With Muthappa Rai's death ended a life that highlighted the dark side of Bengaluru's often delirious growth to become India's IT capital
'The operation was planned in a manner so as not to alert the terrorists.' 'Every precaution was taken to keep it low-key so as not to alert the terrorists and surprise them and arrest them.'
Balbinder Singh Dhami, who has played an inspector, for over a year, in The Zee Horror Show, took on the role of a witness on Monday. It was a part he had no experience of.
Good intentions and elaborate roadmaps apart, there is an urgent need for the Tamil Nadu chief minister to come up with branded schemes like MGR's meal scheme, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
'It was one of the greatest learnings in my life to see someone like the great Amitabh Bachchan go through such a tough phase.' 'He had been there, done it all and really didn't need to prove himself.' 'Yet, he channelised it all and came out with one of his best performances,' Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra tells Savera R Someshwar/Rediff.com in a fascinating conversation about the films he has made and the actors he has worked with.
'Dubey was a desperate criminal.' 'I don't discount the possibility of him trying to disarm the cops and escape.'
Top Lashkar-e-Tayiba bomb expert Abdul Karim Tunda, one of the 20 terrorists India had asked Pakistan to hand over after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, on Friday withdrew his bail petition filed before a Delhi court.
Eight police personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, were gunned down in a village near Kanpur city by the henchmen of a criminal who lost two of them in a firefight later, officials said.
When it came to his cross examination by Sanjeev Khanna's lawyer Niranjan Mundargi, Imtiaz Shaikh appeared to be afflicted by that peculiar gap-in-one's-memory or Choosy Memory Syndrome with his recall of other dates in his life, except those directly related with the murder, shaky or non-existent.
Terming court's decision to summon Dow Chemicals in the Bhopal gas tragedy case as an "important step", Amnesty International today demanded that the company must acknowledge its responsibility towards the survivors of the 1984 industrial disaster.
'The BJP will get the lion's share of the Opposition vote. I would give the Congress-Left around 15 per cent.'
'He was tortured in police custody.' '"Do you not have any rape cases to write about in Kerala?" "Why is it that a Muslim from Kerala has so much sympathy for a Dalit woman in UP?" "Why did Rahul Gandhi visit your wife?"' 'These were the kind of questions the UP police asked him.'
Sukh Ram and Raja were charged with corruption during their tenure as telecom ministers. Sukh Ram was convicted while Raja has been acquitted. One had cash found under his bed; in the case of the other the trial judge mockingly asks: Where is the money? And if there's no money, where is the corruption? So, pronounced innocent. Sukh Ram is a Brahmin. 'Maybe he strayed just that one time, people like that aren't usually corrupt.' And Raja is a Dalit. 'Can you expect any better?' What race is in some places, caste is in India, says Shekhar Gupta.
Rediff.com takes a look at some cases from the recent past where the courts awarded the capital punishment for horrific crimes that fall under the rarest of rare category.
Though the list of superstitious beliefs is long, often dissolving distinctions of class, caste, religion and education, Karnataka's anti-superstition bill is seen as a big step ahead.
'Afzal Guru was convicted of supporting the attack on India's Parliament. The Supreme Court said "the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded" to Guru.' 'Till we can think up similar justifications for hanging non-Muslims, I do not think we can delink terrorism from religion in our minds,' argues Aakar Patel.
A more informed electorate, rather than the Lokpal, can fight corruption better, argues Neeta Kolhatkar.
Pervez Musharraf said that Pakistan tried to undermine the Afghan government led by ex-president Hamid Karzai for helping "India stab Pakistan in the back".
Sandhya Ravishankar describes the thorny relationship between the two political titans of Tamil Nadu, M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa, both now part of the ages.
Having made farmer suicides a campaign issue, Modi and the BJP should have no complaints in now having to live with it, says Aakar Patel.
'Dalvi, you are saying you asked a question, but don't remember the answer?' asks Pasbola incredulously. 'Yes.' 'You are lying.'
'Jaish aided by LeT attacked Parliament knowing mobilisation of Indian military assets would be the consequence.' 'That mobilisation happened, necessitating a military response from Musharraf who moved troops guarding back doors out of Tora Bora, facilitating Osama's escape.'
M I Khan traces his story and finds that he was a virtual nobody 25 years ago.
'Like in cricket, M S Dhoni was the captain and Virat Kohli played under him.' 'Then Dhoni played under Kohli.' 'Now imagine, having a second switch.' 'That is the analogy here, and I find no other example in Indian politics, or even world politics.'
"I would like to now apologise to the victims, to the survivors," he told a Boston court shortly before being formally sentenced to death for the bombing. "I want to ask forgiveness of Allah and his creation."
The court granted bail to Advani, Joshi and Bharti after they appeared before it.
'Nitish Kumar's government has proved during these floods that it is a helpless government.'
Crackdowns on bloggers often signal the ominous rise of religious fundamentalism
'Generations pass by, but those fighting for justice are still not seeing the end to so many cases.'
The babas' vote banks and the politicians' greed for en bloc votes, is the curse of Punjab and Haryana.
Bangladesh's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was on Wednesday sentenced to death by a special tribunal for his role in the killing of thousands of people during the nation's independence war against Pakistan in 1971.
Dhananjay Desai has been allowed to spread his poison to young men in Maharashtra and Goa over the last five years, by a 'secular' Congress-NCP government. The 23 cases pending against him have not stopped him. He and his supporters must have thought they were immune when they lynched a bearded Muslim at night. Neither Desai nor his followers, nor the police, nor their 'secular' political masters, must have expected the nationwide furore that followed, says Jyoti Punwani.
'It is the RJD, otherwise known for misgovernance, which has offered a candidate of clean and performing credentials, rather than the NDA,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
Very few people have access to the granular detail of what options are available to India and what their costs, consequences and benefits are. While Modi considers all of this, he would do well to do one thing. And that is to ignore the media.
'Kulbhushan Jadhav is a very sad case.' 'I think Pakistan handled this issue very clumsily.' 'They gave too much of publicity and also said that they will hang him.' 'Now obviously, they are not going to hang him.'
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel -- who covers the Sheena Bora murder trial for Rediff.com -- reports on a day in a Ranchi court.
They broke free yet failed to evade the clutches of law.
'Those who have seen the functioning of the Modi government in Gujarat know that the issues related to Hindutva and issues of economy and growth function simultaneously.' 'Modi's politics are based on the understanding of the middle-class consumer society which is in pursuit of material aspirations.' Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reveals the Modi government's economic and political plans for the year ahead.
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It's perverse to rationalise 'controlled' killings or torture -- without going down a slippery moral slope. Once the state stoops to torture, it's liable to sink into tyranny, says Praful Bidwai.
