Four months after Arvind Kejriwal announced his Aam Aadmi Party, yoga guru Ramdev followed suit. On Wednesday, Ramdev announced he was forming a political outfit. Its name and coalition possibilities would be announced within two months  Ramdev said the party’s focus would be on fighting corruption and bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks. But it would also “work towards” forming the government in the Centre.   Declaring he has […]

Pilibhit: A court in Uttar Pradesh has acquitted BJP leader Varun Gandhi in one of two cases that accuse him of making hate speeches while campaigning in his constituency of Pilibhit in 2009 for the national elections. The second case is expected to be decided on Friday. Mr Gandhi won his parliamentary election after he spent 19 days in jail. He has denied that the speeches he delivered were designed […]

Indian media on Sunday mistakenly used an image of the late MPA Manzar Imam for an alleged suspect involved in the recent blasts in Hyderabad, India, Express News reported. At least 18 people were killed and over 50 were wounded in multiple blasts in the crowded Dilsukhnagar area of Hyderabad on Thursday. Imam, a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), was killed in a targeted attack on January 17, […]

In Pic :Journalist Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui addressing the media along with his family at Press Club of Bangalore, after releasing from Parappana Agrahara Central Jail on 26,02,2012. Photo: V Sreenivasa Murthy “If I was the mastermind, then why are the others still in jail?” A day after his release from jail, 26-year-old journalist Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui has accused the police of harbouring an “institutional bias” against the Muslim community. “If I wasn’t […]

Why should you call it a conspiracy? If Dec 13 is a conspiracy, then entire Kashmir militancy is,” Afzal told Hizb chief Salahuddin through an Urdu weekly editor in 2008 Nearly five years before his execution at Delhi’s Tihar Jail for the December 13, 2001, terrorist strike on Parliament, Afzal Guru purportedly justified the attack in a letter to the editor of an Urdu weekly in Srinagar. Writing by hand, […]

MUMBAI: Seventeen-year-old Riyaz Shahbandri from Kurla was a shy civil engineering student at Nagpada’s Saboo Siddik polytechnic in 1993. He would maintain a low profile and hardly participated in any college events. However, girls found his chocolate-boy looks appealing. Two decades later, he began making headlines as Riyaz Bhatkal, a suspected terrorist who has killed more people than the feared Dawood Ibrahim or the hanged Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab—more than […]

A man believed to be the world’s oldest marathon runner has run his last long distance competitive race in Hong Kong. Fauja Singh, from Ilford, east London, who is 101 years old, finished the Hong Kong 10km (6.25 mile) event in one hour, 32 minutes and 28 seconds. “I will remember this day. I will miss it,” Mr Singh said minutes after crossing the finish line. In 2000, he ran […]

In Pic :Nehru smiles as Che Guevara gifts him a box of Cuban cigars. Despite his own convictions, Che Guevara understood India’s non-violent resistance as arising from a cultural context in which war was distant from the spirit of the people Jean-Paul Sartre was impressed enough by Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967) to call him “the most complete human being of our age” after Che’s death. It was a reference to […]

Vishaw Hindu Parishad leader Praveen Togadia was on Thursday detained by the police at Jammu airport and sent back by authorities, fearing law and order disturbance.   “I have been detained at the Jammu Airport and not allowed to move out of the complex,” the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader told PTI. “I was served notice by the additional deputy commissioner which said that I will not be allowed to enter […]

By making a statement of regret over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, David Cameron has opened up a can of other questions and grievances over Britain’s colonial past. What about the British museum returning all the treasures looted from India during the Raj? What about sending back the Kohinoor diamond still embedded in Queen Elizabeth’s crown? And many commenting on this blog say it shouldn’t stop at India – what about the many casualties of […]