The Supreme Court has sought responses from the Centre and 12 states on a PIL challenging the validity of their anti-conversion laws. The National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) filed the PIL, seeking a stay on the operation of these laws.
The Supreme Court has declined to urgently hear pleas seeking a stay on anti-conversion laws enacted by several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. The matter is now scheduled for hearing in December.
Alleging that the NGO allows its name to be used "at the behest of some selected political interest", the Union of India told the top court that it is guilty of collecting huge funds by exploiting the agonies of riot-affected people.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay the circulation of Justice G T Nanavati's report about the Godhra carnage in Gujarat.The NGO, Citizen for Justice and Peace, approached the apex court contending that a report by Justice U C Banerjee Committee on the same carnage has been stayed and a similar step should be taken for the Justice Nanavati Commission Report, which was tabled in the Gujarat assembly on Thursday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to interfere with the appointment of P C Pande as the Director General of Police of Gujarat. An NGO -- Citizens for Justice and Peace -- had in 2006 challenged the appointment of Pande as DGP, alleging that several complaints relating to post-Godhra riots were pending against him. However, a bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and V S Sirpurkar said the petition has become redundant.
An NGO - Citizens for Justice and Peace - wants the cases pertaining to the massacre of 110 people in Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya to be transferred outside the state.\n\n
The samples will be sent to the forensic laboratory at Red Hill in Hyderabad for DNA testing.
Mizoram's director general of police Anil Shukla held a high-level meeting on Sunday to assess the security arrangements, a statement said.
Villagers from Pandharwada and Lunavada were also among the co-accused for participating in the matter.
The victims of the 2002 post-Godhra violence criticised Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, on Monday, for not appearing before the Special Investigation Team in Ahmedabad in connection with a riots case and asked him to come clean.
The pleas, filed by advocate Vishal Thakre and others and an NGO 'Citizens for Justice and Peace', have challenged the Constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 and the Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act, 2018 which regulate religious conversions of interfaith marriages.
Relatives of victims of the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat Tuesday claimed to have exhumed skeletal remains from a mass grave in Panchamahal district of those believed to have been killed in the post-Godhra riots.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde refused, however, to stay the controversial provisions of the laws and issued notices to both state governments on two different petitions.
The key witness in the Best Bakery case alleged that witnesses were coerced to change their statement.
The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear on February 3 a batch of pleas challenging controversial state laws regulating religious conversions due to interfaith marriages.
After her detention on Saturday, she had been taken to the Santacruz police station in Mumbai for informing the local police about her detention.
The home ministry said exercising the powers conferred under Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, the registration of Sabrang Trust has been suspended for a period of 180 days with effect from September 10, 2015.
The order said the NGO has transferred an amount of Rs 2.46 lakh from its foreign contribution designated account to Sabrang Trust domestic account, thus mixing of domestic and foreign funds and violating the rules.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought data on the beneficiaries of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act in Assam, saying there was no material before it which could indicate that the effect of granting Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi immigrants between 1966 and 1971 was so great that it impacted the demographic and cultural identity of the border state.
The report urged the top court that the matter may be taken up by the petitioners and other parties with utmost sensitivity as any misinformation or rumour or even suspicion may aggravate the situation in Manipur, where things are slowly returning to normal with the concerted efforts of the central and the state governments.
The plea filed by NGO Association for Protection of Civil Rights and others also sought a direction to the Centre to refrain from preparing the National Register of Citizens.
'Israelis arrested us before this war and continue to do so -- even more so -- now.'
She is accused of having a role in illegal exhumation of bodies of some victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
'We are losing the battle of secularism, but we have not lost.'
The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the CBI and the Gujarat government as to why they want to send social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand back in jail after they have been out for over seven years on anticipatory bail.
The court said that the petitioner can approach a higher court for further investigation in the case.
The home ministry also ordered a probe by the Computer Emergency Response Team-India to ascertain whether there was hacking of government software systems as there have been several instances where licences of NGOs under scrutiny were renewed automatically.
The Gujarat government, which sought a probe into the role of activist Teesta Setalvad's NGO, is now targeting her main funding source, the US-based NGO, Ford Foundation.
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Deepak Gupta said the matter will be heard on November 19, as the court has not gone through the petition in detail.
The apex court directed the Centre to frame guidelines on the matter.
An FIR has been lodged against social activist Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand, Zakia Jafri's son Tanvir Jafri and two others for allegedly usurping Rs 1.51 crore collected by them for turning Gulbarg Society into a museum, police said.
'There is nothing traitorous about highlighting the poor record of your own government. If the Indian government does something wrong, we all have the right to point this out at any forum, international or national.'
'After the NRC it is proved that whatever the BJP was saying about illegal Bangladeshi migrant was a lie and Indian Muslims have their documents to prove their citizenship.'
'We have 10 million votes, 15,000 votes per MP constituency. There are certain constituencies who will win by about 5,000 or 6,000 votes. So if we win this case, these 15,000 votes will play crucial roles in at least 50 Lok Sabha constituencies, which can change the dynamics of the entire political system,' Nagender Chindam tells Patrick Ward in an interview.
'Little about this regime, given its vindictive credo, is a complete surprise. But we were still taken aback by the CBI raid as it was a complete abuse of due process.' 'These are not legal inquiries, but abusive use of State power. They are not legitimate investigations, but a witch-hunt.' 'Ours is a typical, classic case of the State and its organs being used as an outlet for motivated vendetta of the vilest kind.'
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's decision not to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Colombo has once again put the focus on alleged cases of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.
Journalist-turned-activist Teesta Setalvad in her new book 'Foot Soldier of the Constitution: A Memoir' has spoken of the rise of communalism and the aftermath of the '02 Godhra riots. In this interview with Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf, she discusses her book, the cases against her and the state of secularism in the country.