The Catholic Church in Kerala withdrew action against Sister Lucy Kalappura, who came out publicly in support of the five nuns who sat on protest against Bishop Franco Mulakkal in Kochi for two weeks. The withdrawal followed strong protests by parishioners belonging to Karakkamala, which comes under the Manathavady Diocese in Wayanad district of Kerala. […]
An engineer from Kerala working with a petroleum company in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment and a fine of around Rs 30 lakhs for his tweets. With this, Vishnudev, a native of Alleppey in Kerala, has become the first Indian to be punished under Saudi Arabia’s stricter anti-blasphemy laws that […]
The Supreme Court today directed the home secretaries of the states that have not filed compliance reports on anti-mob violence measures to personally appear before it after a week. Hearing a public interest litigation on rising cases of violence by cow vigilantes in July, the court had issued 12 guidelines for all state and the […]
Telecom operators and the Unique Identification Authority of India have denied having anything to do with the ‘mysterious’ addition of the UIDAI’s former helpline to the contact lists of Android phone users in India. That leaves only three candidates — Google, which makes Android, handset makers and any of the popular apps that has been […]
Ministry of Home Affairs today denied media reports that said that the center would set up a police force dedicated to fighting cyber crime. Law and order is a state subject in India, and currently cyber crimes are dealt with by state police forces. Earlier this year, media reports suggested that the home ministry had […]
Trinamool Congress MP Prasun Banerjee today raised the issue of the recent ‘trolling’ of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament. Over the last several days, Swaraj has come under attack on social media after she took disciplinary action against an official of the Lucknow Regional Passport Office for allegedly denying passports to a Hindu-Muslim […]
Setting off a controversy, Janam TV, a Malayalam news channel with leanings towards with the BJP, today reported that displaced people belonging to scheduled castes at a relief camp in Aleppey were moved to a separate relief camp due to protests from another community. The ‘apartheid’ took place at a relief camp run by the […]
Former cabinet minister Anand Sharma today warned against what he called the misuse of tax and investigation agencies in the country, and warned BJP leaders that they may not always be in power. He said the BJP government has ‘spoiled the habits’ of agencies like Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax Vigilance and Central Bureau of Investigation, […]
Bharti Airtel said the Reserve Bank of India has lifted the restriction on signing up new customers imposed on its banking unit Airtel Payments Bank. The restriction was imposed in January after reports that the company was signing up its mobile customers on its payments bank platform without seeking their full consent. Payments Banks are […]
Social media users posting in one of Kerala’s biggest Facebook Groups are facing the prospect of being sent to jail for ‘encouraging alcoholism’ by glamorizing drinking. Given there’s no law against glamorizing drinking, Kerala Excise Department is reported to have directed the police to use other laws — such as those against child abuse and […]
Congress politician Shashi Tharoor has avoided going to jail immediately after he won anticipatory bail from a Patiala House court. The bail has been granted with two conditions — he cannot go outside India without taking prior permission from the court, and he should not try to influence witnesses or evidence. The trial of the […]
WhatsApp, India’s largest communication platform used by an estimated 65% of the country’s online population, has come under scrutiny for providing a conduit to distribute ‘fake news’ after multiple cases of lynchings came to light. While the company has urged ‘society and companies’ to help tackle the menace, the messaging application has some more to […]
The Supreme Court has asked the state of Uttar Pradesh to furnish details of the encounter killings that are taking place in the state. In a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties or PUCL, the court directed counsel Aishwarya Bhati to file details of the encounters taking place. Among the […]
The Supreme Court bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Sanjay Kaul has removed the ‘immunity’ enjoyed by Enforcement Directorate official Rajeshwar Singh and said the government can go ahead with any probe into his conduct, and remove him, if it wants to, from the investigation. Rajeshwar Singh, on his part, claimed that his life […]
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has expressed suspicions of an ‘internal sabotage’ of the investigations into the so-called Aircel-Maxis scam, in which the accused include former finance minister P Chidambaram and son Karthi. “BJP government at Centre, judging by today proceedings on Aircel Maxis in SC, is under internal sabotage. Have to find out who is […]
Fitch Ratings has downgraded the ‘viability rating’ of scam-hit Punjab National Bank by two notches to ‘b’ from ‘bb-‘, citing a sharp rise in loan defaults. However, the bank’s ‘default rating’ has been kept at BBB-, given the high probability that the government of India will lend support in case of such an eventuality. “The […]
Manpasand Beverages denied charges that it had denied data to its auditor Deloitte Haskins & Sells, but disclosed the resignation letter of the auditor that contained charges to the effect. The beverage maker is under a cloud after news of the resignation broke, and its stock has fallen from around Rs 430 on Friday to […]
Pharma major Strides Shasun denied rumors that its auditors had resigned. The rumors, coming close on the heels of a similar development at Manpasand Beverages, had impacted the company’s share price today morning. Shares of Strides Shasun fell to a low of Rs 397 compared to the close of Rs 423 yesterday, before making up […]
A Dalit Christian boy has been killed in Kerala three days after he married a girl belonging to an upper caste Christian family, allegedly by the girl’s relatives. The body of Kevin was found in a stream today morning, 24 hours after the boy was abducted from his relatives’ house by a group of around […]
In the first such case in Delhi, tax authorities arrested a city-based father and son duo for issuing input tax credit invoices without supplying anything to their ‘clients’. Under the GST regime, any company can get a reduction in the tax they have to pay if they produce receipts of raw material purchase, to the […]
