Hindustan Times News | 24th March 2022 | 6PM

HT Daily News Wrap

Delhi court denied bail to former JNU student Umar Khalid in the conspiracy case related to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee met the family members of the people killed in Birbhum violence and announced Rs 5 lakh compensation, Supreme Court declined to give any specific date for the hearing of the hijab pleas challenging the Karnataka high court order & other top news in today's bulletin.
A Delhi court on Thursday denied bail to former JNU student Umar Khalid in the main conspiracy case related to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots. “Dismissed,” additional sessions judge Amitabh Rawat said while pronouncing the order. The court passed the order after deferring it three times. The judge had reserved the order on March 3 and said it will pronounce it on March 14, but that did not happen. The judge then posted the matter to March 21, but the order could not be pronounced on that day either due to the last-minute filing of a written submission by the special public prosecutor. On Wednesday, the matter was again deferred for today, as the order was under correction. Khalid, along with several others, has been booked under the anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), in the case for being the alleged masterminds of the February 2020 riots, which left 53 people dead and over 400 injured. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee met the family members of the people killed in Birbhum violence and announced Rs 5 lakh compensation for each family affected in the violence. A total of eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal’s Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh. Ahead of Banerjee’s visit to Rampurhat, Superintendent of Police of Birbhum, Nagendra Nath Tripathi inspected the village along with a large contingent of the police personnel. Following the direction of the Calcutta High Court, CCTV cameras are being installed in the violence-affected area of Rampurhat. Taking suo motu cognisance of the Rampurhat incident, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed the state government to install CCTV cameras for round-the-clock surveillance. The Court has also directed the state government to submit a status report on the incident in 24 hours (by around 2 pm on Thursday). The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to give any specific date for the hearing of the hijab pleas challenging the Karnataka high court order. When senior advocate Devadatt Kamat pressed the Apex Court and said the urgency is because of the impending exams, Chief Justice NV Ramana said, ‘Exams have nothing to do with the issue. Don’t sensitize.” Earlier, the top court refused to urgently hear the appeal and posted the matter after Holi break. On Thursday, the case was scheduled to be mentioned before the Chief Justice of India for urgent listing. Advocate Kamat on Thursday said the students have their exams on March 28 and if they are not allowed inside the classroom without hijab, they will lose a year. The Karnataka high court, in its recent ruling, has upheld the ban on religious clothes inside educational institutions, including hijab. The high court ruled that hijab is not an essential religious practice in Islam. The verdict has been challenged in the top court. The White House has a special team in the place known as the Tiger Team which is tasked to figure out how the United States should respond if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The Tiger Team, as reported by the NYT, comprises national security officials and the existence of such a team proves that the US is not ruling out the possibility that Putin might unleash his nukes and biological weapons being frustrated with the little inroad that it has made in the month-long conflict. According to the NYT report, the Tiger Team, a term used for an emergency task force, was set up on February 28, four days after Putin authorised the special military operation and, since then, the team members are meeting thrice a week in classified sessions. “The team is also looking at responses if Russia seeks to extend the war to neighbouring nations, including Moldova and Georgia, and how to prepare European countries for the refugees flowing in on a scale not seen in decades,” the report said. Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia’s post-Soviet economic reforms, has quit his post as a Kremlin special envoy and left the country due to the war in Ukraine, two sources told Reuters, the highest profile protest by a Russian figure against the invasion. Chubais, who once served as former President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff, left his post as Vladimir Putin’s special representative for ties with international organisations, one of the sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. He was appointed to the post, which was charged with “achieving goals of sustainable development”, in 2020, days after resigning as the head of state technology firm RUSNANO, which he had run since 2008. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity with Reuters, said Chubais left due to the conflict in Ukraine. He does not intend to return to Russia, one of the sources said.