CBI court raps Amit Shah for non-appearance in fake encounter case // Amit Shah all set to become BJP chief

By Dilip -
A CBI court on Friday reprimanded the counsel of former Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah for seeking yet another exemption for his client without assigning any reason for the BJP leader’s non-appearance in connection with the 2006 Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case. “Every time you are giving an exemption application without assigning any reason,” said special CBI judge J T Utpat after CBI counsel B P Raju opposed Shah’s exemption application. However the court allowed his exemption application and fixed the next date of hearing on July 4.
Earlier, on June 6, the court had allowed the exemption plea of Shah and postponed the hearing till today. Shah in his exemption application on Friday said he could not attend the court hearing as he was in Delhi. “Shah is engaged in political work in New Delhi and therefore not about to come to court,” read his application filed by his lawyer Robin Mogera.
The court is also likely to pass an order on the discharge application filed by Shah on June 25. The court had on May 9 issued summons to Shah and other accused in the case, which was transferred from Gujarat to Mumbai this year. The CBI had chargesheeted Shah and 18 others, including several police officers, in the case in September 2013.
According to CBI, gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, claimed to have links to Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba, and his wife Kauser Bi were abducted by Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad when they were on way from Hyderabad to Sangli in Maharashtra and killed in an alleged fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005. Tulsiram Prajapati, an eye-witness to the encounter, was killed by police at Chapri village in Banaskantha district of Gujarat in December 2006. Shah, who was then Minister of State for Home was allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind both the incidents. 
BJP general secretary Amit Shah is set to take over as the next president of the Bharatiya Janata Party from home minister Rajnath Singh, with party and RSS leaders deliberating on the timing of the formal decision. “The odds are stacked in his favour. Most of the senior leaders are in his favour,” a BJP leader told HT. BJP general secretary JP Nadda was also a strong contender for the post but lost out since the BJP is looking to utilise Shah’s organisational skills in the upcoming assembly elections. Shah headed the BJP election campaign in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha polls. The party won 71 of the state’s 80 seats. The party is now looking for an appropriate time for the announcement so that it doesn’t overshadow the Narendra Modi government’s first Budget, likely in the second week of July. minister Rajnath Singh, with party and RSS leaders deliberating on the timing of the formal decision. 
See also:
Team Modi and free speech: Republishing "9 Myth Busters Of Gujarat 2002 Riots" by Shehzad Poonawalla On April 29, Shehzad Poonawalla wrote a piece for the DNA called Between Myths and Truths. It was about 9 myths being propagated Narendra Modi with regard to 2002. The article was posted at 1 pm and was popular on social media. DNA itself tweeted about the article three times. In less than 24 hours, without notice, the article was pulled down. Here's speculation as to why it was withdrawn. 
Did Modi, Amit Shah know of the Ishrat Jahan encounter in advance?
Police records show Gujarat riots weren’t a sudden backlash
Ishrat Jehan's mother appeals for justice // CBI Probe Nails IB Officer’s Role // Important interview with Shamima Kauser's lawyer Vrinda Grover

Public Appeal by R.B. SREEKUMAR, FORMER DGP, GUJARAT
Mohan Guruswamy - Who lit the Godhra fire? (July 2002)
Sadiq Jamal Case: CBI Files Affidavit, Says Probe In Progress
Gujarat Police killed Sadiq Jamal despite Intelligence Bureau's clean chit
How Varun Gandhi silenced the system
1984 carnage - 5 convicted, main accused Sajjan Kumar acquitted
Probe larger conspiracy says Zakia Jafri's counsel, reminds SIT of SC order on 2002 riots
Poornima Joshi: Sangh Singh Song

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested that I might
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, to stare at
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more