The Supreme Court today granted bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair, arrested last month, in six cases filed against him across Uttar Pradesh for alleged hate speech. In its order, the top court said there was no justification in keeping Zubair in continued custody. The Supreme Court also transferred the investigation in six FIRs in Uttar Pradesh to the Special Cell of the Delhi Police as all the cases pertain to the same tweets allegedly deemed offensive. In Punjab, two men booked for the murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala were killed in an encounter with the police near Amritsar. According to the police, Mandeep Manu and Jagdeep Rupa, accused of shooting at Moosewala, were killed near village Chicha Bhanka, where they had taken shelter in an isolated house in a field. The police have recovered one AK 47, a pistol and a bag from the site. Three policemen were also wounded in the encounter, while one cameraman sustained a bullet injury. A Delhi court today sent former Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey to nine-day ED custody in connection with the alleged phone-tapping of NSE employees, which the central agency suspects could be linked to money laundering. The ED case is based on a CBI First Information Report registered in 2018 against the IPS officer, an audit company linked to his family, and others, including arrested NSE’s former managing director and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna. Ranil Wickremesinghe was today elected as the new President of Sri Lanka. He will replace Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled the country and resigned after public anger over the country’s worst economic crisis exploded on the streets 10 days ago. Ranil got 134 votes, Dullas Alahapperuma, a rebel leader of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, got 82 votes, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna got three votes. From presiding over the remains of the United National Party after a stunning election defeat in which it failed to win a single seat to becoming President of his country, Ranil’s fortunes have changed dramatically in this history-making year in Sri Lanka. As President, he has his task cut out as he takes charge at a time when the country, in his own words, is “bankrupt”. Political Pulse As the Eknath Shinde-BJP alliance government in Maharashtra recently announced the restoration of a pension scheme for political activists who were imprisoned during the Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during 1975-77, the state Congress criticised the move, asking how could CM Shinde clear the decision, which, the party claimed, was against the ideology of the Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, who had openly supported the Emergency. The scheme was initially launched by the erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government in 2018. It was scrapped in 2020 by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government which included the Congress and the NCP as partners besides the Sena. The BJP and the RJD in Bihar have been locked in a slugfest following top RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav’s sharp attack on Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai charging that the latter had “come with a request to be taken into the RJD when he had not become a minister”. Returning fire, the BJP rolled out several of its leaders to not just mount a counter-attack on Tejashwi but to also float a reverse story. A key reason for the BJP’s sharp reaction to Tejashwi’s assault on Rai lies in the fact that the latter is one of its most high-profile state leaders and a prominent Yadav face, whose name has been doing the rounds in state political circles as the saffron party’s possible chief ministerial candidate in future. Santosh Singh reports. Express Explained Answering an unstarred question on Lok Sabha, the Ministry of Home Affairs stated that over 1.6 lakh Indians relinquished their Indian citizenship in 2021. According to the government data, the largest numbers of Indians who relinquished Indian citizenship in 2021 went to the United States (78,284), followed by Australia (23,533), Canada (21,597), and the United Kingdom (14,637). But why do people renounce citizenship and choose certain specific countries when they leave India? We explain. India has opened up the highly regulated sector of producing and processing opium to private players. Bajaj Healthcare has become the first company to win tenders for producing concentrated poppy straw that is used to derive alkaloids that are the active pharmaceutical ingredient in pain medication and cough syrups. What is the process of growing and processing opium in India? What is opium used for? How does the involvement of private players help? Read here.
