UK Law Firm Files Rights Case Against Amit Shah, Gen Naravane; R-Day Tableaux Now Federal Issue

Saffron coup at ICHR, Opposition sees pattern in raids, Delhi main Yamuna polluter, pandemic data quality remains poor, only 19 women cadets for NDA, and Gujarat Chief Justice stopped by vagabond cows

A newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas | Contributors: MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day
January 19, 2022

Pratik Kanjilal

The Associated Press reports that Stoke White, a London law firm, has asked the War Crimes Unit of the UK Metropolitan Police to arrest Indian Army Chief MM Naravane and Home Minister Amit Shah for “the torture, kidnapping and killing of activists, journalists and civilians” in Kashmir. Eight other military officers have been accused but not named. The request has little to no chance of being acted upon, though it is based on over 2,000 testimonies and was filed under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which applies to human rights crimes irrespective of geography. In 2003, a case filed in London against Narendra Modi – for the 2002 anti-Muslim violence – while he was on a persona visit gave the Indian High Commission sleepless nights but nothing came of it. If the Kashmir complaint is admitted, it would cause the UK police to probe and perhaps even arrest the accused if they set foot in the UK. For now, it will drum up more bad press for India overseas. AP reports that Indian authorities denied knowledge of the matter. 

‘Raids’ by central agencies, the Enforcement Directorate, the taxman and others on prominent Opposition leaders shortly before elections are now routine. In the last few days, Samajwadi Party supporters and members in UP were raided, and Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi’s family yesterday. The Opposition sees a pattern.

Quartz reports that in the third year of the pandemic and with a fresh wave raging, India’s data quality remains low. And in India vs Bangladesh in economic growth, the World Bank declares the winner.

Bajrang Dal activists in Ujjain, MP, proudly announced that they had hauled out a Muslim man travelling with a non-Muslim woman from a train. The duo are friends, are married to other people and were going to Pushkar together. The incident sheds some more grim light on India’s social climate. Though though both are in their 20s, the police only released them into the custody of their parents.

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the Centre to prepare a model to implement the Community Kitchen scheme across the country and for providing additional foodgrains to states to run it, because “hunger has to be taken care of”. A bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana took strong exception to the submissions of Attorney General KK Venugopal, which reported that no state has reported starvation deaths: “Are you making a statement that there are no starvation deaths in the country now?”

Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao, amicus curiae in the matter of marital rape in the Delhi High Court, has weighed in against the exception made in these matters. Rape is rape if there is no consent, irrespective of marital ties. India is among 36 countries which do not recognise marital rape as an offence.

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the Centre to consider tweaking the protocols for the last rites of Covid-19 victims to include essential tenets of Zoroastrian belief. Currently, only cremations and burials are allowed, not the Parsi practice of exposing corpses in a Tower of Silence. The apex court is reportedly hit with a 30% positivity rate and 10 judges are affected by Covid-19.

Rattled by assertive chief ministerial responses over the rejection of their states’ tableaux for Republic Day, the Defence Ministry has surfaced to try and tackle the issue. Minister Rajnath Singh has written to Opposition chief ministers. (See The Long Cable below)

Travelling about 1,400 km through several states, the Yamuna flows for 22 km through Delhi. That’s 2% of its total distance, but the capital accounts for nearly 76% of its pollution.

An Ipsos-Mori study on how artificial intelligence is perceived globally finds that in India, 68% trust AI companies.

“My car was entering the court today and about 10-12 cows had blocked the road. Even the police couldn’t remove them by whistling,” said the Gujarat High Court Chief Justice. The High Court said that its orders for dealing with the stray cattle menace have not been implemented, though a legislation is in place to tackle the problem. 

The BJP has another former Army chief in its ranks: Gen JJ Singh, the first Sikh to head the force, who was Governor of Arunachal Pradesh under the UPA, then joined the Akali Dal and was bested humiliatingly by Amarinder Singh in the 2017 Assembly polls, joined the BJP yesterday.

Tandoori-style, and in pakoras and milkshakes ― India’s love for Maggi noodles knows no bounds. Launched 40 years ago in India, the product was initially aimed at hard-pressed working women looking for snacks for their families. Then it was reimagined as street food ― Maggi parathas and tandoori paneer Maggi.

And speculation continues about the “tech glitch” at Modi’s Davos speech, which rendered him