The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Kerala government on a plea seeking permission to euthanise “suspected rabid” and “extremely dangerous” stray dogs in the Kannur district of the state.
A vacation bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice M M Sundresh issued a notice to Kerala and directed it to file a reply by July 7.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by the district panchayat of Kannur raising the issue of stray dog attacks and mentioned the death of an 11-year-old differently abled boy in such an attack in the district this month.
The matter was mentioned before the bench for an urgent hearing.
”On the oral request, the matter has been taken on board on the date fixed, that is July 12. Counter-affidavit to be filed by July 7,” the bench said.
The plea said, ”It is pertinent to mention that 5,794 stray dogs attacks were reported in 2019, as many as 3,951 cases in 2020, 7,927 cases in 2021, 11,776 cases in 2022 and 6,276 cases up to June 19, 2023, in the Kannur district itself. It is further submitted that there are approximately 28,000 stray dogs in the limits of the applicant herein.” It said the menace has continued despite every effort to control it.
The 11-year-old boy was found grievously injured in a bush near his home on June 11. Nihal, who suffered from autism, was missing from 5 pm on Sunday. He was later found in a grievously injured state and was taken to a hospital where he died.
The Supreme Court is seized of a batch of petitions on issues relating to orders passed by various civic bodies on the culling of stray dogs that have become a menace, especially in Kerala and Mumbai.
Tesla's Elon Musk says eyeing significant India investments after meeting PM Modi 3
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was pushing the car maker to make a “significant investment” in the country, adding that such an announcement was expected soon. His comments came after a meeting with PM Modi on Tuesday during the Indian leader’s state visit to the United States. A source previously told Reuters that Musk would brief PM Modi on plans to set up a manufacturing base in India.
India has strong potential for a sustainable energy future including solar power, stationary battery packs and electric vehicles, Musk said, adding that he hopes to bring SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service to India as well. “He (Modi) really cares about India because he’s pushing us to make significant investments in India, which is something we intend to do,” Musk told reporters after the meeting.
“I am confident that Tesla will be in India and will do so as soon as humanly possible.” Later, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson tweeted saying Modi had invited Musk to “explore opportunities in India for investments in electric mobility and rapidly expanding commercial space sector.”
The South Asian country is now looking to allow some U.S. companies to initially collaborate with Indian firms for investments in its space sector, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. India opened the way for private launches in 2020 and
wants its private space companies to increase their share of the global launch market by five-fold within the next decade.
Executives of Tesla visited India and held talks with Indian bureaucrats and ministers last month on establishing a manufacturing base for cars and batteries in India. Musk said last month Tesla would probably pick a location for a new factory by the end of this year, adding India was an interesting place for a new plant.
US companies need to reduce reliance on China as a manufacturing base in the face of tensions between Washington and Beijing. Tesla last year shelved its India entry plans due to high import tax structures. Modi’s meeting with Musk, who owns Twitter, came days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the platform for not complying with content takedown orders during a 2020-2021 protest. India called the allegation an “outright lie”.
“Twitter does not have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don’t obey local government laws, we will get shut down…,” Musk told reporters on Tuesday.
Adipurush movie is nothing but cultural destruction 5
After seeing Bahubali, Baji Rao Mastani, and RRR, watching Adipurush was a punishment. The South Indian movie industry has shown us a big shift; they excelled on every level. They have good technicians and skilled people. But in Bollywood, it has always been glory, fantasy, fashion, fiction, and heroism. There are hardly any good movies with mind-blowing VFX (apart from people like Sanjay Leela Bhansali) in filmmaking. Either they’re taking people for granted or don’t even realize what they’re doing. The Ramayana is beloved by Hindus because of the lessons and values it imparts on good versus evil and the importance of doing your duty, yet from the teaser, it doesn’t seem that these lessons will be shown. Rather, it will be another empty action spectacle designed to bilk money from unsuspecting moviegoers.
Adipurush is the latest rehearsal of the Ramayana. The problems that have come to your feet are various. The film has many flaws, such as Raavan looking like a Mughal invader. In the Ramayana, there is a clear description of how he looked, and that is how he has been portrayed down through the ages. Hanuman and his vanar sena look like rejects from Planet of the Apes. However, the biggest gripe that people are having is about the VFX. They had a budget of Rs. 500 crore, and this is what they came up with? Animation in the name of CGI Even Ra.One and Brahmastra (which was a stride for Indian VFX but still not up to Hollywood standards) were better than this movie. Even Ravana’s heads look like Snapchat filters applied to Saif Ali Khan gone crazy.
Raavan is a complex character. On the one hand, he was a scholar well versed in scripture and a devotee of Shiva. On the other hand, his character flaws, such as his egotism and his obsession with Sita, made him evil and led to his disgrace. In the teaser, Raavan is shown as a one-dimensional brute, a portrayal at odds with his scholarly and meditative nature.
Ram’s physique is clearly unimpressive, with CGI used to give him fake abs and tone up his other body parts. Prabhas is more than capable of flaunting an impressive physique; then why give him fake abs? Even the Ram from the 1987 serial was not digitally buffed up, yet he made an impact on viewers.
Lord Rama lives in Hindu hearts, and the Ramayana is one of the great epics that we all follow, believe in, and live by as Hindus. When they are pictured, the filmmakers need to be clearer because they are interpreting it for the world. Already, Hindu gods and goddesses are mocked. We are adding misinterpretation to their narration of our deities. Adipurush is one such horrible representation that one should actually ban.
When you announce that the movie is about Lord Ram and Ramayan, you have to stick to the basics and not work against them. Nobody has a problem if ‘Adipurush’ is a fictional movie based on historical events, but the characters should be fictional too. You can’t show some mythical figure that is against the famous narration and claim it as – This is Lord Ram or Ravan. That’s simply unacceptable.
Ravan is the king of Lanka; he had warriors to fight for him, not apes. And this is the first time I’ve seen a king without a crown. Isn’t the crown a basic identity for a Lankan King? I mean, kings wear crowns even during battle, and that’s an identity that distinguishes them from the rest of the crowd on the battlefield.
Just show Ramayan as Ramayan. What’s the complexity? This is actor NTR in Telugu movies portraying Lord Ram. To date, calendar publishers have printed his picture as Lord Ram in South India. That’s the respect the movie industry had for Hindu devotional characters. Adipurush is trying to follow Hollywood filmmaking – “Take a script from History, change the narration to suit current political trend.”
My problem with Bollywood-style artistic choices in movies in general is that they have that fantasy of exaggerating everything. Which in turn ruins the true essence of a story, the characters, and the environment involved in that. Pick any movie you want, and you will find a rare, never-ending “colorful gloss,” like a mandatory thing. However, there are some Indian movies that I would not put in the “glossy” category. Especially the tiger scene of RRR. It was photo-realistic, and another one would be thumbed because it didn’t attempt to look flashy. The makers tried to make things as realistic as possible.
There’s only one possibility for Adipurush. It’ll become the biggest disaster of all time in the history of Indian cinema. There’s no second possibility at all. Even the die-hard Prabhas fans would agree with me. Made on a massive budget of around 500 crore, it requires a grand opening to start things off. Let’s assume it gets around 150 crore worldwide. The movie won’t collect much after it, given that the characters in the story are cartoonish. Many other answers have described how some of the visuals are copied from other English movies like Game of Thrones and others. It has already ensured that the expectations of most of the audience are met.
Back in 2020, when the announcement of the movie was made, I was genuinely interested in how the movie would be made. But the teaser has ensured that I needn’t waste my money on watching the movie. I guess the teaser would’ve had a similar impact on many other viewers. Prabhas looks like a caricature of himself and less like Prabhu Shri Ram. His entire physique is computer-generated and looks extremely fake. His face, moustache, expressions, etc. bring Duryodhana to mind. Other characters are also shown wearing leather like medieval Europeans. Barely a glimpse of Bhagwa.
The CGI of Adipurush is horrible, to say the least. It makes one wonder if the team deliberately wanted people to feel unimpressed or underwhelmed. Om Raut had a 500 crore budget, but he seems to have given the job of VFX artist to the top student at White Hat Junior. It is supposed to be a blended animation, but the overall effect is such that you feel like you are watching two different movies—an animated movie and a normal one.
(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
Sanjay Raut writes to UN, urging it to declare June 20 as 'World Traitors Day' 7
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut has written to the United Nations, urging it to declare June 20 as “World Traitors Day” to mark the “desertion” of his party chief Uddhav Thackeray by 40 Shiv Sena MLAs, including Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Raut said that on June 20 (last year), a group of 40 legislators from the Shiv Sena broke away from their party after being “instigated” by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Each of them is said to have taken Rs 50 crore to defect,” said Raut in the letter, a claim rubbished by the legislators.
The letter dated June 19 was tweeted by him on Tuesday.
“The 40 MLAs who stabbed us were led by a leading legislator Eknath Shinde (who is now the CM of Maharashtra). Along with them, 10 Independents supporting the Maha Vikas Aghadi government left us,” Raut said.
He said the process began on June 20 when Shinde and others left Mumbai for the neighbouring state of Gujarat.
“They deserted Uddhav Thackeray who was an ailing man and underwent two major surgeries on November 12 and November 19, 2021,” Raut said.
Each one of them took advantage of Thackeray’s illness, he said in the letter.
“I am appealing to you to make June 20 as World Traitors Day just as June 21 is observed as World Yoga Day. This must be done so that the world remembers traitors,” he said.
The rebellion by 39 MLAs spearheaded by Shinde led to the collapse of the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government last year. While it also split the 57-year-old party, the Election Commission of India later allotted the Shiv Sena name and its bow-and-arrow symbol to the Shinde camp.
Separately, Shiv Sena (UBT) party workers on Tuesday also observed June 20 as ‘World Traitors Day’ in different parts of the state.
Punjab Assembly passes resolution over Centre 'withholding' Rs 3,622 crore RDF dues 9
The Punjab Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution over the Centre ”withholding” more than Rs 3,600 crore in Rural Development Fund, with Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann warning that the state government will approach the Supreme Court if the money is not released within a week.
The Punjab government has accused the BJP-led Centre of not releasing Rs 3,622.40 crore of the Rural Development Fund.
The motion was moved by Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian.
”This House recommends to the state government to approach the central government for the release of withheld RDF (Rural Development Fund) amounting to Rs 3,622.40 crore immediately so as to continue with the uninterrupted developmental activities for the welfare of farmers and rural population of Punjab,” the resolution stated.
”Due to non-release of the Rural Development Fee for the last four seasons — Kharif market season 2021-22, Rabi market season 2022-23, Kharif market season 2022-23 and Rabi market season 2023-24 by the Government of India, the rural development works of Punjab are being adversely affected,” it further stated.
Mann said, ”RDF is our right, we are not begging” and added that if the Centre does not release the fund within a week, the state government will approach the Supreme Court.
SC dismisses pleas challenging Calcutta HC order on deployment of central forces in WB 11
The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed pleas challenging a Calcutta High Court order directing the State Election Commission (SEC) to requisition and deploy central forces across West Bengal for the upcoming panchayat elections.
A vacation bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Manoj Misra said the fact remains that the tenor of the high court order is ultimately to ensure free and fair elections in the state since it is conducting local body polls on a single day.
The high court had on June 15 directed the SEC to requisition and deploy central forces across West Bengal for the panchayat elections within 48 hours.
The court had noted that no appreciable steps had been taken ever since it passed an order on June 13 to deploy central forces in sensitive areas for the poll process.
The high court had directed the SEC to requisition central forces for deployment in all the districts of the state that were rocked by violence during filing of nominations for the July 8 panchayat elections.
Mumbai Police commissioner-led SIT to probe 'irregularities' in BMC works 13
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has given approval for setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe ”irregularities” worth Rs 12,024 crore in various works of the Mumbai civic body flagged by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
The SIT will be headed by the Mumbai police commissioner, said a statement issued by the Chief Minister’s Office late Monday night.
The statement said Shinde has given approval to set up the SIT that will probe Rs 12,024-crore irregularities in various works previously undertaken by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) when the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power (from November 2019 to June 2022) in the state.
India’s richest civic body is currently under an administrator and the term of its corporators ended early last year.
Shinde has also given directives to include top officials of the Mumbai police’s economic offences wing and other senior police officials in the probe, said the release.
The municipal corporation undertook several works during November 2019-June 2022, a period which also covered the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Mumbai Amit Satam had written a letter to Shinde claiming irregularities in various COVID-19-related works after the CAG submitted its audit report.
Satam, in his letter, demanded an SIT probe into ”irregularities” flagged by the CAG report.
A 45-year-old security guard of a residential building in Mumbai has been arrested for allegedly molesting a seven-year-old girl inside the electricity meter room of the complex on multiple occasions, a police official said on Monday.
According to the Samata Nagar police station official, the security guard, arrested on Saturday, has been working in the housing society where the girls stays with her family for the last few months.
During probe, the police found the accused would take the minor girl inside the electricity meter room of the building and molest her whenever he found her alone in the society premises, he said.
The accused also used to threaten her of dire consequences if she revealed his criminal act to anyone, said the official.
After keeping mum for several weeks, the girl one day told her mother about the accused’s misdeeds, following which the family lodged a complaint at the Samta Nagar police station in suburban Mumbai.
An FIR was filed against the security guard and he was arrested under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), he added.
Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar shot dead in Canada 16
Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was wanted in India with National Investigation Agency (NIA) having announced a cash reward on him, was gunned down outside a gurdwara in the parking area in Canada’s Surrey, according to a report in Vancouver Sun. Hailing from Bharsinghpur village in Punjab’s Jalandhar, Nijjar was based in Surrey and had been declared “absconder” by the NIA.
Canada-based Vancouver Sun said Surrey RCMP S. Sgt. Tyner Gillies did not confirm the identity of the murder victim, who was found inside his grey truck in the parking lot. “Upon attendance police found an adult male inside a vehicle suffering from apparent gunshot wounds and provided medical assistance until Emergency Health Services arrived on scene. The man died of his injuries at the scene,” Gillies said.
He said the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team had been called in. “At this early stage of the investigation, any possible motives for the shooting are not yet known. Police are still working to determine possible suspect descriptions from multiple witnesses who were in the area,” Gillies said, according to Vancouver Sun.
“Surrey RCMP is aware of social media posts that are speculating on the identity of the victim, but are not in a position to confirm the victim’s identity at this very early time,” the official said, according to the report. It said Nijjar was married with two sons and worked as a plumber.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had in July last year announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh on Nirjar in the case of killing of a Hindu priest in Jalandhar. “Hardeep Singh Nijjar is wanted by the National Investigation Agency in NIA case in the conspiracy hatched by Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) operating under Nijjar, to kill a Hindu priest at Jalandhar,” NIA had said in a release.
“Hardeep Singh Nijjar is presently residing in Canada and is the Chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF). Nijjar is also promoting the secessionist and violent agenda of Sikhs for Justice in India,” it added. NIA was also probing cases against Nijjar including those related to “Punjab Referendum 2020 for Khalistan”.
Delhi Police arrests two for stabbing DU student Nikhil to death over dispute 18
Two persons including a school dropout have been apprehended by Delhi Police in connection with the incident where a student was stabbed to death in Delhi University Campus on Sunday, police said on Monday. According to police, two persons, identified as Rahul – a 1st year BA student – and Haroon – a school dropout and friend of Rahul – have been apprehended in connection to the incident.
“The investigation is in progress. We have identified two more persons involved in this incident,” Manoj C, DCP (South West Delhi) told ANI. Officials said that the victim student was allegedly stabbed to death at Delhi University’s South Campus on Sunday afternoon.
The police in its preliminary investigation found that a fight broke out between the two over a dispute pertaining to a girl, during which the victim was stabbed to death. DCP Manoj C said that the deceased student, identified as Nikhil, was a BA (H) 1st-year student of the School of Open Learning.
“About a week ago, one of the students in college misbehaved with his girlfriend. On Sunday, at 12:30 pm, the main accused from the same college along with 3 others met Nikhil outside the college gate and stabbed him,” he said.
