The Indian Express / by Express News Service
Ahead of Sudha Bharadwaj’s birthday on November 1, activist and lawyer Shalini Gera went to meet her in jail on Thursday. Gera told The Indian Express that she had carried two books for Bharadwaj but was not allowed to give them to her.
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News Click / by Peoples Dispatch
Israeli company NSO exports the Pegasus spyware, which has been used by governments across the world against opposition activists and journalists, including in India.
In an apparent move to save the NSO group – owner of the Pegasus spyware – from public criticism, an Israeli court cited national security concerns and ordered a closed-door hearing in the case against the company.
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Mumbai Mirror / by Shruti Ganapatye
WhatsApp privacy breach: Spyware Pegasus was used to snoop on activists, journalists, political dissidents; state home minister promises probe.
Four months after WhatsApp made a sensational disclosure that Israeli spyware Pegasus was used to snoop on some Indian citizens, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh claimed yesterday that the Maharashtra government officials had visited Israel to purchase the technology.
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The Indian Express / by Deeptiman Tiwary
The data shows that Jammu and Kashmir saw a sharp spike in sedition cases in 2018, with 12 cases compared to just one in 2017. The state was split into two Union Territories last year.
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The Wire / by Markandey Katju and Janhvi Prakash
It must be regrettably said that the judiciary has largely surrendered before the political executive.
The words ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting’, from the Bible (Daniel:5:27), were used by Sir Winston Churchill in 1938 to criticise Neville Chamberlain, the then British prime minister, for signing the shameful Munich Pact with Hitler. The same words could aptly be used for the Indian Supreme Court too, for its recent dismal, distressing, disheartening and discomfiting performances in repeatedly failing to protect the fundamental rights of the Indian people – which is its sacred and solemn duty under the constitution.
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Mumbai Mirror / by Abhishek Sharan
Decision comes after three labs in the country failed to get anything from the damaged disk.
The Pune police will take forensic help from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to retrieve data from a damaged hard disk seized last August from an accused in the January 2018 Elgar Parishad case, sources said on Wednesday.
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Firstpost / by MN Parth
The Free Press Journal / by Sanjay Jog
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray may form a panel to probe the arrests of activists in connection with Elgar Parishad action by the Pune police. Activists Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Varavara Rao and Sudhir Dhavle, who were arrested, were accused of having Maoist links. Thackeray has sought details regarding the ongoing court cases from the home department.
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The Indian Express / by Express News Service
Expressing surprise at the comments of NCP chief Sharad Pawar on the arrests of activists in the Elgaar Parishad case, former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said many of these activists had been arrested and charged for similar offences when the Congress-NCP government was in power in the state and the Centre.
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The Indian Express / by Seema Chishti
The letters, which The Indian Express has access to, reveal a slice of their lives behind bars. Some talk about when they can possibly see the gallows, some are abstract ruminations on life and freedom, while some dwell on the circumstances of their arrest and merits of the case.
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The Hindu / by Gautam Bhatia
Last month, the news website Scroll revealed that more than 10,000 people in the Khunti district of Jharkhand had been chargesheeted by the police for sedition. These people are overwhelmingly Adivasis. Then, in early December, a judicial probe completed a seven-year long investigation, finding that a so-called encounter of “Maoists” in Chhattisgarh by security forces, in 2012, had been a “fake encounter” all along. The people killed had not been Maoists, but innocent villagers.
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