TIMES TOP10

Supreme Court resumes hearing on PIL against freebies; Government to meet stakeholders for adoption of common charger for all devices; Congress to hold protest rallies against price rise, unemployment; Tamil Nadu CM Stalin likely to meet PM Modi; Fourth phase of CUET begins today

A Kashmiri Pandit was killed and his brother was injured when militants opened fire on them in an apple orchard in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Tuesday.

A spate of attacks

• Militants have stepped up attacks in the Kashmir valley over the past week. A total of 15 civilians and six security forces personnel have been killed in targeted attacks this year.
• A policeman was killed in Nowhatta on Sunday and a migrant labourer from Bihar was shot dead in Bandipora last week. The migrant labourer, Mohd Amrez, was the fourth non-local to be killed in a targeted attack in Kashmir this year.
• On Monday, a policeman and a civilian were injured in two separate grenade blasts on Monday. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and political leaders of various parties condemned Tuesday’s attack.

‘Leave the valley’

• Meanwhile, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharash Samiti (KPSS) has asked the community members to move to safer places like Jammu and Delhi in the wake of the increased attacks on them by the militants.
• “With another deadly attack on Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir, the terrorists have made it clear that they are going to kill all the Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir valley," KPSS chief Sanjay Tickoo said.

A Chinese navy vessel arrived at the Beijing-built Hambantota port in southern Sri Lanka on Tuesday, after its port call was earlier delayed due to apparent security concerns raised by India.

• The ship: Sri Lanka has referred to the Yuan Wang 5 as a “scientific research ship," but there are fears in India that the vessel could be used to snoop on the region with multiple media reports calling it a “dual-use spy ship”.
• The capability: The tracking vessel has significant aerial reach — reportedly around 750 km — means that several ports in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh could be on China’s radar, Associated Press said quoting a media report.
• A key military asset: The Yuan Wang family of naval vessels serve both the Chinese missile force and its space program, which is run by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). PLA officers serve in command positions aboard the Yuan Wang class vessels, which may also have civilians in their crews.
• Beijing allays fears: China’s foreign ministry dismissed concerns about the ship, saying its deployment “conforms to international law and international common practice, and will not affect the security and economic interests of any country”.
• Strategic interests: The closely watched developments surrounding the vessel underscore the competing interests of India and China in the small island nation. For more than a decade, Sri Lanka’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean and along one of the busiest shipping routes has seen both countries vie for influence.

The apex court on Tuesday said the practice of divorce in Muslims through ‘Talaq-e-Hasan’ is not akin to triple talaq and that women also have an option of ‘khula’. In Islam, a man can take ‘talaq’, while a woman can part ways with her husband through ‘khula’.

What is Talaq-e-Hasan?

• In Talaq-e-Hasan, divorce gets formalised after the third utterance in the third month if cohabitation is not resumed during this period. However, if cohabitation resumes after the first or second utterance of talaq, the parties are assumed to have reconciled and the first or second utterances of talaq are deemed invalid.
• In 2017, the Supreme Court declared triple talaq or instant divorce unconstitutional. Two years later, Parliament passed a law that criminalises the practice of triple talaq.

A new petition

• The Supreme Court was hearing a plea seeking to declare ‘Talaq-e-Hasan’' and all other forms of “unilateral extra-judicial talaq as void and unconstitutional”, claiming they were “arbitrary, irrational, and violated fundamental rights”.
• A bench of Justices S K Kaul and M M Sundresh said if husband and wife cannot live together, it can also grant divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown under Article 142 of the Constitution.
• “This is not triple talaq in that sense. Marriage being contractual in nature, you also have an option of khula… Prima facie, I don't agree with petitioners. I don't want this to become an agenda for any other reason,” the bench observed. The next hearing is scheduled for August 29.

Accusing the Archbishop Of Bangalore Diocese Dr Peter Machado along with the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India of having “resorted to falsehood and selective self-serving documents”, the Centre on Tuesday termed reports of attacks on Christians as false in a note filed in the Supreme Court (SC).

Identity crisis?

• In its preliminary note of objections, the Centre said that the petitioners’ information was based on ““independent” online databases and from findings of various non-profit organisations” — an enquiry of which revealed “that majority of the incidents alleged as Christian persecution in these reports were either false or wrongfully projected.”
• The Centre also submitted that several such cases projected as attacks on Christians were actually criminal cases arising out of personal enmity that had been given a communal colour.
• Citing specific instances, the Centre alleged that in a report by Evangelical Fellowship of India-Religious Liberty Commission (EFI-RLC), titled 'Hate and targeted violence against Christians in India, 2021’, 162 incidents were not truthfully recorded and another 139 incidents were false or deliberately projected as violence against Christians.

What’s the petition about

• Earlier this month, the petitioners had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the SC through which they sought an end to the “sinister phenomena of violence" and “targeted hate speech" against India’s Christian community.
• The SC, which had refused to get into the enquiry of individual cases, has now fixed the next date of hearing for August 25 when the petitioners will file their response to the Centre’s note.

The release of 11 men convicted of raping Bilkis Bano by the Gujarat government has possibly set the state and the Centre on a collision course even as it’s the BJP which calls the shots in both places.

Wheels of motion

• In June earlier this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a notice proposing “to give special remission to certain categories of prisoners and release them in three phases — 15th August, 2022 (75th anniversary of Independence), 26th January 2023 (Republic Day) and again on 15th August, 2023” — as part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav events to commemorate India’s 75th year of freedom.
• Even as the notification said that male prisoners above 60 were eligible to be considered for remission, it also specifically forbids release of those prisoners who have been “convicted for the offence of rape.”

State’s loophole

• Interestingly, the remission granted to the rapists came under a Gujarat government policy that has been upheld by the Supreme Court (SC). After one of the rapists moved the SC seeking premature release under the Code of Criminal Procedure as he had served over 15 years in prison, the apex court directed the state government to take a decision as per its 1992 policy on remission of convicts, which was in force at the time of conviction in 2008.

The case

• The 11 men who walked free were found guilty of raping a then 21-year old Bano, who was five months pregnant when she was assaulted, with her toddler daughter killed along with six other family members in Gujarat’s Dahod district in March 2002 in the violence that erupted after the burning of a coach of Sabarmati Express in which 59 kar-sewaks were killed.
• The 11 were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Mumbai, with the sentencing upheld by the Bombay High Court. Bano had told the special court during the trial that the rapists were known to her as they used to buy milk from her family regularly.

Indian Railways (IR). The IR conducted a test run of its longest freight train, the 3.5km long Super Vasuki with 295 loaded wagons carrying 27,000 tonnes of coal between Korba in Chhattisgarh and Rajnandgaon in Maharashtra’s Nagpur district. Owner of four UNESCO World Heritage Sites — Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (inscribed in 1999), Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai (inscribed in 2004), Nilgiri Mountain Railway (inscribed in 2005), and Kalka Shimla Railway (Inscribed in 2008) — it employs about 14 lakh people. Diamond Crossing is the place from where trains go to the East, West, North and South. Its mascot is Bholu the elephant.