Riot-like conditions prevailed in Nilakkal and surrounding areas as thousands of Ayyappa devotees and Kerala Police engaged in pitched battle involving stone throwing and lathi charges. The situation worsened after the police moved early morning to dismantle the local pandals put up by devotees, who...
CRIME
Chetan Bhagat says ‘enough is enough’ on fresh MeToo allegations
Chetan Bhagat, India’s most popular pulp fiction writer, today sought to put his foot down on allegations that he sexually harassed people on WhatsApp. His response comes in the wake of yet a new allegation, four days after a woman leaked a conversation with him...
MCA orders inspection into Vakrangee’s accounts
Vakrangee Ltd, the Mumbai-based technology and distribution company, said the ministry of corporate affairs of India has ordered an inspection of its accounts for three years, and that PricewaterHouse will step down as the company auditor as part of the exercise. The inspection will be...
High Court allows Cobrapost to publish video on Dainik Bhaskar
Delhi High Court has set apart a lower court decision that imposed a stay on the publication of a video by website Cobrapost that allegedly showed political bias among employees of Dainik Bhaskar group. DB Corp, the publisher of Dainik Bhaskar daily, won the injunction...
Marriage does not shackle a woman’s sexual freedom & choice – Justice Chandrachud
The sexual choices that a person makes is part of that person’s expression, and the constitution does not allow anyone to “shackle the sexual freedom” of another just because he or she entered into a marriage, Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud said today in his 77-judgment in...
Church withdraws action against nun who protested against Bishop Franco
The Catholic Church in Kerala withdrew action against Sister Lucy Kalappura, who came out publicly in support of the five nuns who sat on protest against Bishop Franco Mulakkal in Kochi for two weeks. The withdrawal followed strong protests by parishioners belonging to Karakkamala, which...
Indian engineer sentenced to 5 years for blasphemy in Saudi Arabia
An engineer from Kerala working with a petroleum company in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment and a fine of around Rs 30 lakhs for his tweets. With this, Vishnudev, a native of Alleppey in Kerala, has become the first Indian...
LYNCHING: Supreme Court summons home secretaries
The Supreme Court today directed the home secretaries of the states that have not filed compliance reports on anti-mob violence measures to personally appear before it after a week. Hearing a public interest litigation on rising cases of violence by cow vigilantes in July, the...
UIDAI Helpline: No, your phone has not been hacked!
Telecom operators and the Unique Identification Authority of India have denied having anything to do with the ‘mysterious’ addition of the UIDAI’s former helpline to the contact lists of Android phone users in India. That leaves only three candidates — Google, which makes Android, handset...
No plans for Central Cyber Police Force – Home Ministry
Ministry of Home Affairs today denied media reports that said that the center would set up a police force dedicated to fighting cyber crime. Law and order is a state subject in India, and currently cyber crimes are dealt with by state police forces. Earlier...
Govt faces questions over the ‘trolling’ of Sushma Swaraj in LS
Trinamool Congress MP Prasun Banerjee today raised the issue of the recent ‘trolling’ of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament. Over the last several days, Swaraj has come under attack on social media after she took disciplinary action against an official of the Lucknow...
KERALA FLOODS: Dalits face ‘apartheid’ at relief camp
Setting off a controversy, Janam TV, a Malayalam news channel with leanings towards with the BJP, today reported that displaced people belonging to scheduled castes at a relief camp in Aleppey were moved to a separate relief camp due to protests from another community. The...
Anand Sharma warns BJP: Power is not permanent, don’t misuse ED, CBI
Former cabinet minister Anand Sharma today warned against what he called the misuse of tax and investigation agencies in the country, and warned BJP leaders that they may not always be in power. He said the BJP government has ‘spoiled the habits’ of agencies like...
Airtel Payments Bank: RBI lifts ban on new signups
Bharti Airtel said the Reserve Bank of India has lifted the restriction on signing up new customers imposed on its banking unit Airtel Payments Bank. The restriction was imposed in January after reports that the company was signing up its mobile customers on its payments...
Kerala FB users face jail for ‘promoting drinking’ via photos & posts
Social media users posting in one of Kerala’s biggest Facebook Groups are facing the prospect of being sent to jail for ‘encouraging alcoholism’ by glamorizing drinking. Given there’s no law against glamorizing drinking, Kerala Excise Department is reported to have directed the police to use...
Shashi Tharoor gets anticipatory bail in Sunanda Pushkar case
Congress politician Shashi Tharoor has avoided going to jail immediately after he won anticipatory bail from a Patiala House court. The bail has been granted with two conditions — he cannot go outside India without taking prior permission from the court, and he should not...
How WhatsApp can easily fix the Fake News problem
WhatsApp, India’s largest communication platform used by an estimated 65% of the country’s online population, has come under scrutiny for providing a conduit to distribute ‘fake news’ after multiple cases of lynchings came to light. While the company has urged ‘society and companies’ to help...
Supreme Court seeks details of encounter killings in UP
The Supreme Court has asked the state of Uttar Pradesh to furnish details of the encounter killings that are taking place in the state. In a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties or PUCL, the court directed counsel Aishwarya Bhati...
Supreme Court removes immunity of ED official probing Aircel Maxis case
The Supreme Court bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Sanjay Kaul has removed the ‘immunity’ enjoyed by Enforcement Directorate official Rajeshwar Singh and said the government can go ahead with any probe into his conduct, and remove him, if it wants to, from the...
Center gives ‘secret letter’ on ED official: Swamy alleges sabotage in Aircel-Maxis case
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has expressed suspicions of an ‘internal sabotage’ of the investigations into the so-called Aircel-Maxis scam, in which the accused include former finance minister P Chidambaram and son Karthi. “BJP government at Centre, judging by today proceedings on Aircel Maxis in SC,...