50 days after arrest, DK Shivakumar released from Tihar jail

Bail

This comes after the Delhi High Court granted bail to Congress leader Shivakumar in a money laundering case.

TNM Staff

Former Karnataka Minister and senior Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar was released from Tihar jail on Wednesday night exactly 50 days after he was taken into custody on September 3, after the Delhi High Court granted him bail in a money laundering case. According to Tihar jail authorities, Shivakumar was set free around 9 pm after his release was formalised. "He was released at 9 p.m. after we received the court orders," a senior Tihar Jail official said. Shivakumar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on September 3 in connection with a money laundering case. The High Court granted bail to Shivakumar asking him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25 lakh and two sureties each of like amount. The court directed him not to leave the country without permission. Speaking after his release, Shivakumar told reporters, "I thank all those who helped me and stood by me in the hour of crisis. I thank all the leaders of various political parties including my party president Sonia Gandhi who came all the way to visit me and give me strength and solidarity. I express my thanks to all those who stood on the streets of this country or prayed for me or wished me in the hour of crisis."  Shivakumar has been on the radar of the Income Tax Department and the ED since demonetisation in 2016. An Income Tax search at his New Delhi flat on August 2, 2017, led to the seizure of unaccounted cash amounting to Rs 8.83 crore. Thereafter, the Tax Department lodged cases against the Congress leader and his four associates under Sections 277 and 278 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, and Sections 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), 193 (Punishment for false evidence) and 199 (False statements made in declaration which is by law receivable as evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Incidentally, according to Shivakumar's affidavit submitted to the Election Commission ahead of the Assembly elections in 2018, his daughter Aisshwarya owned assets of Rs 108 crore compared to only Rs 1.09 crore in 2013. Shivakumar, however, clarified that Aisshwarya was not dependent on his income and that he was still declaring her assets as per the Representation of People Act. The Congress party has held multiple protests against the arrest of Shivakumar while BJP leaders have also sympathised with the Vokkaliga leader. With IANS inputs

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BJP MLA from Kodagu wants Tipu Sultan to be removed from history textbooks

Education

Critics, however, condemned the notion that books should be modified to suit one version of history over another.

Prajwal Bhat

Madikeri's BJP MLA Apachu Ranjan has written to the Karnataka Education Department seeking the removal of references to Tipu Sultan from state syllabus school textbooks.  In a letter to the state Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar, Apachu urged him to remove lessons pertaining to Tipu Sultan, the former ruler of Mysore kingdom.  Speaking to TNM, Apachu says that Tipu Sultan has been glorified as a freedom fighter. "He is not a freedom fighter and this is something that the textbooks have said. This information is wrong and we want an expert committee to look into this. Tipu has converted many people in our area and looted temples here (in Kodagu)," Apachu said.  In the letter, Apachu urges the Education Department to "stop glorifying Tipu" in textbooks printed in the state. "Tipu Sultan was concerned about expanding his kingdom and his religion but he has not fought for the freedom (of the country). We cannot call him a freedom fighter," reads an excerpt from the letter. The letter also argues that Tipu was not a freedom fighter by contending that he supported the French and persecuted Kodavas in Coorg (now Kodagu) and Christians in Mangalore (now Mangaluru). Apachu alleges that Tipu converted tens of thousands of Christians in Mangaluru, and questioned how he could be called a freedom fighter. In the letter, Apachu also alleges that Tipu was against Kannada since the language used in his kingdom was Persian. Tipu Sultan ruled the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom from 1782 to 1799 and was involved in multiple battles against the British East India Company for territory in modern-day South India. The controversy over his reign comes three months after the BJP government decided to cancel Tipu Jayanti celebrations this year. The celebration has been held every year in November since 2015 when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government officially celebrated it for the first time. Every year, on the days leading up to the celebration, BJP and pro-Hindu groups ran a campaign claiming that Tipu Sultan had persecuted Kodavas and Christians. However, the Congress government led by then CM Siddaramaiah had continued to celebrate it.  BJP leaders had earlier celebrated Tipu Sultan and taken part in celebrations honouring his memory but after the state-sponsored celebrations were introduced in 2015, party leaders have stood opposed to the former Mysore kingdom ruler.  Read: Why is BJP against Tipu Sultan, and was this always the case? Critics, however, condemned the notion that books should be modified to suit one version of history over another. "Tipu Sultan has to be remembered in history. This demand (of not having him in textbooks at all) is absurd since Tipu made contributions across many fields and they cannot be erased,” says Chandan Gowda, a professor of Sociology at Azim Premji University.   The Kodavas, an ethno-lingual tribe, consider themselves to be the original inhabitants of Kodagu. Sections of the Kodava community contend that Tipu Sultan captured 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners and sent them to Srirangapatna where they were forcibly converted to Islam around the year 1792. Srirangapatna was once the capital of Mysore kingdom under Tipu Sultan's rule and is home to many monuments related to Tipu including the tombs of him and his family. The opposing view contends that only a handful of Kodavas were captured by Tipu Sultan and the number of prisoners were wildly exaggerated. Tipu forcibly converted people only in Coorg and Mangalore, both of which were outside the Mysore Kingdom and which the British were trying to take over. Tipu was working to ensure that people in these regions did not work with his enemy, the British. He felt for example that the Christians of Mangalore might not be loyal to him due to their shared faith with the British. His motivation for conversion needs to be understood within the political context of that time", Chandan explains.  "Today, people in Mangaluru and Kodagu can say they don't have fond memories of Tipu Sultan. But now, these regions are all part of one state - Karnataka - and so, the point is not whether Tipu should be taught or not - he should be taught, of course - but about how he must be understood today, about the care needed for understanding the military realities of empire building in Indian history in general. Could the Vijayangar empire have been built without the loss of lives? Why isn't anyone raising questions about who its rulers killed to retain their power?," he asks.     This view is supported by Gazetteers published by German Missionaries including Hermann Friedrich Moegling. Writing in the Coorg Memoirs: An Account of Coorg and of the Coorg Mission published in 1855, more than 50 years after Tipu's death in 1799, Moegling states, "The whole population of Coorg maybe estimated as 25,000 to 26,000. They have much increased in numbers in the last twenty years...In former days they [Kodavas] seem scarcely ever to have mustered more than 4,000 or 5,000 fighting men."   The controversy over Tipu Sultan's persecution of Kodavas however still lingers on today. Apachu Ranjan has called for an expert committee to study Tipu's contributions in Kodagu and make changes to the history represented in school textbooks. He adds that he will provide documents to back up his claims. 

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Amrita student suicide: 10 staff members booked for allegedly tampering with crime scene

Crime

One of the accused, a lecturer, was booked for abetment of suicide in another case in 2012 when a student killed himself.

Theja Ram

Three days after 4th year engineering student Sri Harsha killed himself at the Amrita Engineering College campus in Bengaluru, the police have not made any arrests in connection with the case. According to Parappana Agrahara Police Inspector Nandeesh, who is investigating Harsha’s suicide, the student’s father has accused the college Principal and nine other lecturers of harassing his son. Speaking to TNM, Inspector Nandeesh said, “No arrests have been made yet as the case is under investigation. We will make the arrests soon,” he said. According to the FIR, a copy of which is with TNM, Principal of Amrita Engineering College, Choodasandra – Dhanaraj Swamy, Rakesh SG lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Bhaskar BL from the Chemistry Department, Ravi Kumar from the Mechanical Engineering Department, Ramesh TK from the ECE Department, Nipun Kumar and Amrudha from the CSE Department, Ventatesh B from the Math Department, Nagaraja SR the HOD of the Mechanical Engineering Department and Murty NS the HOD of ECE Department have been included as accused in the case. The 10 accused have been booked under section 201 (tampering with evidence) and 306 (abatement to suicide). Inspector Nandeesh also said that the evidence was tampered with as the blood stains at the crime scene were wiped clean before the police could arrive on the spot. Lecturer Rakesh SG was booked for abetment of suicide in another case in 2012. This is when a 2nd semester engineering student named Jitendra Sai killed himself inside his hostel room. His classmates had found Jitendra in his room and had tried to rescue them when the then hostel wardens allegedly stopped the students from helping Jitendra claiming it was a medico-legal case. At the time too, hundreds of students had protested and accused SG Rakesh, who was the Associate Dean of the college at the time, of formulating academic rules that had forced Jitendra to take the drastic step. According to the FIR, Sri Harsha’s father Vijaya Bhaskar tried to meet the college authorities after he received a call from the institute about his son's suspension. On October 21, while Harsha appeared before the disciplinary committee, his father was not allowed inside the campus. And while his father was waiting outside the gate, Harsha killed himself. The FIR states that Vijaya Bhaskar was contacted by officials of Amrita Engineering College at around 12 pm stating that his son had been rushed to Columbia Asia Hospital due to ill health. However, Harsha had been declared dead by hospital authorities by the time his father arrived. “On October 21, he (Vijaya Bhaskar) went to the college from the hospital to talk to the college administrators. He was later told that his son was admitted at Columbia Asia hospital. He has alleged that several staff members of the college were cleaning up the spot where his son had fallen. The accusation is that the college harassed his son, which led him to end his life,” the FIR states.   Speaking to TNM, Deputy Commissioner of Police Isha Pant said that the investigators are looking into the allegations made by the students that the college harassed Sri Harsha on multiple occasions. “It has come to our knowledge that the committee that was investigating the vandalism incident threatened to inform the companies that had offered Harsha a job,” she added. Hundreds of students of Amrita Engineering College began a silent protest demanding justice for Harsha soon after his death. The students alleged that in September 2019 those living in the hostel had complained to the management of water shortage. They had also complained about the bad quality of food in the mess. Angered by the no adequate response to their demands, several students had allegedly vandalized eight buses, a hostel window and a CCTV camera at the hostel. The next two weeks saw several students get suspension notices and Sri Harsha was one among them. Harsha was suspended for a year. He and other students allegedly went to negotiate with the disciplinary committee on October 21. Students of the college allege that Harsha had received two job offers for Rs 16 lakh and Rs 20 lakh per annum each and that the disciplinary committee informed him that they would tell the companies that he had been suspended for a year. Read: Student death in Bengaluru: Students demand Amritanandamayi should address their issues      

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‘We are with you Harsha’: Protests continue for 3rd day at Bengaluru's Amrita college

Protests

The students shouted slogans and carried placards in large numbers as police continued to remain on campus on Wednesday.

Soumya Chatterjee

Two days since Harsha, a fourth-year engineering student of the Amrita School of Engineering in Bengaluru’s Kasavanahalli near Bellandur took his life allegedly due to harassment by college authorities, protests in the campus continued. The students shouted slogans and carried placards in large numbers as police continued to remain on campus on Wednesday, even as the protests have remained peaceful. Some of the placards read— “It’s not a suicide, it’s a murder”, “We are with you Harsha.” One third-year B.Tech student said, “We are not stopping our protests till the time our demands are met. We want those responsible for the incident to be punished and do not want the college to interfere in the investigation.” Read: Amrita Engineering college student in Bengaluru kills self, students protest alleging harassment The protesting students, who are more than 500 in number, are on their third day of protests in the college campus. They say they are not going to stop the protests until all their three demands are met. Their demands are: 1) Those accused should be arrested and produced in court, 2) The college authorities should not influence the investigation, and 3) Amritanandamayi, the chancellor of the University should address the students herself and gain their confidence by coming o the college. Another student and Harsha’s batchmate said, “We are not moving from here. The college authorities tried telling us they will give a week of holidays for the tragedy. But none of us accepted it even though Diwali holidays are round the corner.” The college is one of the many institutions run by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, which comes under Kerala-based spiritual leader Amritanandamayi. The students till now have been told that Amritanandamayi is currently in Switzerland. Even the dean of the institution Sasangan Ramanathan, who operates out of Coimbatore, has said that he can’t reach Bengaluru in the next 10 days. Irked by the reaction from the administration, the students have decided to continue their protests. They have lost faith in the current administration  as they allege that the college had initially tried to pass off the incident as an accident.  TNM has earlier reported how the college’s disciplinary action committee wanted Harsha to 'confess' his involvement in an incident of vandalism. This, despite another student apparently telling the committee that Harsha was in no way involved. The students had also alleged that the college administration even threatened to cancel Harsha’s job offer which he had just secured. Meanwhile, jurisdictional Parappana Agrahara police declined to comment on the progress of the investigation and why no arrests have been made in the case so far. TNM had earlier reported that an FIR has been registered under Section 306 (Abetment of suicide) and Section 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of the offence, or giving false information) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). In a statement, the students on Tuesday also said that the director of the institute Dhanraj Swami, had allegedly ridiculed the student at a formal meeting where he apparently joked that the failure of Chandrayaan-2 and depreciation of the rupee were the reasons behind the college not being able to pay for water tankers. The students said that so far the college authorities had already rusticated 15 students across batches and another 45 were suspended over the incident of vandalism. The students have alleged that all of them were punished arbitrarily without any shred of evidence.

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After 50 days, DK Shivakumar finally secures bail in ED case

Crime

DK Shivakumar has been in jail since September 3 after he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money laundering case.

TNM Staff

PTI/ File image

Former Karnataka Minister and Congress troubleshooter DK Shivakumar was granted bail by the Delhi High Court on Wednesday, in connection to a money laundering case against him. He has to furnish a bond of Rs 25 lakh and cannot leave the country without the trial court’s permission. The development comes just after Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi visited the former Karnataka water resource minister in Tihar jail.  Shivakumar has been in custody since September 3, 50 days after he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate. His previous applications for bail was rejected by the trial court. While his police custody ended on September 19, he was remanded to judicial custody till October 1 by the Rouse Avenue court. He was reportedly lodged in the same jail compound as former Finance Minister P Chidambaram. The ED had been probing accusations of money laundering registered against DK Shivakumar since August 2017, when a cash amount of Rs 8.86 crore was found at his New Delhi residence.  Allegations against DKS include that he, along with his associates, transferred unaccounted money through hawala transactions to the Congress top brass. On September 12, DK Shivakumar’s daughter Aishwarya too had appeared before the ED and was questioned for seven hours in connection with the case. At the time, officials from the ED stated that she was being questioned about a trust fund set up in her name. The ED also interrogated her regarding the increase in her wealth between 2013 and 2018. Shivakumar had declared that his daughter held assets worth Rs 108 crore, ahead of the 2018 state Assembly elections. However, in 2013, she supposedly had only Rs 1.09 crore.

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Karnataka rains continue, 13 dead, over 7,000 people displaced

Rains

More than 10,000 houses were damaged due to the rains.

TNM Staff

The fresh spell of rainfall across Karnataka has taken the lives of 13 people and displaced more than 7,000 people in the state.  All 13 deaths were reported in the central and northern districts of Koppal (4), Haveri, Belagavi (2 each), Davangere, Raichur, Chitradurga, Dharwad, Bagalkot (1 each). With many areas flooded, six National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams have been deployed in Belagavi (2), Gadag, Dharwad, Haveri, Bagalkot (1 each). 28 rehabilitation centres have been opened across the state to house 7220 people displaced by the rains. Coastal, central and northern districts of the state received widespread moderate rainfall in the last 24 hours, a situation report by the Chief Minister's office stated. The report said that 150 animals lives were lost while more than 10,000 houses were damaged due to the rains. This included 202 houses that were damaged completely, of which 160 are from Haveri district.  The spell of rains which began on October 18 affected 27 of the 30 districts in the state. The reservoirs in the Krishna and Cauvery basin in Karnataka are either at or near full reservoir level, the situation report by CMO stated. The discharge in the reservoirs has been increased in order to keep appropriate buffer. Officials in the state are on high alert as the rainfall is expected to continue for the next 2-3 days across the state. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) stated that scattered moderate rainfall along with heavy rainfall in isolated areas are likely in Belagavi, Bagalkot, Dharwad, Gadag, Haveri, Ballari and Koppal districts. Similarly, a red warning was issued by the IMD for the three coastal Karnataka districts - Udupi, Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada - while an orange warning was issued for several districts in the interior part of the state. The upper Krishna basement in Maharashtra is also expected to receive widespread moderate rainfall along with heavy rains in isolated areas.   Rainfall in the Upper Krishna basin was one of the factors behind the floods that hit the state in August. More than 4 lakh people were displaced by the floods in August, particularly in the northern part of the state. Landslides affected areas in Malnad region of the state.      

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