suman gave birth to a boy, and in the meantime, an ambulance was arranged to take her and the child to the district hospital in Sitapur.

Police investigation details gruesome rape and killing of eight-year-old Asifa Bano, as outrage in India soars.
The time was ripe to kill the girl, Sanji Ram told his juvenile nephew on a cold January evening.

The ritual had been performed and Asifa, an eight-year-old Muslim nomad girl, was taken to a culvert in front of a temple where she had been kept in captivity, and sedated, for four days in Rasana village of Kathua district in Indian-administered Kashmir.

But, before she would be strangulated and her head was hit twice with a stone “to make sure” she is dead, Deepak Khajuria, a special police officer, made a demand. He wanted to rape the girl before she was killed.

“As such”, the police investigation noted, “once again the little girl was gang raped” by the accused police officer and then by the juvenile.

For the next three months, the rape and murder of Asifa seemed to be another case of sexual violence that is rampant in India but rare in Indian administered Kashmir, till the barbarity and the plot came to fore in the 16-page charge sheet presented by the crime branch – a local investigating agency.

The investigation revealed that the rape and murder were systematic, preplanned and rooted in religious hatred harboured by Sanji Ram, a Hindu, against the Muslim nomadic community of Bakarwals.

The nomad girl
Asifa, the nomad girl, loved to take horses for grazing to the forest near her home in Rasana, a quiet village in Kathua district of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The reason Asifa was picked as a target by Sanji Ram, who knew she “often comes to the forest”, was simple; they wanted to drive the Muslim community out, according to the investigation.

In captivity inside a temple, Asifa was drugged and raped. The police in its investigation report described Asifa as an “innocent budding flower, a child of only eight years of age, who being a small kid became a soft target”.

Outrage over the rape and killing of Asifa Bano soared across India [Jaipal Singh/EPA]
The crime, however, was rooted in a sinister conspiracy and Asifa’s rape and murder were the means to an end – create fear among the Muslim nomadic community, Bakarwal, and force them to leave.

Rafeeza Bano, Asifa’s 55-year-old mother, recalls the horror she saw on her dead daughter’s body. “There were scars on her cheeks,” she told Al Jazeera at their camp in Udhampur.

“Her lips had turned black, and her eyes had bulged out. It was a scary scene for a mother to see,” she said. “She was my youngest child. It was horrific. She had faced a lot of barbarity.”

The mother now fears for her surviving daughter, aged 13. “They did this with an eight-year-old girl, imagine what they can do with a 13-year-old,” she said.

Asifa’s mother Rafeeza Bano, 55, at their nomadic camp in the meadows of Udhampur [Rifat Fareed/Al Jazeera]
The Family
The tough life of a nomad had cast its shadow on Mohammad Akhtar and he looks older than his 45 years. He now lives with a more damning burden – the elusive justice for his daughter, Asifa.

On a hill in Udhampur district, nearly 150km north of Rasana, the family camps under the open sky with their herd of goats and horses. The journey is part of the annual migration of this nomadic community in search of grazing pastures.

“Her face was full of scratches and bites,” Akhtar told Al Jazeera, describing the marks of torment on Asifa. “I never knew they will do this with the child, her milk teeth were yet to fall out,” he said.

Asifa’s father Muhammad Akhtar with his daughter Manega sitting at the camp in Udhampur [Rifat Fareed/Al Jazeera]
Akhtar is Asifa’s biological father as the girl was raised by her maternal uncle, Mohammad Yusuf, who adopted her when she was a toddler after he lost his three children in an accident.

“After she was killed it created more fear than before. We now take our daughters along all the time, all in our community became protective towards our daughters,” he said.

Akhtar said the family also faced threats in the aftermath of the incident.

“They said if our men are given the death sentence, we will kill you one by one. After the dead body was found, Hindu people came to us and threatened us,” he said.

Gazala, Asifa’s aunt who lived in nearby Samba district, says she now fears for her two daughters aged nine and four. “I fear for them. They would run after the horses, they were free to play but now we are very worried. We had not seen anything as gruesome,” she said.

Asifa’s rape and murder have forced an early migration of Bakarwals, a tribe with a rudimentary lifestyle that earns a living out of herding goats, sheep and horses to mountainous pastures. The incident instilled fear in their community, which is unprotected during its lengthy migratory journeys.

Manega, Asifa’s elder sister, was still in shock when she talked to Al Jazeera in Udhampur.

“I saw her dead body,” she said. “I now fear a lot. We don’t play, we don’t go out alone. Asifa’s killing has shattered us,” Manega, 13, said.

Asifa’s sister, Manega: “We used to play together. We would run and play in the meadows” [Rifaat Fareed/Al Jazeera]
The accused
A retired government official, his son who came from another city to “satisfy his lust”, the juvenile nephew and his close friend, and the special police officer were all part of the conspiracy and crime to kidnap, rape and murder the eight-year-old girl, according to the police report. Three police officers were involved in destroying the evidence.

The incident, which initially appeared to draw a reluctant outrage, however, snowballed into a major crisis for India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the horrifying details and motives of the rape and murder came into public domain.

Human rights groups have repeatedly claimed that religious minority groups, particularly Muslims, face increasing “demonisation by hardline Hindu groups, pro-government media and some state officials” in India, and the frequency of such incidents appears to be increasing.

In a recent Amnesty International report, the London-based human rights group noted that dozens of “hate crimes against Muslims took place across the country”.

“At least ten Muslim men were lynched and many injured by vigilante cow protection groups, many of which seemed to operate with the support of members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party,” it said.

While the outrage over Asifa’s rape and murder was muted – even missing – during the initial weeks, the eight accused men found a crusading force of lawyers and ministers from BJP in their support, some of whom insisted the police investigators were Muslims and had a bias towards the accused – all of whom Hindus.

In the second week of April, nearly three months since Asifa’s body was found in the forested foothill, a group of Hindu lawyers attempted to block police investigators from entering a court premise where they had gone to file the charges against the accused.

“It is shocking that the lawyers in Kathua so blatantly tried to obstruct justice in this case,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, said in her report last week.

“For the local lawyers and other BJP supporters, the Hindu suspects and the Muslim victim were grounds for blocking prosecution of the case,” Ganguly said.

As the pressure mounted on BJP, which administers Indian administered Kashmir in an alliance based government, its two ministers – who had attended a rally in favour of the accused – resigned.

“The investigation was completed within 90 days which makes it clear that there was no intervention or attempt to block the investigation,” BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav told reporters in the city of Jammu, 60km from here.

The Fear
The fact that it took three months and the exposure of horrific details for the outrage to build against the rape and murder of the girl, who was just eight-years-old, has already instilled fear among the Muslim nomads.

Bakarwals, a poor tribe of nomads, tread across mountains during their biannual migrations from the meadows of Kashmir valley to the hilly forests of Jammu, where some pockets are dominated by ultra-nationalist Hindu groups.

Muhammad Yusuf, 45, Asifa’s uncle who had adopted her when she was a toddler, abandoned Rasana village with his herd of sheep, goats and horses soon after the girl’s body was found. The routine migration was still weeks away, but the new-found fear forced it earlier.

“We left home earlier than usual due to fear. There is a fear among all the Muslim families in Rasana and most of them have left now,” Yusuf said. “We are afraid to go back,” he said.

In the village, where Asifa was raped and killed and later not allowed to be buried, Yusuf said Hindus were always hostile towards Muslims. “Sometimes they would object to our grazing of horses, sometimes they would block the water supply,” he said.

Zafar Chowdhary, author and political analyst based in Jammu, told Al Jazeera that there is a feeling among the Hindus in the state’s Jammu region that Muslims are involved in making demographic changes.

“There is unrest and distrust among the communities in the region particularly on the question of identity in the state,” he said.

The family members of accused in the village have launched a hunger strike demanding that the investigations be done by the federal investigative agency.