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Madhya Pradesh rattled by spate of ‘love jihad' cases: What police found

Madhya Pradesh rattled by spate of ‘love jihad' cases: What police found

India Today7 days ago
The Madhya Pradesh police, over the past couple of months, have been dealing with a series of crimes that, owing to their communal overtone, could blow up into wider law and order issues in the state. The alleged 'love jihad' cases threaten to keep the communal cauldron on the boil and were perpetrated despite the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, a law enacted to deter religious conversions through force, undue influence, coercion or fraud, including those done in the name of marriage.In April, six Muslim men were arrested in Bhopal after a woman complained that she had been sexually exploited by some of them. The woman alleged she was being blackmailed over her intimate videos with one of the men. She told the police she was being pressured to convert to Islam.advertisementThe police invoked provisions of Freedom of Religion Act and rape laws against the accused. The case soon expanded to several women studying in an engineering college in Bhopal. Matters took a communal turn as all the accused were from the minority community while the women were Hindus.On July 1, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) sent a letter to the state chief secretary and director general of police (DGP), asking them to ensure that the complainants, who had discontinued their studies following the alleged exploitation, be given readmission in college. The NHRC increased the compensation for each woman from the Rs 50,000 announced by the state government to Rs 5 lakh.
The panel has asked the state government to rehabilitate the complainants and pay the fees for those students who dropped out of college due to the case. The panel also asked for disciplinary action against police personnel who had ordered the demolition of a restaurant where the women had allegedly been sexually exploited, terming it as destruction of evidence.In another case in April, four Hindu girls—three of them minors—from Bichrod village in Ujjain district filed a police complaint that they had been raped and were under coercion to convert. The six accused in the case, including a minor, are Muslims.In June, four men from the minority community in Nagda in Ujjain were booked for rape and under provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act after four Hindu girls pressed charges that they had been sexually exploited and asked to convert.In May, Mohsin Khan, a coach at Indore's Dream Olympic Shooting Academy, was booked for allegedly sexually exploiting a former student. The girl claimed she had been harassed in 2023 and had been threatened all this while not to speak out. The police claimed Khan's phone contained videos of him exploiting girls, mostly his students. The Bajrang Dal's local chapter termed the case as 'love jihad'.In June, two men, Sahil Sheikh and Altaf Shah, alleged they had been paid money by Anwar Qadri, a Congress corporator in the Indore Municipal Corporation, to marry Hindu women and convert them. Qadri has been booked by the police. The matter has taken a political turn with the Congress terming the allegations as political vendetta.advertisementGymnasiums in the state have lately emerged as new communal battlegrounds, with some Hindu groups demanding that Hindu women be trained only by members of their community. A video went viral of a police sub-inspector in Bhopal purportedly asking gym owners not to allow Muslim trainers. He was transferred following a hue and cry.The state police have formed a special investigation team (SIT), headed by Bhopal inspector general Abhay Singh, to probe the Bhopal cases. An advisory has also been issued for college students by the Crime Against Women cell of the police. 'Investigations are on in the cases and a report will be submitted soon,' said Singh.Sources said the investigations had not found any financial angle or evidence of an organised gang at work.The Congress has blamed the ruling BJP for the law and order situation. 'For any crime happening in the state, the BJP government is directly or indirectly responsible as they have been in power for almost two decades. This is not a communal issue but that of women in general being unsafe in the state,' said Congress spokesperson Abbas Hafiz. Criticising BJP leaders for allegedly making communal statements on these cases, Hafiz added: 'Communal statements only disrupt harmony and help certain parties gain votes.'advertisementWhile Hindu groups were raking up 'love jihad', a case was reported in which the woman was a Muslim and had allegedly been befriended by a Hindu youth by posing as Muslim. This prompted some Muslim groups to challenge the contours of the term 'love jihad'.Meanwhile, a petition came up in the high court that the term 'love jihad' not be used by the media in its reporting. The court refused to intervene.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
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Malegaon verdict on July 31: Recalling the 2008 bombing and the case against the accused
Malegaon verdict on July 31: Recalling the 2008 bombing and the case against the accused

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time6 minutes ago

  • Indian Express

Malegaon verdict on July 31: Recalling the 2008 bombing and the case against the accused

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The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which took over the investigation from the local police, suspected that the improvised explosive device (IED) had been planted on an LML Freedom motorcycle. It was suspected that the conspirators had consciously chosen the month of Ramzan and the eve of Navaratri to carry out the bombing, intending to cause communal rifts and endanger the internal security of the state. The ATS claimed that the registration number of the motorcycle that was found at the site of the explosion – MH-15-P-4572 – was fake, and that its engine number and chassis number had been erased. The motorcycle was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Nashik for restoration of the erased numbers. The ATS alleged that the owner of the bike was Pragya Singh Thakur alias Sadhwi Poornachetanand Giri, and arrested her on October 23, 2008. Thakur's arrest and interrogation, the ATS claimed, led it to the other accused. The agency said that it had intercepted phone calls of suspected persons. Calls between Lt Col Purohit and retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay were under scrutiny. Upadhyay and Sameer Kulkarni were arrested on October 28. By November 14, 2008, a total of 11 persons had been arrested. Among them was Purohit, who was arrested from the premises of the Army in Colaba in South Mumbai. The accused claimed that they were illegally detained by the ATS before being produced in court, and that they had been tortured in custody. In November 2008, the ATS invoked stringent sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) against them. They were accused of having formed an organisation named Abhinav Bharat, which was an organised crime syndicate. In its chargesheet filed on January 20, 2009, the ATS named the 11 arrested persons as accused, and another three as wanted accused. The accused were charged under the IPC and UAPA. 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NIA finds gaps in ATS investigation In 2011, the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the federal investigation agency that was set up after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Even as the NIA continued with its investigation, the accused approached courts challenging the invocation of MCOCA against them, under which their confessions were recorded. In its chargesheet filed on May 13, 2016, the NIA dropped the charges under MCOCA, saying that the manner in which the organised crime law was invoked by the ATS was 'questionable'. The ATS probe, it said, was filled with 'lacunae', and of the 11 individuals arrested by the agency, evidence existed against only seven, and against the two wanted accused, Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange. The NIA said that the motorcycle registered in Thakur's name had been in the possession of Kalsangra, who was using it well before the blast. It also said that since MCOCA was not applied, confessions made under the Act, including a statement where it was claimed that Thakur had asked a co-accused to call Purohit to arrange for explosives, were inadmissible as evidence. Most of the ATS's case against the accused relied on confessions, and the NIA said that the confession of Chaturvedi was an 'outcome of torture'. It also said that due to the passage of time, no additional evidence could be recovered from the spot. The NIA re-recorded the statements of some witnesses before magistrates, citing inconsistencies in the ATS probe. Witnesses who the ATS had claimed were present in meetings in Bhopal and Faridabad where discussions on revenge and the blast were allegedly held, told the NIA that they were not present at these purported meetings, and did not hear any such talk. One of the main allegations in the NIA chargesheet was that the ATS had created false evidence to implicate the accused, and had illegally entered the house of Chatuvedi in Deolali, as was noticed by two Army officers. What court said on Thakur, Purohit, others Despite the NIA's pitch to drop Thakur as an accused, the special court hearing the case said there was prima facie evidence to put her on trial. Even though the NIA chargesheet claimed there was no witness or other proof to show her involvement in the conspiracy, the court said that it was difficult to accept Thakur's claim that she had no connection with the blast. On Purohit, a military intelligence officer, the court said that a conclusion could not be drawn that he had participated in the alleged conspiracy meetings ahead of the blast in the discharge of his duty and with the permission of his superiors, as he had claimed. On December 27, 2017, the court accepted the NIA's contention that MCOCA cannot be invoked in the case. It said that the seven accused – Thakur, Purohit, retired Major Upadhyay, Kulkarni, Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar, and Sudhakar Dwivedi – would face trial under UAPA, IPC, and the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. The court also said that two other accused, Rakesh Dhawde and Jagdish Mhatre, would face trial only under the Arms Act, 1959, in Pune, and three others would be discharged for lack of evidence, as proposed by the NIA. How the trial of the accused progressed The trial began in December 2018. The ATS, the previous probe agency, did not have a say in the proceedings, but the prosecution relied on documents and evidence collected by both the ATS and the NIA during the trial. More than 30 witnesses who were cited in the chargesheet passed away before they could depose before the court. The prosecution examined 323 witnesses and cited technical evidence including Call Data Records and voice samples. Thirty-four of the witnesses turned hostile. The testimonies of these witnesses mainly related to Purohit and the alleged conspiracy meetings. These witnesses denied having participated in or heard any discussions by the accused about the conspiracy to carry out a bomb blast. Some of the accused also alleged that they had been coerced, illegally detained, and threatened by the ATS into giving false statements naming certain persons. In its final arguments, the prosecution submitted that there was evidence in respect of Call Data Records, and forensic evidence to show that the explosive device had been planted in the LML motorcycle. There was also evidence to show the presence of the accused at the places where the conspiracy meetings had taken place, and other documentary proof. The accused claimed that with witnesses turning hostile, the conspiracy was not proven at all. The accused also claimed that a mob of 15,000 had 'manipulated' the crime scene. Police officials deposed that a mob, angry about the attack, had gathered and stones were thrown at the police. Lawyers for the accused claimed that the mob was 'motivated', and had 'attempted to screen the real culprit'.

‘Protect morality, ethics…': Why Kyrgyzstan banned online pornography
‘Protect morality, ethics…': Why Kyrgyzstan banned online pornography

Hindustan Times

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‘Protect morality, ethics…': Why Kyrgyzstan banned online pornography

Kyrgyzstan has banned access to online pornography and imposed state control over internet traffic under new laws signed by President Sadyr Japarov, his office said on Tuesday. Japarov's office said the ban on pornography is to "protect moral and ethical values" in mostly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian country of 7 million people(Unsplash/Representational) Japarov's office said the ban on pornography is to "protect moral and ethical values" in mostly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian country of 7 million people which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The legislation requires internet providers to block websites based on decisions by the ministry of culture. Violators will face fines. Once Central Asia's most democratic country, Kyrgyzstan has seen increasing pressure on opposition groups and independent media since Japarov, a populist and nationalist, swept to power on a wave of protests in 2020. He has made the protection of what he calls traditional Kyrgyz values a centrepiece of his agenda. Also on Tuesday, Japarov signed a decree imposing a state monopoly on international internet traffic. Under the decree, state-owned telecoms company ElCat will become Kyrgyzstan's sole provider of international internet traffic for a year-long trial period, starting on August 15. All other Kyrgyz telecom operators will be required to transfer their contracts for international bandwidth to ElCat within two months. Bishkek-based political analyst Emil Juraev told Reuters: 'This decision only adds to the growing role of the state at the expense of market freedom in Kyrgyzstan.' The move comes ahead of a parliamentary election due in 2026, and a presidential poll due in 2027. Japarov, whose allies dominate the legislature, has indicated he will run again.

Wait, what? 261 IPL jerseys worth  ₹6.5 lakh stolen from Wankhede Stadium
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