DCP South Prem Nath transferred to Mizoram; 24 other Delhi police officers also transferred: ANI reports

Delhi Anti-Corruption Bureau Chief Mukesh Kumar Meena transferred to Andaman & Nicobar Islands: ANI

UN Security Council announces that former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has died. He was 93.

Attacking the Delhi Police over its inaction when journalists and JNU students were being thrashed in a court complex yesterday, AAP today dubbed them "deaf and dumb", and asked why no action was taken against BJP MLA O P Sharma for his alleged involvement in the assault.


The party also questioned why the police was not checking the video in which JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been arrested on sedition charges, was talking in favour of following the Constitution.


"The Delhi Police has become deaf and dumb since yesterday. It has taken no action against BJP MLA O P Sharma who is seen assaulting JNU students and journalists and terrorising them," AAP leader Sanjay Singh said.


Yesterday, groups of lawyers had beaten up journalists and JNU students and teachers in the Patiala House court complex ahead of the hearing of sedition case registered against Kumar in connection with an event at the varsity last week to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.


Delhi BJP MLA OP Sharma was also seen beating up a CPI activist. Earlier, Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi said the alleged negligence on the part of police is being probed and the guilty will face legal action. Singh also noted that those who raised anti-India slogans during the event have not been arrested yet and demanded an independent probe into who those people were.

Congress and CPM had little to say when finance minister Arun Jaitley showed a video on his mobile on the alleged hate speech and slogans by JNU students.


Leaders of many regional parties had condemned the JNU students who allegedly raised "aazadi-barbadi" slogans. Jaitley also told his captive audience (D Raja, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma, the Modi government's mindset on Arunachal Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh, who has been pulled up in a money laundering scam. Azad, who is Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha after the meeting went over to Jaitley and whispered something inaudible. The Congress was exposed in today's all-party meet, Naidu told the press later.

Union Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu was closeted with the Chief Justice of India CK Thakker inside the Supreme Court today. This created quite a flutter with the media, given the JNU protests, but later it was realised that Naidu was simply taking the CJI around the complex to see the construction near Pragati Maidan complex which was being readied for the Supreme Court. 

Delhi court sends former Delhi University professor SAR Geelani, booked for sedition in connection with a Press Club event here, to two-day police custody.


Geelani was arrested early this morning on sedition and other charges for allegedly organising an event in support of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the Delhi Police has said. Geelani was acquitted in the Parliament attack case in 2003.


After he was detained late last night, he was questioned at the Parliament Street police station. A senior police officer said the case was registered after examining media clips of the event that was held at the Press Club on February 10.


Geelani's arrest comes amid a raging controversy over the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru University's student's union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges.


Kumar was arrested for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at a February 9 event at the campus which questioned the hanging of Afzal Guru three years ago.

Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh): Under construction building of Officers Training Institute collapses. Several labourers feared trapped.

@the_hindu  @arunjaitley showing a video of JNU students protesting on the campus to Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and D Raja.

President Barack Obama has a proven formula for getting big, politically charged nominations through Republicans in the Senate -- and close observers say that now points to Sri Srinivasan as his likeliest Supreme Court choice, with Loretta Lynch suddenly lighting up chatter as a potential sleeper candidate. Read


At Rediff.com, we always knew Srikanth Srinivasan was exceptional. No wonder he was unanimously adjudged as the India Abroad Person of the Year 2013. Here's a look.

Siachen avalanche: Hundreds pay homage to Sepoy G Ganesan at his hometown in Madurai. Ganesan was one of 10 soldiers who died in an avalanche on February 3. 

And an update in the the case that has taken a backseat -- the Sheena Bora murder.

Peter Mukerjea on Tuesday was charged with murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence in connection with the case.

Earlier in the day, the CBI has submitted supplementary chargesheet in the case against Peter Mukerjea.

Former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee on the sedition charges against JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar. "If someone says 'Afzal Guru ka conviction galat tha' that's not sedition. Being critical of the government is not sedition, saying that Afzal Guru's execution was wrong is not sedition."


Terming the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar for sedition as "deplorable', eminent Sorabjee asked if his (Kumar's) words and actions really amounted to sedition. "What did he do? Did he merely shout slogans like 'Pakistan zindabad'? Arresting him for that? I mean that's deplorable. That is not sedition. Sedition, the Supreme Court has said, are the acts which have a tendency and intention to disturb law and order or incite violence. After all, it is a section which gives you life imprisonment, has very serious consequences. So the Supreme Court has construed it in that fashion and said it very clearly that even if you use words that vigorously criticise the government or comment on the actions of the government, that is not sedition. That is our law, that is how Section 124A was interpreted and upheld as constitutional by a Constitution Bench," said Sorabjee.

Prithvi II successfully test fired from a military base in Chandipur, today.

Was Home Minister Rajnath Singh's claim on Sunday that the JNU incident was supported by Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed and IB report or was it just based on hearsay?

Insiders say that it was a top secret report by RAW that Rajnath Singh quoted, since neither the Delhi police nor the Intelligence Bureau have claimed responsibility for the report.

Speculation, dear reader, is rife. 

Domestic handset maker Ringing Bells will launch India's most affordable smartphone for under Rs 500 later this week, a move that is set to disrupt the booming handset market in the country.

The launch is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for "empowering India to the last person, transforming India's growth story', the Noida-based company said.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikkar will launch the smartphone 'Freedom 251' on February 17.

"The phone will be popularly priced at under Rs 500'this event and launch stands as a true testimony of success of the latest initiatives taken by the Government of India,' according to a media invite sent by the firm.

Since the Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light, diamond was mined in India during the middle ages, maharajahs, shahs and princes have fought to possess it. The size of a hen's egg, it was of inestimable value. Nevertheless, an 18th-century Afghan queen, Wufa Begum, did her best to describe its worth: "If a strong man were to throw four stones, one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air, and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor."

The Koh-i-Noor has belonged to the British since 1849. It sits in the crown of the Queen consort and presumably if Charles becomes king, Camilla will wear it. Read

@BDUTT  tweets: "A handful of us finally allowed past police barricade into court. We have submitted petition signed by hundreds."

SC agrees to give urgent hearing tomorrow to a plea seeking action against those involved in the violence at Patiala House court complex.

Pic: NDTV's Barkha Dutt with India Today's Rajdeep Sardesai outside the SC handing over their petition protesting the violence against the media outside a Delhi court yesterday. 

Kanhaiya Kumar , the JNU students' union president, addressed a gathering on the campus on Thursday evening. The following day, Kumar was arrested on the charge of sedition for taking part in a march on Tuesday where anti-India slogans were raised.


The following is the near-complete Hindi speech Kumar delivered on Thursday, translated by JP Yadav of The Telegraph from a recording uploaded on YouTube. The recording does not feature the beginning of the speech. Other than that, the translation below reproduces the speech in full.  Read

Journalists preparing a memorandum for the Chief Justice of India, asking for immediate action against those responsible for the attack on the students and the media outside the Delhi court yesterday.

Supreme Court agrees to hear the PIL on the Patiala house court violence tomorrow after Senior Advocate Indira Jaising mentions the matter.

Meanwhile, police have stopped the journalists from approaching the SC, citing security reasons.

Police Commissioner BS Bassi says JNUSU leader Kanhaiyya was present at the spot and on the basis of that evidence he was arrested. "There are allegations and counter allegations," Bassi said when asked if BJP MLA OP Sharma would be detained.

MK Alagiri -- suspended DMK leader and party chief M Karunanidhi's son, has written a lengthy communique to his father that there has been misuse of authority and misappropriation of funds by his brother MK Stalin in the DMK Foundation which runs the day-to-day affairs of the party. He has alleged irregularities in the running of Anna Arivalayam, the massive DMK office in the heart of Chennai. Out of six  trustees, five are from Karunanidhi's family. The market value of the DMK headquarters is estimated to be Rs 300 crore.

The Budget session scheduled to commence on 23 February promises to be turbulent.

Opposition parties are gearing up to disturb the address by President Pranab Mukherjee to both houses.

JDU and CPM MPs are likely to raise slogans on JNU and other burning political issues on February 23 in the Central Hall when the President addresses joint session of Parliament.

Opposition MPs are considering the following strategy: A walkout or raising slogans while the President addresses the house.

Watch this space. 

We were students, too. Nothing extraordinary or magical about it. These JNU kids are not some new, improved product. We also were anti-establishment and happily loathed the system. We also protested and had rallies and sang songs from Joan Baez and Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and had huge posters of Che Guevera on the walls of our rooms and batted for Fidel Castro. We knew what it was to be blowin' in the wind and we believed fervently a change would come. We read Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, it was our almanac, and from Berkeley to Woodstock to the fight against corruption in Bihar, we also swayed in solidarity.


We thought the government was the pits and was there only to ruin our happiness and be the boot on the neck. But never the country. There was a difference, always a difference.

Read this piece for a different point of view.

When BJP MP Maheish Girri labelled Jawaharlal Nehru University a "hub of treason" on Saturday amid the police crackdown on the campus, he was unwittingly belittling not just rivals but also key political, diplomatic, bureaucratic and education leaders of his own party's government. Many supporters of the arrest of JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and the imposition of sedition charges on multiple students from the university have over the past three days blamed the institution's intense student politics, frequently dominated by the Left.

Read more

And the award for the best Page 1 today goes to the Telegraph, Kolkata...

The escalating row over the JNU issue today found an echo at a meeting of political parties called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with opposition leaders speaking against the sedition case slapped on the arrested student leader and government asserting that slogans raised by students were "highly objectionable".


The government said it is open to debating the JNU row in Parliament during the upcoming Budget Session starting February 23 with Modi saying that it will address the concerns raised by the opposition.


Modi said during the meeting as opposition parties raised a host of issues that he was Prime minister not only of BJP but the entire country, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told the media after the over two-hour meeting.


Today's parleys were the first-ever meeting of political parties convened by Modi ahead of a Parliament session.


"We will respond to the issues raised by the opposition and address them... I hope the congenial mood here will be translated into action in Parliament," Modi told the meeting. Naidu said there was a general consensus that Parliament should run smoothly.


With BJP targeting Congress over its support to "anti-nationals" in the JNU row, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said his party "disassociates" with all such students who shouted slogans attacking India's unity and Constitution but insisted that there was no proof of sedition against Kanhaiya Kumar, the arrested JNU Student Union president.


"There is no proof of sedition against him," he said. He also hit out at BJP leaders for "defaming" the party leadership with their "anti-national" jibe and said the government should restrain them.

What exactly happened at JNU last week: A university student's account. Read

Delhi journalists march from the press club to the Supreme Court protesting against the violence against them outside the Patiala House court yesterday. Lawyers and BJP MLA OP Sharma attacked journalists and students when the JNU student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was brought to court yesterday.

The members of the Women's Press Corps have submitted a petition to the Home Minister, demanding that the Delhi Police who watched the assault silently on Monday be accountable for their actions and that the perpetrators of the assault be punished. 


Pic: Senior journalists -- NDTV's Barkha Dutt and the Wire's Siddharth Varadarajan -- march to the Supreme Court

PIL to ban jokes on Sikhs: SC gives 6-weeks time to petitioner to give suggestions within judicial dynamics so such jokes can be banned. SC observes Sikhs are the pride of the nation and that the community is second to none. The court also observed that the next CJI is a Sikh too. 

A 27-year-old RSS worker was hacked to death in front of his aged parents at Papinesseri in Kannur district of Kerala, police said.


Sujit, who suffered serious injuries in the attack, succumbed to injuries before reaching hospital on Monday night.


His aged parents and a brother tried to stop the assailants, who stormed into the house at around 11.30 pm last night, and suffered injuries in the process.


Police said some CPI(M) sympathisers have been taken into custody for questioning.BJP has called for a 'hartal' in Kannur, Pappinessery and Azhikode areas to protest against the killing.

BJP MLA OP Sharma who was caught on camera beating up a protester, a CPI leader, outside the Patiala House Court yesterday, justifies his act.


"Mai jab court se bahar nikal raha tha to jo sajjan the, mai unka naam bhi nahi jaanta, wo 'Pak zindabad' ke naare laga rahe the. Maine unko mana kia, unko samjhaane ke baavjood woh nahi maane aur isi beech haatapaai ho gayi, mujhe sar par chot maar di."Maarne ke baad jab woh bhaagne lage toh humne unhe chase kia. Uske baad ka ghatanakram aapke saamne hai," says Sharma. "Sharma says while he was leaving the Patiala House Court yesterday, there was an unknown man shouting slogans of Pakistan Zindabad. Sharma said he went up to him and tried to explain it was wrong, but the man refused to see reason. A scuffle followed and Sharma said he was hit on his head.   "After hitting Sharma, the man tried to flee and Sharma chased him. You know what happened after that," Sharma said.


However, yesterday, Sharma told PTI, "Mein goli bhi maar deta agar bandook hoti. Koi hamari Ma ko gaali dega to kya usey maaroge nahin (I would have opened fire if I had a gun. If someone abuses our mother, won't I beat him up)."


Sharma is the BJP MLA from Vishwas Nagar in Delhi and is said to be close to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.


Pic: OP Sharma grappling with the CPI protester outside the Patiala House court yesterday.

"I couldn't believe my eyes. An assault was unfolding right inside the courtroom, which later spread outside.

"A group of lawyers went berserk, attacking students, teachers and journalists. The lawyers slapped, punched and abused their victims, raining blows on their heads with shoes. For over an hour, Delhi police constables stood by - most passive, some smiling. I was in the courtroom of the metropolitan magistrate Lovleen, waiting for the police to produce JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested on the charge of sedition."


Basant Kumar Mohanty of The Telegraph recounts how teachers and journalists were assaulted inside the courtroom and outside in the Patiala House Courts complex on Monday. Read the chilling report.

The Opposition raises the JNU issue with the PM at the all-party meet. 

Delhi High Court dismisses plea seeking a NIA probe in the JNU sedition case, terming it as "premature". The HC said that the incident happened on February 9, so it "cannot assume that the Delhi Police is not investigating the incident".

The sedition case against JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar will not be investigated by the NIA even as protests over his arrest are set to intensify today with hundreds of teachers joining in.

Outside a court where Kanhaiya Kumar (pictured) was produced yesterday, several journalists were attacked. Media at the spot said policemen did nothing to stop the attackers. Journalists have now sought an appointment with Home Minister Rajnath Singh today.


Kanhaiya Kumar, 28, was arrested last week on charges of sedition for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at an event in support of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged in 2013. He will remain in custody till Wednesday.

JUST IN: Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu gives a compensation cheque of Rs 25 lakh to the family of Sepoy Mustaq Ahmed who lost his life in the Siachen avalanche.

The Opposition has demanded for a clarification from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the JNU row at a meeting ahead of the Budget session of Parliament. The PM had called for the meeting even as the ongoing JNU row has given fresh ammunition to the Opposition to target the government. 

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz has 'regretted' India's objection to sale of eight F-16 aircraft to Pakistan. 

A fire in one of the hostel dormitories at Smolensk State Medical Academy in Russia on Sunday morning tragically cut short the lives of two Indian girls -- Pooja Kallur, 22, and Karishma Bhosale, 20, as they slept. Pooja, from Navi Mumbai, and Karishma, from Sahakar Nagar in Pune, were in their fourth year of studying medicine in Smolensk. 

The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar and the crackdown on political dissent at JNU suggest that we are living under a government that is both rabidly malign and politically incompetent. 

Former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee delineated the law on sedition and said that even if some of the slogans raised at JNU were 'problematic', they do not amount to a charge of sedition against Kanhaiya Lal, who happened to be at the event where the slogans were raised. "Merely saying 'Pakistan zindabad', is not sedition. Saying 'Bharat ki barbaadi' is problematic, but I would rather say not sedition," he said. 

It was touted as an 'event of national importance', but officials chose to ignore the many red flags that an inspection team raised ahead of the Maharashtra Night event at Chowpatty on Sunday. 

Senior Aam Aadmi Party leader Ashutosh claimed that he has received a life threat for the second time over the ongoing JNU controversy. The AAP leader said he has approached the police over the issue.  "On JNU, I received a life threat on Whatsapp, saying, 'As terrorists are killed, we will kill you," Ashutosh tweeted. 

The Editors Guild of India condemned the attack by certain lawyers on journalists covering the JNU case in the court complex. "The Editors Guild of India took serious note of the assault on journalists and strongly condemns this attempt to intimidate the media through the threat of physical violence, and prevent the journalists from doing their job," it said in a statement. 

People from across Mysuru came to pay their respects to Sepoy Mahesha PN, one of the soldiers, who died in the Siachen avalanche on February 3. Days after weather conditions improved, the mortal remains of the soldiers were brought to New Delhi from where they were further airlifted to the hometown of the heroes. 

With issues like President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, Pathankot terror terror attack and Jawaharlal Nehru University  row set to generate heat in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached out to the Opposition by convening a meeting of leaders of major political parties this morning. 

The Supreme Court refused to pass any order on passive euthanasia and said the Parliament, or the "people's court", should decide on its legality. The court also left it to the Parliament to take a call on the right of terminally-ill persons to execute 'Living Will' not to prolong their lives by putting them on life support systems.

Press Club event: Former DU professor Geelani detained

Madras HC judge threatens to lodge FIR against SC judges

SC backs Army's preferential promotion policy

JNU row: Indian home minister misleading people, says Hafiz Saeed

A chief minister who lives on 10,000 per month!

BJP MLA attacks JNU student protesting outside Patiala House court