Hamid Nihal Ansari, a software engineer from Mumbai, returned to India in December 2018 after spending six years in a Pakistani jail for illegally entering the neighbouring country from Afghanistan, reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online. He was arrested in 2012 and lodged at Peshawar jail after Pakistan had slapped espionage charges against him. The decision to release him was on account of relentless pressure from New Delhi and Sushma Swaraj, who was the external affairs minister and was personally monitoring the case. Speaking to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com, Ansari recalls the time he spent with her and says that if it wasn't for her efforts, he would still be rotting away in a Pakistani cell.
'Mamata Didi is the only politician who can take on the might of Modi.'
'The central government forces are supporting one group and the state government forces are supporting another group and this is resulting in non-stop cross-firing, which has resulted in the killing of many innocent people.'
'These new laws give complete (impunity) to the police.' 'Whatever little accountability the police had, all that is gone now.' 'There is no accountability mechanism against the police for abusing or misusing in the new laws.'
Indians waiting patiently in serpentine queues outside Mumbai banks tell Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf they are ready to suffer for the larger good of the country.
'UCC should be across India and legally applicable to every Indian citizen.'
'If Israel had stuck to the peace accords, Hamas would have had no one to fight.'
'Badle ki bhavna (revengeful politics) was never seen in Maharashtra and Indian politics, but now we are witnessing all that today.'
'The Indian Army and paramilitary have to land more in Assam as the situation is very bad, especially in upper Assam,' says BJP MLA Binod Hazarika whose home was burnt down by mobs.
'You will really wish oh! Had I stayed in Dharavi I would have got a nice house. I can assure you that. We will make dreams come true.'
'We do not want Kashmiri Pandits to migrate from Kashmir.'
'The people of Jharkhand know that Modi is not going to become chief minister, so why should they vote for the BJP?'
'The wife will not only abuse her husband for giving her less money, but also abuse the government.' 'Look at the price of a cooking gas cylinder, it is Rs 1,200.'
Over 1,200 Indian students stranded at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine make a desperate call for help.
'Writers are always nervous.' 'If you go to a party, you will notice that the writers are always in a corner of the party, looking anxious, sweating and tense about something or the other.' 'I am that kind of person.'
'With the Citizenship Amendment Bill, Hindus from Pakistan can come to India. They have got a way,' says Gurumukh Jagwani who came to India on his honeymoon, loved the country so much that he stayed back and got Indian citizenship.
'All is well in Visakhapatnam for now.'
'He was provided sustenance by the British.' 'Many times he wrote to the British that he needed an increase in pension.'
'Even if not me, there are other deserving candidates from Maharashtra in the Congress who should have been given the Rajya Sabha ticket.'
'I was not there at the spot and I don't know who was driving the car.' 'It is a matter that needs to be investigated by the police and it is their job,' says the father of the journalist who was killed in Lakhimpur Kheri.
'If they don't make Ajit Pawar chief minister, what can he do?'
'The cousins do not have a good rapport with each other in politics, though they may be having a good rapport with each other in family life.'
'She showed courage at every turn in her political career.'
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com recounts the history of the Indian flag and how it has evolved over the years.
'He told senior journalists a few days after the Babri Masjid demolition, 'Jo hua theek hua. Maine isliye hone diya ki BJP ki rajniti hamesha ke liye khatam ho jaye.'
'We moved out just in time. The fire spread so fast.'
'This committee underscores the Indian State's longstanding conventional approach to leverage top-down conflict management in North East India in general and Manipur in particular.' 'Trying to 'manage' violent conflicts top-down has not worked in the past, and apparently does not seem to work this time either.'
'The upper caste elite's belief that they are casteless is a belief that is available only to the upper castes. Because all the lower castes are reminded by society every day what their caste is.'
'Deeply hurt by Modi's conspicuous silence for over a month-and-a-half since the outbreak of violence, people in Manipur came on the roads and crushed their radio sets to express their frustration and anger.' 'The fact that Modi's Mann Ki Baat did not have a single reference to the Manipur violence further accentuated this hurt and anger.'
'We are a country of amazing ability and the way we have responded to the pandemic is evidence.'
'Modi warned China, therefore they have come to the talks.' 'Nothing will come out of these talks.'
'My father's life sends a message that there are positive things happening between India and China, no matter what happens at the border.'
'As far as I know, Sachin Pilotji is not going to the BJP.'
'People of my constituency told me they will continue loving me, but will not vote for me if I am with the BJP.'
'The Congress didn't win elections only on soft Hindutva.'
'We cannot accept that this incident was not in the knowledge of the home ministry.' 'If they had no knowledge about this incident, then it is a big intelligence failure as the Union home ministry has no idea what is going on in Manipur and what the state police is doing.'
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'All restaurants and pubs must treat the issue seriously and appoint safety officers. This chalta hai attitude cannot work.'
'All this while he has been maintaining that he is innocent and, if that is the case, why will he run away?'
'I am not sure of the numbers killed, but they were not as high as the use of the word 'genocide' suggests.' 'There is another meaning you could take, 'cultural genocide', in that the Pandit community is extremely small and their forced departure led to a wiping out of their culture.'
