2020

Arms of the government see journalism (of all kinds) not as a useful source of feedback at a time when the population is in distress but as a nuisance to be squashed. Fake news is no longer seen only as an electronic menace but as reporting with malign intent, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere.

Excerpt from the preface: ". . . The report is fairly comprehensive and even-handed but due to the non-cooperation of Delhi Police, the fact-finding committee could not present a more comprehensive and incisive report. The committee has also studied the issue of compensation given to the victims by the Government of Delhi so far. It has come up with a number of recommendations to be implemented by the Central and state governments and by the Delhi Minorities Commission. The most important (…)

DOCUMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Delhi – July 13, 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown does not appear to have brought much relief to Indian citizens following the Christian faith. The first half of this year has so far witnessed 121 incidents of violence against Christians in 15 states of India as per the recorded data of New Delhi based United Christian Forum (UCF).
The 121 incidents of violence have, sadly, taken the lives of two. Mob violence grew with 95 (…)

19th July is a very significant day in the chronicles of banking sector in our country. It was on this day, on the 19th July in the year 1969, 14 major private Banks were nationalised by the Government of India, from when these Banks started chartering a new path with social orientation. AIBEA played a leading role in championing the cause and demand for nationalisation of private Banks. There were continuous struggles for more than 20 years including strikes by bank employees demanding nationalisation of banks.

Dr. G. N. Saibaba in his most recent call to his family and advocate informed despite the preventive measures taken by the jail administration many prisoners were affected by COVID-19 including jail guards in Nagpur Central Prison. One of the prisoners near to his anda cell got tested positive for COVID-19. The disease has reached very close to me", Saibaba said, and that it was only a "matter of time" since it reaches his cell as he is highly vulnerable due to existing co-morbidities

by Mohammad Sayeed Malik
[Editor’s note: Mohammed Syed Malik may well be the most senior journalist in Kashmir today. A long serving Special Correspondent in Srinagar of the now defunct Delhi-based national daily newspaper Patriot and Link Newsweekly, he also had a stint as Director, Information and Public relations in the government of the undivided state in the 1970s. Malik posted this on this Facebook page on 13 July, 2020. It recalls a turning point in the history of the region. It (…)

Seven months after catching Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police Deputy Superintendent of Police (Dy SP) Davinder Singh escorting two alleged terrorists belonging reportedly to Hizbul Mujahideen group of Pakistan, in his Hyundai i10 car on the Srinagar-Jammu highway, the premier National Investigations Agency (NIA) finally presented a charge-sheet in a NIA special court in Jammu on July 6. Curiously nearly a month before that a Delhi court granted him bail for the failure of Delhi Police to (…)

It was more than 25 years ago, in 1994, I bought my own copy of Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja and virtually devoured it. No other contemporary work of literature has shaken me as Lajja has. The following lines she wrote in the Preface of Lajja reveal how true a secularist Taslima Nasreen is: “I detest fundamentalism and communalism. This was the reason I wrote Lajja soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. The book, which took me seven days to write, deals with (…)

by Bhanudeb Dutta
As soon as the death-news of Jolly Mohan Kaul reached me, though not a bolt from the blue, immediately a thought flashed on me on a group photograph put up at the office of the Indian Society for Cultural Cooperation and Friendship (ISCUF), 77 Lenin Sarani, Kolkata. It was actually a group-photograph of 36 founder members of the ‘Friends of the Soviet Union’ along with a Soviet journalist Mr. Peter Gladyshev which was taken at historic 46 Dharamtala Street (now Lenin (…)

Fake encounters are being valourised to delegitimise rule of law and the courts. There is an urgent need to raise sharp questions and work towards judicial reforms within the ambit of Indian constitutionalism.
Fake encounters and cold blooded murders by the police are no answer to the ordinary, poor and vulnerable citizens anguished cry against injustices. For whom do fake encounters pay rich dividends?