Hisar, Oct 11: Self-styled godman Rampal was on Thursday found guilty by a court in Hisar in two murder cases.
Additional District and Sessions Judge, Hisar, D R Chaliya, held Rampal and some of his followers guilty in these cases. The quantum of punishment will be pronounced on October 16 and 17.
Rampal and 27 of his followers were charged with murder and wrongful confinement after four women and a child were found dead in his Satlok Ashram in Barwala town in Hisar on November 19, 2014.
New Delhi, Mar 2: As communal violence spiked in north-east Delhi earlier this week, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh residents of a colony came together and stood guard against frenzied mobs which ran riot in nearby areas vandalising homes, shops and torching cars.
They have not let their guard down even as the situation is limping back to normalcy following four days of violence that has claimed at least 42 lives and left over 200 injured.
The B-Block colony in Yamuna Vihar has a Hindu-dominated Bahjanpura on one side and Muslim populated Ghonda on the other.
People from all faiths in the locality sit outside their homes at night and deal with any suspected outsider, Arib, a dentist in his 30s, said.
"It is the sloganeering by mobs that causes panic in the dead of night. Such slogans are from both sides and we hear groups of people moving forward towards our area.
"This is where we let the Muslim locals deal with Muslim groups and Hindu residents deal with Hindu groups coming from outside," he said.
Businessmen, doctors and people working at government offices stuck together as violence reached its crest on Monday and Tuesday, and have been guarding the locality round the clock.
Earlier, the locals had claimed inadequate police deployment in the area, but were satisfied as patrolling by security personnel increased in the last two days.
Charanjeet Singh, a Sikh who owns a transport firm, said residents have ensured that not too many people gather to guard the colony at night. It has been decided not use sticks or rods, an idea which seems to have worked in maintaining peace, he said.
"I was 10 years old when we came to this locality from Uttar Pradesh's Meerut in 1982. There were riots in 1984 and tension in 2002, but even then our area remained peaceful. We have always been united and that is the way we have helped each other," Singh, who is now in his 50s, told PTI.
Faisal, a businessman in his 30s, said after two days of major violence, there was palpable tension in the area. "Nobody could sleep in the neighbourhood even on Wednesday and Thursday when the situation was brought under control," he said.
Faisal said around 4 am on Wednesday, three to four miscreants had torched a car, but were chased away by vigilant residents. They raised an alarm and others gathered, saving other vehicles parked nearby from being damaged, he added.
On the idea of not keeping sticks while guarding B-Block, Singh said, "Violence begets violence, crowd begets crowd. We thought if somebody would see sticks or rods in our hands from a distance and large crowds standing guard, it is likely they would want to come prepared. This could fuel violence."
"Now, if there is some young man returning late in the night, we identify if he belongs to our area. If not, we normally inform him about the situation and guide him to his destination, if required," he added.
Seventy-year-old V K Sharma said people in his colony never had any trouble with each other, as he blamed "outside elements" for the violence in north-east Delhi.
"Some people have some problem with symbols. If they find a particular religion's symbol on a shop, home or a car, they vandalise it.
"This is on both sides, Hindus as well as Muslims. But not all people in all religion are like that. There are good people who outnumber these handful people involved in violence," he said.
The violence happened for two days but it would take months for fear to subside, Sharma said, as he took out his two granddaughters, aged nine and two, out for ice cream.
"I cannot reduce the tension outside my home, but at least I can make these kids feel good by reducing their craving for ice cream,” he added.
Colony resident Shiv Kumar, a property consultant, and Wasim, a government official, said they too were members of this voluntary guards' team of the colony which stays up at night to fend off miscreants.
Lucknow, Jul 2: After a video showing health workers allegedly tossing bodies of coronavirus victims in a large pit in Karnataka, BSP President Mayawati on Wednesday stated that the incident is the "height of cruelty and insult to humanity".
The former UP Chief Minister demanded that the guilty must be punished.
"The tragedy that the bodies of COVID-19 victims being thrown into trenches in Ballari, Karnataka is the height of cruelty and an insult to humanity. Though incidents related to inhuman cruelty with corona patients are rampant but guilty of Ballari must be punished by the state government," Mayawati said in a tweet.
Also, in another tweet, she asked the Central government to extend the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana till the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
"In order to check ignominy of starvation on account of long unprecedented hardship & unemployment due to coronavirus and the subsequent nationwide lockdown, the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna must continue not till November but till the end of the pandemic, this is the demand of BSP," she tweeted.
New Delhi, Feb 5: Days after a gunman opened fire in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA movement, YouTuber Gunja Kapoor was detained at the protest site on Wednesday after she was caught covertly filming the protests in a burqa.
Kapoor runs the channel ‘Right Narrative’ on YouTube and her pinned tweet on Twitter says she is followed on the microblogging site by PM Narendra Modi.
According to police, the protesters turned suspicious after Kapoor asked them "too many questions". She was caught by some of the women protesters after they identified her as the popular YouTuber. The incident led to a commotion at Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a senior police official said.
#WATCH Political analyst Gunja Kapoor extricated by police after protestors at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh alleged that she was wearing a 'burqa' and filming them. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/llRiKhMvOd
— ANI (@ANI) February 5, 2020
She was taken to Sarita Vihar police station where her identity was ascertained, police said.
The incident sparked outrage on social media. Many took to Twitter to question why Kapoor was at the protest in disguise. Others expressed concern about her motives at secretly filming the protests.
Chaos at #ShaheenBaghProtest when a burka clad woman caught while making some video from her mobile. She is found out to a be a YouTuber. Objection was why she was covering the protest wearing burka. @DelhiPolice has detained her pic.twitter.com/W3Ypdey9il
— alok singh (@AlokReporter) February 5, 2020
Meanwhile, praises flew in for the women of Shaheen Bagh who can be seen defending Kapoor from angry protesters after she was caught.
This is not the first time that a right wing social media activist has landed in trouble in Shaheen Bagh where residents and other women and children have been sitting in protest for nearly two months since the passing of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 in December last year.
A burka clad lady @gunjakapoor is caught in #ShaheenBaghProtest site,disguised as a Muslim.
She hs 20k+ followers in @twitter & one among them is PM.
Why BJP sent a prominent face like her & nt a small worker?
Why BJP is so scared?
What’s BJP plan?Mass murder?@IndiasMuslims— Seerat Raza (@iamseeratraza) February 5, 2020
In January, Deepa Sharma had posted videos online about the "traumatic" experience she had when she was allegedly heckled and harassed by Shaheen Bagh protesters. While the woman's claim could never be verified, other pieces of rampant fake news aimed at delegitimising and villainising protesters has taken social media by storm.
A right wing activist caught in Shaheen Bagh trying to infiltrate by wearing a Burkha and faking her name
She is “Proud to be followed by Modi” on Twitter pic.twitter.com/l1zklov0io
— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) February 5, 2020
From doctored videos of women protesters allegedly accepting they were paid Rs 500 to attend protests to alleged fights over biriyani and anti-India sloganeering, trolls on social media seem to be working overtime to taint the ongoing protests.
The latter, however, show no signs of giving up. In fact, as Delhi nears elections on February 8, protesters have arranged for music performances by eminent artists, including pop celebrity Prateek Kuhad, till February 7.
Sit in protests take place 24x7 with women showing up in thousands to spend the night and sing songs of protest. And with polls around the corner, the protests have become an active part of political discourse with Aam Aadmi Party's Manish Sisodia expressing his support for the protesters at a recent press conference.
Comments
Thank God. Hope that all criminals would go to jail.
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