Tuesday was the last that Courtroom 51 saw of Shyamvar Rai, accused No 3 and approver in the Sheena Bora murder trial. True to form, Rai's final hours in the witness box were rather acrimonious. His cross-examination at several points turned downright ugly.
Over the weekend and Labour Day, a change seemed to have come over the former secretary and her memory had all but deserted her. Not unexpectedly, Kajal Sharma had lost much of her exactness. Her vocabulary had shrivelled to four or five words.
After 800 days, is it a little clearer that Accused No 1 through 4 are responsible for her death?
Something about the big car and its passengers, standing solemnly outside their vehicle, piqued the biker's interest.
The world had almost completely forgotten about Partition, and many never learned about it, says Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the woman who founded the 1947 Partition Archive.
Will there be answers? Will we ever know the truth about who murdered Sheena Bora?
Pasbola had a number of queries about the nails of the corpse found at Gagode Khurd. Did it have nails? Nails, in a case of strangulation, are key because they often have particles and skin beneath them to show the victim had been grasping something as s/he was strangled.
R K Studios is not just another piece of real estate; it is part of India's movie history.
The street leading to the Golden Temple gets a makeover that takes you back in time.
Industrialist Naveen Jindal, fighting to win the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat for a third time, has more than just Narendra Modi to contend with. Joel Rai reports.
The babas' vote banks and the politicians' greed for en bloc votes, is the curse of Punjab and Haryana.
Singh and Badami subsequently took Waghmare to a corner of the corridor outside, where others have no access, and gave him a lecture. The conversation was largely inaudible, except for a phrase here or there. The thrust was unmistakable. Waghmare had to learn not to give such detailed answers to the defence.
'The death certificate which I once read even states the date, 6 August, but I know that already.' 'Every year, we observe paath at the local gurdwara for which we need to take leave from school. The leave form always says 'attending father's death anniversary'. 'I always dread this day -- the long walk from my desk to the teacher's table with my diary in hand and in it a handwritten note dripped with sadness despite its curt language.' 'What generally follows is pity on my teacher's face, a deep sigh of sympathy and a sad pat on the back.' A moving excerpt from Gurmehar Kaur's memoir Small Acts Of Freedom.
The British administration ignored the mounting evidence of violence between Hindus and Muslims... Military historian Barney White-Spunner traces the countdown to the tragedy in his book, Partition.
The question being silently telegraphed around the court room was: When did this happen? Wasn't this trial about Indrani murdering her daughter to prevent her from marrying Rahul Mukerjea, her husband Peter Mukerjea's son from his first marriage?
'This was our country, after all, our India, humara Hindustan -- why would we go anywhere else?'
And then came the chief moment of Friday. If the courtroom had a soundtrack, Beethoven's 9th would be playing, providing a triumphant, dramatic prologue to the production of this last clip. A woman reporter was asking Mekhail about Sanjeev Khanna. He says clearly, without mincing words, emphatically: 'Never seen him. First time I am hearing his name.'
In the witness box, on bald embarrassing display, was not just Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, but the entire system of police investigation too.
Bajirao Mastani has the potential to do for Maratha 'history' what Mughal-e-Azam did for Mughal 'history', says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
Buried in a Kolkata cemetery is an Englishman who served India well during her struggle for freedom. Charles Freer Andrews was a benevolent force that neither the Indians, nor the British could ignore.
If Pasbola seemed like he was testing Rai on his high school physics, Rai on the other hand, had relocated himself to a classroom of philosophy, offering beautifully inexact answers, arrived at after deep thinking.
Jahnavi Patel/ Rediff.com chats with Mowgli when he comes to Mumbai.
Calling on the world to embrace Yoga as a discipline in everyday life, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the occasion of the International Yoga Day today, asserted that the ancient Indian art was the most selfless of its kind, as it did not discriminate, did not ask for much, but simply functioned for the betterment of mankind and brought every society together.
The post mandate comments that 'darkness has descended on India' shows the kind of opposition Modi has to overcome. It is this aspirational India that is attempting to throw away shackles of Macualayism. Make no mistake it is a tectonic shift and a beginning of the end of Maculayan mindset that has 'ruled' India for close to 60 years, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
'He was believed to finish his own work in an hour and spend the remainder of the time walking from one office to another, sitting down with the harried junior staff and helping them sort out the problems they were working on.'
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances