Chidambaram’s Arrest: A Breakdown in Lutyen’s Consensus?

The arrest of former finance minister P Chidambaram has thrown many critics of the current administration into a quandary. On the one hand, they know that there may be some truth to the allegations of corruption made by the investigating agencies. They would, therefore, like nothing better than for corrupt politicians to be probed just […]

Tech-savvy scammers try to steal flood relief donations

Even as a large part of the country grapples with torrential rain and floods, scammers have set up fake bank IDs to get their hands on at least a part of the donations meant for disaster relief. For example, the original UPI ID for donating to Kerala’s disaster relief fund is keralacmdrf@sbi. However, given that […]

ICICI Bank tops in banking fraud hits; SBI, HDFC Bank follow

ICICI Bank, one of India’s top three lenders, has emerged as the No.1 target of bank fraudsters last year in terms of the sheer number of such incidents, overtaking bigger rival State Bank of India. ICICI Bank reported 374 medium and large sized incidents of fraud, beating back SBI, which came in with 338 such […]

‘We’re cleaning up the banks’ – FinMin gives the numbers

Finance ministry on Thursday gave detailed numbers to detail the efforts that the Narendra Modi government has been making to overcome the problems created by corruption and bad loans in India’s public sector banks. Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman pointed out that a review in 2015 found that a huge chunk of loans issued in previous […]

Govt ‘cannot find’ two centrally protected monuments in Delhi

The Central government can no longer find two centrally protected monuments in Delhi, junior tourism minister Prahland Singh Patel said in parliament today. There are 174 monuments/sites that enjoy protection from the central government in Delhi. These have been declared as monument of national importance in the Delhi under Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and […]

63,959 people declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals in Assam

A total of 63,959 people have been declared as foreigners through ex-parte proceedings by Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam as of February this year, minister of state for home affairs said today. Ex-parte proceedings refer to those cases where the person does not turn up to contest the initial finding, and is therefore declared as a […]

Indian Railways detects attempts to book VIP tickets using fake letters

Indian Railways booking clerks have been asked to double check all suspicious requests for VIP quota tickets after incidents of forged letters of ‘dignitaries’ have come to light. “Some instances of attempts to get accommodation released out of Emergency Quota on the authority of fake letter heads of high dignitaries and some Railway Officers have […]

“Was Expecting This” -Tanushree Dutta slams police and courts

Tanushree Dutta, the US-based former Bollywood actress, said she was hardly surprised by the Maharashtra Police’s move to file a closure report in her complaint of sexual harassment by actor Nana Patekar and said the #MeToo movement’s aim is not to win justice for the victims via the legal machinery. She alleged that ‘a corrupt […]

Relief for social media users as SC orders Yogi govt to release journalist

The Supreme Court has ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to immediately release jailed journalist Prashant Kanojia. The state will be free to carry on a case against the journalist. Hearing a plea by wife Jagisha Arora to protect the journalist’s fundamental rights, a two-judge vacation bench comprising Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Ajay Rastogi did […]

18-year-old girl booked under POCSO for sexual assault on 16-year-old girl

An 18-year-old woman from Kerala has been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act or POCSO, based on the complaint of a 16-year-old. The police complaint by the family of the 16-year-old says that the girl confided in them, and accused the 18-year-old woman of putting pressure on her to have sex […]

Infosys pays Rs 34.35 lakh to SEBI over severance to Rajiv Bansal

Infosys said it has paid Rs 34.35 lakh to settle the investigation into the incident of the company paying over Rs 17 cr as severance pay to Rajiv Bansal, who resigned as its finance head in October 2015. There have been allegations, including from the side of founder Narayana Murthy, that everything was not well […]

Kerala to create ‘campus police’ to combat extremism, drug-use

The Kerala government is planning to extend a student police project, currently running in schools, to colleges in the state in an effort to contain extremism and drug use and instill positive qualities among the students. The Government Law College in Thiruvananthapuram will be the first to get a unit of Students’ Police Cadet. The […]

Controversy erupts after girls in Kerala shame moral police on FB

An apparent incident of moral policing, in which young men allegedly tried to harass college girls wearing hijab for posing for photos with their male classmates has now ended with the police registering a case against the ‘guardians of cultural values’. The incident took place over in Kilinakode village in Malappuram, a conservative district in […]

Riot-like conditions at Sabarimala as devotees exchange stones with police

Riot-like conditions prevailed in Nilakkal and surrounding areas as thousands of Ayyappa devotees and Kerala Police engaged in pitched battle involving stone throwing and lathi charges. The situation worsened after the police moved early morning to dismantle the local pandals put up by devotees, who had used the camp to conduct vehicle checking yesterday. Women […]

Chetan Bhagat says ‘enough is enough’ on fresh MeToo allegations

Chetan Bhagat, India’s most popular pulp fiction writer, today sought to put his foot down on allegations that he sexually harassed people on WhatsApp. His response comes in the wake of yet a new allegation, four days after a woman leaked a conversation with him in which he confessed to ‘trying to woo’ her. In […]

MCA orders inspection into Vakrangee’s accounts

Vakrangee Ltd, the Mumbai-based technology and distribution company, said the ministry of corporate affairs of India has ordered an inspection of its accounts for three years, and that PricewaterHouse will step down as the company auditor as part of the exercise. The inspection will be carried out under section 206 of the Companies Act. The […]

High Court allows Cobrapost to publish video on Dainik Bhaskar

Delhi High Court has set apart a lower court decision that imposed a stay on the publication of a video by website Cobrapost that allegedly showed political bias among employees of Dainik Bhaskar group. DB Corp, the publisher of Dainik Bhaskar daily, won the injunction after arguing that the video was malafide and based on […]

Marriage does not shackle a woman’s sexual freedom & choice – Justice Chandrachud

The sexual choices that a person makes is part of that person’s expression, and the constitution does not allow anyone to “shackle the sexual freedom” of another just because he or she entered into a marriage, Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud said today in his 77-judgment in the ‘Section 497’ case. The order also linked a person’s […]