Daily Briefing: The rise and fall of Gotabaya Rajapaksa; Lalit Modi’s penchant for surprises
In today’s edition, we bring you the latest on Sri Lanka crisis, Lalit Modi's Twitter post with Sushmita Sen, review of Taapsee Pannu's ‘Shabaash Mithu’ and more.
Top news on July 16, 2022. It’s Saturday!
Get your weekend started with the top 5 stories from today’s edition: The rise and fall of Gotabaya Rajapaksa; Lalit Modi’s penchant for surprises; what to watch this weekend, and more.
1) From a champion of Sinhala pride to a fugitive leader — the last few months have changed everything for Sri Lanka’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Gotabaya, who resigned on Thursday after fleeing the country, is now in Singapore, a fugitive leader. He was replaced, temporarily, by former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who after being sworn in, described the situation in Sri Lanka as “dangerous”.
🔴 ‘Demi god-like status’: Over a decade ago, Gotabaya, then the Defence Secretary, along with his brother and then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, were hailed for killing LTTE supremo V Prabhakaran and ending Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war. At the time, Gotabaya earned a demi-god-like status, ruling the country through fear. As Defence Secretary, he silenced his critics — some through white-van kidnappings and killings — the most famous case being that of Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of The Sunday Leader who was killed in 2009.
🔴 In our opinion section today, Andrew Fidel Fernando writes on the ‘spectacular cowardice of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’: “This transformation of Sri Lanka’s relationship with Gotabaya, particularly in the Sinhalese-dominated south, has come with a plummeting assessment of his character.”
2) “I know I will go to jail. Paying the fine would mean accepting that I did something wrong,” says activist Himanshu Kumar. The Supreme Court this week rejected a petition by him seeking a probe into the alleged torture and extrajudicial killings by the security forces during anti-Maoist operations in Dantewada in 2009 and directed him to pay the “exemplary” cost of Rs 5 lakh.
🔴 Who is he? For the last 17 years, Kumar has been running an NGO called Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada. The 57-year-old left the state in 2010, forced out, he says, by threats in the wake of his Dantewada allegations.
🔴 What happened? The incident dates back to September and October 2009 when 17 tribals, including a 12-year-old girl, were killed and many injured and their houses destroyed in villages of then Dantewada and now Sukma district in Chhattisgarh. While Kumar and several villagers accused the security forces of killing the tribals, the Raman Singh-led BJP government at the time blamed the Naxals. After Kumar approached the court in 2009, police exhumed seven bodies from the outskirts of one of the villages, Gompad.
🔴 What did the SC say? While dismissing his petition for a probe into the deaths, the Supreme Court Thursday asked the CBI and state police to investigate whether the PIL had been filed by him deliberately to discredit the security personnel and help Left Wing Extremists. Kumar was ordered to submit the Rs 5 lakh fine over the “frivolous” litigation within four weeks.
3) Ripudaman Singh Malik, who was acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombing case, was shot dead in Surrey in Canada’s British Columbia on Thursday morning, Canadian news outlets reported. CBC News cited witness accounts to report that three shots were heard and Malik was hit in the neck.
🔴 Who was Ripudaman Singh Malik? Ripudaman Singh Malik, 75, was one of the accused in the 1985 bombing of Air India’s Flight 182 Kanishka that killed 331 people, mostly from Toronto and Vancouver areas. He was allegedly associated with Babbar Khalsa, a terrorist outfit responsible for many terrorist incidents in Punjab. He was also a close associate of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the alleged mastermind of the Air India bombing.
🔴 What is the Kanishka bombing case? On June 23, 1985, a bomb exploded aboard Air India Flight 182 flying from Montreal to London, with New Delhi being the final destination. It was a Boeing 747 wide-bodied jumbo jet, christened Emperor Kanishka. The bomb had been placed in a suitcase, which was checked into cargo during a stopover in Vancouver. It exploded above the Atlantic Ocean in Irish airspace when the aircraft was cruising at an altitude of 31,000 feet, killing all 329 people on board — 268 Canadian citizens, many of whom were of Indian origin, 27 Britons, and 24 Indians.
4) Lalit Modi has always had a knack of pulling off surprises, like he did late on Thursday when he announced on Twitter about a “new beginning” with Miss Universe 1994 Sushmita Sen. The early Modi days in the BCCI were interesting times. The old-timers hated him. He was seen as an upstart. His Twenty20 venture bred mistrust. The maidan cricketers-turned-administrators in safari suits were slowly getting replaced by Armani-clad MBAs. Cricket’s good old political takeover, which seemed unshakably permanent for eternity and beyond, was now threatened by a corporate coup. Modi quickly became the BCCI’s blue-eyed boy. It didn’t check his homework or his pocket money.
5) This week, Shubhra Gupta reviews the Taapsee Pannu starrer ‘Shabaash Mithu’: “The film is long, and flabby in parts. A couple of team-mates get some scenes on their own, especially the one played by the very expressive Sapna Mandal: Raaz is the only other performer who stands out. The background music keeps swelling, trying to tell us how to feel. When will this stop?”
Sunday quiz
A previously unknown self-portrait of a world-renowned Dutch painter has been discovered at the National Galleries of Scotland. The work is believed to have been hidden for over a century. Who is the artist?
- Van Gogh
- Johannes Vermeer
- Rembrandt
(🤫 Pssst… the answer is in today’s edition of The Indian Express. Get it here)Until tomorrow,
Rahel Philipose and Vidya Gowri
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