India legal 15 december 2015

InderjitBadhwarexaminestheIndian
legaltangleonsnooping
Francecaughtinawebofconfusion
IsBelgiumthenewterrortheatre?
USpondersefficacyofmasssurveillance
THEPARIS
EFFECT
NDIA EGALL
December 15, 2015 `100
www.indialegalonline.com
I
ByAPDURAI
Never-told-beforeexplosivestoryoftheCBI’scomplicitywith
LaluYadav’spoliticalenemiestonailhiminthefodderscam
STORIES THAT COUNT
46
CONSTITUTION
DEBATE
Modi’s balm 54
MURALI
KRISHNAN
Taslima
Nasreen’s
exclusive
interview
42
AJITH
PILLAI
Indrani’s
mess
gets
messier
56
SMRUTI
Endemic
intolerance
34
08

The trail of those wanted in the Paris attacks leads the police to
Belgium, which has emerged as Europe's hotbed of Islamic terrorism,
observes SEBASTIAN ROTELLA from ProPublica
DECEMBER15,2015
8
LEAD
Paris is burning
France takes stock of its options post 13/11 while the clamor for closing
the doors on Syrian refugees grows. A report by Stratfor
14
Does this spying help?
Analysis shows that when it comes to gleaning intelligence about attacks
and tracking down jihadis, mass surveillance may not be a very effective
tool. LAUREN KIRCHNER reports for ProPublica
The Paris Effect
The Belgium connection 16
22
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Editor
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Managing Editor
Ramesh Menon
Deputy Managing Editor
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Executive Editor
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Associate Editors
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4 December 15, 2015
INDERJIT BADHWAR compares the American
experience of mass surveillance in the Indian
legal context
34
REGULARS
Cover Design: ANTHONY LAWRENCE
BOOKS
DIPLOMACY
With the legal route being used to bring this priceless
gem back to India, will Britain give up its claim on it?
SAJEDA MOMIN reports from London
Quote-Unquote...........................................................6
Ringside......................................................................7
National Briefs.............................................................25
Supreme Court............................................................28
Courts......................................................................... 30
International Briefs.......................................................45
Campus Update..........................................................78
Figure It Out.................................................................80
Wordly Wise.................................................................81
People......................................................................... 82
POLITICS
PROBE
The two-day Constitution Debate in parliament was
marked by acrimony and bitter mudslinging till Prime
Minister Modi calmed ruffled feathers, says AJITH PILLAI
42
INTERVIEW
“Let good sense prevail”
In an interview to MURALI KRISHNAN, Taslima Nasreen
worries about the rapidly shrinking space for freethinkers,
be it in Bangladesh or in India
5
India under attack
Modi’s refusal to take a stand on the repeated instances of hate
crime has fuelled fears that India is fast turning into a bigoted and
narrow-minded country. SMRUTI stresses the need to fight back
SOCIETY
Haunting memories
HERITAGE
54Modi’s calming effect
Was the murder of Sheena Bora
linked to the Rs 900 crore
siphoned off by Indrani Mukerjea
and her husband abroad?
AJITH PILLAI reports
56Follow the
money trail
A new book by top cop
AP DURAI tells the
inside story of how CBI
conspired with his
political opponents to
nail the RJD supremo
in the infamous fodder
scam case. An excerpt
Farmers’ fight in Gujarat
Amravati’s new awakening
Farming out God’s estate
STATES
60
64
68
46
The dazzle of
Koh-i-Noor
74
Ghost town Kuldhara,
near Jaisalmer,
was abandoned
200 years ago. It is
now being restored
and turned into a
tourist hotspot,
reports PRAKASH
BHANDARI from
Jaipur
72
In defense of Lalu
INDIA LEGAL December 15, 2015

QUOTE-UNQUOTE
“They (Indian Muslims) are free to
go anywhere. They can stay here
(in India). If they want to go to
Bangladesh or Pakistan, they are free to
go. Many of them have gone to
Pakistan. But if they are persecuted
there… Taslima Nasreen was persecut-
ed there, she came here. If they come,
we will give them shelter.”
—Assam Governor PB Acharya, on the issue of
Indian Muslims facing persecution, The Indian
Express
“France would
be unforgiving
with the
barbarians
from Daesh.”
—French
President François
Hollande, after the
terror strikes in Paris
“Economic policy has no sense
of direction and this is largely
because Planning Commission,
with all its deficiencies....was a
positive dynamic instrument of
steering the country’s economy.”
—Former PM Manmohan Singh, at a
national convention in New Delhi
6 December 15, 2015
“Almost 95 percent beef traders are
Hindus. Still a man was lynched in
Dadri because he ate beef...Eating
habits have nothing to do with religion.”
—Justice Rajinder Sachar, former chief justice of
Delhi High Court, who headed a panel that
recommended quota for Muslims in 2006, at a
conference on world security and radical Islam
“It’s a new start for India and Nitish should
now start making preparations to come to
Delhi and become the prime minister and
we will extend our full support to him for
that.”
—National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah to
TV channels before attending Nitish’s swearing-in
ceremony in Patna
“There’s a lot more
to be done, before
our people feel
secure enough to
celebrate.”
—Aung San Suu Kyi,
NLD leader, on Myanmar’s
recently concluded
democratic elections,
to BBC
“Of course, it is not joyous to
make blood flow. But, from time
to time, it is pleasant to see the
blood of disbelievers.”
—Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the
suspected mastermind of Paris attacks, to
a French-language recruiting video for
ISIS, released shortly before his
supposed death, The New York Times
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies
pass and the little ones get caught.
Honore de Balzac
VERDICT
Aruna
INDIA LEGAL December 15, 2015 7

blica that government officials have been
pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justifi-
cation for mass surveillance programs. CIA
Director John Brennan accused privacy advo-
cates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our
ability collectively internationally to find these
terrorists much more challenging”. Former
National Security Agency and CIA director
Michael Hayden said: “In the wake of Paris, a
big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the
scariest thing in the room.”
But evidence, according to Kirchner, points
to the startling conclusion that these programs
may indeed have limited value in unearthing
useful information. The word “useful” was
defined by the US’s FBI general counsel as
“those leads that made a substantive contribu-
tion to identifying a terrorist, or identifying a
potential confidential informant”. An internal
review of the Bush administration’s warrant-
less program—called Stellar Wind—reports
Kirchner “found it resulted in few useful leads
from 2001-2004, and none after that. In 2006,
says ProPublica, she conducted a comprehen-
sive study of all the leads generated from the
content basket of Stellar Wind between March
2004 and January 2006 and discovered that
URING this period of unusual
national turbulence over the pri-
macy of the constitution over
partisan politics, we tackle two
separate but related stories,
across two continents and the huge security
tribulations created in our world by mass ter-
rorist attacks like the recent carnage in Paris.
We all know this was not one of a kind. Ever
since 9/11, terrorism has been ubiquitous. It
has become worse and widespread notwith-
standing the use of an ever widening range of
deadly weapons.
One bludgeon in this armamentarium has
been the sharpening of intelligence gathering
through snooping and surveillance and the
preventive arrest and prolonged interrogation
of suspects. But are these methods which,
arguably, impinge on human rights and priva-
cy, effective? The jury is still out on that one,
but there is a raging debate in India and other
democratic countries on how much freedom
can be sacrificed at the altar of building a wall
of impenetrable security.
In fact, there is considerable debate in the
US about the efficacy of mass surveillance.
Lauren Kirchner recently reported in ProPu-
LEAD/ LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
8 December 15, 2015
THE EFFICACY
AND LEGALITY
OF MASS
SNOOPING
INDERJIT BADHWAR
D
in the United States with an act of terrorism
since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional inves-
tigative methods such as the use of informants,
tips from local communities and targeted
intelligence operations provided the initial
impetus for investigations in the majority of
cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk sur-
veillance programs to these cases was minimal.
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the scope of
NSA’s surveillance system in the summer of
2013 put government officials on the defensive.
Many politicians and media outlets echoed the
agency’s claim that it had successfully thwarted
more than 50 terror attacks. ProPublica exam-
ined the claim and found “no evidence that the
oft-cited figure is accurate”.
Like in all functioning democracies, the
debate over privacy versus security is also
robust and a matter to which our justice sys-
tem, particularly the Supreme Court, have paid
much-needed attention. The matters to which
I shall now refer may not be related directly to
terrorism or security, but have often been cited
as tools which will help prevent attacks and
track down culprits. One significant and well-
publicized case that comes to mind is Justice
K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd)…vs Union of India
zero of those had been useful.
Wrote The New York Times reporter
Charlie Savage: “The program was generat-
ing numerous tips to the FBI about suspi-
cious phone numbers and e-mail addresses,
and it was the job of the FBI field offices to
pursue those leads and scrutinize the people
behind them. (The tips were so frequent and
such a waste of time that the field offices
reported back, in frustration, “You’re sending
us garbage.”)
S
everal other intelligence gathering pro-
grams under review by reporters created
no more than garbage. They included
the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk
collection of phone records or were disguised
as intelligence “intercepts” when, in fact, they
were gathered from online databases.
In 2014, New America Foundation echoed
those conclusions, says Kirchner. It described
the government claims about the success of
surveillance programs in the wake of the 9/11
attacks as “overblown and even misleading”.
An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals
recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group
or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged
9INDIA LEGAL December 15, 2015
Are methods
like sharpening
of intelligence
gathering
through
snooping and
surveillance
and the
preventive
arrest and
prolonged
interrogation
of suspects
which,
arguably,
impinge on
human rights
and privacy,
effective?
Amitava Sen

Rohatgi submitted that in view of the judg-
ments of the apex court in M.P. Sharma &
Others v. Satish Chandra & Others—AIR
1954 SC 300 and Kharak Singh v. State of
U.P. & Others, AIR 1963 SC 1295—(decided
by eight and six judges respectively), the legal
position regarding the existence of the funda-
mental right to privacy is doubtful. He also
submitted that in several subsequent deci-
sions, the Supreme Court referred to “right to
privacy”, contrary to the judgments in the
above mentioned cases which resulted in a
jurisprudentially impermissible divergence of
judicial opinions.
T
he state argued: “A power of search and
seizure is in any system of jurispru-
dence an overriding power of the State
for the protection of social security and that
power is necessarily regulated by law. When
the Constitution makers have thought fit not to
subject such regulation to constitutional limi-
tations by recognition of a fundamental right
to privacy, analogous to the American Fourth
Amendment, we have no justification to
import it, into a totally different fundamental
right, by some process of strained construc-
tion. [See: M.P. Singh & Others v. Satish
Like in all
functioning
democracies,
the debate
over privacy
versus security
is also robust
and a matter
to which our
justice system,
particularly
the Supreme
Court, have
paid much
needed
attention.
(August 2015). It was ruled on by Justices
J Chelameswar, SA Bobde and C Nagappan.
I discuss this important issue in this article
because not all readers are familiar with its
implications and concerns for the basic con-
cept of the right of citizens to be protected
against gratuitous intrusions on their rights
and liberties. The initial order in this case,
points to the compassionate involvement of
our judicial system in ensuring that “law and
order” and the exigencies of “data gathering”
cannot be used indiscriminately to curtail the
rights of people living in this land.
The Puttaswamy case relates to the govern-
ment of India collecting and compiling both
the demographic and biometric data of resi-
dents of this country (Aadhaar card) to be used
for various purposes. The petitioners argued
that the very collection of such biometric data
is violative of the “right to privacy”. Some of the
petitioners asserted that the right to privacy is
implied under Article 21 of the constitution of
India while other petitioners assert that such a
right emanates not only from the Article but
also from various other articles embodying the
fundamental rights guaranteed under Part-III
of the constitution of India.
Contrarily, Attorney-General Mukul
POLICY
FAULTLINES
(Right) A series of
attacks by ISIS,
including in Paris,
has raised doubts
about government
surveillance
UNI
10 December 15, 2015
unresolved contradiction in the law declared
by this Court.
“Therefore, in our opinion to give a qui-
etus to the kind of controversy raised in this
batch of cases once for all, it is better that the
ratio decidendi of M.P. Sharma (supra) and
Kharak Singh (supra) is scrutinized and the
jurisprudential correctness of the subsequent
decisions of this Court where the right to pri-
vacy is either asserted or referred be exam-
ined and authoritatively decided by a Bench
of appropriate strength.
“We, therefore, direct the Registry to place
these matters before the Hon’ble the Chief
Justice of India for appropriate orders.”
I
n the interim, the Court instructed the
government to give publicity in the elec-
tronic and print media, including radio
and television networks, that it is not
mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar
card. Additionally, the Court held that the
Unique Identification Number of the
Aadhaar card “will not be used by the
respondents for any purpose other than the
PDS Scheme and in particular for the pur-
pose of distribution of foodgrains, etc. and
cooking fuel, such as kerosene. The
Chandra & Others, AIR 1954 SC 300, page
306 para 18] “… Nor do we consider that Art.
21 has any relevance in the context as was
sought to be suggested by learned counsel for
the petitioner. As already pointed out, the right
of privacy is not a guaranteed right under our
Constitution and therefore the attempt to
ascertain the movement of an individual which
is merely a manner in which privacy is invaded
is not an infringement of a fundamental right
guaranteed by Part III.”
The contrarians submitted that world over
where Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is followed,
“privacy” is recognized as an important aspect
of the liberty of human beings. Additionally,
they said, it was too late in the day for the
Union of India to argue that the constitution of
India does not recognize privacy as an aspect of
the liberty under Article 21. At least to the
extent that the right of a person to be secure in
his house and not to be disturbed unreason-
ably by the State or its officers is expressly rec-
ognized and protected in Kharak Singh (supra)
though the majority did not describe that
aspect of the liberty as a right of privacy, “it is
nothing but the right of privacy”.
The judges opined: “We are of the opinion
that the cases on hand raise far reaching ques-
tions of importance involving interpretation of
the Constitution. What is at stake is the ampli-
tude of the fundamental rights including that
precious and inalienable right under Article 21.
If the observations made in M.P. Sharma
(supra) and Kharak Singh (supra) are to be
read literally and accepted as the law of this
country, the fundamental rights guaranteed
under the Constitution of India and more par-
ticularly right to liberty under Article 21 would
be denuded of vigor and vitality. At the same
time, we are also of the opinion that the insti-
tutional integrity and judicial discipline
require that pronouncement made by larger
Benches of this Court cannot be ignored by the
smaller Benches without appropriately explai-
ning the reasons for not following the pro-
nouncements made by such larger Benches.
With due respect to all the learned Judges who
rendered the subsequent judgments – where
right to privacy is asserted or referred to their
Lordships concern for the liberty of human
beings, we are of the humble opinion that there
appears to be certain amount of apparent
The judges opined: “We are of the opinion that
the cases on hand raise far reaching questions
of importance involving interpretation of the
Constitution. What is at stake is the amplitude of
the fundamental rights including that precious
and inalienable right under Article 21...”
LANDMARK
VERDICT
(Above L-R) Justices
J Chelameswar,
SA Bobde and
C Nagappan of the
Supreme Court

Aadhaar card may also be used for the pur-
pose of the LPG Distribution Scheme…The
information about an individual obtained by
the Unique Identification Authority of India
while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be
used for any other purpose, save as above,
except as may be directed by a Court for the
purpose of criminal investigation.”
H
ow seriously the Court takes matters
of personal liberty and privacy is evi-
dent in some of the footnotes and
citations in the judgment. One reads: “The
right to privacy is not enumerated as a funda-
mental right in our Constitution but has been
inferred from Article 21…The right to privacy
— by itself — has not been identified under the
Constitution. As a concept it may be too broad
and moralistic to define it judicially. Whether
right to privacy can be claimed or has been
infringed in a given case would depend on the
facts of the said case. But the right to hold a
telephone conversation in the privacy of one’s
home or office without interference can cer-
tainly be claimed as ‘right to privacy’.
Conversations on the telephone are often of an
intimate and confidential character. Telephone
conversation is a part of modern man’s life. It is
considered so important that more and more
people are carrying mobile telephones in their
pockets. Telephone conversation is an impor-
tant facet of a man’s private life. Right to priva-
cy would certainly include telephone conversa-
tion in the privacy of one’s home or office.
Telephone-tapping would, thus, infract Article
21 of the Constitution of India unless it is per-
mitted under the procedure established by law.
“Right to freedom of speech and expression
is guaranteed under Article 19 (1)(a) of the
Constitution. This freedom means the right to
express one’s convictions and opinions freely
by word of mouth, writing, printing, picture, or
in any other manner. When a person is talking
on telephone, he is exercising his right to free-
dom of speech and expression. Telephone-tap-
ping unless it comes within the grounds of
restrictions under Article 19(2) would infract
Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.”
To come back to the American experience
of mass surveillance, ProPublica reports that
local police departments have also acknowl-
edged the limitations of this technique. Boston
Police Commissioner Ed Davis admitted that
federal authorities had received Russian intel-
ligence reports about bomber Tamerlan Tsar-
naev before the Boston Marathon bombings,
but had not shared this information with local
law agencies. Davis observed: “There’s no com-
puter that’s going to spit out a terrorist’s name.
It’s the community being involved in the con-
versation and being appropriately open to
communicating with law enforcement when
something awry is identified. That really needs
to happen and should be our first step.”
HUMANE
APPROACH
The Supreme
Court gave
precedence
to personal
liberty and
privacy while
giving its
ruling on
Aadhaar
cards
editor@indialegalonline.com
“Right to freedom
of speech and
expression is
guaranteed
under Article 19
(1)(a) of the
Constitution. This
freedom means
the right to
express one’s
convictions and
opinions freely by
word of mouth,
writing, printing,
picture, or in any
other manner.
When a person is
talking on
telephone, he is
exercising his
right to freedom
of speech and
expression...”
—Supreme Court

ANALYSIS
French President Francois Hollande publicly
placed responsibility for the November 13
attack on the Islamic State, declaring it an act
of war. This French response to the Paris
attacks is markedly different from that of the
Spanish Government following the March
2004 Madrid train bombings. Instead of
pulling back from the global coalition working
against jihadism, it appears that the French
will renew and perhaps expand their efforts to
pursue revenge for the most recent assault.
The precise nature of this response will be
determined by who is ultimately found to be
the author of the November 13 attack.
To date, there has been something akin to a
division of labor in the anti-jihadist effort, with
the French heavily focused on the Sahel region
of Africa. The French have also supported coali-
tion efforts in Iraq and Syria, stationing six
Dassault Rafale jets in the United Arab
Emirates and six Mirage jets in Jordan. On
November 4, Paris announced it was sending
the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de
Gaulle to enhance ongoing airstrikes against
Details are still emerging
as to precisely who was
responsible for the
Nov. 13 Paris attacks.
Sorting through
the jumble of
misinformation and
disinformation will be
challenging for French
authorities, and for
outside observers such as
Stratfor. While the
Islamic State has
claimed credit for
the attack, it is still
uncertain to what degree
the Islamic State core
organization was
responsible for
planning, funding or
directing it. It’s not clear
whether the attackers
were grassroots
operatives encouraged
by the organization like
Paris Kosher Deli
gunman Ahmed
Coulibaly, if the
operatives were
professional terrorist
cadres dispatched by
the core group or if the
attack was some
combination of the two
LEAD/Terrorism/Paris Horror/Aftermath
the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. To date,
French aircraft have flown more than 1,285
missions against Islamic State targets in Iraq,
and only two sorties in Syria.
France has numerous options for retalia-
tion at its disposal, but its response will be
conditioned by who was ultimately responsi-
ble. If it is found that the Islamic State core
group was indeed behind the November 13
attack, France will likely ramp up its Syrian air
operations. The skies over Syria, however, are
already congested with coalition and Russian
aircraft. With this in mind, the French may
choose to retaliate by focusing instead on the
Islamic State in Iraq, or perhaps even other
Islamic State provinces in places such as
Libya. Another option would be to increase
French programs to train and support anti-
Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, or even
to conduct commando strikes against key
leadership nodes. France also has the option of
deploying an expeditionary force like it did in
the Sahel, although that would probably
require outside airlift capacity from NATO
allies, especially the United States.
After Paris, France Con
A GRIEVING COUNTRY
Parisians pay
tribute to 13/11
victims at one of
the attack sites
EUROPEAN RAMIFICATIONS
The Paris attacks occurred during a Europe-
wide political crisis over migrant flows from
the Middle East, Asia and Africa. A Syrian
passport was found near the body of one of the
Paris attackers, prompting a Greek official to
say November 14 that the name on the docu-
ment belonged to a person who passed though
Greece in October. This news means that a
number of politicians critical of the European
Union's response to the immigrant crisis will
amplify their disapproval. In particular, advo-
cates who want to end the Schengen agree-
ment, which eliminated border controls in
Europe, will use Paris to support their cause.
This has already begun. Poland became
the first country to link the Paris attacks to
the uptick in immigration. On November
14, Polish Minister for European Affairs-
designate Konrad Szymanski said the Paris
attacks make impossible the implementa-
tion of an EU plan to distribute asylum
seekers across the Continental bloc. As
expected, France's National Front party also
demanded the end of the Schengen agree-
ment. In a televised speech, party leader
Marine Le Pen said France has to “recapture
control of its borders.”
In Germany, Bavarian Prime Minister
Horst Seehofer said the Paris attack demon-
strates that border controls are more neces-
sary than ever. Seehofer has been very critical
of the German government's handling of the
refugee crisis, demanding permanent border
controls as well as faster repatriation of asy-
lum seekers. The Paris attack will likely
strengthen his position and further weaken
the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel,
which was already facing internal dissent
because of the migration crisis. In recent
weeks Germany has seen an increase in anti-
immigrant violence, including arson attacks
against refugee shelters. The November 13
attacks may encourage more extremist groups
across Europe to attack asylum seekers.
The anti-Schengen camp will feel vindicat-
ed by a parallel event that took place in south-
ern Germany last week, when a Montenegrin
citizen was arrested while allegedly driving to
Paris with several weapons. While German
police have not established a direct connection
between this incident and the November 13
attacks, they have said that a link cannot be
ruled out. The fact that this man was from
Montenegro—a country in the Western
Balkans—and made it to Germany in his car
will strengthen the demands for stricter bor-
der controls along the so-called Balkan route
of migration, which connects Greece to
Northern Europe.
The Paris attacks will therefore improve
the popularity of anti-immigration parties in
many European countries, and continue to
weaken popular support for the Schengen
agreement. Several countries, including
Germany, Sweden, Slovenia and Hungary had
already re-established border controls because
of the immigration crisis. Hungary and
Slovenia have gone as far as building fences
along their borders. After the November 13
attacks, most EU governments will find it hard
to justify a policy of open borders.
Courtesy Stratfor
THE CRACKDOWN
Police patrol a spot
near Eiffel Tower the
morning after the
November 13 attacks
templates a Reckoning
The Paris
attacks will
improve the
popularity of
anti-immigration
parties in many
European
countries, and
continue to
weaken popular
support for the
Schengen
agreement.
IL
Photos: UNI

P
ARIS — Before a SWAT team
stormed a tenement in the
Belgian city of Verviers in
January, police used listening
devices to monitor their tar-
gets inside: Belgian jihadis
who had returned from Syria
to attack a local police station in the name of
the Islamic State.
Police gunned down two suspects during
the pre-dawn firefight, foiling the plot. But a
chilling detail stuck with the Belgian count-
er-terror investigators who tracked down the
plotters with help from French and U.S.
As a pre-dawn
raid on November
18 outside Paris
targets suspected
mastermind of
November 13
attack, his roots
point to the
shadow Belgium
casts over the
terror threat
in Europe
by Sebastian
Rotella
LEAD/ Terrorism/Paris Horror/The Clues
intelligence. As investigators listened, the
militants responded to the police assault
with a ferocity forged in the battlegrounds of
the Middle East.
“They were talking about their plans to
commit violence here,” a senior Belgian
counterterror official recalled in a recent
interview. “The police flashbang grenade
goes off. And immediately these two start fir-
ing their AK-47s. No hesitation, no panic.
These are guys with combat experience. They
were ready to fight and die.”
As the fast-paced investigation of the
rampage in Paris that left at least 129 people
Trail of Paris Atta
Terrorism’s Long
Update, Nov. 19, 2015: Paris prosecu-
tors confirmed today that Abaaoud had
been "formally identified" as one of the
dead at the scene of the police raid and
gun battle Wednesday in the suburb of
St. Denis. His corpse had been disfig-
ured by bullets and shrapnel from a
bomb explosion, prosecutors said.
Police were still hunting for fugitive
Salah Abdeslam, who allegedly took
part in the attacks and oversaw the
rental of cars, safe houses and other
logistics. Belgian police conducted new
searches in the Brussels area today as
part of a massive investigation.
Abdeslam fled to Belgium after last
Friday's attacks with the help of two
accomplices who are under arrest. "We
believe Salah is here," a senior Belgian
counterterror official said today. "He is
our top concern."
Masterminddead
dead unfolded, elite tactical teams carried
out another pre-dawn raid Wednesday on
suspected terrorists holed up in an apart-
ment outside the French capital. The target
was the accused Belgian mastermind of the
thwarted effort to attack the police station in
Belgium in January who is also believed to
have played a central role in directing the
Paris attacks last week: Abdelhamid
Abaaoud.
Two suspects died in the gunfight this
morning, one of them a woman who detonat-
ed a bomb vest, authorities said. Five SWAT
officers were wounded. Police arrested five
suspects. The target of the raid was Abaaoud,
who investigators now believe may have
made a daring return from the Islamic State’s
stronghold in Syria to lead the Paris attacks
in person. Authorities had not yet announced
Wednesday morning whether he was among
those killed or captured, or if he remained at
large. (Update: Police later confirmed that
Abaaoud died in the raid.)
Abaaoud, 27, was a stick-up man-turned-
terror kingpin from the tough Brussels sub-
urb of Molenbeek, which has been raided
repeatedly by Belgian counterterrorism
investigators in the days since the attack.
NO ROOM FOR TERROR
Policewomen search
residents of Molenbeek,
a Brussels suburb, on
way to a memorial
gathering for the Paris
attack victims
ckers Winds to
time Outpost The leading
role of
Belgians in
the Paris
massacre
highlights the
large shadow
cast by
Belgium on
the map of
terror in
Europe during
the past two
decades.
Photos: UNI

ON THEIR TOES NOW
Cops track movement
of vehicles near Paris's
Le Carillon restaurant
Belgium featured in a wave of bombings in
France by Algerian-dominated groups in the
1990s. Belgium-based terrorists have been
active in al Qaida: killing an anti-Taliban
warlord in Afghanistan two days before the
September 11 attacks, plotting to bomb the
U.S. embassy in Paris, and sending jihadis to
Pakistan, Africa and U.S.-occupied Iraq in
the 2000s.
In a practice seen again in the Paris plot,
operatives in the Franco-Belgian networks
move back and forth across the border with
speed and agility, outpacing law
enforcement.
“Things are easier for terrorists in
Belgium than they are in France,” said
Commandant Mohamed Douhane of the
French national police. “They use Belgium as
an outpost.”
MOUNTING THREATS
November 13’s tragedy in Paris was an attack
foretold. During interviews earlier this year,
The extent of his role in the Paris massacre is
not yet clear, but he had longtime links to at
least two of the suspected attackers, accord-
ing to European counter-terror officials.
Abaaoud’s name had already surfaced in
connection with previous plots targeting
France and Belgium. In one instance that
directly foreshadows Friday’s attack in Paris,
French police in August arrested a militant
who had trained in Syria. He told authorities
that Abaaoud had directed him to attack live
music venues in France, officials say.
There are also suspicions that the Belgian
was involved in a deadly shooting at the
Jewish museum in Brussels last year, as well
as the foiled attack on a Paris-bound train
from Belgium by a Moroccan gunman who
was subdued by a trio of vacationing
Americans this summer.
The leading role of Belgians in the Paris
massacre highlights the disproportionately
large shadow cast by Belgium on the map of
terror in Europe during the past two decades.
UNI
assassinating two political leaders in Tunisia
in 2013. Both jihadis have ties to the Charlie
Hebdo attackers.
About 2,000 French militants have gone
to Syria, the single largest contingent of
fighters from Europe. French-speaking
Tunisians and Moroccan militants in Syria
are thought to number close to 10,000. But
the more than 500 Belgians are the largest
proportionate group of Europeans. Most
Francophone jihadis join the ranks of the
Islamic State in Syria, where they live and
fight together. They see France as their
top target.
FOR ISIS, SHIFTING STRATEGIES
The Islamic State’s war on the West differs
from the hands-on plotters of al Qaida,
whose foreign operations unit has tradition-
ally hatched plots in Pakistani and Yemeni
hideouts and directed attackers to their tar-
gets. Those plots often involved bombs and
specific, highly symbolic targets. Instead, the
primary focus of the Islamic State, whose
leaders are mostly Iraqi and Syrian, has been
conquest of turf and
the consolidation of
their self-declared
caliphate.
The Islamic State
has used a social
media barrage to
inspire jihadis
abroad to carry out
strikes without train-
ing or direct contact.
The group has also
given its trusted for-
eign fighters consid-
erable autonomy to develop attacks in the
West, delegating details such as target selec-
tion to militants who best know their home-
lands, according to European and U.S. intel-
ligence officials.
“The Islamic State’s general directive has
been to do attacks,” the French counterterror
chief said, “and the Europeans propose
projects.”
This year, however, that dynamic seems to
have evolved in response to an offensive by
the coalition fighting against the Islamic
State, according to U.S. and European
French and Belgian terror chiefs warned that
a swarm of threats had reached overwhelm-
ing levels. They identified Abaaoud as one of
several senior Francophone militants relent-
lessly plotting attacks on Europe from Syria.
“The threat is so high,” a French countert-
error chief said during an interview in the
spring. “There will be new attacks. There is a
permanent fatwa from the Islamic State:
Attack the West.”
As disturbing intelligence reports piled
up in recent months, French and U.S. coun-
terterror agencies teamed up to target sus-
pected European plotters. Complicating mat-
ters, the threat had multiple faces. Al Qaida
in Yemen had overseen the attack on the
offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in
January. Although the Islamic State has
many more recruits than al Qaida’s affiliate
in Syria, the latter group includes veterans
who have been hatching plots against
Western targets since the early 2000s, when
they operated from refuges in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
“They are a direct threat and, while small-
er than the Islamic State, have bigger plans,”
the French counterterror chief said. “They
want to do more spectacular attacks, [a]
more choreographed style of attacks as
opposed to shootings.”
U.S. drone strikes this summer killed two
top names on the al Qaida list who kept
French spymasters awake at night: convert
David Drugeon, an expert bomb-maker, and
Said Arif, who had been linked to plots
against France dating to 2000.
“There has been some progress made in
getting guys with strong connections and
who were among the most operationally
capable,” a U.S. counterterror official said.
“But clearly the bench is pretty deep.”
Air strikes also targeted Abaaoud and two
Frenchmen thought to be actively involved in
Islamic State plotting against France, accord-
ing to U.S. and European counterterror offi-
cials. In October, a French bombing raid on
the Syrian city of Raqqah missed Salim
Benghalem, a 31-year-old Parisian ex-convict
known for beheadings and sadistic treatment
of hostages. Another Islamic State
Frenchman who dodged an air strike was
Boubaker el-Hakim, who is suspected of
The IS war on the West differs
from the hands-on plotters of al
Qaida, whose foreign operations
unit has traditionally hatched
plots in Pakistani and Yemeni
hideouts and directed attackers
to their targets.

counterterror officials. They said the Islamic
State has developed a kind of external opera-
tions unit that may be behind a flurry of
large-scale attacks in Paris, Egypt and
Turkey, officials said.
“Months ago they created a department to
coordinate the jihad overseas based on the
foreign fighter elements,” a senior Spanish
intelligence official said. “They weren’t as
interested in that before. They were interest-
ed in the territory.’’
‘THEY ARE RUINED PEOPLE’
Belgium — small, prosperous, tolerant — has
historically been a hub for espionage, arms
trafficking, organized crime and extremist
activity. The country has a generous welfare
state and lacks the huge public housing proj-
ects that breed crime, alienation and extrem-
ism in France. Nonetheless, the integration
of Muslims in Belgium remains problematic.
Successive jihads in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Syria have radicalized scores of young, disaf-
fected, working-class Muslims. Most are of
North African descent and have criminal
pasts; the groups they join grew out of long-
time networks active in Europe and the
Muslim world.
Belgium has skilled counterterror officers
who know the extremist underworld, includ-
ing a number of investigators of Muslim
descent. Despite the intensity of the terror
threat, the bureaucracy puts constraints on
them. The government has scrambled to beef
up counterterror forces in recent years, with
one unit tripling in size. It is hard to keep
suspects in jail without overwhelming evi-
dence, and sentences for terrorism are short
—as in the rest of Europe.
In an interview, a senior Belgian law
enforcement official said the swagger and sav-
agery of the Islamic State has a disturbing
appeal among aimless young criminals in
Molenbeek and other neighborhoods.
“They go to Iraq and Syria because there
they will be somebody,” he said. “Here they are
nobody. They are told that if they join the
Islamic State they will get to drive a nice car,
get women, they won’t have to pay in the shops
down there. They will be badass warriors.”
The Belgian official described a police
search of the home of three brothers who all
joined the Islamic State and have been impli-
cated in decapitations and other violence in
Syria. Their father had a well-paid job with a
U.S. automotive company. Each brother had
his own room stocked with computers, video
games, clothes and other consumer goods, the
law enforcement official said.
“They don’t work; they live with their
family into their 20s,” he said. “They manip-
ulate the welfare system for money; they
don’t study. They go to Syria, and they come
back with PTSD. They come back after they
saw killing and raping. What are you sup-
posed to do to cure them? They are ruined
people. Game over.”
RISE OF A PARIS PLOTTER
Abaaoud’s trajectory is emblematic. He is of
Moroccan descent, a wiry man with an
engaging grin. Like many youths in
Molenbeek, he got involved in low-level
gangsterism and was arrested for a hold-up
along with Salah Abdeslam of Molenbeek,
who is now a fugitive suspected of renting
cars and safe houses for the three Paris attack
teams. Abaaoud also had ties to Abdeslam’s
brother, who would die in one of the Paris
suicide bombings.
Abaaoud joined the Islamic State and
went to Syria, where he became notorious for
a video in which he hauled a pile of corpses
In an interview, a
senior Belgian law
enforcement
official said
the swagger
and savagery of
the Islamic
State has a
disturbing appeal
among aimless
young criminals
in Molenbeek
and other
neighborhoods.
THE MAN ON THE WALL
A Belgian special forces
policeman on an apartment
block during a raid in
search of terrorists
Photos: UNI
IL
forms to storm a police station in the Brussels
area. Three plotters stockpiled weapons in the
safe house, monitored by police. The SWAT
team went into action because an attack
seemed imminent, officials said. “We heard
them speaking about projects and manipulat-
ing weapons, it was obvious they were about to
do something,” a Belgian law enforcement offi-
cial said. “One of them always stayed awake,
standing guard. The stun grenades went off at
the front room window, but they were lucky
because they were in back and weren’t stunned.
The firefight lasted 10 minutes.”
Abaaoud, however, had been directing his
fighters by phone from Greece. He melted
away. And if the allegations are true, he kept
launching human missiles at France until his
dreams of devastation came true on a Friday
night in Paris.
Courtesy ProPublica
with a tractor and joked about it. In late
2014, intelligence agencies picked up com-
munications indicating he wanted to carry
out an attack back in Belgium. U.S., Belgian,
French and German intelligence tracked the
plotters for three or four months, officials say.
“The Belgians proposed an action to
Daesh [IS], and they said yes,” the senior
French counterterror official said. Islamic
State bosses provided $5,000 to help finance
the operation, Belgian investigators said.
Abaaoud dispatched Sofiane Amghar, 26,
and Khalid Ben Larbi, 23, who had fought in
a special squad of fighters in Syria, according
to Belgian investigators. Amghar, a
Molenbeek recruit, posted a fake obituary
about himself online to cover his tracks as he
made his way back. Ben Larbi returned via
the United Kingdom. They set themselves up
in a safe house in Verviers.
Their plot involved using stolen police uni-
KEEPING THE CITY SAFE
Belgian soldiers walk past
a Christmas tree at
Brussels’ Grand Place in
the wake of the deadly
Paris attacks

C
URRENT and former govern-
ment officials have been
pointing to the terror attacks
in Paris as justification for
mass surveillance programs.
CIA Director John Brennan
accused privacy advocates of
“hand-wringing” that has made “our ability
collectively internationally to find these ter-
rorists much more challenging”. Former
National Security Agency and CIA director
Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a
big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the
scariest thing in the room.”
Ultimately, it’s impossible to know just
how successful sweeping surveillance has
been, since much of the work is secret. But
what has been disclosed so far suggests the
Officials are again
pointing to the
need for mass
surveillance to take
down terrorists.
Here’s what we
know about how
well it works
by Lauren
Kirchner
LEAD/ Terrorism/Paris Horror/Intelligence Snooping
programs have been of limited value. Here’s a
roundup of what we know.
An internal review of the Bush adminis-
tration’s warrantless program – called
Stellarwind – found it resulted in few useful
leads from 2001–2004, and none after that.
New York Times reporter Charlie Savage
obtained the findings through a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit and published them
in his new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s
Post–9/11 Presidency: [The FBI general
counsel] defined as useful those [leads] that
made a substantive contribution to identify-
ing a terrorist, or identifying a potential con-
fidential informant. Just 1.2 percent of them
fit that category. In 2006, she conducted a
comprehensive study of all the leads generat-
ed from the content basket of Stellarwind
NEED OF THE HOUR
CIA director John Brennan is
all for implementation of this
security methodology
What’s the
Mass Surveillance
between March 2004 and January 2006 and
discovered that zero of those had been useful.
In an endnote, Savage then added: The
program was generating numerous tips to
the FBI about suspicious phone numbers
and e-mail addresses, and it was the job of
the FBI field offices to pursue those leads and
scrutinize the people behind them. (The tips
were so frequent and such a waste of time
that the field offices reported back, in frustra-
tion, “You’re sending us garbage.”)
In 2013, the President’s Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications
Technologies analyzed terrorism cases from
2001 on, and determined that the NSA’s bulk
collection of phone records “was not essential
to preventing attacks”. According to the
group’s report: In at least 48 instances, tradi-
tional surveillance warrants obtained from
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
were used to obtain evidence through inter-
cepts of phone calls and e-mails, said
the researchers, whose results are in an
online database.
More than half of the cases were initiated
as a result of traditional investigative tools.
The most common was a community or fam-
ily tip to the authorities. Other methods
included the use of informants, a suspicious-
activity report filed by a business or
community member to the FBI, or informa-
tion turned up in investigations of non-ter-
rorism cases.
Another 2014 report by the nonprofit
New America Foundation echoed those con-
clusions. It described the government
FEAR RULES
French police
engaged in rescue
operations at one of
the sites of the
Paris terror attacks
The program
was generating
numerous tips
to the FBI. The
tips were so
frequent and
such a waste of
time that the
field offices
reported back,
in frustration,
“You’re sending
us garbage.”
Evidence
Works? Not Much
Photos: UNI

UNDER TERROR’S SHADOW
A Paris attack victim near
Bataclan concert hall
made a significant difference. That case
involved a San Diego taxi driver named
Basaaly Moalin, who sent $8,500 to the
Somali terrorist group al-Shabab. But even
the details of that case are murky. From the
Washington Post: In 2009, an FBI field intel-
ligence group assessed that Moalin’s support
for al-Shabab was not ideological. Rather,
according to an FBI document provided to
his defense team, Moalin probably sent
money to an al-Shabab leader out of “tribal
affiliation” and to “promote his own status”
with tribal elders.
Also in the months after the Snowden
revelations, the Justice Department said
publicly that it had used warrantless wiretap-
ping to gather evidence in a criminal case
against another terrorist sympathizer, which
fueled ongoing debates over the constitution-
ality of those methods. From The New
York Times: Prosecutors filed such a notice
late Friday (November 13) in the case of
Jamshid Muhtorov, who was charged in
Colorado in January 2012 with providing
material support to the Islamic Jihad Union,
a designated terrorist organization based
in Uzbekistan.
Mr. Muhtorov is accused of planning to
travel abroad to join the militants and has
pleaded not guilty. A criminal complaint
against him showed that much of the govern-
ment’s case was based on intercepted e-mails
and phone calls.
Local police departments have also
acknowledged the limitations of mass sur-
veillance, as Boston Police Commissioner Ed
Davis did after the Boston Marathon bomb-
ings in 2013. Federal authorities had received
Russian intelligence reports about bomber
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but had not shared this
information with authorities in
Massachusetts or Boston. During a House
Homeland Security Committee hearing,
Davis said: “There’s no computer that’s going
to spit out a terrorist’s name. It’s the commu-
nity being involved in the conversation and
being appropriately open to communicating
with law enforcement when something awry
is identified. That really needs to happen and
should be our first step.”
Courtesy ProPublica
claims about the success of surveillance pro-
grams in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as
“overblown and even misleading”.
An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals
recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group
or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and
charged in the United States with an act of
terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that tra-
ditional investigative methods, such as the
use of informants, tips from local communi-
ties, and targeted intelligence operations,
provided the initial impetus for investiga-
tions in the majority of cases, while the con-
tribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance pro-
grams to these cases was minimal.
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the scope
of the NSA’s surveillance system in the sum-
mer of 2013 put government officials on the
defensive. Many politicians and media out-
lets echoed the agency’s claim that it had suc-
cessfully thwarted more than 50 terror
attacks. ProPublica examined the claim and
found “no evidence that the oft-cited figure
is accurate”.
It’s impossible to assess the role NSA sur-
veillance played in the 54 cases because,
while the agency has provided a full list to
Congress, it remains classified.
The NSA has publicly discussed four
cases, and just one in which surveillance
An analysis of
225 individuals
recruited by
al-Qaeda or a
like-minded
group, and
charged in the
US since 9/11,
demonstrates
that traditional
methods
provided the
initial impetus
for investigations
in the majority
of cases. IL
LEAD/ Terrorism/Paris Horror/Intelligence Snooping
NATIONAL BRIEFS
More courts than judges
Due to the logjam caused by the
adoption and subsequent repeal
of the National Judicial
Appointments Commission (NJAC)
Act, India may find itself in a situa-
tion where it has more courtrooms
than judges, reports The Times of
India. No judicial appointments
were made in any of the 24 high
courts for nearly a year following
the passage of the NJAC Act in
December, 2014. After the repeal of
the NJAC Act and the restoration of
the collegium system, no new
appointments have been made so
far, even as 2,000 new courtrooms
are expected to be completed by the
end of the year.
Currently, there are 16,400 court
halls, including rented premises in
the country, and around 15,600
judges. Out of the high courts’ sanc-
tioned strength of 1,017 posts for
judges, 371 are vacant. In the sub-
ordinate and district judiciary,
4,580 posts of judges are vacant.
Maharashtra’s legal metrology
department has threatened
criminal action against state-owned
oil companies—Hindustan Petroleum
Corporation Ltd, Bharat Petroleum
Corporation Ltd and Indian Oil
Corporation Ltd—for using “outdated
technology” for measuring and dis-
pensing fuel, as a result of which
retail outlets receive less fuel while
being forced to pay for the full quan-
tity, reports The Indian Express. To
curb this problem, the state govern-
ment is planning an advertisement
campaign to warn customers of the
malpractices by companies and
petrol dealers.
Center
backpedals
on Swamy
prosecution
Maharashtra’s
petrol woes
Nearly a month after saying it support-
ed the prosecution of BJP leader
Subramanian Swamy for alleged
“hate remarks” in his book Terrorism in
India, the central government
backpedaled from its stance in the
Supreme Court. The ministry said it not
feel that Swamy’s book constitutes hate
speech, and that the book is the subject
matter of legal challenge before
trial courts.
The Indian Express reported that on
October 28, the home ministry
(MHA) had told the apex court that
Swamy violated IPC provisions with
his writing.
The MHA had filed its response to defend
the validity of Section 153A of the IPC,
which makes promoting enmity between
different groups on the basis of religion or
race an offense.
Following the registration of various
cases against him under Section 153A and
similar IPC provisions relating to hate
speech, Swamy challenged the validity of
Section 153A and similar provisions in the
apex court, on grounds that they violated
the fundamental right to freedom
of speech.
The National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) received
a petition from the parents of the
victim of the December 2012
Delhi gang rape, saying that the
juvenile offender in the rape and
murder of their daughter, who will
be released on December 15, con-
tinues to be a threat to society.
The NHRC has issued notices to
the center and the Delhi govern-
ment on the complaint.
The Times of India reported
that the parents asked the NHRC
to recommend that the govern-
ment prepare a plan to protect cit-
izens from such delinquent juve-
niles upon their release. They
urged that laws requiring states to
monitor and track convicted sex
offenders following their release,
like those in countries like the
US and Canada should be
implemented in India.
Concluding that the parents’
fears were well-founded and need-
ed to be looked into, NHRC asked
the Delhi government to inform it
whether any post-release plan had
been prepared in the case and
whether the juvenile was
recently subjected to
psychiatric assessment.
Nirbhaya’s parents
move NHRC

SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court recently came
up with some significant judg-
ments in favor of women. In one of
the verdicts, the apex court made it
clear that women, including widows,
have an absolute right over assets
given to them under “maintenance”.
After a woman’s death, her hus-
band’s family can’t claim it back. The
Court further held that she is also
well within her rights to leave it in
anybody’s name after her death.
In another significant judgment,
the Court ruled that women have total
rights over “streedhan” or all things
they got before and after marriage,
even after being legally separated
from their husbands. In case, they
are deprived of valuables by their
husbands or in-laws, they will be
liable for criminal prosecution under
the Domestic Violence Act, the
Court said.
Focusing on the concept of “judi-
cial separation”, the Court clarified
that under that arrangement, the con-
cerned man and the woman are still
husband and wife, and the woman
could take the help of the Act to
assert her rights over “streedhan”.
Navy gets relief
Considering that there was no
avenue under which women short
service commission officers could be
awarded permanent commission in
the Navy, the apex court struck down
a Delhi High Court order. The High
Court, while accusing the Navy of
“sexist bias” and “gender discrimina-
tion”, had asked it to award perma-
nent commission to such officers.
The center knocked the doors of
the Supreme Court, objecting to the
High Court order. It held that the High
Court had made a mistake in conclu-
ding that the Navy was against
women’s progress.
The apex court also issued
notices to those officers, both retired
and serving, who had approached
the High Court seeking an order to
the Navy to give them permanent
commission.
UP to pay compensation
The Supreme Court slammed the UP
government for procedural lapses
that led to the sacking and eventual
arrest of a forest officer in UP on false
charges. The Court asked the state
government to pay him `10 lakh as
compensation for mental agony, loss
of reputation and financial loss.
It was during Mulayam Singh
Yadav’s regime in 2003 that Dr Ram
Lakhan Singh, an Indian Forest Service
officer, had to suffer such ignominy.
His fault was that he had refused to
comply with the CM’s “diktat” that he
take steps for the “denotification” of
Benti sanctuary in Kunda, Pratapgarh
district. That is what the officer alle-
ged. Singh was then a member of the
National Board of Wildlife. The Benti
sanctuary was earlier “notified” by the
previous Mayawati dispensation.
According to Lakhan Singh, he had
to face an inquiry under a “false” case
slapped by a Samajwadi Party MLA.
Women’s rights sacrosanct
— Compiled by Prabir Biswas; Illustrations: UdayShankar
Acting on petitions by a group
of lawyers from Madhya
Pradesh, the Supreme Court
asked the state governor Ram
Naresh Yadav as well as the
center as to why Yadav
should not be sacked from his
post. The court sought the
response in connection with the
Vyapam scam in the state.
Allegations have been flying thick
and fast that Yadav was a party
to the scam.
The court also asked the
Madhya Pradesh government
and the governor to respond to a
petition that questioned the
Madhya Pradesh High Court’s
order quashing FIR against the
governor.
The lawyers had raised
objections to Yadav occu-
pying the august position
despite his name crop-
ping up in the scam.
Considering the
gravity of the issue, the
apex court will also
take up the issue of
the need to frame
fresh rules for a
governor’s removal, in
case he or she faces
grave allegations.
MP governor
under
scanner
While hearing pleas
objecting to the
decision of mass killing
of stray dogs by the
Thiruvananthapuram
Municipal Corporation,
the apex court held that a
balance had to be arrived
at between protecting ani-
mal rights and saving
human lives.
Taking a grim view of
the senseless way in
which stray dogs were
being culled, the Court,
however, in its interim
order allowed civic
authorities to cull only
dogs which were irretriev-
ably ill, wounded or
suffering from rabies
and could pose a danger
to humans.
The Court further
added that the ruling will
hold true for any contrary
order by high courts on
the matter. It alluded to
the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals Act 1960, as
well as Animal Birth
Control (Dog) Rules
2001. The Court
observed that it was the
solemn duty of all local
bodies to strictly abide by
laws on stray dogs and
provide them proper infra-
structure. It also wanted a
comprehensive informa-
tion from states on
what was being done for
their welfare.
The apex court directed Vodafone India, India’s num-
ber two telecommunications company, to pay
`2,000 crore to the Department of Telecommunications
(DoT). If the UK-based company does that, it will be
able to re-start a three-year-old process of merger of its
six group units in India for operational efficiency.
The merger process had come to a grinding halt
due to a payment dispute with DoT as Vodafone needed
a license from it to proceed with the merger. The apex
court asked Vodafone to cough up the amount before
the merger takes place.
Whether Vodafone needs to pay more to settle the
payment dispute once and for all will depend upon the
result of litigation on the matter in lower courts. The
company had already received a favorable order from
the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal
(TDSAT) over `6,930 crore demanded by DoT for the
merger. TDSAT had rejected the amount but said that
Vodafone must abide by the amount decided by the
lower courts.
TDSAT’s decision was challenged by DoT in the
apex court. The court finally arrived at a overall figure
of `2,000 crore.
Vodafone to
proceed with merger
Culling
straydogs

COURTS
ADelhi trial court permitted TERI
director-general RK Pachauri,
accused of sexually harassing a
woman colleague, to enter the
think-tank’s headquarters at Lodhi
Road, New Delhi, as well as the
Gurgaon office. This is in light of
the fact that the colleague has left
the organization. The order came
after Pachauri pleaded for the relief.
The court thus changed its ear-
lier verdict that had debarred
Pachauri from entering both the
offices while allowing him to walk
into offices in other locations. This
was in addition to the anticipatory
bail granted to him.
The observation by the ses-
sions court that Pachauri did not
take undue advantage of the liberty
granted to him earlier also worked
in his favor. The court felt that there
was no reason to believe that the
former D-G would impair the probe.
The alleged victim of sexual
harassment left TERI in November.
All TERI offices open for Pachauri
HC clears test match
In a huge face-saving relief for the Delhi & District
Cricket Association (DDCA), the Delhi High Court
removed bottlenecks that had put a question mark
on the fourth India-South Africa Test match slated
from December 3. The match will be played at the
Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium in Delhi.
The interest of the players and cricket fans was
paramount for the High Court and the sanction
was only an interim order, it said, asking the Delhi
government to give approval for the match. It also
ordered the South Delhi Municipal Corporation
(SDMC) to give a provisional occupancy certificate
to DDCA. The court appointed retired justice Mukul
Mudgal to keep a close watch on the arrangements
for the test match.
DDCA was to pay, as an interim measure, `50
lakh to SDMC as property tax. The
total amount it owes to
SDMC is more than `1
crore. Besides, DDCA
had to pay `1 crore
to Delhi govern-
ment’s excise
department as
entertainment tax.
The state govern-
ment had
demanded `24
crore from DDCA as
outstanding dues.
Relief for
Greenpeace
The Madras High Court
did not approve
the cancellation of
registration of
Greenpeace India
by the Tamil Nadu
Register of
Societies (RoS) and
put a stay on the
latter’s order. It
ruled that the NGO
would operate in India
until the judiciary gave its
final verdict on charges of
financial improprieties
slapped on it by the center.
The Court’s ruling
came after Greenpeace
India approached it
following the action taken
by RoS.
In April this year, the
center had put on hold the
NGO’s registration in India
for six months. Green-
peace was not allowed to
source funds from abroad
and even its accounts in
India were frozen. The
government claimed that
the NGO was not transpar-
ent about its money flow
from abroad and was
using the money without
the center’s permission.
Greenpeace had denied
the allegations. It even
approached the Court and
got a favorable order on
drawing money from
domestic accounts.
The protracted legal
battle between Greenpeace
and the center continues.
— Compiled by Prabir Biswas
Illustrations: UdayShankar
The Madras High Court did not offer legal sanctity
to a marriage between a Hindu woman and a
Christian man. The Court observed that one of them
should have converted to solemnize the marriage as
per Hindu or Christian customs. Or else, the mar-
riage should have been registered under the Special
Marriage Act, 1954, if they were against conversion.
However, the Court allowed the woman to go
with the man as she was a major.
Nothinglegalaboutit
The Railways got a thumbs up from the Bombay
High Court on its circular that only Rail Neer be
stocked and sold at railway stations and platforms.
IRCTC manufactures and supplies the packaged
drinking water brand. The High Court did not buy the
argument of the Indian Railway Caterer’s Associa-
tion that the Railways was trying to have a strangle-
hold on the supply of drinking order. It also did not
agree with their contention that consumers will have
limited options. The Court observed the order was in
no way affecting their business.
GoaheadwithRailNeer
David Headley to face
Mumbai court
The Bombay High Court stopped just
short of issuing a contempt notice
against political parties for continuing
with the practice of putting up illegal
hoardings, posters and banners
throughout Maharashtra.
The Court was upset that the NCP,
Congress, Shiv Sena and MNS continue
to flout laws despite filing affidavits to
the contrary, and in total disregard of
notices from Court commissioners.
They were appointed by the High Court
to stop the practice.
The violation was brought to light by
two PILs, which also alleged that as a
result, private and public properties
were being vandalized.
The Court also asked political par-
ties to assign one worker for each ward
in the state for removing hoardings. It
also said that parties which put up ille-
gal hoardings be denied direct permis-
sion from authorities on a regular basis.
Political parties which had promised to
follow rules must furnish the addresses
of party workers who were displayed
on illegal hoardings so that action could
be taken against them.
Crackdown on illegal hoardings
Whether he does
appear or not is a
million dollar question,
but a Mumbai sessions
court has summoned
David Coleman Headley
as an accused in the
26/11 terror attacks in
the metropolis.
Summons have been
shot off to the concerned
authorities in the US and
Headley will have to face
the court in a hearing
through video-conferen-
cing on December 10.
If that happens,
Pakistan-born Headley
will hold the distinction
of being the first foreign
national to appear
through a video link in a
terror trial in India.
Headley, a US nation-
al, was pronounced
guilty by a US court for
conspiring in the 26/11
Mumbai attacks and is
serving a 35-year prison
sentence.

There have been numerous acts of
intolerance in India, a country known
for its secular and inclusive nature.
But with PM Modi preferring to
embrace silence, there are fears of
where this will lead to
By Smruti
SOCIETY/Growing Intolerance
I
N the 18 months that Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has led India, he has
attempted to package the country in
various acronyms and pithy slogans,
mainly for his audiences abroad. Yet,
the one slogan, more precisely a phrase,
which has come to qualify India in
recent weeks, is the one that must rile
him the most—“intolerant India”. It
threatened not only Modi’s carefully packaged
marketing of the country, but more importantly, it
cleaved into the very idea of India as a pluralist
Ideaof
India
under
Threat and secular democracy.
Now, as the government braces up for
another parliament session this winter, the
signs are on the wall. The opposition, espe-
cially the Congress under a resurgent Rahul
Gandhi, is expected to corner the Modi gov-
ernment on intolerance. The defeat of the
BJP-led NDA in the Bihar assembly elections
to the Nitish Kumar-led mega-alliance has
provided the necessary boost to opposition
parties to press home the point about the
country turning intolerant.
GROWING PROTESTS
The government will undoubtedly unleash its
defense in parliament and attempt to bolster
it outside. After all, Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley dismissed the resistance against intol-
erance and bigotry as “manufactured rebel-
lion” earlier. Others will attempt to dismiss
the movement too. But this is more than a
political issue. The resistance to the threat of
India turning into a bigoted, fanatical and
narrow-minded society has gathered social
momentum and brought a wide range of
SILENT SPECTATOR
Vehicles were set on
fire during violent
clashes between
Hindus and Muslims
in Vadodara; Modi’s
refusal to speak up in
the face of such
incidents is worrying

time, she said, should we move out of India?
That’s a disastrous and big statement for
Kiran to make to me. She fears for her child.
She fears about what the atmosphere around
us will be. She feels scared to open the news-
papers everyday. That does indicate that
there is a sense of growing disquiet,” he said.
“As an individual, as a citizen, certainly I
have also been alarmed, I can’t deny it, by a
number of incidents,” he said, and added:
“For us, as Indians, to feel a sense of security,
two-three things are important. The sense of
justice gives a lot of security to the common
man. The second thing, that is important, are
protestors out into the public domain.
Two incidents in recent times acted as
catalysts: the cold-blooded murders of ratio-
nalists Dr MM Kalburgi in Dharwad,
Karnataka, and Govind Pansare in Kolhapur,
allegedly by right-wing Hindu fundamental-
ists on August 30, and the horrific lynching
of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri, near Delhi,
following allegations that he and his family
had consumed and stored beef in their house.
The latest to voice his insecurity about an
intolerant India has been actor Aamir Khan,
who on November 23, said: “Kiran (wife) and
I have lived all our lives in India. For the first
“For the first time, Kiran
said, should we move
out of India? That’s a
disastrous and big
statement for Kiran to
make to me. She
fears for her child. She
fears about what the
atmosphere around us
will be.”
—Aamir Khan, actor
“It is stupid to be
intolerant and this is our
biggest issue, not just an
issue… Religious
intolerance and not being
secular in this country is
the worst kind of crime
that you can do as a
patriot.”
—Shah Rukh Khan, actor
the most wishy-washy statement in the cir-
cumstances: Hindus and Muslims must fight
poverty together.
Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh
and others attempted to change the narrative
but the tag “intolerant India” had stuck.
Instead, BJP’s spokespersons and apologists
mocked the Idea of India that stands for a
plural, secular, multi-denominational, inclu-
sive and egalitarian country. Cultural Affairs
Minister Mahesh Sharma mocked that “writ-
ers should stop writing”. Together, they were
effectively undermining the letter and spirit
of the constitution.
the people who are the elected representa-
tives… we look upon these representatives to
take a strong stance, make strong statements
and speed up the legal process to prosecute
such cases. It doesn’t matter who the ruling
party is.”
PUBLIC STAND
The resistance started with writers returning
their awards to the Sahitya Akademi to sym-
bolically protest against its studied silence as
writers’ freedom came under the shadow of
guns and open threats after Kalburgi’s mur-
der. Soon, scientists, a community that rarely
takes a public stand on social issues, joined
their voices to the protests. Shah Rukh Khan
too spoke up.
As many of the protestors pointed out, the
stifling of dissent, curbs on freedom of expre-
ssion and diktats being issued on what one
should eat, wear, read or watch by right-wing
Hindutva outfits seemingly enjoyed tacit
support from those in power.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, mean-
while, chose complete silence instead of
words of reassurance or commitment to the
constitution. It was not lost on people that a
man who embraced social media and wished
colleagues on their birthdays and remem-
bered leaders on anniversaries, did not offer
any comment on the rising intolerance.
When finally he did, under pressure, it was
VOICES OF PROTEST
(Clockwise from above)
In the light of growing
intolerance,
documentary
director Anand
Patwardhan has
returned his national
film award, novelist
Shashi Deshpande has
resigned from the
Sahitya Akademi
General Council and
writer Nayantara
Sahgal has returned
her Sahitya Akademi
Award

the economic front, rising prices that saw
pulses sell in retail outlets at `200-220 a kilo
and the loss in Bihar means Modi is on the
backfoot. His standard response in such a sit-
uation is to brazen it out and go on the offen-
sive. Will he, indeed can he, do it against a
revived opposition in parliament and the
new-found confidence of many Indians to
speak the truth to those in power?
IN QUICK SUCCESSION
The Kalburgi murder and the Dadri incident
were the last in a series of events that have
been cause of much concern. Beef bans, meat
bans during Jain festivals, lynching of truck
drivers on suspicion that they were trans-
porting beef, disruption of book launches
and art exhibitions, the mythification of
science with Ganesh’s head being the first
plastic surgery in the world, selective hound-
ing of activists and NGOs believed to be Left-
of-centre have all happened in the last one-
and-a-half years.
This began to inform international per-
ception, provided ammunition for Modi
jokes and allowed people to move away from
the rah-rah narrative that had been built up.
On social media platforms, where Modi and
his managers had unleashed a blitzkrieg in
the run-up to the 2014 general election and
his loyalists continued to drum up support
for him later, the tone had altered.
Though “Modi toadies”, as author Salman
Rushdie termed them, persisted in their
abuse of anyone who spoke for the Idea of
India, there was comparatively less bile and
sharpness. The only defense that they were
left with was “Go to Pakistan”, hurled at any-
one who remarked on the growing intoler-
ance. It sounded juvenile and funny. This was
ironic because many protestors had been
pointing out that intolerance and bigotry was
turning India into a “Hindu Pakistan”.
The national and international conversa-
tion about “Intolerant India” coming on the
back of a less-than-stellar performance on
Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP leader
He questioned Shah
Rukh Khan’s patriotism
and said his soul is in
Pakistan.
Mahesh Sharma, culture minister
Calling award wapsi
writers’ personal choice,
he challenged them to
stop writing.
Dinanath Batra, RSS ideologue
As convenor of Shiksha
Bachao Andolan Samiti,
he is pushing Sangh’s
ideology in textbooks.
spiral of darkness of the kind that India had
not seen in decades.
DISMISSIVE GOVERNMENT
The government strategy to dismiss the writ-
ers as disgruntled leftists with failed
Nehruvian ideals did not help. Banal ques-
tions like—they have returned the award but
what about the prize money (`1 lakh), why
are they protesting now—proved ineffective.
In fact, when Hindi writer Kashinath
Singh, who hails from Varanasi, Modi’s con-
stituency, returned his award on October 16,
he pointed out that he was upset by the dis-
missive manner in which the government
treated the protest by writers. He told news
channel APN that he was particularly anno-
yed by the response of some of the ministers
in the Union cabinet: “The statements one
heard from our ministers showed that they
were in the least concerned about the issues
that were being raised. The ministers have
insulted the writers.”
Other “intolerant” incidents include:
threatening music concerts of Pakistani
artistes such as Ghulam Ali, increasing visi-
bility of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Modi
and his cabinet at a governance status update
program of the RSS, a Muslim scholar being
stopped from writing columns on Ramayana,
Nobel-awardee Dr Amartya Sen being ridi-
culed and vilified, Vice-President Hamid
Ansari being taunted for his religion, the
systematic saffronization of cultural and
educational institutions, appointment of
Dina Nath Batra to education boards, the
Machiavellian twisting of the religious cen-
sus to bring alive the BJP’s old bogey of
“Muslim population growing faster” and
much more.
It was the worst nightmare coming true
for many, especially those who always sus-
pected that the BJP and Modi’s talk of devel-
opment and good governance was a market-
savvy mask for the right-wing agenda of
turning India into a Hindu state. It was a
Hamid Ansari, vice-president
Has faced criticism for
his views on intolerance;
was not invited for Yoga
Day celebrations.
MM Kalburgi, Kannada writer
A critic of idol worship
and superstition, he was
gunned down in August
this year.
Mohammad Akhlaq, Dadri
resident
A mob killed him over
rumors that he had beef
in his house.

IL
award. In it, Sahgal explained: “The Prime
Minister remains silent about this reign of
terror. We must assume he dare not alienate
evil-doers who support his ideology. It is a
matter of sorrow that the Sahitya Akademi
remains silent…In memory of the Indians
who have been murdered, in support of all
Indians who uphold the right to dissent, and
of all dissenters who now live in fear and
uncertainty, I am returning my Sahitya
Akademi Award.”
The rising protests meant that a section of
the intelligentsia had come awake from the
“comatose state” that award-winning novelist
Kiran Nagarkar had lamented they were in
last year. Yet, instead of paying some atten-
tion, the Prime Minister chose to disregard it
all and move on as if he did not grasp the full
import of what the bigotry was doing to the
country’s social fabric. This was no fringe
group, this was the mainstream and majori-
tarian political party leaders or elected MPs.
What is the way out of this spiral? Nagar-
kar, Patwardhan and others say that all those
who believe in the Idea of India must stand
up for it now, irrespective of the profession
they pursue, and speak up against the storm
of hatred and intolerance.
Though such incidents took place during
the Congress governments too, there was a
difference. As a Mumbai-based social scien-
tist put it: “There were hate crimes before
2014 too and the Congress was guilty of col-
luding in some of them. But there’s a differ-
ence. There is now a systematic diminishing
of the plurality and tolerance, there is a tri-
umphalism of Hindu majoritarianism, and
there is visibly less acceptance of the other.
Writers and thin-kers, who are considered
the soul of the society, are resisting by return-
ing their awards. Others will have to find
their own language of protest.”
The fight against this spiral of darkness,
clearly, cannot be one-dimensional and uni-
form, or short in tenure. A wider range of
Indians, those in other fields, must discover
their means of protest and find the nerve to
say what they want to. Let no one tell us that
the Idea of India as enshrined in the consti-
tution is not worth fighting for, irrespective
of how Modi and his ministers handle the
parliament session.
Even BJP’s allies, the Shiv Sena and the
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) have been critical
of the intemperate remarks made by BJP
leaders and ministers. SAD MP Naresh
Gujaral reportedly said: “The prime minister
had spoken (against Dadri lynching) earlier,
but these motormouths have not paid eno-
ugh heed to what he said. It’s high time that
the BJP leadership takes action against at
least against one such person so that there is
some kind of sanity back in national affairs.”
Pradnya Daya Pawar, writer and poet, and
daughter of path-breaking Dalit writer Daya
Pawar, in her letter to Maharashtra chief
minister Devendra Fadnavis in October,
while returning the state award and prize
money, even stated it was “undeclared emer-
gency”. Joining her were three other writers
and poets in Maharashtra.
WORSE THAN EMERGENCY
What is happening now seems worse than
even the Emergency, said noted documen-
tary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. The
undercurrent of his sentiment found a
release in well-known novelist Shashi
Deshpande resigning from the Sahitya
Akademi general council and in noted writer
Nayantara Sahgal’s letter returning her
DISCORDANT NOTES
The Shiv Sena did not
allow Pakistani singer
Ghulam Ali’s show to
happen in Mumbai
40 December 15, 2015 41INDIA LEGAL December 15, 2015
MORE NEWS
Smart policing by 2017
Union Minister for Women and Child
Development Maneka Gandhi wants to
make pre-nuptial agreements, which have
already caught favor in the western world,
to be recognized in Indian courts as a stan-
dard legal document, reports The
Huffington Post.
At the moment, the pre-nuptial agree-
ment is not recognized in India. Couples
may enter into an agreement under the
Indian Contracts Act, but this has not been
legally upheld in courts. The ministry has
now called for a consultation on the matter
from several stakeholders, including former
solicitor-general Indira Jaising,
women-centric NGOs and so on.
Pre-nuptial agreements
“Practice in
lower courts first”
The center has set an ambi-
tious deadline of March
2017 for integrating the coun-
try’s 15,000 police stations
with e-courts, e-prisons,
forensics and prosecution as
part of the home ministry’s
`2,000-crore Crime and
Criminals Tracking
Networking and Systems
project. The project will
ensure quick data transfer,
enhanced transparency and
also reduce processing time. It
will digitize data related to
FIR registration, investigation
and chargesheets in all police
stations, reports Business
Standard. This would lead
to the development of a
national database of crimes
and criminals.
Sacrilege will get life
Senior advocate and
chairman of Bar Council
of India (BCI) Manan
Kumar Mishra told a
five-judge constitution bench
headed by Justice
JS Khehar that the BCI
is contemplating framing
of rules which would
make it mandatory
for a lawyer to practice
for a minimum of five years
in lower courts before joining
the high court, reports
The Times of India. At
present, a law graduate can
argue a case in all courts,
including the Supreme
Court, after clearing the
All India Bar Examination
conducted by
the BCI.
Close Balakrishnan probe: Govt
The Punjab cabinet has announced that it
would introduce a new amended section—
295 AA—in the IPC to punish with life impris-
onment those involved in the sacrilege of the
Guru Granth Sahib, The Times of India
reports. Hurting religious sentiments, currently
covered under Section 295 A, makes sacrilege
punishable by a three-year jail term. The move
follows a dozen cases of Guru Granth Sahib
desecrations which triggered violent protests
in which two protesters were killed in Faridkot
in October. The BJP welcomed the move, but
added that the government should seek similar
punishment for disrespect to Hindu idols.
Underlining that it may set a
“dangerous precedent”, the
government has favored closure
of Supreme Court proceedings
against former Chief Justice of
India KG Balakrishnan (in the
picture) over allegations of illicit
monetary transactions and
disproportionate assets, reports
The Indian Express.
Attorney-General Mukul
Rohatgi told the Bench led by
Justice Dipak Misra that after
the income-tax inquiry against
the former CJI and his family
“yielded nothing”, there should
not be any fresh probe by the
CBI or any other agency.
“We cannot have investiga-
tion like this in such cases.
Everybody will start making wild
allegations,” he said.

INTERVIEW/Taslima Nasreen
Do you think religious fundamen-
talism in Bangladesh has become
more pronounced, especially in the
backdrop of the killings of blog-
gers, writers and publishers?
I think so, yes. In my time, hundreds of
thousands of fundamentalists deman-
ded my execution by hanging because I
criticized Islam. Now, young writers
and bloggers, who are critics of Islam,
are being hacked to death by Islamic
terrorists.
Islamization started in Bangladesh
in the 80s. Huge amounts of money
arrived from the Middle East. Nume-
rous mosques and madrasas are being
Exiled in 1994 for criticizing Islam in her novel
Lajja, controversial Bangladeshi writer
TASLIMA NASREEN is still dauntless and does
not mince words when it comes to opposing
religious fundamentalism and espousing the
cause of freedom of expression. Since 2004, she
has an Indian visa on a continuous basis. In an
interview to MMURALI KRISHNAN, Nasreen, 53,
shares her worries about the shrinking space for
freethinkers in her country and says Islam
cannot be exempt from the critical scrutiny other
religions go through. Excerpts:
“This is a Different
India...! Hope Good Sense
Will Prevail”
built for indoctrinating young boys.
These mosques and madrasas are the
breeding ground of Islamic fundamen-
talists and terrorists.
During the 70s and 80s in
Bangladesh, I never saw so many girls
and women wearing hijab and burqa.
Arab Wahhabi culture has invaded
Bangladesh. And political Islam is
present with its guns. It has replaced
the innocent form of Islam practiced
by my grandparents.
The Awami League is in power.
They are considered pro-indepen-
dence and “secular”. How come
fundamentalists are gaining
ground in the country?
The Awami League is not secular
anymore. It’s more like the Jamaat-e-
Islami. This party has an ulema league
which was formed by Islamic funda-
mentalists. They are the people who
okay the killing of freethinkers and
liberals. Members of the Jamaat-e-
Islami have been joining the Awami
League because they have more or less
the same ideology.
Sheikh Hasina has not issued any
statement so far against the brutal
killings of progressive and secular
writers. She has rather warned the
freethinkers that they must not cross
the limit or hurt the religious feelings
of people. She created a law which is
against freedom of expression. She
made atheist writers and bloggers
victims of a dangerous provision of
Section 57 of the Information and
Communication Technology Act.
Many suggest that the main
conflict in Bangladesh today is
between pro- and anti-indepen-
dence forces that has escalated
with the starting of war tribunals.
Do you agree?
Not really. Many pro-independence
forces are also against the atheist
BACKWARD
MARCH
(Left) More and
more Bangladeshi
youth are taking
to the burqa and
the Hijab now
The Jamaat-e-
Islami, whose
leader Abdul
Quader Mollah
(below) was
hanged in 2013
for war crimes,
has infiltrated the
Awami League

bloggers and writers. All pro-indepen-
dence people are not necessarily free-
thinkers. Many are believers. They sup-
port the punishment of war criminals
as well as the atheists. The real conflict
is between secularism and fundamen-
talism. Between rational, logical think-
ing and irrational blind faith, between
humanism and barbarism, between
those who value freedom and those
who do not.
The rise of fundamentalism can
also be seen in India. Is the world
changing in a new direction?
I have been witnessing the rise of fun-
damentalism in India. Rationalists
have been slain by Hindu fanatics.
Four people have been killed over beef.
Two have been killed in clashes over
Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary celebra-
tions. This is a different India. I cannot
be proud of this intolerant India. I
hope good sense will prevail.
If you hadn’t left Bangladesh, do
you believe the fundamentalists
would have killed you?
Of course. I live in exile. The Islamic
killers are still after me. They have
made a new global hit list and my
name is on it.
You said a majority of Indian intel-
lectuals are hypocritical as they did
not speak up when Muslim fanatics
attacked you.
I did not say that Indian intellectuals
are hypocritical. I said that pseudo-
secular people who speak against
Hindu fundamentalists but not
against Muslim fundamentalists are
hypocritical.
I respect intellectuals in India.
They are against all kinds of funda-
mentalism. It is true that many writers
and artists who call themselves secular
did not defend me when I was attacked
by Muslim fundamentalists. They bel-
ieve it is their duty to defend Muslims
in India as they are a minority. That’s
fine, but I don’t understand why they
think they should defend minority fun-
damentalism. There is no difference
between minority religious fundamen-
talism and the religious fundamental-
ism of the majority community.
You said there is “idiocracy” in
Bangladesh, not democracy. Why?
Yes. If they weren’t idiots, they would
have created laws based not on misogy-
nistic religion, but on equality and
justice. They would have had science-
driven education rather than religion-
driven education. Now the country is
fully of idiocy and theocracy. I have lost
all hope for that country.
I said that
pseudo-secular
people who speak
against Hindu
fundamentalists but
not against Muslim
fundamentalists are
hypocritical. I don’t
understand why they
think they should
defend minority
fundamentalism.
IL
ETHOS OF
INTOLERANCE
(L-R) Bangladesh
blogger Avijit Roy
and Indian thinker
MM Kalburgi
both fell prey to
fundamentalist
forces
INTERVIEW/Taslima Nasreen
AMoscow city court has ruled
that the Moscow branch of the
Church of Scientology should be
dissolved, reports The Guardian.
The court accepted the argu-
ments of Russia’s justice ministry
that as the term “scientology” is a
registered US trademark, the
church cannot be considered a
religious organization. The church
condemned the ruling and
pledged to appeal against it.
Created by science fiction
writer L Ron Hubbard in 1954 and
based in Los Angeles, California,
the Church of Scientology has
generated controversy around the
world. Critics say that it is a cult
and that it scams its members,
while many others maintain that
it provides spiritual support to
its followers.
RussiancourtbansChurchofScientology
INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS
Thailand repatriates
Chinese dissidents
China has defended its
repatriation of two
Chinese activists from
Thailand who had been grant-
ed UN refugee status, BBC
News reported. The foreign
ministry said the men were
guilty of crimes but did not
say which laws they were
accused of breaking. Jiang
Yefei and Dong Guangping,
who fled China after being
jailed for criticizing the gov-
ernment, were sent back.
The United Nations
strongly criticized Bangkok’s
decision to repatriate those
who had been granted
refugee status, warning that
the men were at risk of “grave
human rights violations”.
Political cartoonist Jiang
Yefei was a vocal critic of the
Chinese government and had
been tortured by Chinese
authorities in the past. He
had been living in Thailand.
Bangladesh hangs opposition politicians
Bangladesh announced that it had carried out
the hanging of opposition politicians Ali
Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin
Quader Chowdhury, accused with war crimes
committed during the country’s 1971 war of
independence fought against Pakistan, reports
Al Jazeera.
Chowdhury, 66, was a member of the oppo-
sition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and
was convicted of atrocities, including genocide,
during the 1971 war.
Mujahid, 67, was a member of the banned
Jamaat-e-Islami and was sentenced for war
crimes, including the killing of top intellectuals.
The executions have been decried as being
“politically motivated” by opposition groups.
Iran sentences US journalist
Following the burning of
an Ahmadi place of
worship as well as a
chipboard factory,
Pakistani law enforcement
agencies arrested over 40
suspects in a midnight
raid for their alleged
involvement, Pakistani
daily Dawn reported.
Sources told Dawn that
authorities used video
footage of the incidents to
identify the suspects. After
the arrest, the suspects
were supposedly shifted
to an undisclosed location
for interrogation.
Iranian authorities
announced that American
journalist Jason Rezaian, a
reporter of The Washington
Post, held by the govern-
ment for 16 months and
charged with espionage,
had been sentenced to jail,
reported NBC News.
Rezaian, a dual
American-Iranian citizen,
was accused of espionage
and other charges in
October. His family and The
Washington Post insist that
the charges against him
have no merit and have
accused Iran of a lack of
transparency.
Neither the US State
Department nor Rezaian's
family confirmed the report.
Pakistan nabs over 40 for arson
Chinese rebel Jiang Yefei

This never-told-before inside story of the CBI’s complicity with Lalu
Yadav’s political enemies when he was nailed in the fodder scam. Now
with Lalu making headlines all over India following his triumph in Bihar,
this revelation will probably send shockwaves across the country
BOOKS/Pursuit of Law and Order/ AP Durai
ThePersecutionof
LaluPrasadYadav
POLITICAL
VENDETTA?
The book questions
CBI’s overzealousness
in dragging Lalu
Yadav’s name into
corruption cases
F
ollowing an outrageous
attempt by the CBI officers in
Patna— headed by UN Biswas,
Joint Director, CBI from
Calcutta— on 31st July 1997 to
summon the assistance of the
army authorities to arrest Lalu
Prasad Yadav, former Chief Minister of
Bihar, I was appointed by the Cabinet
Secretariat to enquire into the incident and
submit a report in ten days’ time. There had
been uproar in the Parliament and to
assuage the feelings of other MPs cutting
across party lines, Prime Minister Gujral
decided to institute an inquiry. How this
assignment came my way while I was serv-
ing as DG RPF was a mystery to me. Perhaps
it was a vindication (and recognition) of my
consistently apolitical and independent
stance in my career.
I visited Patna and recorded statements
and collected the facts from concerned CBI
officials and army authorities and submitted
my report on 18th August 1997. In what
came to be known as the Animal Husbandry
Department scam, CBI had registered 49
cases and Lalu Prasad Yadav was involved in
seven cases, including RC-20 (A) /A/96-
Patna, which was a case of ‘larger conspira-
cy’ (a term invented by Joint Director Biswas
obviously to rope in Lalu Prasad Yadav and a
number of IAS officers) and the charge sheet
had been filed against him in this case on
23rd June 1997 in the court of the Special
Judge, CBI in Patna.
In the order issued by the Department of
Personnel and Training on 1st August 1997,
the Government said they had taken “serious
note of the conduct of the CBI in requisi-
tioning the army in the circumstances of this
case.” From the very beginning the case
against Lalu Prasad Yadav had become
politicized and the opposition leader in the
state assembly, SK Modi was carrying on a
crusade due to which the Supreme Court
had appointed two judges of Patna High
Court as the ‘Monitoring Bench’ to oversee
the investigation of the bunch of cases on a
fortnightly basis. Although their jurisdic-
tion had ceased once the charge sheet
was laid in the Special CBI court,
my enquiry revealed that the judges
continued to monitor CBI’s efforts
to arrest and disgrace Lalu
Prasad. I would quote from the
order of the Supreme Court in
Union of India vs Sushil
Kumar Modi and others on
24th January 1997: “In case of
persons against whom a
For those who were active in Indian
journalism during the 1980s and
1990s, AP Durai was a legendary
figure. There were many like him.
Nonetheless, that adjective was
rarely used for a cop, especially in
post-independence India in which
the police force is by and large exco-
riated as corrupt or politically
compromised.
The back flap of his new book,
Pursuit of Law And Order
(NotionPress) describes the auth-
or’s journey aptly: “As Durai raced
through positions he held in Indian
Oil Corporation, as Director of the
SVP National Police Academy,
Hyderabad, and as Director
General of Karnataka police, as
Director General Railway
Protection Force, he left behind him
many reforms and a new spirit of
optimism and public service in the
forces he commanded.”
But his journey was no bed of
roses. His autobiography is sprin-
kled with tales of his struggle with
politicians and jealous colleagues,
of frequent transfers and humilia-
tion. Nonetheless, it proclaims “the
triumph of the human spirit
imbued with the ideals of public
service and professionalism. The
book, therefore, would be a source
of inspiration to all public servants
involved in the governance of the
country.”
There are tales of horror, of
humanity, of deep spiritual intro-
spection, of constitutional legali-
ties, of courage, throughout this
238-page book written in flawless,
often poetic prose and sensibility.
Its clarity stems from its inherent
honesty. One chapter that stands
out and makes the reader’s hair
stand on end is the extent of consti-
tutional impropriety in which the
CBI and its political masters con-
spired to capture Lalu Prasad
Yadav in the infamous “fodder
scam” by trying to bring in the
Indian Army.
This never-told-before story,
now with Lalu making headlines
all over India following his tri-
umph in Bihar, will probably send
shockwaves across the country.
– Editor
EXCERPTS:
APOLITICAL PROFILE
AP Durai is well-
respected for his
upright image

India legal 15 december 2015

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India legal 15 december 2015