A special NIA court in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district has reserved its order on a bail application filed by three persons, including two nuns from Kerala, arrested on charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion.
All along, we were told SIR was an essential exercise carried out as part of the Election Commission's regular duties. But now that the ideological mentor of the ruling party has declared that SIR is a means of detecting infiltrators, one understands the unseemly haste with which it is being carried out, notes Jyoti Punwani.
FCRA registration will also be cancelled if any NGO is not utilising foreign funding as per the aims and objectives of the NGO or if it has not uploaded the annual returns, the ministry said.
Similar bills in the recent past have been passed in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.
'I cannot imagine that any NSA before Ajit Doval would have given us this kind of time and this kind of engagement. They would have offered slogans, or nothing at all. That, too, tells you something.'
The Chhattisgarh State Women Commission has directed the Director General of Police to file FIRs based on complaints from three women who allege assault and molestation by Bajrang Dal workers. The women were initially involved in a human trafficking and forced conversion case.
A victim of alleged human trafficking and forceful conversion in Chhattisgarh claims she was coerced by Bajrang Dal activists to give a false statement. She also alleges police did not record her statement properly and that the arrested nuns are innocent.
India has slammed Pakistan at a UN debate by drawing attention to the heinous crimes of gross sexual violence against women in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971, adding the pattern continues with impunity to this day.
India has previously rejected the US state department's annual human rights report on the country, saying they continue to be based on "misinformation and flawed understanding".
The core issues to be settled -- access to Hormuz, Israel's aggression in Lebanon, the question of Iran's nuclear programme, sanctions relief and compensation -- are thorny enough to require weeks of patient negotiation. The most likely outcome of the opening sessions is that both sides take the measure of each other, establish what is and is not negotiable, and return home without having broken anything. That would count as progress.
'The nuns were subjected to abusive language and all types of mental torture.'
The arrest of two Catholic nuns from Kerala in Chhattisgarh on charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion has ignited a political controversy, with opposition parties criticizing the arrest and the Chief Minister defending the police action.
'The BJP is keeping its options open and that the final decision is still tightly held.' 'That is consistent with the party's tendency to preserve suspense, avoid premature factional conflict, and use leadership selection as a way of resetting internal hierarchies.'
The Kerala BJP has contradicted the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister's justification of the arrest of two Keralite Catholic nuns, stating they were not involved in human trafficking or forced conversion attempts and promising to help them.
The state cabinet presided over by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had earlier this week approved the draft ordinance to curb forcible or "dishonest" religious conversions including those for the sake of marriage, which could land violators in jail for up to 10 years.
'They should be given a strong message that they are not the ones who decide the rule of the land, and they are not the ones who decide what justice is.'
Justice Renu Agarwal made the observation while rejecting a Hindu-Muslim couple's plea for police protection.
Israel and the United States had a plan. Iran punched back. And now the Gulf is reeling, the world is beginning to feel the pain and, as on date, no one in Washington or Tel Aviv appears willing to admit that the punch has landed, notes Prem Panicker, continuing his must-read blog on the war in the Middle East.
A 30-year-old woman with three children converted to Hinduism and married a 12th-grade student in a temple ceremony in Uttar Pradesh's Amroha district. The woman, previously known as Shabnam, has been married twice before and has no living parents. Police are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the marriage, but no legal complaints have been filed so far. The woman's previous husband was left disabled after a road accident and she obtained a divorce last week. Her new husband's father supports the marriage and wishes the couple happiness.
An additional chief judicial magistrate sent the accused to nine days of police remand on Monday.
The Chhattisgarh high court has disposed of two petitions seeking the removal of hoardings prohibiting entry to pastors and 'converted Christians' in eight villages, holding that they were installed to prevent forced conversions through allurement or fraudulent means and cannot be termed as unconstitutional.
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.
Two more people have been arrested in connection with the alleged rape and forced religious conversion of a young woman in Meerut taking to five the total number of arrests in the incident even as the situation in the Uttar Pradesh district is tense but under control.
"Bhagwat has done national service by speaking the truth on what missionaries do," the Sena said.
'Dating someone during divorce proceedings is legally permissible as long as it does not involve provable physical intimacy,' says lawyer Navaneet Kumar.
The 'Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill' was passed by the Legislative Assembly in December last.
The face-off between Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee and West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose intensified further on Wednesday after the politician lodged a counter-complaint against the state's Constitutional head at the Hare Street Police Station within 24 hours of the latter having filed a first information report (FIR) against the former at the same PS.
'The implementation of the judgment has largely been left to the discretion of the very executive authorities it sought to restrain.'
'They have to prove the credibility of their talk; whether they want to focus on the secular face of India, whether they want to focus on democracy and above all freedom of an individual to practice his or her religion.'
Gujarat police have registered the first FIR in the state under the newly-notified law against forcible or fraudulent religious conversion through marriage, and arrested a 26-year-old man in Vadodara city, a senior official said on Friday.
The Centre told the Supreme Court on Monday that religious freedom does not include a fundamental right to convert other people to a particular religion and that it certainly does not embrace the right to convert an individual through fraud, deception, coercion or allurement.
Three years ago, the accused started exerting pressure on her to undergo religious conversion and perform 'nikaah' (marriage). But when the woman opposed, he threatened to kidnap her, Tikaram alleged.
The Deepa Thoon controversy, if not allowed to die a natural death, could take the election focus away from the anti-incumbency impacting the DMK and into the secular space. Stalin would love to have it that way, all over again, after the three past elections, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
More than 150 daily wage employees of Chanderi Municipality in Madhya Pradesh's Ashoknagar district have threatened to renounce the "Sanatan Dharma" and embrace some other religion en masse after Diwali to protest their removal from service.
BJP state chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated that the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh was due to a 'misunderstanding' and that they will be released on bail soon. He met with Archbishop of Trichur Andrews Thazhath to brief him that the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister have assured the nuns would be released on bail.
The youth brigade, set up in 2002 by Yogi Adityanath who is now Uttar Pradesh chief minister, filed a complaint against Yohannan Adam, the pastor of the church, accusing him of converting Hindus to Christianity, a charge the pastor denied.
"Since some people have challenged the provisions of the new law, the High Court has recently put a stay on the law. However, after consulting legal experts and our Advocate General, chief minister Vijay Rupani has decided to challenge this stay in the Supreme Court," deputy chief minister Nitin Patel said.
An FIR has not been registered by the police following the complaint.
As of now, there is nothing to suggest that the 'Michaelpatti episode' has the potential to polarise Dravidian Tamil Nadu on religious lines, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the slot of rural poor, there are those who struggle to pull themselves out of crumbling hovels, and there are the Jamtara-like bunch who turn to crime. Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound is about the former, whose quest for respect and dignity is thwarted because they are underprivileged, notes Deepa Gahlot.
