As actor Shiney Ahuja faces serious charges including rape, his lawyer Shrikant Shivade fields Nithya Ramani's questions on the case.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has alleged that an Indian Army officer linked to the 2007 bombing of the trans-border Samjhauta Express train had hired Pakistan-based militants to carry out the attack.
Kamra was banned by India's largest airline for six months on Tuesday for allegedly harassing Goswami on the Mumbai-Lucknow flight. SpiceJet, GoAir and Air India also imposed a similar ban on Kamra without specifying any period.
After reopening the probe into the Nanded blast of 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation has recently taken custody of Army's tainted Lieutenant-Colonel, Srikant Purohit, and questioned him at length about his role in the incident.
The special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court on Tuesday remanded Ajay Rahirkar, accused in the September 29 Malegaon blast and the treasurer of right wing group Abhinav Bharat, to police custody till December 20. Eight other accused including prime accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur were sent to judicial custody till December 29. The prosecution had sought Rahirkar's custody on the grounds that Rahirkar transferred funds from Abhinav Bharat's treasury.
Bharatiya Janata Party General Secretary Arun Jaitely answered questions from rediff.com readers on the forthcoming assembly elections and also the ramifications of the Malegaon blast probe on November 25.
With allegations being made against various Hindu outfits in the wake of the Malegaon blast, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat today said his organisation was a "disciplined force and not a militant outfit".
The laptop, handed over by the Army after a week of Purohit's arrest, was examined at a forensic laboratory during which, the probe agencies, claimed that he was often visiting anti-Muslim and jihadi websites, sources attached with the investigations said. But, the investigators did not get details about the composition about the saffron outfit -- Abhinav Bharat -- whose cadres are alleged to be behind the blast in Malegaon on September 29 which they were looking for.
Charging the Centre with appeasing minorities for electoral gains, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Saturday called for a nationwide agitation to highlight the 'oppression of Hindus'."On one hand, the government is not executing death sentence to Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and on the other it is torturing an innocent person like Sadhvi Pragya Singh, who has been falsely implicated in the Malegaon blast case," VHP leader Venkatesh Abdev said.
The arrest of Hindu activists in connection with the Malegaon blast has put several investigating agencies on rewind mode. If the revelations by Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Purohit are to be believed then several bomb blasts in the country need to be reinvestigated.
The Mumbai police will be probing if Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit and others arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts had any role in the explosions in other parts of the country this year even as the hunt for two absconding accused intensified.
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and another person, arrested for their alleged involvement in the September 29 Malegaon blast, were subjected to narco-analysis tests in Mumbai on Monday.The Sadhvi and Sameer Kulkarni underwent the scientific tests conducted by officials of the Forensic Science Laboratory in a hospital in south Mumbai, Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad officials said.The tests on former army officer Ramesh Upadhyay is likely to be conducted on Wednesday.
"Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad must explain as to why Riyaz Bhatkal, an accused in the 2006 Malegaon blasts, and who is allegedly involved in a series of recent blasts all over the country has not been put to narco tests," Prasad charged.
Nashik-based Bhonsalal Military School (BMS) on Friday said no meeting took place in the institution among retired major Ramesh Shivji Upadhyay, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and a serving lieutanant Colonel, who have been interrogated in connection with the Malegaon blasts.
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, one of the prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, on Tuesday approached the special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court seeking home food alleging that she is being served non-vegetarian food in the prison.
Police were probing the links of right-wing group Sanatan Saunstha with the blast that took place at 9.30 pm on Friday night when explosives kept in a scooter went off on a busy street in Margao, 30 km from Panaji.
'A member of the house referred to me as 'terrorist'. It is an attack on my dignity as a member of parliament'
A three member team of the Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad arrived in Mangalore to interrogate Shri Ram Sena founder Pramod Muthalik in connection with the Malegaon blast case. The ATS is in Mangalore to interrogate Muthalik who was sent to a day's police custody.
'This Ram Navami -- the birth anniversary of Lord Ram -- presents the majority community an opportunity to shed its minority complex and offer an olive branch and discrimination- free society to the minority,' suggests Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
He was accompanied by his father, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, and mother Rashmi while filing nomination papers.
"The remarks made about Gandhiji or Nathuram Godse are very bad and very wrong for society," he said.
On the Malegaon probe issue, Kavita said her husband "wasn't under pressure from what I understood... because according to the Bhagvad Gita if you are fighting evil, even if your gurus are not doing the right thing, you must continue your fight. He was not confused, his ideas, his ideology was fixed, even the investigations were going smoothly, he had finished his work."
The great Indian election is over and now the wait for the results is shrinking with every passing moment. Though exit polls hint at a cakewalk for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his National Democratic Alliance, there are some battles which will be keenly observed on the result day.
The Mumbai police on Monday night submitted a report to the Maharashtra government on the death of Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare.In its report, the police states that neither of the four bullets found on Karkare's body were police bullets. The report further suggests that Karkare's death had nothing to do with the Malegaon blast probe, which he was heading prior to his death.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has reopened investigations into the 2006 Nanded blast, which is being seen as a key indicator of a Hindutva group's involvement in terror activities.
Terming the invocation of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act against them as inappropriate, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit and Abhinav Bharat treasurer Ajay Rahirkar, both accused in the September 29 Malegaon blast case, on Saturday moved the special MCOCA court seeking bail.Purohit and Rahirkar, in their bail applications, claimed that the Anti-Terrorism Squad had no evidence linking them to the blast and that they have nothing to do with the case.
Today, hour-long, high-pitched 'debates' at prime time, replete with inflammatory visuals and captions, using half-truths, insinuations and lies, pour venom against Muslims and seek to divide Hindus and Muslims, notes Jyoti Punwani.
The Congress on Tuesday attempted to drag Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani and the saffron party into the Malegaon blast case controversy, accusing the BJP's prime ministerial candidate and the party of making the 'first political interference' in the terror case. "The internal security of the country is today threatened by two As -- Advani and Abhinav Bharat," senior party leader M Veerappa Moily told reporters.
National Security Advisor M K Narayanan assured Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani that charges against the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad probing the Malegaon blast case would be investigated, a BJP spokesman said in New Delhi.
Shivram Apte, son of Shyam Hari Apte, has strongly refuted claims that his father had given self-styled religious guru Dayanand Pandey Rs 10 lakh to kill Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh General Secretary Mohan Bhagwat and RSS communications director Indraeesh, as reported by a national daily on Friday."This is our wrong 15 minutes of fame," said an agitated Apte, who owns a software consultancy firm in Pune.
"It has become clear that the ATS is acting in a politically-motivated and unprofessional manner. After going through her (sadhvi Pragya) affidavit, I have to express my shock and outrage, which I am sure all Indians will share," BJP leader L K Advani said during his one-day tour of the poll-bound BJP-ruled Chattisgarh state.
The probe into the Malegaon blast in which several Hindu radicals have been arrested has made Bhartiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh have a change of heart on the question of attributing terrorism to any religion or community. "It is wrong to generalise acts of terror as Islamic terrorism or Hindu terrorism. No one should be allowed to communalise terrorism," Singh said at a press conference in Lucknow on Tuesday evening.
A host of pro-Hindutva outfits, including Abhinav Bharat, organised a meeting in Pune on Sunday to raise money for the accused in the Malegaon blast case.Taking strong exception to the expression 'Hindu terrorism' being used in regard to the suspects booked by the Anti-Terrorism Squad -- Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Lt Col Shrikant Purohit and Dayanand Pandey -- Abhinav Bharat president Himani Savarkar told the gathering that the money collected would be used for the legal battles.
Andhra Pradesh police officials including members of elite anti terrorist force OCTOPUS will soon go to Mumbai to question Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Shrikant Purohit and other suspects who were arrested in connection with the Malegaon blast.
While 'Hindu terror acts' are made out to be a relatively new concept, the fact remains that the first signs of Hindu terror came to the fore as way back as 2006, when a bomb went off while bding assembled in a Hindu activist's house in Nanded, Maharashtra
The army has ordered a departmental inquiry by a three-member team led by a brigadier-level officer into the activites of Lt Col S P Purohit arrested for his alleged involvement in Malegaon blasts.
"I will rather die than get admitted in the J J hospital," is what Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon blasts case had to say.
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, the prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, has threatened to kill herself, alleging ill-treatment meted out to her in jail. In a letter dated July 11 addressed to the media, the Sadhvi states that she is fed up with the manner in which she is being treated by the police, hospital and jail authorities and threatened to commit suicide in the Byculla jail, where she is currently lodged.
The Shiv Sena on Monday alleged that the Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Thakur was being tortured by the Mumbai police and that she had stopped partaking food for the last eight days.
Pragya Singh Thakur, the sadhvi arrested in connection with Malegaon bomb blasts, will undergo polygraph, brain mapping and narco tests, a government lawyer said on Monday.