The Tribune – Governor has power to pardon if Sanjay Dutt appeals: Minister

New Delhi, March 22. With Press Council chief Markandey Katju asking Maharashtra Governor to pardon film star Sanjay Dutt in 1993 Mumbai blasts case, the government today indicated that the matter will be looked into and an “appropriate” decision taken once such a plea is made by the actor.

“Governor will use his discretionary power when there will be an appeal to him. He has the power to pardon. We should not comment on it,” Law Minister Ashwini Kumar said.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said the authorities will take cognisance of the matter at the appropriate level.

“Justice Katju has been a very eminent judge of the Supreme Court. Whenever he articulates a position on an issue, people both inside and outside the government listen to it carefully,” Tewari told reporters outside Parliament. (PTI)

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130323/main7.htm

The Tribune – ‘Shattered’ Sanjay Dutt explores legal options

Tribune New Service & Reuters

Mumbai, March 21. After his conviction for possessing illegal arms and ammunition at the time of the Bombay serial blasts in 1993, Sanjay Dutt said he was “shattered and in emotional distress” as he had already suffered for 20 years.

“I am heartbroken because today along with me, my three children, wife and my entire family will undergo punishment,” he said in a statement.

“I know in my heart that I have always been a good human being, respected the system and has always been loyal to my country.”

The actor was reportedly exploring legal options and awaiting a copy of the court order. Throughout the day, he was holed up in his 10th floor flat at Imperial Heights building at Pali Hill in the suburb of Bandra.

His lawyer Satish Maneshinde told reporters that the length of sentence had come as a shock to Dutt who has continued to make films despite the legal action against him. “We will wait for a copy of the Supreme Court judgment and then decide the further course of action. He is a strong man and will fight back,” he said.

“We have been preparing him from the very beginning,” Maneshinde said. The actor would abide by the apex court order and undergo the sentence in letter and spirit, he added. “Three-and-a-half years is not a long period,” Maneshinde added.

Another of Dutt’s counsel, Majeed Memon, told reporters that the actor has suffered major mental trauma following his arrest and imprisonment for possessing an AK-47 assault rifle. “Dutt was foolish, but is neither a traitor nor a terrorist,” Memon told reporters.

The entertainment industry reacted with shock to the news of Dutt’s sentencing with the actor seen by some fans as a victim of his star lineage and own fame.

“Heart Broken: Just heard that Sanjay Dutt has to go to jail for 5 years. I expected mercy! Alas it did not happen,” tweeted filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, who helped resurrect Dutt’s career after he was freed on bail in the 1990s.

Dutt, the son of actor and former Congress minister Sunil Dutt and actress Nargis, also has political ambitions. But in 2009, the Supreme Court refused to suspend his conviction so that he could contest the elections on the ticket of the Samajwadi Party.

Dutt has reportedly said that he will complete all his films and not let anyone down. The actor is currently shooting for a new film “Policegiri” and was due to reprise his role in a third “Munnabhai” film later this year.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130322/nation.htm#2

The Tribune – Ratan Tata: The titan takes a bow

Mumbai, December 28. Corporate icon Ratan Tata today retired as chairman of the Tata Group after a 50-year run, predicting that India’s growth will re-establish after the “passing phase” of a difficult environment that would most likely continue in 2013.

Turning 75 today, he kept away from the Bombay House headquarters of the $100 billion group, but instead spent time with employees in the manufacturing facilities of Tata Motors in Pune.

“At the request of the union, I spent the day — my last day prior to retirement – at the Tata Motors’ various manufacturing facilities at Pune to say farewell to my shop floor colleagues. We have been together in good times and bad and have gained closeness based on mutual trust,” he tweeted.

He said in his Twitter message that going to the plants and receiving greetings from so many colleagues was a great emotional experience. “I have been deeply moved by the sincerity and spontaneity of their greetings. I will always carry memories of this day with me through the rest of my life,” Tata said. In a farewell letter to all employees, he asked them to live by the value systems and ethical standards the group had followed all along.

Cyrus Mistry, the 44-year-old chairman-designate who is likely to take over as Tata Group chairman tomorrow, visited the office today. He was groomed for the assignment by Tata for a year. He chose group company Tata Motors’ sedan Indigo Manza to travel to work on a day that marked the end of an era.

The narrow lane leading to Bombay House, one of the oldest buildings in the heritage Fort area of south Mumbai, had heavy media presence since morning in anticipation of Tata visiting Bombay House. (PTI)

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121229/main2.htm

The Tribune – Government issues new norms to prevent IT Act misuse

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 29. Facing public uproar over arrests made under Section 66 (A) of the IT Act in Maharashtra recently, the government today said that it would be focusing more on the Section and has also issued guidelines for its appropriate use. Section 66 (A) provides for a jail term of up to three years.

Government officials here said that it has already issued guidelines where approval would have to be taken from an officer of the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) level at rural areas and Inspector General (IG) level in metros before registering complaints under the controversial Section.

In two incidents in Palghar in Maharashtra few days after the death of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, two girls and a youth were arrested for their Facebook comments. While the girls were arrested for a post criticising the bandh-like situation in Mumbai following Thackeray’s death, the boy was arrested yesterday for posting “vulgar” comments against MNS chief Raj Thackeray and the people of Maharashtra on the social networking site.

Senior government officials here said that the new guidelines would make the misuse of the controversial Section difficult. “The concerned police officer or police station may not register any complaint unless he has obtained prior approval at the level of an officer not below the DCP rank in urban and rural areas and IG level in metros,” officials said.

Facebook effect

November 2012: 21-year-old girl, her friend arrested for questioning and ‘liking’ Facebook post criticising the Mumbai shutdown after Bal Thackeray’s death

October 2012: Businessman Ravi Srinivasan held in Puducherry for making an allegation on Twitter against P Chidambaram’s son

May 2012: Two AI employees held in Mumbai for posting contents on Facebook and Orkut against a trade union leader and some politicians

April 2012: Chemistry professor of Jadavpur University, Bengal, Bengal, held for posting Mamata Banerjee’s cartoon on social sites

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121130/main7.htm

BBC News – Cricket : England crush India in Mumbai

Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai – India (327 & 142 – Panesar 6-81) lost to England (413 & 58-0) by 10 wickets.

Mark Patterson, Eurosport, 26 November 2012. England wasted no time in sealing a 10-wicket win before lunch on day four of the second Test against India in Mumbai to level the four-match series at 1-1.

The tourists had made huge inroads into the Indian batting line-up the previous evening, but finished them off quickly in the morning, conceding just 25 more runs while claiming the last three wickets to dismiss India for 142.

Graeme Swann picked up a further two scalps, while Monty Panesar took his 11th wicket of the match to record the best figures of an English spinner in a Test in India.

That left a target of 57 runs, which England picked off without loss in fewer than 10 overs.

Nick Compton set the tone with a 28-ball unbeaten 30, including a reverse-swept four and a six down the ground.

Alastair Cook was also not out, adding 18 as he oversaw a victory on the subcontinent that few would have predicted after the shambles of the previous Test in Ahmedabad.

The teams meet again for the third Test in Kolkata on December 5.

Harbhajan Singh and Gautam Gambhir were positive from the off, looking to leave England an awkward fourth-innings target. Harbhajan hit the first ball of day over the top for a boundary, plundering Panesar’s opening over for 10 runs.

But the ball was still turning, and Swann accounted for him in the next over, beaten by bounce as he attempted to cut, and edging to Jonathan Trott at slip.

Zaheer Khan played with patience for 10 balls before a rush of blood to the head got him slog-sweeping Panesar. The ball went straight up, and Matt Prior pouched the catch.

The innings should have been wrapped up on 136 when Pragyan Ojha inside-edged Panesar onto his pad and on to short leg, but remarkably Umpire Aleem Dar missed it.

Gambhir was then unlucky to be adjudged out at the other end, getting some bat on a successful Swann appeal for leg before wicket. He fell for a valiant 65.

The damage had already been done, however – with a meagre target required for victory, there was no time to unsettle England’s batsmen on their march to victory, and with Ravi Ashwin sending down four byes to both start and end the chase, India bowled like a side who knew the game was up.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/cricket-england-complete-series-levelling-win-mumbai-052925180.html

Link found on BBC website

Dawn – Child marriage and Islam

Asghar Ali Engineer

Friday, 3 August 2012. Recently, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Majles (the Iranian parliament) has told the press that they regard the law that prohibits girls below the age of 10 from being married off as ‘un-Islamic and illegal.’

Reports indicate that in Iran, more than 75 female children under age 10 were recently forced to marry much older men. It is indeed very strange how child marriage can be deemed Islamic in any sense of the word. How can it be un-Islamic not to permit child marriage at the immature age of eight?

This is probably more cultural than religious. After all, any law bears footprints of culture and cannot completely get rid of cultural influences. While Islamic laws are very progressive, cultures in Islamic countries are still feudal or semi-feudal. Also, there has been debate among the ulema, as pointed out by the spokesperson for the Majles, about the age of puberty. Many ulema think that girls attain the age of puberty by or before age 10 while others think by the age of 15. But for most 10 is the age of puberty.

This has happened in Iran, where women’s participation in the revolution was so genuine and enthusiastic that they voluntarily took to wearing the chador as a symbol of their Islamic identity and a New York Times correspondent — seeing a sea of women in black chadors in 1979 — wondered how daughters of those mothers who had cast off their veils could take to the chador again. He perhaps did not realise that these daughters were wearing the chador as a symbol of their Islamic identity and to show solidarity with the leaders of the Islamic revolution.

However, their experience right from the beginning was not very pleasant and their expectations of liberation were not fulfilled. Gradually, the Islamic regime began to tighten its grip over women’s liberty, especially after the death of Imam Khomeini, who was a great visionary and believed in using persuasion rather than coercion. The revolutionary leadership began to quarrel for power in the post-Khomeini period and unfortunately the conservatives won.

And in the Islamic world whenever conservatives win, the first to be affected are Muslim women. Recently in Libya, when Qadhafi was defeated and his opponents — conservative Muslims — won, one of their first declarations was to legalise polygamy, as if their revolution was all about polygamy.

In Iran too women came to be under increasing control of the conservative clergy. A few years ago a woman, who was married with children, was accused of adultery and was sentenced to death by stoning, though human rights activists maintained that adultery charges were not proved. And there was no punishment for her alleged adulterous partner.

Coming back to child marriage, there is nothing Islamic about it; if anything it is un-Islamic. It is well-known that marriage is a contract in Islam and the Quran calls it a ‘strong covenant’ (mithaqan ghaliza) (4:21). It does not require a lot of argument to conclude that such a covenant cannot be entered into by children of the age of eight, that too a strong contract. A child does not even understand what a covenant is.

It is also well-known that both parties, i.e. husband and wife, can stipulate conditions, without fulfilling which the marriage will not be valid. Can a child stipulate conditions? Marriage is a lifelong partnership and a child cannot be expected to have the experience or intellectual ability to choose his or her life partner. Thus child marriage can in no case be Quranic or Islamic.

What is, then, the origin of child marriage in Islam? It is simply cultural and was not uncommon among the Arabs. The jurists can hardly escape the influence of their culture and cultural ethos. Though the Quran did not permit it, they allowed it because it was widely prevalent around them. They also tried to find justification for it in the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) Sunnah. Most Muslims believe that the Holy Prophet married Hazrat Ayesha when she was simply seven years of age and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

Firstly, this hadith appears about 300 years after the passing of the Prophet and in-depth research by many scholars clearly shows that Hazrat Ayesha’s age at the time of marriage was not less than 17 or 18 and at the time of consummation of marriage about 19 or 20. I have seen this research and there are very good reasons to believe it.

Since marriage is a contract in Islam, Imam Abu Hanifa, while allowing child marriage for sociological rather than religious or Quranic reasons, also had to make a provision for what is called option of puberty (khiyar al-bulugh) i.e. the girl, on achieving puberty or the age of proper understanding, could accept or reject the marriage and her guardian (usually father) also cannot force her to accept the marriage if she is unwilling. Imam Abu Hanifa had to make this provision because he knew the guardian is not an absolute authority to give the child away in marriage.

Religion should prevail over culture and not culture over religion. That is why most Islamic countries have now prescribed 18 as the age of marriage and have made child marriage illegal. Thus the Iranian clergy would be better advised not to legalise child marriage. I am sure the women organisations of Iran would surely resist this measure on part of the government, if at all it takes this regressive step defying the Quranic concept of marriage as a strong covenant.

The writer is an Islamic scholar who also heads the Centre for Study of Society & Secularism, Mumbai.

http://dawn.com/2012/08/03/child-marriage-and-islam/

The Hindu – Shah Rukh Khan banned from entering Wankhede

Mumbai 17 May 2012. The Mumbai Cricket Association officials have lodged a police complaint against Kolkata Knight Riders IPL franchise team co-owner Shah Rukh Khan for his alleged misbehaviour on Wednesday night at the Wankhede Stadium and decided to ban him for life from entering the premises.

“We have lodged a complaint against him at the Marine Drive Police station (for his alleged misbehaviour against MCA officials),” informed MCA secretary Nitin Dalal.

The Bollywood star had an altercation with the security and officials of the association after the Knight Riders had swamped Mumbai Indians, according to MCA treasurer Ravi Savant.

“He misbehaved and abused the MCA security personnel as well as MCA officials, including our president Vilasrao Deshmukh, after the IPL match (between KKR and Mumbai Indians). We have decided to ban him for life from entering the stadium in future,” said Savant, who alleged that the actor was in a totally inebriated state.

Giving the background to what happened after the KKR’s 32-run rout of MI in the last IPL game of the season at the Wankhede stadium, Savant said that Khan and his posse of bodyguards had gone up to the teams’ dressing room and then came down and started to enter the ground.

“The MCA security personnel told them they cannot do so as the match was over which led to Khan abusing them as well as the MCA officials. There was manhandling too by his people. We have decided to ban him from all future matches at the stadium. We are also going to lodge a police complaint against him,” said Mr Savant.

Mr Savant also said that one of the members of the MCA’s managing committee who is also a top police official, Iqbal Sheikh, tried to intervene and pacify the actor but could not do so as he was in no mood to listen to anyone.

Asked whether MCA would lodge a complaint with the BCCI over one of the IPL team’s owner’s behaviour, Mr Savant said all the altercation had taken place in the presence of IPL CEO Sundar Raman and BCCI’s media manager Devendra Prabhudesai.

“Of course we will lodge a complaint with the BCCI also,” said Mr Savant.

Mr Dalal said the MCA is scheduled to have a managing committee meeting next week and would discuss the scandal. (PTI)

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3428123.ece

BBC Column, Soutik Biswas – Is hope a fiction for India’s poor?

Soutik Biswas, Delhi correspondent

Wednesday, 15 February 2012. “We try so many things,” a girl in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai tells Katherine Boo, “but the world doesn’t move in our favour”.

Annawadi is a “sumpy plug of slum” in the biggest city – “a place of festering grievance and ambient envy” – of a country which holds a third of the world’s poor. It is where the Pulitzer prize-winning New Yorker journalist Boo’s first book Behind the Beautiful Forevers is located.

Annawadi is where more than 3,000 people have squatted on land belonging to the local airport and live “packed into, or on top of” 335 huts. It is a place “magnificently positioned for a trafficker in rich’s people’s garbage”, where the New India collides with the Old.

Nobody in Annawadi is considered poor by India’s official benchmarks. The residents are among the 100 million Indians freed from poverty since 1991, when India embarked on liberalising its economy.

‘Garbage justice’

Boo’s story – a stirring and gritty non-fiction narrative, one of the best ever written by a foreigner on India – revolves around the self-immolation of a cantankerous, one-legged slum woman called Fatima Sheikh and how her neighbour and a hardworking, young garbage trader called Abdul and his family are framed on a charge of murdering her. Fatima’s death is a liberation from enervating poverty, and a chance for some eighbours to make money from Abdul’s family, who are making a bit more money than the rest from selling recyclables.

This is when Abdul realises that the Indian criminal justice system was a “market like garbage” – “innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags”.

Boo adopted what she calls the “vagrant-sociology approach” and followed Abdul and his neighbours of this unexceptional slum over the course of several years – November 2007 to March 2011 – to see “who got ahead and who didn’t, and why, as India prospered”.

She used more than 3,000 public records, many obtained using India’s right to information law, to validate her narrative, written in assured reported speech. The account of the hours leading to the self-immolation of Fatima Sheikh derives from repeated interviews of 168 people as well as police, hospital, morgue and court records. Mindful of the risk of over interpretation, the books wears its enormous research lightly.

Boo’s narrative is peopled by a vast range of gripping characters from Annawadi, the world from which New India shies away.

An aspiring slum boss woman who volunteers for a local Hindu right-wing party. A man who paints his horses with stripes and rents out the fake zebras to birthday parties of middle-class children. A corrupt nun who runs a children’s home. A deranged man who talks to a luxury hotel building skirting the slum.

Then there’s a bunch of young scavengers and thieves, ravaged by rats and high on white correction fluid, who live, work and die quickly. They are the young flotsam that India breathlessly parades as its demographic dividend when, in reality, the children, tired and brutalised, are already past their sell-by-date.

Bleak

The people of Annawadi are also caught up in the hideous web of corruption and official venality which hurts the poor most, and lead utterly de-humanising lives in a city that aspires to become India’s Shanghai. It is far removed from the dreadful stereotype of the happy-poor Mumbai of Slumdog Millionaire.

Behind The Beautiful Forevers  

The local councillor runs fake schools, doctors at free government hospitals and policemen extort the poor with faint promise of life and justice, and self-help groups operate as loan sharks for the poorest. The young in Annawadi drop dead like flies – run over by traffic, knifed by rival gangs, laid low by disease; while the elders – not much older – die anyway. Girls prefer a certain brand of rat poison to end their lives.

Behind The Beautiful Forevers is a bleak, heart-breaking book, which leaves you numb with anger, helplessness and pain. In this age of globalisation, Boo writes, hope is not a fiction. But hope flickers dimly in Annawadi as the “unpredictability of daily life has a way of grinding down individual promise”.

Boo asks some uncomfortable questions: What is the “infrastructure of opportunity” in India? What capabilities does the market offer? What capabilities are wasted? Why don’t places like Mumbai where filthy slums stand cheek-by-jowl with the world’s priciest buildings explode into violence? Why don’t unequal societies implode? What happens to the powerless when, among powerful Indians, the distribution of opportunity is “typically an insider trade”.

Boo has an interesting take on corruption, rife in societies like India’s. Corruption is seen as blocking India’s global ambitions.

But, she writes, for the “poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained”.

On the other hand, Boo believes, corruption stymies our moral universe more than economic possibility. Suffering, she writes, “can sabotage innate capacities for moral action”. In a capricious world of corrupt governments and ruthless markets the idea of a mutually supportive community is a myth: it is “blisteringly hard”, she writes, to be good in such conditions. “If the house is crooked and crumbling”, Boo writes, “and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17038326

The Asian Age – Anna farce ends, politics begins

Pratik Salunke and Shobhan Singh, Asian Age Correspondents

Mumbai, 29 December 2011. Discouraged by his deteriorating health and the lukewarm response that his protest has drawn, anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare on Wednesday called off his three-day fast on its second day, as well as the nationwide “jail bharo” agitation planned from Friday. Team Anna will now concentrate on an “awareness campaign” by touring the five election-bound states, he said, and will intensify its agitation ahead of the 2014 general election.

Team Anna members said Mr Hazare, who left for the government guesthouse where he is staying in Mumbai immediately after calling off his fast prematurely, will leave for his native village Ralegan Siddhi on Thursday morning.

“This is not democracy, it is dictatorship. Corruption, hooliganism and blatant looting still prevail after Independence.

I’m calling off my fast, but we will tour the five poll-bound states as well as the nation later for the 2014 national elections,” Mr Hazare said on Wednesday, adding: “We will create awareness amongst the people and ask them not to vote for those who have betrayed the nation.”

Running a temperature of 100ºF on the second day of his fast, Mr Hazare said he would nevertheless continue with his agitation. “What we are seeing today in Parliament is tragic. Parliamentarians themselves are unsure about the Jan Lokpal Bill. There are still two years left for the national elections, and we will wake the nation up before that,” he said.

India today was a poor country, Mr Hazare pointed out. “The country that was once remembered as the golden bird is now unable to even pay its debts,” he said. The turnout at the MMRDA Ground increased marginally on the second day; the crowd stood and cheered as Mr Hazare came on to the stage. At a press conference that followed, Mr Hazare faced certain sharp questions. When asked about the low turnout, he said: “This is not right. I don’t have money and power.

Is the crowd in front of us less? One day you will definitely see how the public will react.” Mr Hazare soon walked out of the press conference due to his poor health.

When asked if Team Anna was targeting Congress and if it would also protest against the other parties opposing the Lokpal, Mr Hazare said: “I don’t think there is any need to oppose the other parties.”

For most of the day, Mr Hazare stayed in an anteroom due to his deteriorating health. At around 6.45 pm, he ended his fast, with Pratiksha Khandale, a child from Ralegan Siddhi, giving him lemonade. He appealed to people fasting along with him across the country to break their fast too.

http://www.asianage.com/mumbai/anna-farce-ends-politics-begins-345

BBC News – Indian singer Jagjit Singh dies

10 October 2011

Renowned Indian singer Jagjit Singh has died in Mumbai (Bombay), aged 70.

Mr Singh, who was famed for his semi-classical ghazal songs, suffered from a stroke last month and had been in a coma in hospital ever since.

Popularly known as the “Ghazal King”, Singh sang in a number of languages.

He is survived by his wife, Chitra Singh, who is also a leading ghazal singer. They had commercial success with songs recorded together in the 1970s and 1980s.

Singh’s admirers say he revolutionised ghazal music and made it accessible to the wider public.

He also sang tracks for a number of popular movies, including Sarfarosh.

He was the first prominent ghazal singer from India in a genre dominated by Pakistani singers.

“He was the first real ghazal singer from India. Before him there were clones. The poetry in his music was beautiful,” actor Anupam Kher said in a tribute.

“His music was gentle, soothing and went to your heart.”

Ghazal singer Pankaj Udhas said that Singh had made ghazal so accessible that his audiences “could sing along with him”.

Jagjit Singh recorded more than 50 albums, many of them major commercial successes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15236222