Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday asserted that Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, will not be restored even if Congress stalwart and late PM Indira Gandhi comes down from heaven.
A senior Nepalese Maoist leader has taken exception to the banning of Indian Maoists who he said are 'fighting for social transformation' in the country.
Police personnel checked vehicles and conducted flag marches at various places in Punjab on Wednesday while central forces maintained a tight vigil in Tripura.
Shah, while releasing the saffron party's manifesto 'Sankalp Patra' for the upcoming assembly elections in Jharkhand, announced that a Displacement Commission would be formed to ensure rehabilitation of people displaced by industries and mines in the state.
Polling in 70 constituencies began at 8 am and will conclude at 5 pm, except in nine polling booths in the Maoist-affected Bindranawagarh seat in Gariaband district, where voting began at 7 for security reasons, a poll official said.
Eight Naxalites and a jawan of the Special Task Force (STF) were killed in an encounter in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur district on Saturday, police said.
Senior Indian Police Service officer Manoj Kumar Verma was appointed the new Kolkata Police commissioner, replacing Vineet Goyal, on Tuesday, a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee held a meeting with agitating junior doctors and agreed to their demands in a bid to resolve the more than a month-long impasse over the RG Kar hospital incident.
Three battalions of the Border Security Force comprising more than 3,000 personnel will move across the border from Odisha to Chhattisgarh and an equal number of Indo-Tibetan Border Police units will further move into the Naxal stronghold of Abujhmad as part of a strategy to intensify anti-Maoist operations in their last bastions, official sources said.
A special court at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh has acquitted tribal activist Soni Sori and three others in a case lodged against them in 2011 for alleged transfer of 'protection money' to Naxals.
A division bench of Chief Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice A K Jayasankaran Nambiar made the observation on Monday while upholding a single bench order granting Rs 1 lakh compensation to a man who was illegally detained by a special squad of the Kerala Police in 2014 on suspicion of being a Maoist.
The NDA candidate tells the Election Commission that the Maoists plan to kidnap him.
The bench also rejected the oral request of Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the Maharashtra government for early listing of the appeal and said it will come in due course.
Claiming that the Trinamool Congress is not perturbed over desertions by some leaders, she said politics is a solemn ideology and philosophy and one cannot change these everyday like clothes.
Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das condemned the attack, saying "their martyrdom will not go in vain".
Sitaram Yechury strived to have the country's Left movement shed its doctrinaire approach to India's socio-cultural complexities and stitch electoral and social alliances to fight the Sangh Parivar.
The Madras high court has told an accused in a case pursued by the National Investigation Agency to avail bail after giving an oath to the effect that he would abide by the Constitution of India.
Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case accused and former Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen was released from a prison in Mumbai on Wednesday afternoon, an official said.
According to the Press Trust of India, Pannun, who has been designated as a terrorist by the Home Ministry, has also appealed to the banned CPI (Maoist) through a video uploaded on social media to disrupt the match, officials said.
The chargesheet, spread over 1,000 pages, was filed before the Patiala House Court in June and the court took its cognisance last month. A supplementary was filed in July.
'Every report I filed for Rediff.com on the professor's incarceration, would leave me wondering for days, at the depth of the State's malevolence towards this disabled professor, and his equally deep capacity to tolerate it,' recalls Jyoti Punwani.' 'No country in the world would do what our country was doing to someone so helpless.'
In this photograph, which is being circulated on social media, Manhas, a commando with the 210th CoBRA battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), is seen sitting in a hut alone without any Naxal in the frame.
Both the incidents occurred in Maoist affected Kandhamal district where the red rebels have asked the people to boycott the elections.
'I was laughing and crying at the same time. Right now, just extremely happy that she will be out and amongst us soon.'
Ramanna was instrumental in several killings and attacks on security forces, including the 2010 Tadmetla massacre that claimed the lives of 76 troopers. He was also involved in the 2013 Naxal attack in Darbha valley where 29 people, including some senior Congress leaders and policemen, were killed.
He also said the Naxals were spreading in urban areas and were trying to mislead the people.
Former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba, who was released from the Nagpur Central Jail on Thursday after his acquittal in an alleged Maoist links case, said it's a 'wonder that he could come out alive' despite suffering the 'brutal' jail life.
Recent court decisions have granted 'political prisoner' status to arrested Maoists. Bibhu Prasad Routray examines how that decision will affect India battle to control the Maoist menace.
The incident occurred at Lippitiputta village under Dambriguda mandal when Araku (ST) MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao and former MLA Siveri Soma went to take part in a 'grama darsini' (village visit) programme.
Former Jawaharlal Nehru University student and activist Umar Khalid has completed four years in jail after being arrested in connection with the 2020 northeast Delhi communal riots.
In a relief to academic-activist Shoma Kanti Sen, arrested in June 2018 in connection with the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, the Supreme Court on Friday granted her bail while taking cognisance of the "composite effect" of the delay in framing charges coupled with her prolonged detention.
Poet-activist Varavara Rao, 81, is the only accused in the case to have secured an interim bail. The Bombay high court had in February this year granted Rao conditional bail for six months considering his medical condition. Rao had been in jail since his arrest in August 2018.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's carping ally said the police assertion about security threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Maoists was just a 'conspiracy theory'.
In a veiled reference to West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said he cannot speak in favour of someone who wants to finish him politically and his party in the state.
He was reviled by critics in his party as a neo-liberal in disguise but till the end, he retained his belief in secularism and the humanity of Communism.
The Bombay high court on Tuesday set aside the life sentence of Delhi University professor G N Saibaba in an alleged Maoist links case, noting that the prosecution failed to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
The larger conspiracy of Communist Party of India-Maoists was to overthrow the democratic system in the country, and the accused were working in that direction, the chargesheet claimed.
She hit out strongly against the "misguided" Congress party for backing "fringe groups" at universities which have shown Maoist or separatist tendencies.
According to an Andhra government statement, Naidu 'reposed confidence' in the PM's leadership.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted bail to activist Gautam Navlakha in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
According to a media report published on Saturday, only one of the outfits to which eight of the arrested activists belonged was declared as unlawful.
