Veteran Communist Part of India-Marxist leader Mohammed Salim in an interview with Rediff.com's Indrani Roy speaks about volatile atmosphere in Bengal this election season, the prospects of the Left and more. Edited excerpts:
The attempts to unearth the document started getting more and more frantic. The clerks began to flip pages of files full of documents, some hand written, some bearing thick seals or multiple stamps, some in Hindi, some in Marathi. Several junior lawyers joined in, perusing different files and dockets. But in spite of the best of efforts the document was not to be found.
'Indrani gave a mirthless laugh on spying The Suitcase, from the accused enclosure and, in sign language, gestured the impossibility of anyone fitting in such a small bag.'
Bowing to public outcry, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday said he will request the high court to order a CBI probe into the Vyapam case, including the large number of deaths of people allegedly linked to the scam.
'Why should the accused in scams visit the CBI chief so frequently?'
Lawyer: 'Did YOU not ever feel scared?' Shyamvar Rai: 'I am a driver, I said okay. Madam said it is your job...'
The CBI is probing whether the former IRDA chief J Hari Narayan had misused his discretionary powers to favour Reliance General Insurance Company, which has admitted that the extra amount collected by it way of premium was not Rs 1.07 crore, as originally believed, but 20 times as much, report Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Pranati B Mehra.
Not Mekhail. Not Rahul. Not anyone. 'Wouldn't someone have asked?' Indrani asked.
'The fragility of this case is that taking a side could be a fallacy to do. Because you don't have all the answers. So how do you take one particular side?' Meghna Gulzar asks Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
Somen Mitra, the one time pillar of the Trinamool Congress and now Congress candidate from Kolkata North constituency, can't help smiling. The SC's order directing the CBI to probe the Saradha scam is the fruit of his hard and lonely battle. On the day when 17 constituencies in the state go to polls, Mitra speaks to Rediff.com's Indrani Roy about the impact of the Saradha scam on the elections and his relationship with his former party chief.
There it lay, a photograph on the desk under a stapler, and later a stamp pad, forgotten, done with, like its subject, a Mumbai Metro One employee who vanished overnight.
'As Rai spoke, in an unbelievably dead pan, almost off-the-cuff tone, about helping plan the murder of two youngsters, drugging them with vodka and whiskey spiked with dava (medicine), smothering one, dragging a body in rigor mortis out of a car, burning a corpse, destroying evidence, and so on, it felt like he was discussing nothing more surprising than the intricacies of the weather.'
'The approach towards Mallya is not right because his unit could have been turned around earlier with additional funds from his side and the bank's side.'
Two lessons from the closure of the Barak investigation: be careful with investigations, and buy from the US or Russia through transparent protocols. Premvir Das examines
'There are times when you feel, you know: "Oh these are parents who committed murder".' 'There are times when you feel: 'No, no, the parents were innocent.' 'There is a fine line between guilt and innocence, which I found very interesting to portray.'
In this two-part interview to rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt, former IB chief Ajit Doval furiously argues against any kind of CBI action against his former colleague Rajinder Kumar in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case of 2004.
'If the State does want to come after you, in India, it can do pretty much anything. And often it isn't as though the orders are coming from the President or prime minister, no, the systems have been built in a way -- or we have allowed them to be built in a way -- that almost encourages crushing of liberties.'
Transcript of the political resolution adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party in its national executive meeting in Panaji, Goa on Sunday.