Maharashtra police on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for suspected Maoist links. Near simultaneous searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi. Subsequently, Rao, Bhardwaj and Farreira were arrested. Although Navalakha was also arrested, the Delhi high court ordered police not to take him out of the national capital at least until Wednesday. According to unconfirmed reports, others whose residences were raided are Susan Abraham, Kranthi Tekula, Father Stan Swamy in Ranchi and Anand Teltumbde in Goa. The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year. Here are their brief profiles:
Pradip Burman belongs to one of India's most illustrious business families, one which runs the noted Dabur brand of mostly Ayurveda-based FMCG products.
President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Union ministers, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and various other top leaders have condoled Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's demise and paid glowing tributes to her.
The 58-year-old Rajya Sabha MP will face several challenges, including strengthening of the combat capabilities of the army, navy and the air force due to changing regional security matrix and geo-political dynamics.
On display was India's military might and cultural diversity.
'They thought he can separate the Muslim votes and win, but the Kerala mind is completely different.' 'It is a secular mind because Hindus, Christians and Muslims live together.' 'We don't like somebody coming from outside, contesting in our state, winning and going and avoiding us.'
Two persons were injured in a clash which took place between AAP and Congress workers at Sultanpur village in Sangrur district.
While PM Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dominated the national executive, senior chief ministers and 'margdarshaks' LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi were ignored
She, however, did not talk of the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance and sought support for only her party's candidates.
He said it's an alliance between two families, one of which 'looted' the country and the other UP.
Is Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi opening another minefield with the introduction of mandatory pre-nuptial agreement before marriage or will this proposed legislation help streamline the dissolution process of a marriage given the spiralling divorce rates in our country? Rashme Sehgal speaks to lawyers on the issue.
Political observers say that except for a strong anti-incumbency sentiment, there is little that might go against the BJP.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
BJP President Amit Shah -- arguably the second most powerful politician in the nation -- granted a rare television interview to the Network 18 group of news channels. Rediff.com's Rajesh Alva checks out what the BJP boss said in this word cloud assessment of the interview.
Modi, who has stepped up his attack on Akhilesh in recent days, also said that the chief minister is to be blamed if people of the state which he ruled for five years do not see 'achche din'.
Following the Supreme Court ruling against liquor being sold within 500 metres of state and national highways, the infamous Indian jugaad is in play once again. Veenu Sandhu, Nikita Puri, Ranjita Ganesan & Avishek Rakshit find out how India is coping.
True misogyny is when you stop being curious about women, and Milind Dhaimade directs his actresses with a sense of wonder. Tu Hai Mera Sunday has delightful women characters, sketchy men, and individual threads that work better than the whole package, feels Sreehari Nair.
The mood turned somber at the 35th National Games after a young netball player lost his life in a freak accident.
This phase of voting was crucial for the state's ruling Samajwadi Party and main opposition Bahujan Samaj Party.
As many as 69 assembly constituencies in the Yadav heartland, considered crucial for the ruling Samajwadi Party in the state, went to the polls in this phase.
Amit Shah's sustained campaigning against slaughterhouses has unnerved UP's leather and meat export industry.
Though today he is treading the path alone with no bigwig coming over for campaigning, the support of his elder brother Mulayam, who started his campaign with a rally for him, has re-established the bonding in the family.
'The creation of Pakistan was integral to Britain's grand strategy.' 'If they were to ever leave India, Britain's military planners had made it clear that they needed to retain a foothold in the NWFP and Baluchistan because that would provide the means to retain control of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.'
The lesson Waghmare sternly received on Monday from CBI Investigating Officer K K Singh and CBI Prosecutor Bharat Badami about the way a witness must answer questions from the defence seemed to have had only a marginal effect on him. On Tuesday the timid former office boy still chose, unpredictably and remarkably, to answer many a question in the manner of his choosing. He told the room categorically that he had asked Indrani's former secretary Kajal Sharma not to forge Sheena Bora's signature on her resignation letter.
CBI sources said that agency teams swooped down at the residences of Peter and Indrani, two each in Mumbai and Goa, Indrani's ancestral home in Guwahati, her driver Shyamvar Pinturam Rai's houses in Mumbai and Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, and the residence of Sanjeev Khanna in Kolkata.
'A belligerent Alok Nath refused to leave.. kept screaming shouting threatening abusing trying to grab me..'
For his 60th birthday in December, which he called his third 20th birthday, Mallya flew in Enrique Iglesias to perform at his villa overlooking the beach in Goa.
All this is happening at a time when aluminium prices in the world market are firming up.
'The non-cinephiles may hold up Sholay as their personal favourite and the cinephile lot may quote something like 8 1/2 as the movie to load with them on the ark.' 'But for a good percentage of these people from both categories, if there is one film to simply laze around with, a film that can extract them from their dull funk, it's definitely DCH.'
In the normal course, a high turnout reflects anti-incumbency but there is no correlation between high turnout and advantage to the National Democratic Alliance, says Dharmendra Kumar Singh.
Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Opposition parties on Wednesday alleged that selective leak of information on demonetisation of 500 and 1000 rupee notes to 'friends of BJP' and demanded making public the names of those who had bought gold and foreign exchange of over Rs 1 crore since April.
Kejriwal sought to remind AAP volunteers, MLAs and Delhi government ministers that things will get worse in the coming days and exhorted them to 'leave' if they are not strong enough.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Wednesday
15 per cent of startups in Silicon Valley are founded by Indians.
Transcript of the political resolution adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party in its national executive meeting in Panaji, Goa on Sunday.
'A lot will depend on the first Aayog and the power it derives.'
Faceless Ambedkarite groups from across the country are running BSP's election war rooms, writes Archis Mohan.
Happy Ending, at its core, is pretentious and doesn't quite live up to expectations, save for Govinda, who lights up the screen with his mere presence.
Opposition on Monday picked holes in various government decisions like demonetisation and surgical strikes as well as allocation of funds for MNREGA, agriculture sector and Scheduled Castes, saying it has failed on all fronts despite which it is trying to "fool" the people.
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