'It wasn't as if the senior police inspectors in charge of the police stations were not aware of the communal tension that was being created in their areas before and during the riots.' 'Yet they chose not to act,' recalls Jyoti Punwani.
We have failed to acknowledge the volatile events that have changed Mumbai.
We saw the best of the Mumbai police commissioner from the way he handled a volatile situation. Will we see the best of him again from the way he pursues the cases against the rioters, asks B Raman.
Narendra Modi can never be Vajpayee because the poet-prime minister had a heart. Modi doesn't. He only understands the language of business, of profit and loss. It is beyond his capacity to understand a complex country like India, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'My father groomed these people and Shiv Sainiks supported them. But now they want to become owners and our institutions are such that they have made a thief the owner of the house. What is happening in the country'
'Kalesaab could have easily earned Rs 1 lakh per month as rent from this place but he gave it to Muslims for free. Secularism in India is alive only because of people like him.'
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
Banning beef (and not cow) slaughter, not renewing education quota for Muslims. What next from the Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra, a ban on azaan, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Several Muslim bodies have given a call for observing Eid-ul-Azha, on December 9 this year, in a subdued manner following the recent terror strikes in Mumbai which claimed over 200 lives.The call has been given by the ulemas of the All India Sunni Board, Ulema Council and Islamic Centre of India.Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali of the Islamic Centre of India told PTI that during the 'Khutba' before the Bakrid namaz, the scholars should educate the masses about terrorism.
At least 20 FIRs were registered in connection with stone-pelting during rallies held in protest against the Tripura communal violence in five districts of Maharashtra and 20 persons were arrested, police said on Saturday.
Eid-ul-Fitr has been celebrated in a big way in Hindi films.
Former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, the son of Bal Thackeray, and his family members did not attend the event.
Hundreds of Muslims chanted Bharat Mata Ki Jai and unfurled the national flag, in a historic gesture that will only strengthen the country's religious fabric.
Unlike other top police officers, A A Khan spoke boldly --- be it while defending 'encounters' in many of which he was involved, or in tracing the cause of the ghastly Radhabai Chawl incident, recalls Jyoti Punwani. Encounters were useful, he said, because hardened criminals who were targeted were beyond reform and no good for society.
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A division bench of the Bombay high court recently went out of its way to settle an unexpected conflict between a newly married Hindu-Muslim couple from Jammu. When Daljeet Chand from Jammu eloped with his childhood sweetheart Waziran and got married in Mumbai, he had braced for stiff opposition from the bride's conservative and influential family. What he had not bargained for was that Waziran would threaten to walk out on him barely a month of their marriage.
His love for the language, his grit to fight the odds, helped Subramani Ramachandran realise his dream of publishing his book on Urdu poems.
When the Muslim Personal Law Board promises 'advisories' and nikahnamas to the Supreme Court, one has to remember not only its recent campaign against any change in Muslim personal law, but also its past record of inaction on the question of triple talaq, says Jyoti Punwani.
Several Muslim nations have condemned remarks by BJP's former national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal against the Prophet.
Several activists belonging to Muslim women groups held placards demanding entry for females into the sanctum sanctorum of the historic dargah, which receives hundreds of devotees everyday.
Pilot said "opportunist" people are ruling at the Centre after taking votes on emotions but they have failed the country on all fronts.
Arvind Kejriwal warned the media that "very big forces" would try and break the INDIA alliance by showing that there was a lot of acrimony among them.
Amid the tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal attended a dinner hosted by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari for envoys of the non-Muslim countries in Islamabad.The dinner hosted by Zardari on Saturday night at the Presidential palace was also attended by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.Apart from the Indian High Commissioner, envoys of the United States, China, Britain, Russia were present.
Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to defeat it in the ensuing Mumbai civic polls, saying his party's bond with the city was unbreakable, and also hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his rebellion and for laying claims to his late father's legacy.
A 35-year-old Muslim community religious leader hailing from Afghanistan was shot dead by a group of four unidentified persons in Yeola town of Maharashtra's Nashik district on Tuesday, the police said.
Rushdie was attacked and stabbed in the neck on Friday while onstage in Chautauqua in Western New York, the New York police said.
Police have detained social activist Sandeep Pandey and three others ahead of a foot march planned on Monday to express solidarity with Bilkis Bano, who was gang-raped and seven of her family members murdered during the 2002 Gujarat riots, police said.
Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of 26 opposition parties in Bengaluru, Kharge said, "This was a very important meeting to save democracy and the Constitution in the interest of the people of the country."
External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi also said that the OIC continues to be 'hijacked' by 'vested interests' to further their 'nefarious propaganda' against India, seen as a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan.
Signatories to the appeal include actors Aamir Khan, Sanjay Khan and Javed Jaffery, cricketers Mohammed Azharuddin and Syed Kirmani, filmmakers Aziz Mirza, Abbas Mastan, Sayeed Mirza, poet and writer Javed Akhtar, script-writer Salim Khan and senior editor M J Akbar, along with a large number of other personalities from theatre, journalism, police and sports
The Congress and the Left parties have not only extended support to the Samajwadi Party candidate but are also campaigning for him, in accordance with the spirit of the new opposition togetherness ahead of next year's general election.
People also held padyatra and Tirana Yatras to celebrate Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.
Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray held a meeting with party spokespersons in Mumbai, two days before his estranged cousin Raj's scheduled rally.
Mumbai has 1,104 mosques of which 135 used loudspeakers during the morning namaz on Wednesday, he claimed, seeking to know what action was being taken against these mosques 'which violated the law.'
It further claimed the prosecution has not been able to establish Khan had any intention to cause the murder (of Kolhe) in order to invoke UAPA or IPC provisions.
"Public outcry will not affect our judicial decisions," the Supreme Court asserted on Tuesday, as it began weighing the legality of the remission granted to all the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Taking a strong stand against the call by its ally Shiv Sena for the scrapping of Muslims' voting rights, the government today said such suggestions were not acceptable to it and that these "should not be discussed even hypothetically".
However, police said the saw allegedly used by Poonawala to cut his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar's body is yet to be recovered.
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