Dear Reader,
Rights activist Teesta Setalvad and former DGP of Gujarat R B Sreekumar were arrested last weekend on charges of “criminal conspiracy, forgery” and under other sections of the IPC. This was pursuant to a Supreme Court order that upheld the clean chit by the SIT to then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case and further suggested that the petitioners had indulged in "abuse of process" and “need to be to proceeded with”.
These seemingly hasty and arbitrary arrests have raised hackles among the members of the civil society who have taken to the streets in protest. The Court’s judgement, they argued in a statement, “seeks to deter citizens from holding the state accountable for enabling violence in future”. The Citizen brings you the story.
The Caravan deep dives into the precarious situation in Lakshadweep – the idyllic paradise in the Arabian Sea off India’s Malabar coast – that has seen a dire economic downturn, protests and deep distrust between the citizens and the state. This misery is laid at the doorstep of the advent of Prafulla Khoda Patel in 2020 as the Administrator, a former cabinet minister in Gujarat, whose arbitrary decisions have seemingly plunged the islands into a recession.
Reporting from Kishanganj in Bihar, मैं मीडिया focuses on the rampant practice of manual scavenging on paltry wages and without any safety equipment. A practice that is outlawed in India through the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (PEMSR).
And, in the wake of the recent controversy on Hindi’s status as the “national language”, The India Forum looks at the context of the debate and why it reeks of an attempt to merge nation, language and religion – ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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