'I know a lot of gossip, but I will take these secrets to my grave,' Majid, who owns a paan-beedi shop across the road from the guesthouse that Rahul Gandhi stays at in Munshiganj when he visits Amethi, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com
'She has kept them poor so that they spend all their time keeping body and soul together and when the time comes to vote, they blindly vote for her. Had they prospered, they would have had the time to think. She wants the mindset to remain the same. It's the perfect vote bank, but that will change,' Ajay Aggarwal, the BJP's candidate in Rae Bareli, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com
'Justice delayed is justice denied. "Move on, move on", sure, we'll move on, but first give us justice. The fabric and foundation of a democratic government is justice. You can't just move on, sorry. And that works for the anti-Sikh riots, the repatriation of Kashmiri Pandits; give us justice, then govern,' says Javed Jafri, the actor who will contest the Lok Sabha election in Lucknow for the Aam Aadmi Party. In this conversation with Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com, Jafri says he doesn't waste time listening to "enemies of the nation" and feels he is running parallel to the BJP's Rajnath Singh as far as winnability in Lucknow is concerned.
As the Delhi gang rape trial winds to a close, the family who lost their only daughter speak of their eight-month trauma and the desperate need for capital punishment for all rapists, including the five men who brutalised the Mumbai photojournalist last week. Swarupa Dutt reports
As the Delhi gang rape trial winds to a close, the family who lost their only daughter speak of their eight-month trauma and the desperate need for capital punishment for all rapists, including the five men who brutalised the Mumbai photojournalist last week. Swarupa Dutt reports
It's been a year since their daughter, their sister, died of rape-inflicted injuries so brutal, that doctors treating her said they had never seen anything like it. A year that the family has spent scrambling to courts for justice. There will be no closure, they say till all the five men are hanged. Swarupa Dutt reports.
As the Delhi gang rape trial winds to a close, the family who lost their only daughter speak of their eight-month trauma and the desperate need for capital punishment for all rapists, including the five men who brutalised the Mumbai photojournalist last week. Swarupa Dutt reports
'What's happening in Gaza is another ethnic cleansing, a repeat of what happened in 1948.' 'That is why people do not want to evacuate. Either you evacuate or you die.'
As the country awaits justice for the horrific gang rape and murder of the Delhi Braveheart, Swarupa Dutt meets the lawyers of the accused. They either blame the girl, or her friend, or both. One of the lawyers who was associated with the case even claims there was no rape, and that the girl is alive.
A small group of protestors in Delhi have kept up their fight for justice in the Delhi gang rape case. Swarupa Dutt tells their story
A small group of protestors in Delhi have kept up their fight for justice in the Delhi gang rape case. Swarupa Dutt tells their story
In a Delhi home, two brothers miss a special sister on Raksha Bandhan.
'We believe in God and I know nothing bad will happen here as long as the Congress is in power. I was born in Rae Bareli, I am the third generation of Nathans from this place,' Basil Nathan, whose mother Victoria was a member of the AICC and close to Indira Gandhi, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com
'Hamas is going to be prepared. There will be booby traps and tunnels; it's going to be door to door fighting.'
The idea of India is documented by its 4,500-year-old history and as much as its tryst with freedom, was its tryst with princely states. And we are the richer for it, says Swarupa Dutt.
'The Israeli government is saying, "OK, leave northern Gaza, because we're going to fight Hamas there".' 'But Hamas is not stupid. They are going to put militants in southern Gaza too. And then what's Israel going to do?' 'At some point are they going to say, 'Leave southern Gaza too because we want to fight Hamas there? Go across the border to Egypt"'? 'That's what people are worried about. Because they fear that once they cross the border into Egypt there will be no coming back.'
Get transported to Bengal with this simple, yum meal.
An advocate in the December 16 gang rape case, who courted controversy with his gender specific remarks, on Thursday said it was a "personal statement confined to his family which has been given a general interpretation."
'I did get a ticket, but getting nominated isn't enough.' 'The people in Habibpur, my own party workers, are my opponents.' 'Is it possible to win?'
'The power of love is the greatest power in the world.' 'Add a smile and you can conquer the world,' Bengali actor June Maliah, the Trinamool Congress's candidate for the Medinipur constituency, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com.
That it's the day his daughter was brutalised, raped and died as a result of her horrific injuries does not weigh heavily on Badrinath Singh. 'We remember her every single day. In fact, we try not to think of her today, of what happened to her today,' he says.
'Whether the Hindu voter will vote for us or not, we can't say, can we?'
'Tell me, one BJP policy that Mamata has opposed and is fighting tooth and nail?' Be it Article 370, instant triple talaq, be it CAA/NRC/NPR, be it notebandi, FDI, she has aligned with the BJP.'
'The ground reality is that Banglar manush Didir shonge aachhe (The people of Bengal are with Didi).' 'Even as the BJP is still looking for a CM candidate, the elections will be over and we will form government with a two-thirds majority.'
'People say my personality doesn't have sharp edges, but politics doesn't have to be about pulling down your opponents or bad mouthing them.'
'It is time to give back to this city that has given me so much.'
'The TMC forgets that if people don't stand by you, your party will never win.'
As their parties are locked in a fierce battle for Bengal, Tathagata and Saugata Roy, siblings who belong to the BJP and the TMC respectively, answer the same questions put to them about the assembly election.
'Mamata is an emotional person, she follows her heart.' 'We loved that Didi, we still love her, but she is a changed person.' 'Why and how the change happened, who is responsible, I can't say.'
Rediff.com's Swarupa Dutt speaks to the mother of the Unnao rape survivor who met with a near-fatal road accident on Sunday.
36-year-old Sunil Yadav, who works as a garbage collector for the civic body in Mumbai is an inspiration. He chronicles the arduous journey he took to secure his MPhil degree and why he refuses to give up his job despite his education.
'The 41 men who died, they are also somebody's sons or brothers. It is wrong.'
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
'The TMC did not bother telling me, a sitting MLA for 20 years, why I was not being given a ticket.'
Dhruv Shirpurkar's parents never let go of their faith in God while standing with him in his battle against a rare disorder that left him 85 per cent disabled and bound to a wheelchair.
'You may be an MP or an MLA; when we go to Bengal, we go as cadre.'
'He was always opposed to a form of nationalism that was narrow, selfish and arrogant.' 'He will always remain a beacon of inspiration for freedom-loving people across the world and for movements of resistance against oppressive State power.'
Yet actress Pari Singh does it because it is a story that must be told. Again and again.
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