Dilip Simeon's blog

Rohini Salian, special public prosecutor in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, has blown the cover on an open secret ‒ the state’s reluctance to prosecute saffron terror. In an  interview  to  The Indian Express , Salian said that, soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government came to power last year, she was instructed by the National Investigation Agency to “go soft” on Hindu extremists accused in the case. This month, just as the case was to come up for a regular hearing before the Supreme Court, she was reportedly told another advocate would appear for the proceedings. The message, Salian says, was that state agencies did not want “favourable orders”. "Since this new govt came, I have been told to go soft on accused": Special Public Prosecutor // Indian justice system undergoing death by a thousand cuts as we watch In a raft of terror cases that emerged in the 2000s and implicated Hindu extremists, state responses followed a familiar pattern, of ...

The National Investigation Agency investigated seven terror cases in which Hindu right-wing groups are suspects. These cases – involving attacks where Muslims were targeted - were handed to the federal agency by the previous UPA government. This is also when the NIA made most of the arrests, including that of Swami Aseemanand and Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit. After remaining in jail for nine years, Purohit - one of the prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast - walked out of the Taloja prison on Wednesday. There have been allegations that over the past three years, the pace of investigations in these cases has slackened and witnesses have turned hostile where the accused belonged to organisations close to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Petition in S C Accuses National Investigation Agency of Soft-Pedaling Hindutva Terror Cases Public Appeal - Resist degradation of Indian criminal justice system Here’s a status check of the cases by Hindus...

NB:   An excellent analysis by Professor Palshikar. He analyses the specific features of the Hindutva ideology and the central place in it of cultivated violence and aggression. He also reminds us that Hindutva is not Hinduism. Those who conflate the two, those who confuse religion with the communal use of religion will end up strengthening authoritarian politics. See also :   SUHAS PALSHIKAR - There are many ways India mirrors the Emergency now The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar  -   DS Sanathan Sanstha, a Less Known But Potent Member of the Hindutva Family 'The opponents of this variety of Hindutva do not seem to have the ideological wherewithal to counter this paradigm from becoming a center of public sentiment because these opponents revel in antagonizing Hindus more than countering Hindutva..' The arrest of an activist having links with the Sanatan Samstha has somewhat deflected attention from the cause of the ...

Two recent events suggest that the Indian Republic could be hurtling down a slippery slope. Both relate to Uttar Pradesh but have national consequences. One is the Varanasi court judgement opening up the Vishwanath-Gyanvapi Mosque dispute. The other comes from adjoining Allahabad where the High Court has red-flagged the misuse of the National Security Act. Most of the cases are against members of the minority community. Efforts to corner the Muslim community in India appear to be unrelenting. Less than 18 months after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Hindu petitioners in the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid  land dispute in Ayodhya, another smouldering ember from Hindutva’s agenda is being stoked to life. A Varanasi court has ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to ascertain “whether the religious structure standing at present at the disputed site is a superimposition, alteration or addition or there is a structural overlapping of any kind, with or over, any reli...

Incredible as it might sound, the government of India is so irritated with the activities of one woman that it is finding all kinds of ways to catch her and lock her up.  The woman who continues to be a thorn in the flesh of the Modi government is Teesta Setalvad. The reason the government thinks she should be locked up is because this tenacious woman refuses to allow India, or the world, to forget what happened in Gujarat in 2002. It's another story that the multiple cases being foisted on her have little substance.  What one needs to realise is that together they are part of a plan to paralyse her ability to work and eventually to find a way to take her into custody. The latest in the long list of inquiries and cases against Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand, and the organisations they established and run – Sabrang Communications, Sabrang Trust and Citizens for Justice and Peace – are so numerous and complex that one would need hundreds of pages just to run throu...