Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said 13 persons were detained for an alleged assault on a group of persons taking out a vehicle rally in Mira Bhayander area adjoining Mumbai on the eve of the Ram Temple idol consecration in Ayodhya.
From the time he first rose to prominence during the movement against the then UPA government, Arvind Kejriwal has regularly grabbed headlines for his surprise moves and decisions. Here are 10 such instances.
The chief justice, who received a WhatsApp message about the case, heard the matter at his residence at 8 pm on Sunday and gave directions to constitute a bench comprising himself and Justice Srivastava.
Triggering controversy over capital punishment to Yakub Memon in Mumbai blasts case, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday sought to know whether the perpetrators of demolition of disputed structure in Ayodhya, communal riots of Mumbai and Gujarat and other such sensational cases would get a similar punishment.
Following is the timeline of events in the case in which the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the Special Investigation Team's (SIT) clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the 2002 riots in the state.
The VHP president said that it is beyond understanding that the administration is denying permission for a peaceful Yatra.
'The Babri Masjid wasn't just a mosque, it was a test of our secularism,' says Jyoti Punwani.
On June 26, for the likes of me, the music died. Any impression of potential change held forth by the outcome of the 2024 general election, was vaporised, reveals Shyam G Menon.
Gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari's alleged aide Sanjeev Maheshwari Jeeva was shot dead on Lucknow court premises on Wednesday, the police said.
Additional metropolitan magistrate MV Chauhan committed the case to the sessions court in Ahmedabad for trial against Setalvad, former state director general of police RB Sreekumar and ex-Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt.
'The judicial procedure was influenced which led to no convictions in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984'
It has also sought a status report from the state government on 183 "police encounters" that have taken place since 2017.
Apart from the Naroda Gam case, seven other 2002 post-Godhra riots cases were investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team.
A special court in Gujarat on Thursday acquitted all the 67 accused, including former Bharatiya Janata Party minister Maya Kodnani, in the 2002 Naroda Gam riots case in which 11 people were killed.
The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear on July 14 pleas, including the one filed by the sister of slain gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad and Ashraf, seeking constitution of a commission chaired by a retired apex court judge to inquire into their "custodial" and "extra-judicial deaths".
Maybe, the need for secrecy may have tied the government's hand from sharing details in Parliament. Still, it should consider the need of sharing the utmost within any consultative committee, so that relative secrecy is still maintained. But such a course should involve the prime minister or home minister, as it is much more serious than is being made out to be, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
Demand disbanding of WFI
The bench said it will look into the application before hearing the matter on making Setalvad as the second petitioner in Jafri's plea.
Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leaders L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi reacted to the court acquitting them in the Babri Masjid demolition case.
The Supreme Court on Thursday wondered why the Gujarat high court has listed the bail plea of activist Teesta Setalvad for hearing on September 19, six weeks after it sent a notice to the state government seeking a response to her application, and asked the state to inform it by 2 pm on Friday about whether such a precedent existed there.
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 commission had rejected the theory that it was a spontaneous act by karsevaks whereas the CBI court has ruled that there was no evidence that demolition was a conspiracy.
The unity by the opposition parties is likely to reflect inside Parliament as well.
Owaisi said the CBI should appeal against the judgment "to protect its independence."
Zakia Jafri's lawyer on Friday alleged before a court here that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had conspired to instigate Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers and other members of Hindu community after the Godhra train burning incident in 2002.
Fifty-nine 'karsevaks' were killed in the Godhra train burning incident of February 27, 2002, triggering the worst communal riots in the history of Gujarat.
Former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and 68 others were killed in the incident during 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat.
The court had concluded the arguments on quantum of sentence on Friday last week after taking into consideration submissions made by both the prosecution and defence lawyers as well as the lawyer of the victims.
Of the 24 convicted, 11 have been convicted for murder and 13 for other charges.
On Monday, prosecution had sought death penalty for all the 24 people convicted for the gruesome killings.
Registrar (Judicial) informed Chidambaram's lawyers that Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has listed the matter for hearing on Friday.
'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.
The Congress-led grouping has some reasons to feel emboldened over recent political developments.
The opposition made it clear during the meeting that it will press for a joint parliamentary committee to probe the Rafale jet deal and raise several issues, including the "misuse" of probe agencies and the autonomy for Reserve Bank of India.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
The court said it has decided to award imprisonment for life without any time frame to the 11, who have been convicted for murder, while requesting the state not to use its power to remit the sentence after 14 years of imprisonment.
'The cases on hand have no genesis in the act of terrorism or waging war against the state,' the court said.
He told the court that he had met Kodnani at Sola Civil Hospital that morning.
'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.
