A 71-year-old veteran Chinese journalist, known for her hard-hitting reports on elite ruling Communist Party leaders, was today sentenced to seven years in jail for leaking to a foreign website a secret party circular banning press freedom and democracy. Gao Yu, one of China’s most prominent journalists well known for her articles critical of government…
Remember Barack Obama’s speech on religious freedom at Delhi’s Siri Fort in January? That speech was widely seen by BJP-baiters as a lecture to the current government that is easily tarred with the brush of anti-minorityism based on the aggressive statements of some Sangh parivar loudmouths. “Nowhere is it going to be more necessary to…
The Supreme court on Friday stayed proceedings against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in two defamation cases, one filed by BJP leader Nitin Gadkari and the other by a lawyer. A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice PC Pant has also agreed to hear Kejriwal’s plea for decriminalizing defamation law. Facing repeated court appearances…
Bilkulonline.com, Ahmedabad, April 17: Mufti Abdul Qayyum, an accused in the 2002 Akshardham temple attack case who was acquitted by the Supreme Court last year, won’t be able to tell his story. Qayyum had planned to release a book on the 11 years he spent behind the bars for a crime he never committed, at…
Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan says he has an ongoing struggle against the Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC) to achieve creative freedom. The 60-year-old actor, whose 2013 film “Vishwaroopam” was initially banned in Tamil Nadu for 15 days and saw a release only after muting certain scenes, has always voiced his reservations about the censor…
Mahatma Gandhi was obviously a unique figure in India’s history. But it now turns out that he is in a class of his own even in the eyes of the law. Justice might be blind and everyone, high or low, technically equal before it, but there is apparently the Mahatma Exception. A two-judge bench of…
The Supreme Court today reserved its judgment on a petition filed by the editor of an in-magazine of the (All India Banks Association) which had published a satirical poem on Mahatma Gandhi but observed that it is a “collective responsibility to respect the Father of Nation”. “Is it not a collective responsibility of the nation…
Unless Akram Hussain has never heard of MF Husain, he could not not know that a painting of Lord Krishna surrounded by “gopis” in bikinis all hanging out in a bar would not go down well. The difference is MF Husain was already famous in the world of art and did not really have to…
The year was 1927 and Mohammad Hidayatullah, a young Indian from a literary family, had just been enrolled at Cambridge. He was eager to take in the drama scene, but had a problem. When he was a boy, his father had prohibited him from seeing a play called Nao Tanki. Hidayatullah mused that this may…
Maharashtra environment department will soon start online monitoring of industries and their hazardous waste disposal based on which it would take a decision on renewing licences of such units. It will also ask the industries to ensure that hazardous waste substances in their units are turned into non-hazardous material before being disposed, a senior environment…