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Unrest Continues, Curfew Imposed: Lynchings in Jharkand

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Unrest continued in many parts of Jamshedpur city in Jharkhand as fresh clashes between protestors and an apparently callous police continued on Sunday morning. Prohibitory orders under Section 144, which disallows more than four people from gathering at a place, were imposed in four parts of the city after violence in and around the areas on Saturday, reported PTI.
The unrest has been sparked by the lynching of four Muslim men in Saraikela-Khushwahan district on Thursday. The local police sought to act on rumours that were being spread on What's App for over a month on alleged 'child kidnappers' on the prowl.

The commercial electronic media has in a sense blacked out the developments in Jharkand even as the Telegraph, Hindustan Times and Indian Express have been reporting on it.

This was one of the two incidents of mob violence that took place in south Jharkhand on the same day as a viral Whatsapp rumour circulated in the area claiming that gangs of kidnappers were taking away children and killing them in a gruesome manner.

The first incident took place in Sobhapur village in Saraikela-Khushwahan district. Mohammed Naeem, an animal dealer and resident of Phulpal village in East Singhbhum, was passing through Sobhapur in Saraikela-Khushwahan district in a truck with three companions, Sajad Saju, Siraj and Alim on May 18. The people of the neighbouring Rajnagar village, who came to Sobhapur in search of child-kidnappers, attacked and killed Naeem and his three companies.

Later, a similar incident took place in Nagari village in East Singhbhum district, where a mob killed three people, including one Gautam Verma and his brother Vikas Verma, claiming that they were “bachcha chors” or child kidnappers. The Vermas had gone to the village to enquire about buying some land there.

As news of the first incident spread, protests were held in some Muslim areas on Friday, where residents closed shops and blocked roads, reported Indian Express. On Saturday, the protests intensified and several policemen were injured in the stones pelted by the mobs, reported Prabhat Khabar.

On Sunday, the police fired in the air to disperse the mobs in Jamshedpur’s Mango area. “The situation is under control now and adequate force have been deployed in the area,” Deputy Commissioner of East Singhbhum district Amit Kumar said. There are several videos etc of the police action in Jamshedpur.

Related Articles:

1. Hindutva Brigade Assault Continues: 5 Worshippers Including Maulvi Assaulted During Prayers: Kodarma, Jharkand
 

FIR Against Journo Sagarika Ghose After She Tweeted on Brutal Lynchings?

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Trolls on Twitter Threatened Noted journalist and author Sagarika Ghose after she tweeted on Friday asking the government to act against those behind the alleged killings of Muslims across the country – and triggered a Twitter storm in the process.Ghose’s tweet immediately drew sharp reactions from twitterati, with one user even claiming to have filed an FIR against her.

The Twitter War that Followed is a Revelation.

 

The Long Road to Justice: Bhagana’s Dalit Struggle

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The struggle for social justice and Human Rights of the Dalits from Bhagana village in district Hisar, Haryana completed five years recently. It was on May 21, 2012 that they were forcibly thrown away from village by imposing economic boycott by the upper caste villagers. Around 150 families along with their children moved out to Hisar Secretariat and started living in makeshift tents.

Later many of them as mark of protest started a padyatra to Delhi and decided to bring their protest to national capital when they found that the government in Haryana was not very responsive to their issue. Unfortunately they have been betrayed by the political parties and many others. Jagdish Kajala has been in the forefront of this movement from very beginning who left everything at Hisar. We recorded this conversation some months back when the people from Bhagana had come to National Commission for Scheduled Castes in Delhi to get justice where DGP Haryana was supposed to come but with six hours wait at the Commission's headquarter at Loknayak Bhavan no official turned up and people again were taken for granted. Bhagana's struggle can provide a lot of learning for future and what is important to ensure that they are taken to logical conclusion. Sharing this conversation with Jagdish Kajala about the movement and
its future.

.

भगाना के लोगो के आन्दोलन को आज पांच साल हो गए हैं . २१ मई २०१२ को हिसार जिले के भगाना गाँव के दलितों को वहा के जाटो के द्वारा आयोजित सामाजिक आर्थिक बहिष्कार के चलते गाँव छोड़ना पड़ा था . करीब १५० परिवार हिसार के मिनी सेक्रेटेरिएट में रह रहे थे. बाद में बहुत से लोगो ने हिसार से दिल्ली तक का पैदल मार्च आयोजित कर मामले को देश के राजधानी में ला दिया क्योंकि हरयाणा सरकार के तरफ से कोई सकारात्मक जवाब नहीं मिल रहा था . पांच साल के लम्बी लड़ाई में जगदीश काजला और उनके भाई सतीश सुबह शाम अपना सब कुछ छोड़कर जंतर मंतर पे डटे रहे जिसमे उन्होंने लोगो के अलग अलग चेहरों को देखा . बहुत से लोग समर्थन में आये और बहुत से जुड़ने के बाद अलग हो गए . बहुतो ने आरोप लगाया के आन्दोलन भटक गया है तो बहुतो ने कहा के राजनीती करना चाहते हैं लेकिन हकीकत यह है के गाँव जाना अभी भी दूभर है और लोग या तो हिसार सेक्रेटेरिएट में हैं या अपने अपने रिस्ठेदारो के यहाँ दूर दूर चले गए हैं . इस पुरे आन्दोलन के प्रश्नों को लेकर जगदीश काजल से ये बातचीत जंतर मंतर पर कुछ महीने पूर्व रिकॉर्ड की गयी थी जब वह गाँव के अन्य साथियो के साथ रास्ट्रीय अनुसूचित आयोग में गए थे जहाँ पुरे दिन इंतज़ार करने के बाद भी हरयाणा पुलिस के प्रमुख अंततः नहीं पहुंचे जो यह भी दिखाता है के सरकारी आयोगों को अधिकारी कितनी गंभीरता से लेते हैं

Dawoodi Bohra activists jubilant over Union Minister Maneka Gandhi’s plan to abolish female genital mutilation

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Female genital mutilation is a serious criminal offence under IPC and POSCO Act, 2012 inviting an imprisonment of not less than 10 years and may extend to imprisonment for life


Representational image

Dawoodi Bohra activists are “absolutely delighted” over the statement of Union Minister for Women and Child Development (WCD), Maneka Gandhi that the central government will pass a law to prohibit female genital mutilation (FGM) unless the community’s headpriest [Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin] voluntarily issues an advisory to the community to banish the practice.

Gandhi according to a report today in the Hindustan Times has described the practice of female genital mutilation (FMG, also referred to as female genital cutting, khatna) as a “criminal offence”.

On May 8, the Supreme Court has issued notices to the Centre and four state governments in response to a PIL seeking the outlawing of the shameful practice.

It is reliably understood that the WCD ministry has sent advisories to state governments pointing out that FMG is a violation of sections of the IPC and the POSCO Act.

Also read: "I do not believe in your wisdom and power anymore": A Dawoodi Bohra woman's missive to Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin

“We will write to respective state governments and Syedna, the Bohra high priest, shortly to issue an edict to community members to give up FGM voluntarily as it is a crime under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act, 2012. If the Syedna does not respond then we will bring in a law to ban the practice in India,” Gandhi told the Hindustan Times.

“This is fantastic news and absolutely welcome”, the convener of the group ‘Speak Out Against FGM’, Masooma Ranalvi told Sabrang India. The group had recently launched an online petition calling upon the WCD minister to bring a law banning the practice.

“We are very excited and very happy”, enthused Arefa Johari of Sahiyo, an organization of Dawoodi Bohra women campaigning to end the practice of what it prefers to call female genital cutting (FGC).

Also read: SC Issues Notice On PIL Seeking Complete Ban On Female Genital Mutilation

“This is something we have been working at for a very long time and we heartily welcome the minister’s statement”, Johari added.

Ranalvi told SabrangIndia her group has been holding talks with the minister on how to banish the FGM practice which is “un-constitutional, against human rights and against existing Indian laws of the land”: Indian Penal Code (IPC) and The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POSCO Act).   

Johari stated that individual members of Sahiyo who were victims of FGC had also made representations before the WCD ministry.

Also read: Bohra women want an end to the practice of “female genital cutting": Sahiyo report

“We hope that Syedna saheb (head priest of the global Dawoodi Bohra community will abide by the laws of the land and issue an advisory to all his Indian followers to give up the practice of FGM just as he has already issued advisories to all Dawoodi Bohras living in the West,” she told Sabrang India.

Ranalvi categorically asserted that what is referred to as khatna or khahafz is not “female circumcision” as the community’s priests pretend it to be but falls within the Type 1 and Type 4 categories of FMG as described by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Also read: Jain fasting or Bohra female circumcision, why should children bear the brunt of religious fervour?

It may be noted that FMG is considered a serious criminal act with severe consequences both under IPC and POSCO.

Section 326 of IPC: “Voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means—Whoever, except in the case provided for by section 335, voluntarily causes grievous hurt by means of any instrument for shooting, stabbing or cutting, or any instrument which, used as a weapon of offence, is likely to cause death, or by means of fire or any heated substance, or by means of any poison or any corrosive substance, or by means of any explosive substance, or by means of any substance which it is deleterious to the human body to inhale, to swallow, or to re­ceive into the blood, or by means of any animal, shall be pun­ished with 1[imprisonment for life], or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine”.
 
Section 327 of IPC: “Voluntarily causing hurt to extort property, or to constrain to an illegal act.—Whoever voluntarily causes hurt, for the purpose of extorting from the sufferer, or from any person inter­ested in the sufferer, any property or valuable security, or of constraining the sufferer or any person interested in such suf­ferer to do anything which is illegal or which may facilitate the commission of an offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine”.
 
Section 9 (h) (i) and (j) of the POSCO Act define Aggravated Sexual Assault as:
“(h) whoever commits sexual assault on a child using deadly weapons, fire, heated substance or corrosive substance; or
“(i) whoever commits sexual assault causing grievous hurt or causing bodily harm and injury or injury to the sexual organs of the child; or
“(j) whoever commits sexual assault on a child, which —
“(i) physically incapacitates the child or causes the child to become mentally ill as defined under clause (l) of section 2 of the Mental Health Act, 1987 or causes impairment of any kind so as to render the child unable to perform regular
tasks, temporarily or permanently”.
 
The punishment for aggravated sexual assault under the Act is “rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than 10 years but which may extend to imprisonment for life and shall also be liable to fine”.
 
In the past year members of the Dawoodi Bohra community held responsible for FMG have been jailed in Australia last year. In USA last month federal authorities have made arrests and the accused face prosecution for performing, aiding or abetting FMG.
 

Victim of repeated rape, young woman slices off godman’s genitals; “brave girl”, says Kerala CM

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Image credit: The Kathmandu Post

A young woman who was allegedly raped repeated by a godman for the past three years, chopped off his genitals with a knife before he could do it one more time.

The 54-year-old named Sreehari, is also known as Ganga Shashwatapada Swamy. The swamy who is from an ashram is Kerala’s Kollam district has been admitted to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College.

The woman complained to the police that she was the repeated of repeated sexual assaults by the man for the past three years, since she was a minor. On Friday, when he attempted a fresh assault, she sliced off his genitals with a sharp knife. The attacker was later taken to the hospital by the girl’s family.

A case under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) has been registered against the man. The victim’s mother has been taken into police custody as well as she is believed to have worked in connivance with the godman.

The Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has come out in support of the young woman saying, “It was a courageous step, no doubt about it.”
 

Girish Karnad in ‘Samskara’ Takes on the Brutality of Caste

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Pattabhi Rama Reddy’s movie, based on UR Ananthamurthy’s novel, is a bold and blistering attack on the caste system.


Girish Karnad in Samsara
 
A group of Brahmins is furiously debating Naranappa’s cremation. They hated Naranappa for his meat-eating, alcohol-drinking and non-Brahminical ways. He even caught fish in the temple pond and abandoned his Brahmin wife to live with a Dalit woman. Can Naranappa be considered a Brahmin at all – and should he be cremated as one?

Just then, Chandri, Naranappaa’s mistress, enters and hands over all the gold she possesses to pay for the funeral rites. The Brahmins stare at the gold. The discussion changes from who is a good Brahmin to who should get the gold.

UR Ananthamurthy’s 1965 novel Samskara and Pattabhi Rama Reddy’s 1970 film adaptation are both blisteringly bold attacks on the caste system and the moral superiority of Brahmins. Ananthamurthy’s novel provoked one man in particular to turn to filmmaking. When he read Samskara, he was so excited by it that he felt that “here was material that was crying out to be filmed”. 

That man was Girish Karnad.
 

Samskara (1970).

“I talked to a lot of people about the book, suggesting that they make a film of the novel,” Karnad said in an interview to India Today. “I was involved at the time with an amateur theatrical group called the Madras Players, and Pattabhi Rama Reddy, who was also with us, said, ‘OK, I’ll find the money, we’ll make the film…’ Looking back, I realize that I would probably have been drawn to film one way or another, it would have been impossible to ignore the medium altogether, but the accident of reading the book was the spark.”

The film was a team effort by a group of friends. Along with Reddy, there was his wife Snehalata Reddy (as plays Chandri), artist SG Vasudev, Australian filmmaker Tom Cowan and filmmaker and writer Rani Day Burra. 

Karnad acted as the protagonist Praneshacharya “against his will”. Praneshacharya, revered Brahmin in the Brahmin quarter known as the agrahara and respected for his high moral standards and adherence to caste rules, has the dirty job of deciding the fate of Naranappa’s body. Praneshacharya’s wife is bed-ridden and we see the devout man dedicating his life in the service of his wife.

Karnad’s screenplay makes us believe that such a man will indeed find a suitable caste-bound solution to Naranappa’s cremation. Days pass and the body rots away. Unable to find an answer, Praneshacharya prays to the god Hanuman for help.

Shame and freedom

However, when Praneshacharya runs into Chandri, she fills him with a desire he has never known. The two have sex in the forest. Spontaneous and fiery, this scene remains startling especially because the film betrays no hint of such a turn of events. Reddy ensures that we see two bodies in contact instead of two flowers touching. A rebellion against film convention, if you will, mirroring the breaking of false ideas of caste purity.

The encounter triggers an enormous tumult within Praneshacharya, who flees the agrahara to run away from what he has just discovered about himself. He meets Putta, a non-Brahmin, who stuns him with his kindness. In Putta, Praneshacharya sees the value of living a life without judgment and in touch with one’s feelings in all honesty. It is a life outside of caste where humanity is all that matters. The film ends with Praneshacharya returning to the agrahara where a plague has caused the villagers to flee. A plague triggered by a rotting body – and the rottenness of the caste system.

Karnad captures the essence of Praneshacharya’s turmoil with remarkable ease and fealty. The transition from a self-assured man to a man cowering in shame at what he has discovered about himself is stark and accurate. The camera too begins to corner him as he runs away from himself, moving from wide angle shots to tight frames that trap Praneshacharya.

Samskara was part of the Indian New Wave that spread across various Indian states in the late 1960s and ’70s. Reddy’s film was banned initially for fear of a backlash from the Brahmin community, and was released shortly later. It went on to win the National Award for Best Film that year.

Ananthamurthy’s novel too had been both popular and controversial. It outraged members of the Brahmin community, but was equally hailed as a landmark in the Navya movement of modernism in Kannada literature.

As much as he loved Samskara in 1970, Karnad shared an uneasy relationship with Ananthamurthy’s other novels, even going to the extent of openly dismissing the late writer’s legacy. On the same occasion, Karnad even called Samskara “baseless” and “shallow”.

But in 1970, the book, the actor and the writer were all on the same page. And Indian cinema is thankful for that.

Girish Karnad in Samskara (1970).
Girish Karnad in Samskara (1970).

This article was first published on scroll.in.

UN Standards on Clinical Trials to be Implemented by ICMR

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After much controversy on the ethical standards around clinical trials in India, show cased in gross violations in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, India's apex medical research body along with other leading groups will now adopt UN health agency's recommendations to register and publicly disclose results of all clinical trials they fund or support.


Image Courtesy: Livemint

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Norwegian Research Council, the UK Medical Research Council, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Epicentre (its research arm), PATH, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Institut Pasteur, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust agreed to develop and implement policies within the next 12 months that require all trials they fund, co-fund, sponsor or support to be registered in a publicly-available registry. 

They also agreed that all results would be disclosed within specified timeframes on the registry or by publication in a scientific journal. "We need timely clinical trial results to inform clinical care practices as well as make decisions about allocation of resources for future research," said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research. "We welcome the agreement of international standards for reporting timeframes that everyone can work towards," Swaminathan said.

Currently about 50 per cent of clinical trials go unreported, according to several studies, often because the results are negative. These unreported trial results leave an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the risks and benefits of vaccines, drugs and medical devices, and can lead to use of suboptimal or even harmful products.

Background

In January 2013, the Supreme Court directed the health ministry to monitor and regulate all clinical trials of experimental drugs in the country until further notice and observed that unregulated trials have caused “havoc”. The apex court order had revoked the power of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization under the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), which has so far been the nodal agency for monitoring clinical trials in India. The Supreme Court was hearing a lawsuit filed by non-profit Swasthya Adhikar Manch in February, which had alleged that participants in such clinical trials faced health problems and had even died because of the practice. Advocate Sanjay Parikh had appeared in the matter.

“Uncontrolled clinical trials are causing havoc to human life. There are so many legal and ethical issues involved with clinical trials and the government has not done anything so far,” justice R.M. Lodha said while hearing the petition. Livemint reported that the court has directed the health secretary to file an admissible affidavit within four weeks after it refused to accept one filed by deputy drugs controllers as it failed to comply with the court’s order passed in October 2012.
 
Then, in October 2012, the apex court had said it may bar clinical trials in the country unless the health ministry provided information within a month regarding deaths during such programmes, besides compensation and general practices when new drugs are tested on Indians.

DCGI had submitted in court on Thursday that 475 human clinical trials for “new chemical entities not approved as drugs for human use anywhere in the world” were approved by the Indian drug regulator between January 2005 and 30 June 2012. Out of the 475 experimental drugs, 17 have been given approval for marketing, according to court records.

During the period, 11,972 serious adverse events, excluding deaths, were reported, out of which 506 have been attributed to clinical trials. None of the victims has been compensated. A total of 57,303 subjects were enrolled in these clinical trials and 39,022 of them have completed the trials.
 
“The magnitude of the problem is now emerging with the government admitting that no laws were in place between 2005 and 2012 for new chemical entities and yet the government was approving trials so casually,” said Amulya Nidhi, an activist with Swasthya Adhikar Manch. “Our whole plea has been to stop testing for experimental drugs unless there is a regulation in place for it. Besides, there is no mention of rules regarding compensation in the Drug and Cosmetics Act. We hope to strengthen our campaign for relevant amendments in the Act.”
 
In response to interim applications seeking information on experimental drugs being tested in India, between January 2005 and 30 June 2012, the Indian Union government said there were no records for trials conducted between 2005 and 2007. Since 2008, government records showed that 80 deaths can directly be attributed to clinical trials and 40 of these victims have been compensated.This is the first time that state governments have been asked to put comprehensive data on clinical trials in the public domain, according to Chinmay Mishra, one of the petitioners.

According to conservative estimates by Swasthya Adhikar Manch, there have been 2,374 reported deaths during clinical trials since 2007.
 
India’s clinical trial industry has been mushrooming since the introduction of patent protection laws in 2005, drawing multinational companies because of its ethnically diverse pool of patients with low entitlement literacy and huge regulatory void, according to Mishra.
 
The rationale behind conducting clinical trials in India is that these can bring down research and development costs by nearly 60% for big pharmaceutical companies, according to industry estimates. “We don’t know what exactly the court has expressed by revocation of DCGI’s power. The department of health is the authority which makes the policy for clinical trials,” said Arun Bhatt, president of Clininvent Research Pvt. Ltd, one of the country’s top clinical research organisations.
 
Monitoring Norms
 
With the latest developments, "Research funders are making a strong statement that there will be no more excuses on why some clinical trials remain unreported long after they have completed," said Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation at World Health Organisation. The signatories to the statement also agreed to monitor compliance with registration requirements and to endorse the development of systems to monitor results reporting.

In 2015, WHO published its position on public disclosure of results from clinical trials, which defines timeframes within which results should be reported, and calls for older unpublished trials to be reported. That position builds on the World Medical Associations Declaration of Helsinki in 2013.

Todays agreement by some of the world's major research funders and international NGOs will mean the ethical principles described in both statements will now be enforced in thousands of trials every year.

Most of these trials and their results will be accessible via WHOs International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, a unique global database of clinical trials that compiles data from 17 registries around the world.

Human rights violations in clinical trials in India, the case of the HPV vaccination project
 
In 2009, the States of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat launched a research project for the vaccination against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which can cause cervical cancer. Adolescent girls between the ages of 10 – 14 in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat were to be vaccinated. The vaccines were provided by GlaxoSmithKline and Merck. The project was designed and executed by PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and funding was received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In April 2010, however, the Government of India suspended the program as several violations of ethical standards by PATH were widely reported by human rights organizations. However, by that time, 24,000 girls had already been vaccinated.

852 Farmer Suicides in 120 Days in Maharashtra

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Maharashtra has reported 852 farmer suicides in the four months between January to April this year, according to government data. Times of India reports that this means an average of seven farmer suicides were reported every single day during this period. As many as 409 cases – or 48% – are from Vidarbha region, from where chief minister Devendra Fadnavis hails.

Overall, the figures are lower than the 1,023 cases reported during the same span last year, when the state was in the grip of a severe drought and water crisis. Subsequently, the state experienced a good monsoon.

Within the cotton belt of Vidarbha, the bulk of farmer suicides are from the five districts of Amravati, which reported 324 cases. This is not much lower than the 339 cases reported during this period last year. So far, 85 cases have been reported from Nagpur division. Marathwada region, which had experienced successive years of drought, reported 291 cases till April this year, or 34% of the total. Last year, by April, the figure was 375.

North Maharashtra reported 132 farmer suicides by the end of April, or 15% of the total cases. The Konkan belt reported only one case so far, while the sugar belt of Western Maharashtra has reported 19 cases, according to revenue department figures.

The Opposition has been demanding a farm loan waiver, the issue which led to its Sangharsh Yatra. But the state has refused to grant it, saying it would cost Rs 30,500 crore and that the earlier waiver did not stem suicides.

Farm leaders say the government has not done enough to address the critical issues of pricing and farm loans. "As we face the monsoon, many farmers who have not been able to repay existing loans will not be eligible for fresh loans," says farm leader Vijay Jawandhia. Pointing to the tur dal glut, he said the government did not act quickly enough to impose restrictions on imports.

Farmer suicides (January-April 2017)

Konkan | 1

North Maharashtra | 132

Western Maharashtra | 19

Marathwada | 291
 

Vidarbha | 409
 

Total | 852
 

2016 | 1,023 
 

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