Hyderabad: A photograph of a padlocked grave has gone viral on Saturday. It was connected to increased instances of ‘necrophilia’ in Pakistan in media reports and social media posts, with the assertion that the image is an example of how mothers lock their daughters’ graves in Pakistan to avoid rape.
ANI Digital tweeted a link to the story on Twitter along with the image of a locked grave leading to several major news outlets pushing the same story online. But turns out, the story is fake news.
Leading fact checker website Alt News‘ research showed that the grave in the picture did not belong to Pakistan but it was found in Hyderabad, India. The reason for the ‘lock’ on the grave had a different explanation as well. The cemetery is located opposite Masjid E Salar Mulk, a mosque in Darab Jung Colony, Madannapet, Hyderabad.
Explaining the reason behind the grille or jaali as Muqtar Sahab, who is the Muazzin of the Masjid E Salar Mulk, called it said to Alt News that a lot of people go there and bury bodies over the old graves without permission.
“The people who already have their close ones resting here have had complaints since they come here to read Fateha. In order to prevent others from burying any bodies further, the families have put the grille there.”
On being informed about the image of this grave being circulated with the claim that it is from Pakistan, Muqtar refuted it and added that the grille was constructed also with a view to preventing people from stamping on the grave since it was right in front of the entrance.
Prayagraj: A local Congress leader, who stoked a controversy by placing the Indian Tricolour on the grave of slain gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad at the Kasari Masari graveyard in Old City area, has been arrested.
The Congress leader Rajkumar Singh ‘Rajju’, was also expelled from the party for ‘anti-party ‘activities’.
An aspiring corporator from ward no. 43 here in the UP civic polls, Rajju was held by the Dhoomanganj police after a video of him purportedly showing him put the national flag on the grave went viral on social media, said police.
Atiq and his younger brother Ashraf were buried in the graveyard late on April 16 evening after they were shot dead by three armed assailants while in police custody on April 15 night.
In the viral video, Rajkumar Singh Rajju is purportedly seen calling Atiq Ahmed a martyr, demanding Bharat Ratna for him and later spreading the Tricolour on his grave. The authenticity of the video clip is yet to be confirmed.
As soon as the information about the viral clip was received, the Dhoomanganj police traced and detained the accused leader on Wednesday night.
“A complaint is being registered against him,” said police.
Meanwhile, city Congress committee president Pradeep Mishra Anshuman expelled the leader from the party for six years, saying that Rajkumar Singh’s statement on Atiq was his personal view and the party had nothing to do with it.
The viral video also purportedly showed the accused leader saying: “The state government got Atiq Ahmad murdered. I demand that he be given Bharat Ratna. He was a public representative. He should be given the status of a martyr. If late Mulayam Singh Yadav can get Padma Vibhushan, then why should Atiq not be given Bharat Ratna…why was he not given state honours during the funeral?”
Rajkumar Singh is believed to have given this statement to the media after the press conference of Congress mayoral candidate Prabha Shankar Mishra.
While he was giving the statement, the city Congress president could be seen stopping the leader from speaking further.
Tricolour on the grave of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad- Twitter
Prayagraj: Local Congress leader Rajkumar Singh Rajju was taken into custody by the police on Wednesday after he allegedly placed the tricolour on the grave of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad, calling him a “martyr”.
The Congress expelled Rajju, who was a candidate in the upcoming urban local body polls, from the party for six years, its city president Pradeep Mishra Anshuman said.
Anshuman said that Rajju was a Congress candidate for corporator from Azad Nagar in South Malaka.
A purported video of the incident went viral in which Rajju can be seen placing the tricolour on the Ahmad’s grave and raising slogans in favour of Ahmad and his brother Ashraf and demanding Bharat Ratna for the former MP.
“He was a people’s representative and a martyr. Why he was not given state honour and why the tricolour was not put on his grave,” Rajju said, according to the purported video.
Anshuman claimed to have a photo of Rajju receiving the award from state’s Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and said whatever happened was a conspiracy.
Rajju is undergoing treatment for some psychiatric issues, he said, adding a prescription for psychiatric medicines were found at his home.
Congress leader Rajkumar Rajju not only raised slogans of Atiq Ahmed Amar Rahe, but mafia Atiq Ahmed Demanding Bharat Ratna, He has said that Atiq Bhai was killed by the Yogi government and he should get the status of a martyr.
Dhoomanganj police station SHO Rajesh Kumar Maurya said Rajju has been detained and an FIR is being registered against him.
Ahmad (60) and Ashraf were shot dead at point-blank range by three men posing as journalists on Saturday night while police personnel were escorting the two brothers to a hospital in Prayagraj for a check-up.
The controversy surrounding Delaney’s nomination is unusual for a Biden judicial pick, compounded with further concerns voiced by some Democratic members on the panel. The New Hampshire judicial nominee is under particular scrutiny for his representation of St. Paul’s School in a school sexual assault case. During that case, Delaney filed a motion that would have allowed the plaintiff, who was a minor, to remain anonymous only if she and her representatives agreed not to speak about the case publicly during the litigation.
The victim in the case, Chessy Prout, went public and a settlement was eventually reached in 2018. Prout recently wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe encouraging the White House to withdraw Delaney’s nomination. During his confirmation hearing, Delaney said he was an “advocate” for St. Paul’s, and that the school “felt that the request to restrict [Prout’s] lawyers from trying the case in the media was compatible with her desire to proceed with privacy and anonymity.”
Delaney, a former New Hampshire attorney general, has strong support from his home state Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, as well as the White House. Hassan and Shaheen have made the case for his confirmation broadly to their colleagues, including at the caucus lunch this past week.
Delaney’s allies also highlight support from Susan Carbon, former President Barack Obama’s director of the office on violence against women at the Department of Justice, who wrote that he was “instrumental” in making changes designed “to improve the civil and criminal justice systems for victims of crime” in New Hampshire. Other endorsements include four former New Hampshire Supreme Court justices, appointed by both parties, and 29 past presidents of the New Hampshire Bar Association.
“The strong support for Michael Delaney from legal experts, survivor advocates and lawmakers spanning the political spectrum speaks to his qualifications, ethics and commitment to justice throughout his nearly thirty-year career,” said Sarah Weinstein, a Shaheen spokesperson. “Senator Shaheen believes that both his record and strong backing from individuals in the advocacy and legal sectors underscore his qualifications.”
Laura Epstein, a Hassan spokesperson added that “Delaney’s strong, bipartisan support from a wide cross-section of leaders … underscores his deep commitment to justice and why he will make for an excellent First Circuit Judge.”
White House spokesperson Seth Schuster said the White House “has the utmost respect for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors and expects senators to take Mr. Delaney’s full record into account when considering his nomination — as the White House did before nominating Mr. Delaney to the First Circuit.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to take up Delaney’s nomination next week, but that is likely to change depending on attendance. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been out of the Senate recovering from shingles. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have made the school sexual assault case a key focus and are not expected to support his nomination. While no Democrats have come out publicly against Delaney, it’s not clear he has the votes to get through committee.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The ruling Shiv Sena legislator Sanjay Shirshat on Monday demanded that the grave of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar should be shifted to Hyderabad.
The city MLA Shirsat’s quirky call came in response to the indefinite agitation launched by All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on Saturday protesting the name change of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and reverting to the old ‘Aurangabad’.
“If they have so much love for Aurangzeb, then shift his grave to Hyderabad… Let them build a memorial there or do whatever they want, nobody will bother, but stop this agitation,” declared Shirsat, who belongs to the faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
Reacting, the local AIMIM President Shareq Naqshbandi dismissed the SS leader’s demand as “only politics and intended to create disharmony among communities to consolidate their position”.
“If they have so much hatred for Emperor Aurangzeb, then why did they take the G20 delegates on a tour to view his wife Rabia-ul-Daurani’s tomb, the ‘Bibi Ka Maqbara’, built in 1668, by their son Muhammad Azam Shah,” Naqshbandi countered.
Going further, he asked, with so much animosity for the past rulers, why the Bharatiya Janata Party government wants to earn revenues from the Taj Mahal (Agra) and other monuments for its coffers.
Naqshbandi said that since the BJP and its allies have no issues left to take to the people they are resorting to such politics and driving a wedge among different sections of society.
Last month, the Centre okayed a state government proposal to rename Aurangabad to ‘Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’ and Osmanabad to ‘Dharashiv’.
However, other parties like Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, have not yet responded to Shirsat’s outburst.
Meanwhile, last week the AIMIM state President Syed Imtiaz Jaleel, MP, demanded that the names of Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Kolhapur and Malegaon must also be changed in honour of prominent icons.
He has suggested Chhatrapati Shivaji Raje Mahanagar (Mumbai), Jyotiba-Savitri Phule Nagar (Pune), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Nagar (Nagpur), Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj Nagar (Kolhapur) and Maulana Azad Nagar (Malegaon).
MOSCOW — As Russia enters the second year of its war against Ukraine, fans of Joseph Stalin are enjoying a renewed alignment with the Kremlin.
On Sunday, the hundreds of Stalinists who came to Red Square to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet dictator’s death were full of bravado and admiration for a man responsible for mass executions, a network of labor camps and forced starvation.
But that was not a side of the dictator that was at the forefront of the minds of those who showed up to commemorate him.
“Stalin stood up to Nazism,” Maxim, a 19-year-old medical student in a blue wooly hat, who like others interviewed for this article declined to give his last name, told POLITICO. “And now our current president has led the charge to take it on again.”
Irina, a 35-year-old marketer, brought a bouquet of red carnations to lay at Stalin’s grave at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. On February 24 last year when President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine, a triumphant Irina posted a picture of a hammer and sickle on Instagram. “That symbol for me said it all.”
Standing in front of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square, longtime Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told journalists Putin could learn “lessons” from Stalin: “It’s time to take action and start fighting in a real way.”
But as Stalin’s reputation undergoes this rehabilitation, those dedicated to documenting Soviet-era mass repression have felt the full force of the state apparatus used against them.
Across town from Red Square, in Moscow’s north-eastern Basmanny district, about two dozen people gathered outside a faded yellow four-storey building on Sunday. They came to install a plaque commemorating the site as the last home of Vladimir Maslov, an economist accused of spying for Poland in a fabricated case and shot at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge. One of the attendees wore an olive-green jacket adorned with a Dove of Peace — a risky political statement in Putin’s Russia.
The “Last Address” campaign, which attaches the plaques to the former homes of the victims of Soviet repression, is one of very few such projects remaining after a merciless purge of Russia’s most established human rights groups — Memorial, the Sakharov Center and the Moscow Helsinki Group have all been forced to close.
For now, their loosely organized volunteers, armed with drills and step stools to attach the plaques on façades, have been spared. But they face increasing hurdles: The required unanimous consent of a particular building’s residents has become harder to come by; plaques have even been taken down.
“People have become more careful, they are scared that acknowledging the dark episodes of the past will be taken as a nod to what’s going on today,” said volunteer Mikhail Sheinker. “In times like these, past and present converge until they almost blend together.”
The day Stalin’s death was announced — March 6, 1953 — is seared into Sheinker’s memory: “I was four at the time and was making the usual ruckus, but my mother told me to be quiet out of respect.”
Russian Communist party supporters march to lay flowers to the tomb of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
Today, in wartime Russia, the specter of Stalin could once again be used to further silence dissent.
On Sunday, state-run news agency RIA Novosti published an opinion piece headlined: “Stalin is a weapon in the battle between Russia and the West” arguing criticizing Stalin is “not just anti-Soviet but is also Russophobic, aimed at dividing and defeating Russia.”
But while World War II — which Russians refer to as “the Great Patriotic War” — continues to be a central trope of Putin’s rhetoric when it comes to his invasion of Ukraine, the president casts himself more as a successor to the czars than Soviet leaders. Accordingly, state media paid relatively little attention to the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s death.
Former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov said that’s because Stalin is still too divisive and Russia’s ruling elite is loathe to commit to any specific ideology. But “if Russia is going to suffer further setbacks [in Ukraine], Stalin will become a main theme,” Markov wrote on Telegram.
Strange bedfellows
The alliance between Putin’s Kremlin and revanchist Communists is an uneasy one.
In Russia’s lower house, or the State Duma, the Communist Party closely toes the Kremlin line — but at a regional level, its members are at times less disciplined.
Last month, Mikhail Abdalkin, a Communist lawmaker in the region of Samara, posted a video of himself listening to Putin’s annual address to the entire ruling elite with noodles hanging from his ears. It was a nod to a Russian idiom “hang noodles on one’s ears” that refers to being taken for a ride or being fed nonsense.
A Russian Communist party supporter holds a portrait of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, Abdalkin said he had been charged with discrediting Russia’s armed forces, with the case to be heard on March 7. If he’s convicted, Abdalkin could be fined.
On Red Square on Sunday, some Communist supporters volunteered criticism of Putin, too — but not of his war on Ukraine.
“Stalin gets criticized for having blood on his hands. But what about Putin’s policies? Outside big cities, people need to travel hundreds of kilometers on muddy roads to get health care,” said Alexander, a pensioner in his 60s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Srinagar: Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) chairman Ghulam Nabi Azad condemned the killing of a Kashmiri Pandit ATM guard in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Sunday, saying it was a matter of grave concern.
“Any killing, especially a targeted killing, is a matter of grave concern and condemnable. We condemn it,” Azad told reporters here.
A 40-year-old Kashimir Pandit named Sanjay Sharma, who worked as an ATM guard, was shot in the chest at point-blank range by terrorists in the Achan area of the south Kashmir district around 11 am on Sunday, police said.
The DPAP chief said every targeted killing is condemnable, be that of a Kashmiri Pandit or a Muslim or a Sikh and whether the victim is from Jammu or Kashmir.
However, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said the most unfortunate part is that while many people were arrested in connection with such incidents over the last 30 years, “not one killer has been arrested for these targeted killings in the last two years”.
Azad said while it was a reality that militancy has decreased in J-K, what is worrisome is that such target killings have been taking place for the last few months.
He said such mysterious killings pain him and he requested the government to make security agencies, intelligence agencies and law and order enforcement agencies answerable for such killings as “no one was arrested for such killings”.
The former Union minister said except the targeted killings taking place, there was “no militancy in J-K”.
“There is no hartal, there is no stone-pelting. So, there is no justification for the LG’s rule and delaying elections,” he added.
On the issue of the proposed imposition of property tax, Azad, who has earlier demanded that it be put on hold for a few years, said he was not against the imposition of the tax which will eventually benefit the people.
“We oppose its implementation here because of the economic situation. Let it be imposed after six years when the economic situation improves The state has witnessed militancy for the last 33 years, the people here are not in a position to pay such tax,” he said, adding “if need be, the party will launch an agitation against it”.
New Delhi: Law Minister Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday said it was a “matter of grave concern” that certain portions of sensitive reports of the Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing were put in public domain by the Supreme Court Collegium.
He said intelligence agency officials work in a secret manner for the nation, and they would “think twice” in future if their reports are made public.
He was responding to questions on some recent Supreme Court Collegium resolutions, which contained potions of IB and RAW reports on certain names recommended by the top court for appointment as high court judges, being made public last week.
The Collegium had reiterated the names to the government earlier this month while rejecting intelligence inputs.
“Putting the sensitive or secret reports of RAW and IB in public domain is a matter of grave concern on which I will react at an appropriate time,” Rijiju told reporters at a Law Ministry event here.
