Home stay attack: Court discharges journalist Naveen Soorinje from all charges

Dubai, May 18: An Indian working in a mining company in the UAE has become the latest expatriate to have lost his job for hate-filled social media posts targeting Islam and Muslims.

Brajkishore Gupta was fired without notice for calling Indian Muslims 'coronavirus spreaders' and hailing the Delhi violence as 'divine justice' in his Facebook posts.

Gupta, who is from Chapra, Bihar, was employed by Stevin Rock, a mining company headquartered in Ras Al Khaimah city.

"This isolated incident involving a junior employee was investigated and dealt with immediately resulting in the termination without notice of this person's employment with Stevin Rock," said the company's business development and exploration manager Jean-Francois Milian.

"Our company policy supports the direction of the UAE government in promoting tolerance and equality and strongly renouncing racism and discrimination and we have sent communications to all of our employees irrespective of their religious or ethnic background reminding them that any such behaviour is unacceptable and will lead to immediate dismissal," Milian was quoted as saying in the report.

Three Indians based in the UAE were either fired or suspended from their jobs for "Islamophobic" posts on social media early this month.

On April 20, India's ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor had warned Indian expatriates against such behaviour.

"India and UAE share the value of non-discrimination on any grounds. Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this," he said in a tweet.

Last month, Sharjah-based businessman Sohan Roy had to apologise for "unintentionally hurting religious sentiments" through his poem, which alluded to a Muslim religious group.

In March, chef Trilok Singh was fired from a restaurant in Dubai for an online threat against a student in Delhi over her views on the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Mangaluru, Feb 11: Renowned journalist and winner of Magsaysay award, P Sainath will be in Mangaluru on February 14 & 15 at St. Aloysius College (Autonomous). He will speak on the topic ‘Indian democracy in post liberalisation and post truth era’.

P Sainath’s two-day visit to St. Aloysius College will also feature a workshop by the veteran journalist on his rural development project PARI (People’s Archives of Rural India). It is a part of the tenth edition of Media Manthan, a National level media fest organised by the post-graduate department of Journalism and Mass Communication of St. Aloysius College.

P. Sainath is a veteran journalist and media activist who has an avid interest in rural reporting. People’s Archives of Rural India (PARI), a digital journalism platform is an initiative put forward by him which aims to document rural Indian lives and livelihood. Sainath is also a teacher who has trained over 1000 media persons across 27 years.

Media Manthan is a media festival by the PG Department of Mass Communication of St. Aloysius College (Autonomous). Besides endowment lecture and workshop by P. Sainath, the fest holds various media-related competitions for the students of various colleges from across the state.

Bengaluru, May 20: An Air India flight from Dammam in Saudi Arabia landed here with 161 passengers, including 85 for Karnataka and 76 to Hyderabad, an official said on Wednesday. Among Karnataka passengers there were both Bengalureans and Mangalureans.

"AIC-1910 (Airbus A321-211) landed at the city airport at 8.45 p.m. and 85 passengers, including 9 women and one infant alighted here, while 76 will fly to Hyderabad," the airline official said. 

The flight was 45 minutes behind schedule to Bengaluru.

The airline staff and the state government officials received the returnees in the arrival terminal and gave them masks to wear and sanitizer to wash hands.

All the passengers would be screened with thermal device to read their body temperature though only asymptomatic were flown back.

After completing formalities, including immigration check and filling the self-declaration form, the returnees were taken in state-run buses in batches for 14-day institutional quarantine in hotels and resorts across the city.

Passengers have to download the mandatory Quarantine app on their mobile phone before leaving the airport for contact tracing later.

Another evacuation flight from Kuala Lampur in Malaysia to Bengaluru has been cancelled due to Amphan cyclone over the Bay of Bengal that hit the Odisha and West Bengal on the east coast.

The service was the fourth to the southern state in the second phase of Vande Bharat Mission, the national carrier and its Express arm are operating to repatriate thousands of Indians, including distressed workers, migrants, students, senior citizens and tourists, stranded overseas since the government suspended international flights on March 23 and enforced an extended lockdown on March 25 to combat Covid-19 spread.

The first flight in the second phase landed on Monday night at Mangaluru on the state's west coast, with 177 passengers from Dubai in the UAE.

The second flight to the southern state from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia landed here (Bengaluru) on Tuesday evening, with 94 passengers.

The third flight from Muscat in Oman landed here at 6.31 p.m. on Wednesday evening and at Mangaluru on the state's west coast at 8.01 p.m.

The remaining flights to Karnataka will land in Bengaluru and Mangaluru over the next 13 days till June 3 from 12 more destinations the world over.

In the first phase of the mission from May 7-17, the airline and its arm flew 6 flights to the state from May 11-15, bringing in 800 passengers, including 623 to Bengaluru and 177 to Mangaluru from London, Singapore, San Francisco and Dubai.