Faced with the growing number of acid attacks on women, government is planning to categorise such cases as heinous crimes and fix a time-frame for investigation and trial for speedy justice.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat reached the poll-bound state besides Union ministers J P Nadda and Thawar Chand Gehlot, and Bihar minister Mangal Pandey, who are already camping here.
He, however, was quick to add that though "it is an internal matter of the BJP, but so far as country or ideology is concerned, there is no question of tolerating such things."
The fourth convict, Pawan Gupta, has not filed a curative petition, which he still can if he chooses.
Between 2014 and March 3, 2018, 45 people were killed in 40 cases of mob lynching across nine states, and at least 217 persons had been arrested, data compiled by the home ministry show.
Lakdawala was apprehended by Mumbai Crime Branch's anti-extortion cell team at the International Airport. He once worked for underworld don Dawood Ibrahim before forming his own gang.
'The current BJP leadership believes the party's expansion across India, and thus their own survival at the top, depends on injecting communal tension into areas where it has so far been largely controlled,' argues Mihir S Sharma.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
In a bid to fight his way back out of political wilderness, Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad on Wednesday addressed his first major rally in Bihar in a decade during which he called Chief Minister Nitish Kumar a "dictator" whose "downfall" has begun and a "parrot" of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Maharashtra Police plans to announce a cash reward for information on Indian Mujahideen operative Afzal Usmani, who recently fled from court premises.
The BJP has been blaming Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor and his outfit Gujarat Kshatriya-Thakor Sena for the outbreak of violence against Hindi-speaking people in the state.
'Across the country -- in Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Manipur, Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal -- men were lynched on suspicion of being thieves by ordinary people armed with rods and sticks.' 'But none of these lynchings made big news.' 'None of these lynchings were cow/beef-related.' 'The perpetrators were unknown people, not so-called gau rakshaks.' 'So why were these instances of mob violence considered less newsworthy than cow-related lynchings?' asks Jyoti Punwani.
The attack on North Indians in Maharashtra generated major uproar in the Lok Sabha on Monday, with demands that Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray be detained under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act and that he be disenfranchised. Members from Janata Dal-United, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party, most of them belonging to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, expressed grave concern over the attack on North Indians in Maharashtra.
'It is the RJD, otherwise known for misgovernance, which has offered a candidate of clean and performing credentials, rather than the NDA,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
Pegasus, which is capable of attacking both Android and iOS, has been around for three years and is considered one of the most sophisticated spyware in the market.
When Rani Hong was just seven, she was taken from her family and sold into slavery. At an age when she should have been enjoying her childhood, she was subjected to treatment that left her close to death.
'I am afraid the condemnation of mob attacks is a case of too little too little.' 'Much sterner action is needed,' BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha tells Subhash K Jha.
The real, frightening problem is that there is no one fighting communalism in Karnataka.
Anil Kumar Sinha, a 1979-batch Indian Police Service officer, on Wednesday took over the reins of the Central Bureau of Investigation at a time when the agency is facing criticism from courts over its handling of probe in coal allocation and 2G scams.
Almost all the deceased were migrant labourers hailing from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
'What does the nation get out of the CBI's fabulous infrastructure? Very little that is useful.'
Speaking at a rally in poll-bound Bihar, Modi said that the Congress has no right to talk about tolerance after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Under attack from opposition over the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party on Monday accused the media of "targeting" its government under a "conspiracy sponsored by the Bharatiya Janata Party".
In the year 2016, 8132 human trafficking cases have been reported in India.
Cracking the whip, Karnataka government on Monday transferred Bangalore city Police Commissioner Raghavendra Auradkar in the wake of a series of rape cases, including that of a 6-year-old girl student in a public school.
Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Rajasthan has reported the highest number of cases of atrocities against SCs and STs during 2013-15, followed by poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, a new government report said, even as the Centre on Monday flagged the issue of poor conviction rates in such cases.
Washington might occasionally make some noises about alleged human rights violations and related issues but commonality of interests will only see the Indo-US ties grow stronger, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Joining hands with his arch rival, Lalu Prasad Yadav, paid off for the Bihar chief minister
The BJP's win in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls has emboldened the top leadership to pursue a pro-woman agenda.
Experts of the NSG and investigators of the NIA are being sent to Jammu and Kashmir to join the probe into the terror attack.
The trial in the rape case of a five-year-old child allegedly involving two youths on Wednesday commenced in a Delhi court with the girl's mother bursting into tears during her testimony.
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Thanking the Centre for coming out with the bill, the survivors called it an "honest attempt" by the government to break the criminal nexus of organised human trafficking.
The apex court also rebuked Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government for its lax approach in opposing bail granted to the RJD strongman.
Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana on Thursday refused to grant any relief to Akshay Kumar, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh and rejected the petition saying no valid ground has been brought to his notice to justify the stay of execution of death warrants scheduled on March 20 at 5:30 am.
A bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur asked the Centre as to what action has been taken in the matter.
'The prime minister has merely paid lip service condemning these crimes instead of launching a massive crackdown against such brutalities,' argues Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
Hindi cinema has not just explored various instances of brute force, but often glorified its misogyny.
Why are the 'secular' parties silent about the lynchings on our streets? Are they so busy forging political alliances that they ignore the numerous distortions of Constitutional values?
After battling for her life for almost 40 hours, the 23-year-old woman died following a cardiac arrest on Friday night at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.
