CHENNAI/ VELLORE — Income tax sleuths Saturday conducted searches at the residence of senior DMK leader Duraimurugan at Katpadi in Vellore district over suspected use of unaccounted money for electioneering.

This comes days after tax raids led to a political storm in neighbouring Karnataka.

The tax officials along with personnel from the election flying squad arrived late Friday night at the residence of the DMK treasurer and conducted searches early on Saturday morning.

Highly placed sources in the investigation wing of the Income Tax Department told PTI that the raids were carried out. They indicated that the searches were carried out to detect suspected tax evasion vis-a-vis use of unaccounted money for electioneering.

The DMK has fielded Duraimurugan’s son, D M Kathir Anand, from the Vellore seat for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Details like if unaccounted money was unearthed were not immediately known.

Duraimurugan alleged that the raids were a “conspiracy” by some political leaders who could not face them in the electoral arena.

“They (tax officials) have gone with the understanding that we have nothing (to hide),” he told reporters.

The DMK leader also questioned the timing of the raid.

“This is not the time to hold searches, be it tax or other authorities, when we are in the midst of full-fledged election campaign,” he said.

The tax sleuths had carried out pre-dawn raids at 15 to 20 locations in Karnataka, including Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru, Hassan, Ramanagar and Shivamogga, on Thursday.

Karnataka Minor Irrigation minister C S Puttaraju and his nephew and close associates of PWD minister H D Revanna were among those whose residences were raided.

Later, Congress and JD(S) leaders led by Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and former chief minister Siddaramaiah had staged a demonstration in Bengaluru against the raids.

Former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores published an op-ed in New York Magazine’s The Cut on Friday alleging that Joe Biden inappropriately kissed and touched her after he offered to help her with her 2014 campaign.

Flores, who was running for Nevada lieutenant governor at the time, described her encounter with the former vice president as making her feel “uneasy, gross, and confused.” During a Las Vegas campaign rally, she alleges he approached her from behind, put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head.

“I froze. ‘Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?’” she wrote.

She detailed the unwanted encounter with the likely 2020 candidate, which took place right before she was set to go onstage and speak.

I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused. There is a Spanish saying, “tragame tierra,” it means, “earth, swallow me whole.” I couldn’t move and I couldn’t say anything. I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me. My name was called and I was never happier to get on stage in front of an audience.”

The way he touched her, she wrote, was in “an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it.”

Flores explained that she’s sharing the story now because she feels it’s important information to know about the character of someone running for president ― something Biden is imminently expected to announce he’s doing.

Flores’ story about Biden isn’t an unfamiliar one. Throughout his time in office, photos were captured of Biden “nuzzling the neck of the Defense secretary’s wife; Biden kissing a senator’s wife on the lips; Biden whispering in women’s ears; Biden snuggling female constituents,” she reminded readers. 

While Biden built a long record of championing women’s rights while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, those interactions and his handling of the Anita Hill hearing in 1991 have dogged the presidential hopeful as he gets closer to launching his campaign. 

A spokesman for Biden, Bill Russo, said that the former vice president and his staff at the time had no “inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes.”

“But Vice President Biden believes that Ms. Flores has every right to share her own recollection and reflections, and that it is a change for better in our society that she has the opportunity to do so,” Russo continued. “He respects Ms. Flores as a strong and independent voice in our politics and wishes her only the best.”

NEW DELHI — The Election Commission is learnt to have issued a fresh show cause to the Railways, this time on the use of paper tea cups with “main bhi chowkidar” slogan.

As the image tweeted by a passenger went viral, railways said they have withdrawn the cup and penalised the contractor.

EC sources said Railways have been asked to explain the prima facie violation of the model code of conduct by Saturday evening.

It has also been asked to explain the person responsible for it.

The EC is learnt to have invoked the ‘party in power’ clause of the poll code in the case as it could be averred that party in power’ is using government transporter for election publicity.

“Reports that tea has been served in cups labelled as ‘main bhi chowkidar’ have been investigated. This was without any prior approval of IRCTC. Explanation has been sought from Supervisor/Pantry Incharges over lack of devotion to duty. One lakh fine has been imposed on the service provider. Show cause notice has also been served to the service provider for this misconduct,” said IRCTC in a statement on Friday.

This particular cup was found on board 12040 Kathgodam Shatabdi. Tea was served twice in these cups.

This issue comes days after railways was found in violation of the MCC when it was found to be issuing tickets with PM Narendra Modi’s pictures.

Later, railways said that it was an” unintentional and inadvertent mistake”.

NEW DELHI — On the last day of Majlie de Puy Kamp’s internship at the The Asian Age newspaper in the spring of 2007, she walked up two flights of stairs from the news floor to the office of the editor MJ Akbar.

One of her tasks at the paper was to show Akbar options for the lead photograph for the next morning’s front page.

“These moments, where I would go up and give him the photos, were always kind of awkward,” de Puy Kamp said. “I would give him the photos, he would look through them and not say anything, and then do this head wobble over one of them.”

The interaction would last less than five minutes, there was never much conversation.

That particular day, as Akbar looked over the pictures, de Puy Kamp thanked him for letting her intern at his paper.

“He got up and walked around his desk to where I was sitting, so I also got up and I extended my hand.” de Puy Kamp recalled in a conversation this week. “He grabbed me right under my shoulders, on my arms, and pulled me in and kissed me on my mouth and forced his tongue into my mouth, and I just stood there.”

Akbar was 56 years old at the time; de Puy Kamp was 18, and on her gap year after finishing high school.

“What he did was disgusting, he violated my boundaries, betrayed my trust and that of my parents,” du Puy Kamp told HuffPost India in an email, adding that she met Akbar through her parents who had worked as foreign correspondents in Delhi in the 1980s. “He was my parent’s friend, he was supposed to pull through for me if I ever got in trouble while living in a foreign country.” 

HuffPost India corroborated de Puy Kamp’s account—which has not been written about before—by reviewing emails between de Puy Kamp’s father and Akbar, and in interviews with three people who spoke to her immediately after her ordeal.

In the emails, reproduced below, Akbar said, “These are issues which are so prone to misunderstanding, that there is no point debating them. My profoundest apologies if there was anything inappropriate.”

HuffPost India has reached out to Akbar and will update this story if he responds.

Akbar, now the minister of state for external affairs, had maintained a studied silence on the wave of allegations against him until Sunday, when he returned to India after an official tour in Africa. He has now issued a statement denying the multiple allegations, calling them “false, baseless and wild”.

This week, many women journalists said Akbar had subjected them to violent harassment in the newsroom. The allegations ranged from experiences like de Puy Kamp’s, to harrowing accounts of violent harassment lasting months. HuffPost India spoke to survivors, Akbar’s peers and former colleagues to find a pattern of sexual predation that changed little over a career spanning nearly half a century.

Journalists told HuffPost India that the women Akbar assaulted feared retaliation, and worried about the careers they had worked so hard to build.

“Most of us were either the first generation or second generation of women who had come out to work from their families. Definitely the first in our families to say ‘I want to cover crime, I want to go places’,” said Suparna Sharma, who joined The Asian Age in New Delhi in 1993. “I remember two years into the job, he sent me to cover the Karnataka election.”

Sharma, currently the resident editor of The Asian Age in New Delhi, said Akbar had harassed her in the past.

Another journalist in Mumbai, who joined The Asian Age in Mumbai in 2004 and alleges she was harassed by Akbar inside and outside the newsroom, said on condition of anonymity, “He’s extremely schizophrenic. He can be equally brilliant but then there is the side of him being driven by hormones. There were no nuances with MJ Akbar. It was sexual harassment through and through.”

A journalist in Delhi, who was in her twenties when Akbar ran TheSunday Guardian in 2014, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that it was common knowledge that Akbar stared at the breasts of his reporters at weekly meetings and the newsroom knew about it. At the time, he was in his sixties.

“He stares at you in a way that you cannot look him in the face. You look down, you look away. It was as if he was propositioning you, looking for a cue,” she said. ″We just wanted the meetings to get over.”

Another male employee of TheSunday Guardian confirmed how Akbar behaved. “He used to stare at women’s chests. That was very evident.” 

Newsrooms designed for men

“MJ Akbar was the hero that every reporter wanted to be when he joined journalism,” said a senior male contemporary, recalling Akbar’s dizzying rise. “But he had a reputation.”

Akbar’s rise as a newspaperman was swift and well documented: He joined the Calcutta edition of The Times of India as a trainee in 1971, became the editor of the fortnightly magazine Onlooker in 1973, when he was only 22 and editor of Sunday in 1976. When The Telegraph launched in 1982 with him as editor, he was still only 31.

Over the years, he founded two more newspapers, The Asian Age and The Sunday Guardian, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and became the Minister of State for External Affairs—a position he continues to hold as the current wave of allegations break.

But stories of his behaviour towards his female colleagues followed him throughout his career. For his male counterparts, his pursuit of women only added to a legend, already burnished with tales of his grandeur.

When Akbar stayed at the Oberoi at Nariman Point, one story went, the hotel staff made a point to reserve room 1951,a premier room with a view of the bay and the same number as the year of his birth.

“There were rumours of his affairs, but no one ever complained, so we assumed it was consensual,” said a male editor who worked with Akbar.

Male journalists interviewed by HuffPost India recalled the 1980s and 1990s as a time of great bonhomie and equality between male and female journalists.

Women journalists recalled these years differently.

When Nandini Mehta joined the Hindustan Times as weekend editor in 1981, she was shocked to find a used condom on her desk.

“I would find one every day, somewhere on my desk, for eight months,” Mehta said. “And then one day it finally stopped.”

The newsrooms weren’t just male-dominated, they were designed for men.

Radhika Ramaseshan, a senior political journalist, recalled how the first two Bombay newsrooms she worked—CY Gopinath’s Soul Features and Vinod Mehta’s Sunday Observer—didn’t have women’s toilets. The Indian Newspaper Society building in Delhi didn’t have a proper women’s toilet either.

“When we joined, it was drilled into our heads that the newsroom is a gender-neutral space—which we welcomed,” Ramaseshan said. “But in time, I realised this was a very convenient way to stop women from complaining.” 

If a colleague or a boss harassed a female colleague, Ramaseshan said, “you were expected to accept it as part of the back-slapping, boys’ club culture”.

As more and more women joined newsrooms in the 1990s, the presumed equality and informality of the Indian newsroom became an excuse for men to push themselves onto women, even as the women were chided for being prudish, or insufficiently liberated, when they spoke up.

Akbar—with his legend firmly established—revelled in this atmosphere.

“As time passed, and he moved from Calcutta to Delhi, he came closer to power and became more and more entitled,” said the male editor.

In the mid 2000s, a young journalist in her twenties found herself in the lobby of the ITC Grand Central Hotel in Lower Parel, Mumbai, contemplating a fearful dilemma:

Akbar, in town from Delhi, had summoned her to his hotel room. On the one hand, she wanted to go through with the meeting and prove she was a professional. On the other, she knew Akbar was serial molester.

She ran through a checklist in her head.

“I knew I was dressed conservatively,” she told HuffPost India in an interview. “I always double-checked that I was conservatively dressed. No sleeveless, no bra strap showing out. No heels.”

She summoned her courage and took the elevator up to his room.

Akbar was drinking whisky, she said. He offered her a drink, which she declined, and a few minutes later, Akbar had forced himself upon her, kissing her face and lips. She froze.

“When you are young, your instincts are sharp but your reflexes are not,” she said. “A creep will find a way to creep you out.”

She freed herself and ran down the stairs because she did not dare wait for the elevator.

“It was a huge deal for a young woman to be a journalist at the time,” she said, explaining why she continued to work at The Asian Age.

Fifteen years later, the woman made her experience public without naming her harasser, and she chooses to remain anonymous. The woman told HuffPost India that Akbar was the man who harassed her.

The woman said she was still too traumatised to put her name to this account.

“There is no end to his vindictiveness,” she said. “I don’t think even Harvey Weinstein has hurt so many women as MJ Akbar.” 

The woman said it was commonplace for Akbar to touch women inappropriately and comment on their appearance. “I know this is a terrible thing to say but unless you were downright ugly, there is no way that he did not tap you,” she said. “It was like a harem.”

Other women have shared similar experiences of being invited to a hotel room, only to be molested.

A thread of tweets by Shutapa Paul, who worked alongside Akbar at India Today in 2010, describes a similar experience of being invited to the ITC Sonar in Kolkata.

Thank you for the msgs of support and courage that I have received till now. I needed some time to gather my thoughts and relive what happened to me 8 years ago. #MeToo#MJAkbar 1/n

— Shutapa Paul (@ShutapaPaul) October 10, 2018

Ghazala Waheed, meanwhile, detailed a startlingly violent account of months of harassment at Akbar’s hands.

At least ten women publicly spoken out on Twitter thus far.

Media’s open secret

Over time, as word spread in the newsroom and beyond, Akbar’s harassment became an open secret.

“Many of us would talk about it over chai and cigarette breaks,” said Sharma, the journalist who had joined The Asian Age in 1993. “Sometimes, there would be longer discussions amongst women about his behaviour and the culture he had created.”

A former male journalist, who worked in the Mumbai office of The Asian Age, said, “He’s an awful man . A serial molester. Every woman had a story about him.”

There was also pushback.

The woman in Mumbai said, “He once told me that he likes my ‘dusky skin’. I said ‘are you propositioning me’. He said ‘nothing like that’. I was not asking sarcastically. I was asking out of fear.”

Sharma explained it was a price they paid for freedom. It boiled down to women steeling themselves for a shot at being part of a dynamic newsroom, advancing their careers and proving something to themselves.

“There was a heady atmosphere. We were breaking stories every day. We learnt a lot from him. He was most generous with his time as a teacher, as a mentor and as an editor,” she said.

Sharma recalled the parties at Asian Age that would last till two or three in the morning.

“Akbar would play Dev Anand songs which we did not like because we wanted to dance. He would use the opportunity to pursue someone, touch someone inappropriately,” she said. “The next day, we would roll out of bed and make it to the office by 1 pm or 2 pm. He would be there by 11:00 am.”

Journalists speak of a toxicity that eventually pervaded the Asian Age newsrooms as Akbar used his access to pursue and harass women. Office politics complicated matters.

For instance, Wahab has written about her bureau chief, Seema Mustafa’s response to her complaints of harassment at Akbar’s hands:

She heard me. She was not surprised. She said that the call was entirely mine; that I should decide what I wanted to do.

Mustafa has since issued a carefully worded statement condemning Akbar’s statement.

“A lot of women tried to escape his jaal. Some went to on to have affairs and fall in love with him. Some hated him, could not take and left.,” said Sharma. “Some dealt with it, put a stop to it and continued to have a long and fruitful association with him.”

These were the women who then went on to occupy senior positions at Asian Age and made sure that women felt safe in their newsrooms, Sharma said. In fact, she said, these women made sure that female reporters never met Akbar alone. “They would send six of them together,” she said.

Eventually though, women across three generations rationalised and concluded that complaining against Akbar would have “three outcomes”, and none of them had to with accountability.

“There would be three outcomes if a woman complained against him. She would look weak or get talked of as a troublemaker or as a loose woman,” said the woman in Mumbai. “Another thing that was said was ‘suck it up’ and give it back to him when you can.”

And Akbar said

When de Puy Kamp, the eighteen-year-old intern mentioned in the beginning of this story, returned to the US, her father Jurriaan Kamp wrote an email to Akbar. The email—quiet, understated, but poignant—appears symptomatic of the shock that many felt when they learnt that Akbar, a much admired journalist, was a sexual predator.

Akbar's reply is calm and unflustered. There is no shock, no agitation, just the self-assurance of a man with a long history of handling such allegations.

du Puy Kamp, now a journalist in New York, said she had complicated feelings about that day in Akbar's office twelve years ago. In an email to HuffPost India, she wrote about why she felt it was time to share her story:

It happened twelve years ago, why didn't I say something sooner? I'd locked it away, I really didn't think about it much at all. His disturbing behavior in no way broke my spirit. It may have made me more cautious, or maybe I just grew older and wiser – I don't know. But regardless, I never felt the need to say anything because it had had little effect on my life. When Twitter exploded a few days ago I felt strangely emotional and cried a little. Somehow I felt if I had made a bigger scene 12 years ago, maybe there could have been put a stop to this back then.

The reason I'm saying this now, and the reason I'm attaching my name to it mostly has to do with being a journalist myself. I ask people on a daily basis to share intimate stories with me because I think it is important they see the light of day, that they're heard. So if I, living in a foreign country far from MJ Akbar's reach and influence, can't bring myself to speak up now – I couldn't do my job with integrity going forward. Which is not to say that every female journalist has to publicly speak about her #metoo experience, it's a deeply personal thing and everybody needs to do exactly what feels right to them. For me, that is saying something now.

This story has been updated to include Akbar's reaction to the allegations against him.

MUMBAI, Maharashtra — A married couple from Mumbai braved the dead of winter in Kashmir last year, anticipating a vacation with memories for a lifetime. They returned with a nightmare that continues to consume them, after a senior army officer allegedly repeatedly groped her at a New Year’s Party on 2 January, 2018, in the Officers’ Mess of a Rashtriya Rifles garrison stationed in Manasbal, 60 km from Srinagar.

As the sole civilians in the army camp, surrounded by army men who had been drinking all night, the couple say they locked themselves into their room as they feared for their lives.

“I was thinking that they will kill us and bury us and no one will know,” the 34-year-old woman, who lives in Mumbai and works as a freelance content writer, told HuffPost India. “The questions will be ‘what were you doing in an army garrison, are you spies, what are you doing here’?”

The driver who ferried them to the camp was a local Kashmiri, the woman said. “He would not dare say anything against the army. They will call him a terrorist and pick him up, break his hands and legs, what will he do?” she said.

Since then, the woman told HuffPost India, the army has closed ranks around the accused officer, Lieutenant Colonel M. Nagaraj.

Lt. Col. Nagaraj has sought to block the Jammu and Kashmir police’s inquiry into the incident, HuffPost India learnt from interviewing a Kashmiri policeman familiar with the case.

The army has humiliated and intimidated the woman and her husband under the guise of conducting a Court of Inquiry (COI) into the incident, the woman said.

Some of the questions asked of her in the COI, the woman said, included, “When you turned around, which butt did he grope first?”, while the accused, Lt.Col. Nagaraj claimed the woman had touched his penis. The woman insists she never did.

The ordeal, the woman and her husband said, had left them disillusioned and distraught.

“The army should have taken a stand when something so wrong had happened, instead of shielding their man,” the woman said. 

The following account, pieced together from hundreds of pages of letters and email correspondence, and interviews with the J&K police, retired army officers, the couple, and serving army officers they confided in immediately after the incident, paints a disturbing picture of entitlement, ill-discipline, and misconduct by senior army officers.

That the incident occurred in Kashmir, where army personnel have been repeatedly accused of grave human rights violations including at least one incident of mass rape in Kunan Poshpora in 1991, points to a worrying absence of accountability amongst the force’s senior-most ranks deployed in the country’s most sensitive military theatres.

“The Chief of Army is talking big things. He says that we will not leave anyone and morals are everything for the army,” said the woman, referring to General Bipin Rawat’s remarks on the recent case of Major Leetul Gogoi, who was apprehended entering a hotel with a young Kashmiri woman.

“Bullshit. He is just talking crap,” she said. “Should I sit outside your house and give dharna in my pregnant state?”

HuffPost India emailed the Indian Army spokesperson 21 questions pertaining to the incident and the officers referred to in the events that followed. The spokesperson responded with a Whatsapp message and a winking emoji.

“Army is aware of the case and investigating the details. Army is extremely swift with its judicial process and that’s well known. When such serious allegations are levied, they warrant detailed investigations and since the incident is of a remote and CI affected area, the delays are unavoidable for many reasons. However, I can assure you that the investigation is on, things are progressing and because it’s prejudice (sub judice), nothing more can be divulged. As far as the ethics being followed in the Army, we are unparalleled in upholding the values and courtesies and we take pride in respecting the women in every which way. Errors committed (if at all) by any Army man anywhere, anytime will be singled out and acted upon in a time-bound manner.”

The couple said they have not heard from the Indian Army since July even though they wrote to Gen. Rawat in September.

A Night of Terror

A trip to the Manasbal Garrison was not part of the couple’s itinerary when they planned their visit to Kashmir in December 2017.

But a day before they were scheduled to return, the woman’s husband, Deepak Singh, who works in the private sector, made inquiries about whether any fellow “Georgians” were posted in Kashmir. “Georgian” refers to the alumni of the King George Royal Indian Military School, which has branches in Bangalore, Ajmer, Chail, Belgaum and Dholpur.

The couple found Lt. Col. Nagaraj, posted at Manasbal, and he invited them to extend their vacation and stay at the army garrison.

When they arrived on 1 January, 2018, the couple said, Lt. Col. Nagaraj casually showed off a gun and declared, “This is what we use here to kill terrorists.” Later when he entered the couple’s guest room with his dog, the couple alleged, he said, “My dog is getting horny seeing a hot woman.”

The following night, on 2 January, Nagaraj invited the couple to a New Year’s Party at the Officers’ Mess at the Garrison.

At around 1:00 am, the woman said, Nagaraj brushed against her breasts and groped her butt three times.

“First time when it happened, I just brushed it off. I just put it on myself that perhaps I’m not standing properly,” she said “I thought he is my host, he is arranging everything, he is being gentlemanly. Maybe I am mistaken. Our (women) first reaction is to think that we are wrong and that is our biggest mistake.”

“Second time, I just gave him the benefit of the doubt. My thought was army people can’t be wrong, but by the third time, I knew he was doing it intentionally,” she said.

The woman said that after she stormed out of the mess, another officer, Lt. Col. Anil Chaudhary, came out behind her, asked her to calm down and follow him back into the mess.

“When Anil Chaudhary said, ‘Madame, it’s cold, let’s go inside,’ do you think I wanted to go inside the same room where I had been molested? Did I have any other option?” she said. “It’s like you want to scream but someone has put a hand on your mouth.”

The army did not respond to HuffPost India’s detailed questions on this sequence of events. 

The woman and her husband, she said, were suddenly aware of exactly where they were: In an isolated army base in Kashmir, at the mercy of men with guns, many of whom had been drinking heavily for several hours now.

“There is not a single woman in sight. I’m alone with my husband. I’m worried about our security,” she recalled. “I wanted to scream at the top of my voice, but I was in the middle of nowhere, and I was afraid what will I do if four men surround me and rip off my clothes. They will kill my husband. I had to suppress that rage within me,” she said.

They returned to their guest room, locked the door and stacked the dining table and the sofas against it.

“You relate things like, he is drunk, he is outraged, he showed us a gun, the bullets are this size, the walls are not even 12 inches,” said Singh, the woman’s husband, recalling the gun Nagaraj had showed them when they first arrived.

“He’s a Lieutenant Colonel. If he tells four jawans to go kick down the door, they will not even ask another question.” the woman said. “I even told Deepak, let’s go sit in the bathroom, if someone does spray us with bullets, it may not reach the bathroom.”

The couple went into the bathroom, and worriedly waited for the sun to rise.

An urgent basketball game

The next morning, the couple reasoned that if they packed their bags and left immediately, they would lose their chance to file an official complaint.

“We contemplated that if we leave from here today then we have lost the battle,” Singh said.

“Call us stupid,” the woman said. “But we had faith that we would get justice from the army.”

When no one from the Army garrison reached out to the couple, Singh called a friend from military school, Pravin Kulkarni, for advice on how to proceed.

Kulkarni, their friend, contacted another fellow “Georgian”, a lieutenant colonel, stationed at another army base in Jammu and Kashmir, who advised the couple to contact the garrison’s commanding officer.

HuffPost India spoke to Kulkarni and the serving army officer. They both corroborated Singh’s account.

It emerged that none of the officers present in the mess the previous night had reported the incident to their higher-ups — a breach of army protocol.

The couple says that in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Lt. Col. Anil Chaudhary had reassured them that he was duty bound to report the matter to the commanding officer, the next day, but he never did.

“This is wrong. An incident of this nature needs to be reported immediately, there is nothing like kal batayenge,” the serving officer, Kulkarni’s friend, told HuffPost India on the condition of anonymity. “It does not matter night or day.”

Brigadier A.S. Randhawa, the garrison’s commanding officer was away, so the woman and her husband tried their best to track down the acting commanding officer, Colonel Vikramjeet Singh, but he was on patrol. The couple called the phone exchange of the Manasbal Garrison six to seven times before they were able to they were able to extract his cellphone number from the receptionist.

When they finally met Col. Singh at his residence at 5:00 pm that evening, almost 15 hours after the woman says she was molested, he asked them to write down the complaint and hand it to his wife because he had to go play a basketball match.

“Colonel Vikramjeet Singh has been awarded a Sena Medal. What has he got this Sena Medal for?” the woman said, adding she was upset that the matter was being treated so flippantly. “A lady comes to you to say, ‘Sir, this has happened to me and you say, I’m going to play a basketball game’.”

The Army did not respond to HuffPost India’s detailed questions on this sequence of events.

After her meeting with Col. Vikramjeet Singh, the complainant said, Lt. Col. Anil Chaudhary urged her to not pursue the matter as the accused was going through a difficult time in his personal life.

“Anil Chaudhary had the audacity to come to me and say let it go. I’m not the one who is wrong. Why should I hide?” she said.

Nagaraj, the accused, tried to make contact with her the woman said, possibly to apologise for his conduct. But his overtures only made the complainant feel unsafe. The accused also spoke with her husband, she said. “He was crying, saluting, apologizing,” Singh said.

It was already dark by the time they finished writing out their complaint, and so they were forced to spend another night in the camp.

The following day, on January 4, the couple left for their home in Mumbai.

“I wanted to break things, I wanted to break the bottles, the bar counter, the table, the sofas, burn the place down,” the woman said. “How could he do that to me? How could he touch me? He doesn’t have the right to my body. It’s not forgivable. I cannot forgive this.”

Enduring ordeal

On 8 January, 2018, four days after returning to Mumbai, the couple sent a letter to Brig. Randhawa, the commanding officer at Manasbal, but they would not hear from him for over a month.

HuffPost India has reviewed correspondence between the couple and the army.

On 12 February, 2018, the woman wrote an email to senior police officials in Kashmir. Two days later, the Kashmir police registered a First Information Report (FIR), at the Safapora police station, over the phone. HuffPost India has a copy of the FIR.

HuffPost India spoke to a police officer familiar with the case, who, on the condition of anonymity, said that the accused’s lawyer had tried to persuade the local police to drop the FIR since a Court of Inquiry (COI) had already been instituted. The police officer described the demand as “not proper.”

“Once we register an FIR, it is not in our hands,” the police officer said.

The police officer said that army personnel interviewed during the course of the criminal investigation said that no incident of sexual harassment had occurred at the army base.

A charge sheet has been filed against Lt. Col. Nagaraj, the accused, in a local court in Kashmir.

Back to Manasbal

On 20 February, the woman received a letter from Randhawa, briefly stating that the army was looking into the matter.

On 6 March, she wrote letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, Defense Minister, Chief Of Army Staff Bipin Rawat, National Security Advisor, the National Women’s Commission and the Maharashtra State Commission Of India, demanding action against the accused.

“As a civilian, I have always found the media very prejudiced, showing only ill doings of defense services,” she wrote in her letter to Gen. Rawat. “But when it happened to me, I am utterly shocked and at a loss of words, with a feeling of disgust, where a man in olive green uniform can touch my private parts without my permission,” she wrote.

On 14 March, the complainant received a call from an officer, Colonel Mukund Gururaj, that a COI had been set up, ten days later, from 23 to 25 March, 2018, and she would have to travel to Kashmir.

The complainant and her husband paid almost Rs.80,000 to book airline tickets and a hotel room for three days at short notice. The couple says they had to pay for the stay in monthly installments.

They have not been reimbursed by the army.

The COI was set up in Manasbal Garrison. The complainant said that it was traumatic for her to return to the place where she had been sexually harassed.

No one from the army informed her traveling to Kashmir was unnecessary and the COI could have been set up via video conferencing.

“Imagine my situation. I had to enter the garrison where I was molested. This was just to intimidate us,” the woman said.

A sham Court Of Inquiry

The COI was not conducted on 23 March, the first of the three-day hearing, because the army did not have a woman officer present at the hearing.

When a woman officer arrived, from another army base in Kashmir, it was clear that she hadn’t been briefed on the case.

The woman said the panel, of Col. Mukund Gururaj, Col. Kamal Thapa and Major Chetan Chhabra, couldn’t control Lt. Col. Nagarajan, the accused, who frequently raised his voice and shouted.

“He was just flaring up. The presiding officer is telling to keep quiet and warning him off disciplinary action, but nothing is happening, he was flaring up, flaring up and flaring up,” she said.

There was no women’s toilet, and when a toilet was located in another building, it had no water or soap or electricity; each of these things added up to make the woman feel alone and alienated.

The accused, the complainant said, objected to her husband, a witness in the case, sitting in the COI. The complainant insisted her husband be present.

The presiding officers, the complainant recalled, were at a loss as to how to proceed. They even called for the army rule book from the library and then phoned a judicial officer, who was stationed at Awantipora, for advice, the woman said.

“We had already wasted one day. The officers were not prepared. They had no clue what to do. They never had a sense of inquiry. It was all an eyewash,” she said

When the video recording was switched off, the woman said, Col. Mukund Gururaj, the presiding officer, handed a copy of her statement, which had her home address, to the accused. This, the complainant believes, jeopardized her safety.

The army conducted four more hearings of the COI, with Brigadier Pravin Kumar, Colonel Nishant Rathi, Major Iti Srivastava and Captain Indu Dutta presiding, on 11 April, 24 April, 9 June and 17 June.

While these hearings were conducted via video conference in Mumbai, they followed a similar pattern of intimidation and humiliation.

In one instance, the woman was face to face with the accused, and he was allowed to question her — a breach of protocol as questions were to be routed through the panel. “You promised me this guy would not ask me any questions then why is he asking me any questions,” she said.

In other instance, the proceeding lasted from 10:00 am to 1:30 am, the next day.

Army officers tried to blame her for the incident, claiming she was drunk at the time. Some of the questions and statements appeared intended solely to unsettle and embarrass her, rather than establish the truth.

For instance:

“Were you smoking on 2 January?”

“When you turned around, which butt did he grope first?”

“How many more times did he squeeze your butt? ”

“It took three wrongs touches for you to know that he is molesting you.”

“The Indian army runs on alcohol. At every party, they will ask, ‘Sir, what will you have?’ Then, why do you judge women? ‘How drunk were you, how many drinks were you down’,” the woman said. “They will make you so uncomfortable that you will cry.” 

The woman, now pregnant and frequently nauseated, said she struggled to sit through these long interrogation sessions, where she had only limited access to a bathroom. “Being pregnant, I’m not being able to go to the washroom. Forget lying down anywhere. Physically, I was exhausted,” she said.

On the fourth hearing, the accused allegedly asked her husband, “Did your wife tell you she touched my penis?”

The army did not respond to HuffPost India’s detailed questions on this sequence of events.

The couple realised that the proceedings were a farce to tire them out.

“They will stress you out so emotionally and physically,” the woman said. “I just said I’m leaving, I don’t want any justice. Just leave me.”

In the third week of June, the woman’s gynecologist advised her “bed rest” due to early complications in her pregnancy.

HuffPost India spoke with the woman’s gynecologist, who, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that her patient had “severe complications” in her early pregnancy and was indeed advised bed rest.

The army however, said they would postpone the hearing only if she had her doctor’s prescription attested by a government officer.

The woman said she feared the army would hand over her gynecologist’s address to the accused, so asked the army to send a representative to her house to cross-check the prescription from the gynecologist, advising bedrest.

Instead an army representative called her home phone, and when her maid picked up, the representative began asking the maid personal questions about the maid and her husband, and asked for their phone numbers.

That’s when the couple decided to withdraw from the process.

“They made it emotionally, physically and financially very uncomfortable for us in every aspect that we felt we had to leave it,” she said. “I couldn’t go through that physical and mental strain. I couldn’t.”

The army did not respond to HuffPost India’s detailed questions on this sequence of events.

Gross irregularities

Throughout the inquiry, the army shared all evidence, statements and documents provided by the woman — and even her residential address, with Lt. Col. Nagaraj, the accused.

Yet, they refused to share any information at all with the woman, including the statement of the accused.

A retired colonel, who has conducted several COIs, told HuffPost India there is no army rule which prohibits the handing over of the above-mentioned documents and video recordings to the complainant.

The retired colonel expressed shock and disappointment over the army’s treatment of a pregnant civilian allegedly molested by a senior army officer.

Yet, so strong is the code of silence with the force, he declined to speak on record.

“It is absolutely a breach of trust, a breach of faith, a breach of propriety, and a breach of honour,” the colonel said. “The very act of not sharing the evidence shows the court has not been transparent in delivering justice.”

The colonel said that COIs were only a preliminary stage in an investigation and did not last more than a couple of hearings.

“Once you have given the statement, when you have been cross-examined, and thereafter you are making a plea that you cannot appear for the COI, the court should have taken due cognizance of the fact and excused you from appearing in the inquiry,” he said.

The colonel added, “Prolonging it for such a long time, inconveniencing the people involved, gives out ulterior motive of delaying and denying justice.”

Yet these tactics appear to have worked.

“What they do is embarrass you so much that you exit on your own,” said the woman’s husband. “Whether they are a brigadier, a captain or a woman or whatever age. Let’s close the chapter and forget about it.”

“My voice is not being heard,” the woman said.

Lt. Col. M. Nagaraj, the accused, is still stationed at the Manasbal Garrison.

Also on HuffPost India:

If you want to watch Telugu films and don’t know which ones to pick, below is a list to get you started. The blockbuster Baahubali movies and the highly-debated Arjun Reddy have been deliberately left out to steer you towards other popular titles and some light-hearted films.

Here’s your starter pack:

1.Goodachari (2018) — As everybody raves about Sobhita Dhulipala’s turn as a wedding planner in the recently released Amazon Prime series Made In Heaven, let me remind you that she’s equally brilliant in her Telugu cinema debut, Goodachari, where she plays a role with several shades. Adivi Sesh, who has worked on the story and screenplay, steals the show not only as a co-writer, but also as the film’s hero.

Goodachari is enjoyable in more ways than one and works because of the carefully crafted beats of suspense. It’s a spy thriller like none other in Telugu, a two-and-a-half-hour entertainer that’ll keep you on the edge of your seats.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime 

2. Awe (2018): Awe is a gem of a film that travels through many terrains, including same-sex relationships, abuse, addiction, and trauma. Nithya Menen, Eesha Rebba, Regina Cassandra, Murali Sharma, Kajal Aggarwal, Srinivas Avasarala, Devadarshini, and Priyadarshi Pullikonda star in this ensemble drama. The film has its moments of humour in the form of a talking fish and a quick-witted bonsai tree.

Awe will make you think hard about tough issues and director Prashanth Varma deserves a pat on the back for not taking easy way out in telling this story.

Where to Watch: Netflix

3. Rangasthalam (2018): Rangasthalam is a fine movie headlined by Ram Charan, who stars as a happy-go-lucky village leader. The film is set in the 80s but filmmaker Sukumar doesn’t look at the setting through the lens of nostalgia. Instead, he focuses on mood to recreate this particular period.

The film’s climax will leave you in tears and with a whole of questions about caste and violence.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

4.Oohalu Gusagusalade (2014): Are there love stories – reel or real – that haven’t run into trouble? Naga Shourya and Raashi Khanna play twenty-somethings grappling with such questions about love. As they revisit their feelings a few years later, a third person walks into their lives. 

The film is full of funny lines and pleasant songs. Srinivas Avasarala’s directorial debut is a gentle movie.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

5. Fidaa (2017): The story involves Varun (Varun Tej), an Indian American, and Bhanumati (Sai Pallavi), a Telugu girl studying in a small town in Telangana. Their wants and desires differ because of the way they’ve been raised. 

Fidaa moves between the US and Telangana as it focuses on their arranged marriage and a love story gradually develops between the couple. Sekhar Kammula’s romantic films never disappoint the audience.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime 

6. Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu (2013): Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu is the biggest multi-starrer that Telugu cinema has seen in recent times. In Srikanth Addala’s poignant family drama, Venkatesh and Mahesh Babu play siblings with Anjali and Samantha Ruth Prabhu as their love interests, respectively. The brothers deal with happiness and disappointment differently but stand by each other through thick and thin.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime 

7. Mahanati (2018): Is one film enough to make an actor a superstar? It’s tough but that’s exactly what happened to Keerthy Suresh.

Keerthy had starred in around a dozen Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam films before becoming an audience favourite as Savitri in Mahanati. Savitri’s professional highs and lows, along with her personal battles, are brought to life on screen by director Nag Aswhin. Keerthy left no stone unturned as she dove deep into the psyche of this troubled artiste. The film was a big box office success. 

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

8. Mayabazar (1957): Since Raja Harishchandra’s release in 1913, considered India’s first feature film, we have produced several thousand more. But Mayabazar, in my opinion, is one of the grandest and the greatest of our productions.

Pingali Nagendrarao’s lyrics for ‘Vivaha Bhojanambu’, a scrumptious song about a wedding feast, are an anthem in numerous Telugu households even today. Keep in mind that the special effects used in this movie were employed at a time where computers hadn’t yet made a filmmaker’s job easier.

If you want a true cinematic experience, watch Mayabazar and Mahanati one after the other because they’ll teach you a chapter in the history of Telugu cinema.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime 

9. Bhale Bhale Magadivoy (2015): Lucky (Nani) can’t remember two things at the same time. If you tell him to get a bag of chips and a carton of milk, he’ll get only one of them. So, for a guy named Lucky, he’s very unlucky.

Lucky’s problem make for many a comedic moments in director Maruthi Dasari’s Bhale Bhale Magadivoy. His films don’t have solid plots, but he makes sure that they are, at least, funny. Unlike in his other works, Nani doesn’t go overboard in this film and sticks to delivering his humorous lines nonchalantly. Co-star Lavanya Tripathi adds to the comedy.

Where to Watch: Hotstar 

10. Surya vs Surya (2015): How would you feel if you’re told that you can’t go out when the sun is out? This is how Surya (Nikhil Siddharth) must live because of porphyria, a disease that affects his skin if he steps out in the sunlight.

He grows up without having too many friends around and joins an evening college where he befriends a middle-aged man and an auto driver. There’s a love story thrown into the plot to test Surya’s confidence. Surya vs Surya is a breezy film that’ll instantly put a smile on your face.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

What do women in novels do? Well, other than being relegated to the margins as minor characters, involved in a bitter love triangle or sexualised for a male protagonist, they have little role in majority of the fiction published. A recent study says women were more well represented in Victorian novels than modern ones. The bar for Bechdel test is as low as two women characters need to talk about something other than a man, and yet the number of novels that pass the test are pitiable.

Healthy friendships between women in fiction are a rarity but then there are debut novels like Gather the Daughters, a relevant read for today, in the wake of solidarity between women in the #MeToo movement. Writing clubs, soirees and summer seem to be popular settings for women to forge deep friendships. Here are more new-ish releases with a solid girl gang.

1. Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh

Embroideries, translated from the French, is a laugh riot. The graphic novel is a secret invite to a gossipy tea session exploring the private lives of the author, her mother, grandmother, and a group of neighbours and friends. The women talk about love, sex, men, plastic surgery, how to fake one’s virginity and how to escape an arranged marriage with guaranteed chuckles.

2. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty’s pacy, addictive murder mystery about three mothers who become steadfast friends while dropping their kids to kindergarten, is a page turner. The older Madeline is furious that her ex-husband’s child goes to the same class as her youngest, the rich and beautiful Celeste has a perfect, envy inducing family life and single mom Jane finds parenthood daunting. There are heart warming moments like Madeline arriving with a cardboard at night to help with Jane’s son’s school project and hilarious scenes of ‘Blond Bobs’ who aspire to rule PTAs and an erotic book club that has nothing sexy about it. The premise sounds like a cliché Hollywood flick, but each chapter leaves you hanging, thinking not just ‘whodunit’ but also ‘who died?’ 

3. Lumberjanes Vol.2 Friendship to the Max by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Shannon Watters; illustrated by Brooke Allen

Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max follows five girls in a summer camp stumbling into strange adventures. The later volumes of Lumberjanes do not impress as much, but Volume 2 is funny, silly and my favourite in the girl power series. Dive into it for trapping raptors with friendship bracelets, reading star maps and witnessing a power play between the Greek gods, Apollo and Artemis, masquerading as camp scouts.

4. Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Seven year old Chula Santiago and the maid, Petrona, develop an unlikely friendship in the 1990s Colombia. Bombs, kidnappings and assassinations are rampant as drug lord, Pablo Escobar is on the run. Chula guards Petrona’s secret that she lives in the Santiago house with her boyfriend when the family is away, but Petrona is involved in a scheme to kidnap Chula. The plot is inspired by events in the author’s own life which adds more edge to this astounding debut novel.

5. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

This is an absolutely delightful, hilarious, Cinderella-esque fairytale for adults. MissDelysia LaFosse is a flirtatious nightclub singer who has three beaus (one for money, one for her career and one for love) who hires Miss. Pettigrew on a misunderstanding. They are polar opposites – Miss. Pettigrew is a clumsy, poor, forty something lady, raised on orthodox Christian values while Miss. LaFosse lives the glamorous, rich, carefree life, and yet they have each other’s back. Read it for juggling lovers, making business plans as a gold digger, Miss. Pettigrew’s make over for a party and most importantly for the brimming golden warmth of a wonderful day.

6. Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Emmerich

Maria grew up with her cousin, Tsugumi, but they have a difficult relationship. Tsugumi is an invalid who terrorizes her family in cruel ways by taking advantage of her illness. She is mean, rude, spoilt and plays pranks. A turning point in their lives is while playing ‘The Haunted Mailbox’ game where they pretend to receive letters from the dead. The novel explores Maria, now a university student in Tokyo, visiting the family inn on her cousin’s request and realising how difficult bidding goodbye is.

7. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Nikki’s excitement to be an instructor for creative writing at the Punjabi community centre in London is short lived when she realises her students are widows and many do not even know the alphabet. The classes roll into giggling and erotic story telling sessions. Some stories are transcribed, photocopied and passed on to other Punjabi women like a blazing secret to spice up their sex lives. Stay for tips on nicking ghee from under the mother in laws’ nose for love making sessions, shoulder massagers, evading the moral policing brigade of men and of course the erotic stories.

8. Life isn’t all Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal

This is a witty take on thirty something childhood friends of Indian origin living in contemporary London. Sunita, the activist law student is now an overweight, depressed housewife and mother in a sexless marriage, the sexy Tania rejected marriage for a high flying television career, a boyfriend and a Soho apartment and the naïve and plump Chila is marrying Deepak, ‘the most eligible bachelor in a 20 mile radius’. Save for stray instances where the characters felt overdone for a comical effect, the book is an entertaining read with many twists and laughs thrown together.

9. Pure Sequence by Paro Anand

Paro Anand’s book is about your next door sixty-something aunties. The four women of Pure Sequence, who have christened themselves the ‘Bitchy Biddies Bunch’  will surely turn a few eyeballs. They don’t gather around to cry and complain like your stereotypical Indian aunties. Rather, they indulge in namkeen eating sessions, talk in Punjabi slangs, play card games, and swear unapologetically.

10. My Brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante and translated by Ann Goldstein 

The patient, Elena and the flighty, Lila are ‘frenemies’ more than friends, often teetering into disasters. They navigate sex, school, intellectual jealousy and family roles in the outskirts of Naples, Italy in the 1970s.

11. Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed 

Ten men start their families with new rules in an island. Every summer, the children, until puberty, can roam wild and free and the daughters are wives in training. No one leaves, no one comes, and the children are ignorant of a world outside the island. One summer, a girl sees something; the daughters gather and a frightening dystopian-like reality unfolds. This book drowns you in discomfort, and leaves you gasping because of the fantastic world building.

12. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

In 19th century China, some girls are paired with one another and become ‘laotong(s)’ or ‘old same’.  The girls are required to be emotionally available to one another for a lifetime. When a girl from a poor family is paired with a girl from a higher social class, they communicate in a secret language called nu shu, that the men cannot understand, through fans and handkerchiefs. The novel discusses loneliness, the custom of foot binding, love and motherhood.

13. Giant Days Volume 2 by John Allison; illustrated by Lissa Treiman

Dorm mates surviving university with their lively banter!  Gothic Esther with her penchant for drama and chaos, fierce Susan with her unmatchable sarcasm and naïve Daisy are a treat. The second volume has a faith healer expose gone wrong, a secret love affair and a fling with a teaching assistant. Wit, quirks and grins will surely make you reach out for the other volumes featuring the trio.

14. Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Jane, forty one, is a vicar’s wife in the country parish and Prudence, twenty nine, is a working woman in London infatuated with her boss. Jane attempts to find a match (who shockingly is a womanizer) for her friend, often wondering if her own life will become like a Trollope novel. Barbara Pym writes a charming read about the role of women in the changing society of 1950s, peppered with funny notes about men.

15. This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki

This One Summer is a subtle look at friendship through a monotone colour palette. Rose and Windy spend their summer at Awago beach every year. They talk about boys, boobs, and new gossip, and rent horror movies. But teenage angst gets in the way - Rose is embarrassed about Windy, especially in front of older boys, and their parents have secrets. This book made me remember those jagged transition from childhood into teenage life and wonder how much of the adult’s world we actually knew then.

The potential benefits accruing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling alliance from a spike in nationalist sentiment following recent clashes with arch rival Pakistan might be waning, results of a nationwide opinion poll suggested.

Tensions with neighbouring Pakistan soared after a suicide bomb attack in the Indian part of the disputed Kashmir region killed 40 Indian paramilitary police last month. The bombing was claimed by a Pakistan-based militant group.

That led national sentiment on security and terror-related issues in India to peak at nearly 29 percent in early March after India retaliated with airstrikes on a suspected militant camp in northern Pakistan, according to CVoter polling agency.

However, it has since waned to about 15 percent, as tensions have cooled, the agency said, citing its daily tracker of national sentiment.

“A cliff-fall for (the) security narrative complicates BJP’s positioning as this is one issue where BJP comprehensively dominates the Congress and in fact entire opposition,” CVoter said, referring to Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that will face off against the main opposition Congress in the general election scheduled to begin on April 11.

Pollsters say the airstrikes and nationalist rhetoric had diverted attention away from socio-economic issues, including increasing unemployment and an agrarian crisis, that critics have often used to lambaste Modi’s policies.

The new poll numbers suggest those issues may be back on voters’ minds, CVoter said.

At election rallies in recent weeks the BJP has played up the airstrikes and a subsequent anti-satellite missile test that Modi hailed as making India a military space power. Some opposition parties criticised the anti-satellite test announcement as a political gimmick.

“The impact of mission Shakti (anti-satellite missile) test is anticipated to show in the next few days,” CVoter said.

A coalition led by Modi’s BJP is widely expected to retain power in the looming general election, the world’s biggest democratic exercise with about 900 million eligible voters.

Final results of the vote will be available on May 23.

“Flowing breezes, remember: I once lived here”. These are the words Krishna Sobti wrote on the wall in her hostel room on her last day in Lahore.

In A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There, an autobiographical novel by Sobti, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, the young Krishna now at her parents’ home in Delhi looks out of the window to see their Muslim neighbours leave for the railway station to catch the last Pakistan Special to Lahore.

Krishna remembers her last day in Lahore, echoing the words she scratched into the wall. Sobti was a unique author. She resisted the label “woman writer”; at one point, she adopted a male alter-ego to write Hum Hashmat, a series of profiles of famous writers. She wrote in a Hindi flecked with Punjabi, Urdu, and Rajasthani influences, creating an idiolect that reflected her peripatetic early life spent across Gujrat, Shimla, Delhi, Lahore, and Rajasthan.

In 2010, Sobti declined the Padma Bhushan, and later, gave up her Sahitya Akademi fellowship in protest against rising intolerance in the country, citing her need to stay independent of the establishment.

Her novels are women-centric, her protagonists unusual for their times. In Mitro Marjani, a woman married into a conservative joint family fights for her independence and expression of sexual desire. In her semi-autobiographical novella Ai Ladki, Sobti explores the complex relationship between an elderly woman burdened by her past and her unmarried daughter.

Sobti’s language is experimental: she refrains from long sentences and ornate descriptions, distilling her words to produce spare poetic language.

If her best-known novel Zindaginama provides a compelling portrait of a relatively peaceful pre-partition Punjab, then A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There details the devastating impact of the fracturing of Punjab and India.

The title refers to Gujrat in present-day Pakistan and the state of Gujarat in India: although the spellings of these two places are different in English, they are identical in Hindi and Urdu.

Krishna may now be in Delhi with her family, but she yearns for her ancestral home in Gujrat and her college days in Lahore.

There is unrest everywhere; Delhi swells to accommodate refugees who come bearing tales of violence and loss.

In a section which can only be described as prose poetry, Sobti weaves together a haunting elegy for the collective loss faced by people on both sides of the line, interspersing the experiences of refugees and migrants fleeing and those attacking them.

Sobti tries to make sense of the violence. She references Iqbal’s ode to undivided India, Sare Jahan Se Accha when she asks: “Amongst all these how did it disappear. That anthem that warmed our hearts…”. Ultimately though, she cannot make sense of it, and like Saadat Hasan Manto, sees the violence that ensued after Partition as an act of madness: “One comes from here and one goes over there—murder, mayhem, madness on the way.”

Krishna decides to leave Delhi to work at a preschool in the princely state of Sirohi, which is set to join India. The narrative moves seamlessly between the past and the present; the comparisons between her homeland and Sirohi are constant: the “lush yellow fields of mustard” of Punjab contrast with “the wasteland of rocky cliffs” in Rajputana.

Zutshi Sahib, the man in charge of hiring her for the position looks down upon her because of her refugee status.

With the passage of time, however, “histories change, [and] geographies too must change”.

Krishna slowly shakes off her refugee status and finds her place in Sirohi, refugees stuck in camps in Delhi who have been forgotten by the government move into abandoned houses, and Sirohi state inches closer to becoming a footnote in history.

Ghosts from her past follow her: her childhood friend Beembo who was killed by a mob visits her one night in her sleep. She is haunted by a sense of loss and dislocation that stays by her side even as she comes to terms with the finality of Partition. “Look ahead. Stop following that dream which has disappeared into a foreign country,” she thinks.

She ends up as the governess for the child Maharaja Tej Singh. The young boy who has heard whispers of an uncertain future asks Krishna the meaning of the word “oust”.

Krishna tries to console him but they both know that his fate rests in Delhi’s hands: “The ink belonged to Delhi. And who knew what text it would write?”

Although Sobti’s novel was written decades after the classics of Partition literature, such as Yashpal’s This Is Not That Dawn and Bisham Sahni’s Tamas, the autobiographical nature of the novel preserves the immediacy of the event.

The narrative echoes the fragmentary approach of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, blurring time and fiat boundaries.

 Women’s voices in the Partition corpus project the scalar relationship of the dynamics of power between the nation state and the individual.

In Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column, Laila’s fight for her agency occurs alongside the struggle for Indian independence.

Likewise, Krishna’s assimilation into India mirrors the gradual integration of princely states into the Republic of India.

This is a particularly pertinent read in a time of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan.

Where did it all start? Sobti ventures a guess: “When you uproot a tribe, it scatters with the destructive power of an earthquake.”

NEW DELHI ― In a bid to improve the Congress’ position in south India, party president Rahul Gandhi will contest from Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala besides his traditional stronghold of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. 

Veteran Congress leader from Kerala and former Defence Minister A K Antony made this announcement at a press conference here Sunday, saying Gandhi had consented to fighting from Wayanad following requests from the party’s state unit.   

The decision is seen as an attempt by the Congress to consolidate its electoral base in south India, especially Kerala which has 20  Lok Sabha seats. Tamil Nadu has 39 Lok Sabha seats and Karnataka has 28.

“This is a message to the southern states that they are deeply valued and respected. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said he will represent Amethi but will also represent southern states as they are an important part of India’s way of life, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

He said Gandhi has said Amethi his ‘karmabhoomi’ and he will never leave it.

The announcement evoked sharp reactions from both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum.

Reacting to the development, CPI(M) Politbureau member Prakash Karat said that the decision of the Congress to field Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad shows that the party wants to take on the Left in Kerala.

“Their priority now is to fight against the Left in Kerala. It goes against Congress’ national commitment to fight BJP, as in Kerala it’s LDF which is the main force fighting BJP there,” he told reporters. The CPI(M) ex-General Secretary said his party will work to ensure the defeat of Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad.

BJP chief Amit Shah also took a sharp dig at Gandhi contesting from two seats at a rally in Uttar Pradesh. 

“Congress’ votebank politics has worked on playing with the security of the country. It is the result of this that Rahul Gandhi has left Amethi and run away to Kerala because he knows that voters will seek account from him in Amethi this time,” Shah said.

Earlier, Surjewala said the state units of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had requested him to contest from south India at a time when there is attack on the language and culture from the Modi government, he said.

“This is a fight to espouse the aspirations of south India. This is a fight to give a befitting reply to those forces that attack cultures, languages, way of life and also the deep connect between north and south India between which BJP has created a division,” he said.

On BJP’s criticism that Gandhi’s is “not very strong” in Amethi, Surjewala said: “Why doesn’t BJP answer why Moddi ji left Gujarat and went to Varanasi. Does that mean that his condition was bad in Gujarat. Instead of discussing these type of immature things, they should discuss key political issues. Why is BJP so scared.” 

In a swipe at Union Minister Smriti Irani who is contesting against Gandhi in Amethi, he said, “Pehle Delhi mein Chandni Chowk ne haraya, phir Amethi ne bhagaya. Jis mantri mahoyadaya ki charcha kar rahe hain, jinko ticket di hai, ab haar ki hattrick ka mahaul bana hai (First lost from Chandni Chowk, then Amethi. And now, the minister in question has created an atmosphere of a hat-trick of defeats)”.

Surjewala said the people of Amethi trust the fact that they are protected with Rahul Gandhi being there.

“The BJP has the task of conspiracy while we have the task of construction,” he said.

He said Wayanad has a unique geographical feature as it links all the three states of Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiri, Karnataka’s Mysore and has the geographical and cultural representation of the three states.

“That is why party decided that Gandhi will, in a way, represent the three states and strengthen the unity between north and south India.

Senior Congress leader Antony said Wayanad is situated in Kerala, but also surrounded by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. 

“In a way it’ll satisfy the requests of three southern states,” he said.

There were many requests from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the former defence minister said, adding that one of the major reasons for consideration was that it is a trijunction of the three southern states.

“Amethi and Rahul do not have a political relationship. Amethi ke mann mein Rahul baste hain. It is a family relationship and cannot be broken by BJP’s politics,” Surjewala said.

He said when the Congress government will be formed with the blessings of 130 crore Indians, Rahul Gandhi will represent every corner of the country in a bigger way.

“We will discuss about the future slowly,” he said in reply to a question on whether Gandhi will retain Amethi or Wayanad seat if he wins both.

“Don’t question Amethi’s intelligence. Amethi has chosen Rajiv ji, Sonia ji and Rahul ji in difficult circumstances. They trust the fact that this country’s management and Amethi is secure in the hands of Rahul Gandhi. Nobody can break the bond between Amethi and Rahul and least of all BJP,” he said.

Congress had won eight Lok Sabha seats in Kerala in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, besides two by its ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and one by Kerala Congress (Mani) and one by Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).

The party is hoping to further consolidate its position this time in the state.

Wayanad district is in the north eastern part of Kerala and houses various tribal groups of the state. The area was badly affected due to last year’s floods.

Scrolling through your social media timelines and WhatsApp family groups can sometimes feel like a prolonged exercise in sifting the truth from hyperbole and often, outright lies. This has only increased over the past few months as India gears up for a general election that will determine whether the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will get another turn at the helm or not. And just as high as the stakes is the desperation to win, which means that fake news is no longer the outlier it used to be—instead, the role of fact-checkers has grown steadily as thousands of people fall for cleverly photoshopped images and communally sensitive false claims every day.

Facebook, which is still smarting from having to admit its unpreparedness to handle election interference in the 2016 US polls that brought Donald Trump to power, has been working with third-party fact-checkers in India to tackle fake news and recently announced that it was adding more partners. But as HuffPost Indiareported last week, it has refused to answer basic questions about the initiative, including about how the fact-checkers were chosen and even what their team sizes are. This not only raises doubts about the social media giant’s commitment to the issue, it also brings up fears that the initiative may actually backfire.

In March, fake news debunker AltNews had also reported that three of Facebook’s seven partners circulated misinformation after the Pulwama terror attack in Kashmir and the subsequent airstrike conducted by the Indian Air Force in Balakot.

This brings us to an important question: who will fact-check the fact-checkers themselves?

Who are the fact-checkers?

Facebook has taken an easy route to find its Indian partners—they are the seven signatories of the prestigious Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), namely, Factly, FactChecker.in, FactCrescendo, NewsMobile, TV Today Network Fact Check (India Today Group), The Quint - WebQoof and Vishvas News (part of Jagran Media Network) plus one former signatory, Boom Live, which had worked with Facebook on the Karnataka election last year.

So how does ICFN choose these signatories?

Baybars Orsek, the director of the IFCN, told HuffPost India in an emailed response that all signatories have to agree to abide by certain promises, beginning with a commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness. This means not just fact-checking news from across the political spectrum using the same methods, but also not concentrating their fact-checking on one side.

Other commitments include being transparent about sources and methodology, and an open and honest corrections policy.

Fact-checking organisations must also focus only on their task—which is why, for example, there are dedicated fact-checking organisations within the larger umbrella of media groups as mentioned above. Other requirements include public incorporation documents, disclosure of sources of funding and a public non-partisanship policy.

After all these points are satisfied, the fact-checkers also have to get an independent assessment done by a local expert.

The surprise entry

There is only one organisation among the seven partners that is not backed by a media company, or founded by long-time journalists. This is FactCrescendo, an arm of Crescendo Transcriptions Pvt. Ltd (CTPL), an Aurangabad-based company that offers commercial transcription services in multiple Indian languages.

So how did a transcription company become a fake news fighter?

“In CTPL, we are often offering research support, like research about advertisements, to corporates and others, and so we were anyway used to digging into the background of things,” said Rahul Namboori, who heads the FactCheck vertical for FactCrescendo.

“There was an article last year about fact-checking organisations. We were already good at research and it seemed like something we could do, so we applied for it, and went through the observation process,” he added.

According to FactCrescendo’s website, it debunks fake news in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Gujarati and Tamil, and the firm says it can check videos and text in other languages as well.

After meeting the ICFJ checks, the assessment by the local expert took another 2-3 months to complete.

“As it happened, we cleared it on the first try. Then we hired more journalists and researchers, as we started to do more and more fact checks,” said Namboori.

How much impact does fact-checking actually have?

Apart from Facebook, even Google has been highlighting fact checks and trying to flag fake news to users ahead of the 2019 election. One big question is how effective this actually is. HuffPost India had reported last year that Facebook’s month-long fact-checking initiative with Boom Live had only identified 30 pieces of fake news in the run-up to and immediately after the Karnataka election. Also, even if a news article is found to be fake, all Facebook does is push it lower down the news feed, rather than remove it altogether. This time, however, one crucial step forward is that news in languages other than English will also be checked, which was a major limitation with Facebook’s Karnataka experiment. The checks will be carried out in six languages in all, English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, and Marathi.

Due to the sheer glut of information and with the rules about fact-checking still not firmly established, there’s not a lot that the platforms can actually do beyond relying on trusted partners. That’s why it makes it easier for Facebook to lean on something like the IFCN.

 Both FactChecker.in and Boom have been founded by journalist Govind Ethiraj, who has also anchored shows on BloombergQuint and other channels. Ethiraj is also a member of the advisory board of the IFCN. When asked if this was a potential conflict of interest, he pointed out that all board members run different fact-checking organisations around the world.

“Why would this be something unusual? Would you want doctors to be part of Indian Editors Guild?” he asked.

All the fact-checking organisations on the list work in a similar way, with tip lines to find news to debunk, and also by keeping an eye out for trending stories to see what news actually has the most traction and needs to be verified. On this, Namboori said that partnering with Facebook also helps to show what stories people are interested in, and what to fact-check next.

So how do local experts verify fact-checkers?

Given that their role is to fact-check for Google and Facebook, which reach millions of readers, it’s a given that these fact-checking organisations are rather crucial. But it’s a lot harder to understand how exactly these seven organisations were chosen by IFCN.

To actually see that all of their requirements are followed, IFCN’s Orsek noted that the organisation relies on assessors who verify all the requirements. The assessors are “expected and encouraged to take all editorial work of applicant organizations into account for their assessments and those assessments are taken very seriously by our advisory board, which consists of leaders in the fact-checking community and the decision whether to vet the applicant or not is taken on that board voting process”, he said.

Orsek would not give details on how many Indian organisations had applied to become fact-checkers, or how many applications had been rejected, as the IFCN does not share that information. The network of assessors has to process all the information received, and works in local languages so that non-English fact-checkers can be audited. For each assessment that they conduct, the assessors are paid $350 (roughly Rs 24,000).

ICFJ works with 86 external assessors, who act as local experts. Of these, nine are in Asia, and just two in India, both teachers at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bengaluru.

Can you trust everything a fact-checker publishes?

Ah, now this is where it gets interesting. The work of a fact-checker can be much more complicated than it seems.

“Essentially, we are saying what we are saying is true, don’t believe others. That’s a very arrogant position to take. To say that in a world full of information, there has to be a process where we take the audience from the claim to the truth. Gathering the information required to do that takes a lot of time,” Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, had told HuffPost India last May.

Although the IFCN signatory process appears quite stringent, some of the results produced by its signatories is not beyond questioning. For example, a story fact-checked by FactCrescendo about a family of Muslims being attacked on Holi in a supposed act of communal violence was dismissed as false, because the “police did not confirm a communal angle, saying the attackers were all from the locality”. So the fact-checker shows a ready willingness to accept the police statement at face value, when it should actually be delving deeper.

Namboori of FactCrescendo, however, disagreed with this reading, explaining: “We were not debunking what happened, but what you have to understand is that with any story, there is a primary narrative. The Facebook narrative was that this was ‘Sanghi aatankvaad’, which is pegged to a single organisation.”

“The administration report by the authorities has the information. In fact, the latest news is that there is now an FIR against the family. That’s why what we take into account is what is in the FIR, because the authorities have the right information.”

“We are not commenting on the fight or the attack, that is not the primary communication. It could be anything. But putting it on a single organisation was fake, and that is what we verified,” he said.

But ignoring the context of a news item like this may mean the reader does not get the actual picture.

Other partners also raise questions. India Today (along with Republic TV) has been found to be a repeat offender in peddling fake news. As reported by Alt News, in February it used footage from a two-year old video in a story about the airstrike that took place. It also used a photoshopped image of a slain terrorist, that was later taken down.

HuffPost India asked Ethiraj if this raised questions about the signatory process, but he responded that he won’t speak for other organisations.

Orsek of the IFCN also did not respond to questions about TV Today Network Fact Check.

All’s not well

In December, The Guardian published a report that said journalists working as fact-checkers with Facebook were frustrated with the platform, as the collaboration had produced minimal results, along with other concerns.

“They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of fact-checking Snopes, told The Guardian. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly don’t care.”

Facebook has disputed the report, but BBC reported in February that AP and Snopes had stopped their work with the company.

Although the IFCN’s mission is noble, given the sheer scale of the problem, its methods might need review. Many activists have pointed to the fallibility of fact-checking as a solution, when biased news selection can be as much of a problem as outright falsehoods.

Speaking to HuffPost India, activist Raghu/ Godavar said, “If this [fact checking] is a public-spirited effort, there needs to be transparency about the process of selecting fact-checkers. Potentially, Facebook could make this a data-gathering exercise: what sources do people trust?”

Former Vice President Joe Biden has responded to allegations that he displayed inappropriate affection toward a former Nevada assemblywoman, saying that in his years as a public figure, “not once ― never ― did I believe I acted inappropriately.”

“If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention,” he said in a statement on Sunday.

Biden’s response follows Lucy Flores accusing him of touching and kissing the back of her head without her consent in 2014 during an appearance he made with her to aid her unsuccessful campaign for Nevada lieutenant governor. She recounted the alleged incident in a story in New York Magazine’s The Cut on Friday.

Biden said he’s offered “countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort” over his “many years on the campaign trail and in public life.”

As he said he did not believe those actions were inappropriate, he added that he remains “the strongest advocate I can be for the rights of women.”

Flores, appearing on CNN on Sunday, said she’s glad that Biden is willing to listen but that he appears to have a “disconnect” if he believes his behavior was not inappropriate.

“Frankly, my point was never about his intentions, and it shouldn’t be about his intentions. It should be about the women on the receiving end of that behavior, and ... it wasn’t the only incident where he was acting inappropriately with women,” she said. 

Biden, 76, has faced previous concerns about inappropriate touching during his decades-long public career. Photos and videos have shown him kissing a senator’s wife on the lips, whispering into a girl’s ear and then kissing her cheek as she appears to pull away, and squeezing the shoulders and whispering into the ear of the wife of former Defense Secretary Ash Carter as he was sworn into that post during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Flores said she decided to come forward with her experience because of previous incidents that, in her opinion, “were not being taken very seriously.”

“They were not being considered from the perspective of the woman on the other side of that power dynamic, on the other side, of the receiving end,” she said.

The allegation against Biden surfaced as he’s expected to enter the 2020 presidential race. Among his fellow Democrats who have already declared their White House candidacies, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former San Antonio, Texas, Mayor Julián Castro have spoken out in support of Flores.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday he has “no reason not to believe” Flores when asked about the matter on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Sanders also said he will leave it to Biden to decide whether the Flores complaint should nix a White House bid by the former vice president.

“I think that’s a decision for the vice president to make,” Sanders said. “I’m not sure that one incident alone disqualifies anybody, but (Flores’) her point is absolutely right.”

This story has been updated with comment from Flores and Sen. Sanders.

NEW DELHI — Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi has refused to forge an alliance with the AAP for the Lok Sabha polls in the national capital.

Talking to reporters at the airport in New Delhi, the AAP leader said he had met Gandhi recently and the Congress leader had refused to join hands with the AAP .

Asked about Congress’ Delhi unit president Sheila Dikshit’s remarks that Kejriwal never approached her for an alliance, the chief minister said, We have met Rahul Gandhi. Dikshit is not that important leader.

Kejriwal has been urging the Congress to stitch an alliance in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls to keep the BJP away from power.

Leaders in the Delhi unit of the Congress were divided over the issue of alliance with Dikshit and her three working presidents opposing it, party sources had said.

A top source in the party had recently said that chances of alliance were “slim” considering its long term repercussions in Delhi.

“The biggest question is how will Congress face the AAP in Assembly elections due in 2020 after the tie up. Also, the party does not gain much politically as it is being offered only 2-3 seats by Kejriwal,” the source had said.

Congress had drawn a blank in the 2014 parliamentary elections in Delhi.

The talk of alliance was fuelled by the fact that the Congress and AAP had jointly polled more votes than the BJP that had walked away with all the seven seats in the national capital.

Delhi has 7 Lok Sabha seats and it will go to polls on May 12.

VISHAKHAPATNAM — West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal Sunday rallied behind TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, seeking another term for him in Andhra Pradesh while also flaying the Modi government for allegedly destroying democratic institutions.

At an election rally in Vishakhapatnam, which she described as the launch of her Lok Sabha poll campaign, Banerjee urged the BJP’s sister organisations not to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party chief Amit Shah during the national polls.

She claimed the BJP won’t get a single seat in West Bengal and the party won’t cross the 125-mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha.

“The BJP has sister organisations. I would like to request them that if you love the country, please don’t support Narendra Modi and Amit Shah,” the West Bengal chief minister said.

“This is a special election. There are not many people to fight for the country, please vote for Chandrababu Naidu. Modi and Shah bully everyone,” she alleged.

Taking on the PM, she said, “In 2014, Modi got 21 out of 191 seats in Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Odisha, that was your best time.”

“In UP, he got 73 seats when the Samajwadi Party and the BSP fought alone. Now they have come together. In Odisha too, they won’t get any seat,” she claimed.

Banerjee also challenged Modi for an open debate and attacked the prime minister for not addressing any press conference during his tenure. “He reads from tele-prompter and says he has a 56-inch chest.”

She said Modi is a “chowkidar” for the corrupt. A chowkidar who “lies to people round the clock and steals from them”, she said.

Banerjee said the country needs a prime minister who doesn’t differentiate between Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

“Modi said demonetisation would curb terrorism, but it is maximum under his government,” she said.

Supporting Kejriwal’s demand for full statehood for Delhi, Banerjee said the issue needs to be resolved.

Kerjwal claimed that Modi and Shah divided India on religious lines in five years, something which Pakistan could not do in seven decades.

“Since India’s Independence in 1947, Pakistan has been trying to divide India on religious lines. What Pakistan could not do in 70 years, Modi-Shah duo did in five,” Kejriwal alleged.

“The worst thing they did was to threaten the values India is known for ― unity and brotherhood. They pitted one caste against another and one community versus another,” he said.

The Delhi CM also alleged that an emergency-like situation was prevailing in the country.

“The Modi government unleashed central agencies on our institutions and our people. They (Modi and Shah) have ruined the country in five years. PM Modi led the most corrupt government in the last 70 years,” he claimed.

Referring to BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj’s recent remark that the upcoming Lok Sabha polls will be fought in the name of the country and there will be no elections after that, Kejriwal said, “Hitler changed the constitution of Germany after coming to power and ruled until his death. Modi and Shah would do the same in India. Sakshi Maharaj said there will be no election after 2019.”

“Shah said at a rally recently that no one can defeat the BJP till 2050 if his party is voted to power in 2019... This means they are thinking on the same lines,” he told the gathering, adding, “I appeal to you with folded hands, please remove Modi (from power).”

Terming demonetisation “the biggest scam since Independence”, Kejriwal alleged, “Modi doesn’t have a degree, doesn’t have wisdom. He never listens to anyone, only takes advice from Shah, who doesn’t know anything about the economy. He announced note ban and ruined the economy.”

The AAP leader said, “We have come here to appeal to you to vote for Naidu again. He has laid the foundations of a modern Andhra Pradesh. If he gets five years more, he will expedite the process.”

“Delhi is not a state even after 70 years of Independence. While voting, don’t forget that Modi betrayed you (people of Andhra Pradesh) on special status for the state,” he said.

Later in a tweet in Hindi, Kejriwal said, Naidu and Banerjee have announced they will ensure full statehood for Delhi.

Simultaneous polls will be held in Andhra Pradesh on April 11 for 25 Lok Sabha seats and to elect the new 175-member Assembly.

Actor Brenock O’Connor, otherwise known as Olly on “Game of Thrones,” said two goodbyes when the show’s Season 5 finale aired back in 2015.

One to Jon Snow, the Night’s Watch commander whom Olly is last to stab in the episode’s mutinous twist ending, and another to his own personal Twitter mentions.

“I finished reading the scene,” O’Connor told HuffPost, “and went, ‘Everyone’s going to hate me.’” 

He was right. While “Game of Thrones” is full of well-worn mantras ― “winter is coming” and “all men must die” ― fans came up with a phrase of their own in Season 5: “Fuck Olly.”

Hate for O’Connor’s character inspired the Fuck Olly subreddit and a never-ending stream of memes. More seriously, the actor —who was just a teenager — received constant online abuse.

“Oh, people took it way too far. Way too far,” the actor told HuffPost.

In the four years since that fateful Season 5 moment, a lot has happened in “Game of Thrones” and for O’Connor, too. He took the lead role in the British independent film “The Bromley Boys,” can be seen in other projects, such as “Derry Girls,” and has been releasing music and playing gigs. But through it all, and even with Jon Snow having come back to life, it’s still been “fuck Olly.”

“I get at least one tweet a month telling me to kill myself or that they hate me or telling me to fuck off. And I’m like, yeah, you know what, fair enough,” he said. “It’s strange that people take it so seriously, but it also means I’ve done a decent job of making people hate me. That was the character’s point.”

We continued talking with O’Connor about the moment he killed Jon Snow, his experience with trolls and how he’s since joined in on the memes himself.

In your Twitter bio, it says Woody Harrelson listened to your music. How’d that happen?

Yeah, that was something very strange. When I was shooting “Derry Girls,” Louisa Harland, who plays Orla in the show, she somehow, I don’t know how the connection is there, but she knows Woody Harrelson, and she really loves my song “Ghost Men,” which is on Soundcloud and going to be my new single on Spotify. She really loves that song, so she sent him a link, and the only response he gave back was a text “very good.” ... So yeah I’ve got to use and abuse that. 

When you’re playing gigs, do people recognize you? Do they recognize you in general now?

Occasionally, I’ve sort of grown up a lot since shooting it. I think it was four years since I was last on the show, and a lot’s changed for me in that time, but I still get the occasional notice. I was in a pub in Belfast the other week ... and someone came up to me and was like, “Are you from ‘Game of Thrones’?” And I was like, “Yeah.” He went, “Rickon Stark?” 

What’s it been like online?

Yeah, I still tweet occasionally or put a post up on Instagram and someone comments, “Fuck you, Olly.” I’m like, “I’m not Olly anymore. I’m dead. I got my comeuppance. It’s all done.” ... But yeah, it’s nice being such a recognizable part from the show.

Olly wasn’t a character in the books. So what was the genesis of it? How did you first join the show?

I auditioned for an unnamed character ... and it was three lines in one scene, and that was gonna be my entire role, and then Dave Hill, one of the genius writers of the show, thought it would be a good idea to have me kill Ygritte and have me kill Jon, and eventually have Jon [come back]. So, it was all planned out years in advance, but I didn’t know about any of it until I was shooting the scenes. I went for my one week shoot in Iceland and they went, “Oh, can you come to Belfast in a month?” And I was like, “Yeah.” ... It was literally doing this if you want me I’m there kind of thing. I had no idea it was such an important storyline, but it was right place right time. I was very lucky.

I mean, you did kill both Jon and Ygritte, and now the actors, Kit Harington and Rose Leslie, are married.

It’s really strange having killed both of them, and they’re together in real life.

It’s almost like Cupid’s arrow.

Yeah, absolutely. It was an arrow. I don’t want to claim it was all my fault, but yeah.

After the killing of Ygritte seems to be when the Olly memes really took off. There was that one “Shot through the heart!”

Oh, that was a classic. That one made me chuckle.

What’s it like being a kid and then becoming this crazy meme?

It was just mental because I didn’t know what “Game of Thrones” was when I got the part because I was 13, and that’s not the show I watched because it was R-rated, that kind of stuff. So to then have what I still consider to this day a fairly small role in the overall scheme that is “Game of Thrones,” it’s a massive, massive show, and many characters are more important than Olly was, but I’m just glad that he made the impact that he did.

To see the internet take the role and make it their own, there’s a Tumblr [Olly Nods at Things], I nod when I kill Ygritte, I nod at Jon when he wins the vote for Lord Commander, I nod across the courtyard seven times. I didn’t realize I did that. It’s funny what the internet picks out, so yeah the fans are insane. The fans find everything. 

How was it finding out you were going to kill Jon Snow?

I think everyone had that sort of feeling that this is something huge, even if it happened at any point in the series, it’s gonna be a huge thing, Jon Snow dying, but the fact that it was the final moment of that series, it’s him lying on the ground covered in blood, and then that’s all you’re left with for a year, that’s the last thing anyone will think about until they watch the show the next year, it was like this huge opportunity given to us to make this iconic.

What was it like when you read that scene? 

I finished reading the scene ... and went everyone’s going to hate me. Everyone is going to hate me, and I was right. So it was sort of one of those things where it was an immediate reaction. This is big. This is huge, yeah, no, it was a real joy to have that much trust from the writers put on to me like a 14-year-old kid.

And then there was the reaction that you said went too far. What was that like?

I used to have a Vespa, a little 50cc scooter, and I was driving it around the day after I got it. I parked it up in town and one of my mates sent me a screenshot of this Facebook post, and it was, “Just seen that cunt Olly from ‘Game of Thrones’ driving on his scooter. He looked at me as if to say ’Yeah, it’s me. For fuck’s sake don’t look at me.’” And the comments from people in my hometown, people who I would pass in the street, “Should’ve slashed his tires,” “Should’ve clothes-lined him,” “Should’ve shanked him,” “Should’ve stabbed him,” “Should’ve slit his throat.” I was like, I’m 16. I literally just turned 16. This is not OK.

Yeah, that’s so scary.

Yeah, it was terrifying. It’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous game, but you just got to be aware that people that say things like that over the internet aren’t the kind of people that do those things in real life. It’s one of these things where it was a real wakeup call into the minds of idiots.

I’ve had like minor experiences with trolls and even that was intense, so I can’t imagine what it was like for you.

Yeah, no, it’s intense. But all you gotta do is think, “It’s an acting job. I was acting.” People believe it. The whole point of acting is to make people believe, so the only way for me to look at it positively is I did my job quite well. In the least braggy way, I think I did all right.

And you at least you’ve learned to have fun with the memes and everything. Your neighbor had a cutout of Kit Harington in his window that you tweeted about. What was going on there?

I have absolutely no idea. I was just walking past my neighbor’s house on the way to mine, and I did a double take. “Why is Kit in the window? No, it’s not. It’s cardboard. Why is there a cardboard cutout of Kit in my neighbor’s window?” I still don’t know why it was there. I still don’t get how it’s there, but it’s there, and I got a good tweet out of it.

When you were filming that scene, did you know Kit was coming back?

Absolutely no idea. I killed him. I stabbed him. We treated it like it was Kit’s last day on set. We all said our emotional goodbyes. By that point it was like a five-year journey Kit had been on, a young actor with such an iconic role, that’s huge.

To say goodbye to that would’ve been a real emotional rollercoaster … but he knew he was coming back. We didn’t. So I got the script for Series 6, and I was told my character was going to die, I was told by [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss], got the infamous call into the office, and was told I was going to die, and I got the script, and there was this character called “LC,” just LC. And I was like, “OK, there’s some new character come in to kill off the people who killed Jon. Is that something?” And I got on set and Kit was there. I was like, “Sorry, what?” And he’s like, “Yeah LC, Lord Commander.” I was like that makes sense. That’s genius. So they’re very good at keeping their secrets. I didn’t know until as late as I could possibly know. That’s why it’s such a mystery, and everyone’s dying to know what happens, even the actors don’t know what’s happening in the series probably.

What was it like filming Olly’s death scene? Because there were a lot of people obviously cheering for it, but I think I wrote this at the time, it’s pretty disturbing how the camera just lingers on this little kid.

Filming the death was — it’s weird of me to say it was fun — but it was fun. We were in full body harness. We were completely safe when we were hanging. There was no pain on us at all, and it was just good. I enjoy doing stunts and stuff you don’t get to do on any other job. Sword fighting is a major bonus, archery is a major bonus, getting to hang is insane. What other job can you get to do that?

So it was the first actual hanging you see in the show. You see people that have been hanged, but you never see the drop, so it was another first for the show and another chance to make it an iconic moment. It was just great to have such an emotional farewell to a character that I’d really fallen in love with for three years because he had a rough old time, Olly. Parents were killed and eaten in front of him and then [he was] thrown into a castle with rapists, murderers and thieves, finding a friend among those and finding out he is on the side of the people that killed your parents. And the character is 11 all the way through my storyline; so the people who found joy in having 11-year-old die, it’s just like, yeah, but realistically that’s really sick. That’s really sickening. Don’t enjoy this moment. But a lot of people did.

Do you watch the show now?

I love the show. I still love the show. Can’t wait for next series.

What are your theories for the end?

I don’t know whether any of this is true, but I really like the idea that Bran is the Night King. That’s one of the fan theories... because you meet him in Series 1, he’s just this kid who likes climbing, and for him to bring about the destruction of the entire world is insane. So I’m really buying into that.

For as small of a role as it was, Olly became pretty recognizable across the internet, so looking back on it, what would you say to fans?

Thank you for having me along for the ride really. It’s been a mad, mad rollercoaster. I never thought I’d still be talking about it all these years later, but I’m thankful. I am. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done and probably ever will do. I peaked at thirteen. Sometimes that happens.

Well, I don’t know about “peaked.” Woody Harrelson likes your music. 

Exactly. Woody Harrelson likes my music.

SRIHARIKOTA— ISRO’s PSLV C45 lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Monday, carrying India’s EMISAT satellite along with 28 nano satellites of global customers.

As the 27-hour countdown concluded, the nearly 50-metre tall rocket, a new variant of ISRO’s trusted work horse PSLV-QL, blasted off from the second launch pad at the spaceport of Sriharikota, about 125 km from here, at 9.27 am.

The EMISAT satellite is aimed at electromagnetic measurement.

The mission marks several firsts to the credit of the space agency as it would manoeuvre satellites in various orbits and orbital experiments, including on maritime satellite applications.

According to ISRO, a new variant of the rocket PSLV-QL equipped with four Strap-On motors in the first stage is used for the launch.

PSLV, also used in India’s two key missions, “Chandrayan” in 2008 and Mars Orbiter in 2013, is a reliable and versatile launch vehicle for ISRO with 39 consecutive successful flights till June, 2017 and five-in-a-row from January 2018.

The rocket has encountered only two failures so far, its maiden developmental flight ended unsuccessful way back in 1993.

In September, 2017, the flight went off without any hitch but the IRNSS-1H Satellite could not be released into orbit after the PSLV-C39′s heat shield failed to open on reaching the orbit.

In this mission, ISRO scientists would place the satellites and payloads in three different orbits, a first for the agency.

After injecting the 436 kg primary satellite EMISAT, intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurement, at around 17 minutes from lift off in a 749 km orbit, they would restart the fourth stage again.

ISRO said this was the first time it has been envisaged to provide a micro-gravity environment for research organisations and academic institutes to perform experiments.

The PS4-fourth stage hosts three payloads in this mission.

They are automatic identification system from ISRO for maritime satellite applications capturing messages transmitted from ships.

Automatic Packet Repeating System from AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation), India to assist amateur radio operators in tracking and monitoring position data.

Advanced Retarding Potential Analyzer for lonospheric Studies (ARIS) from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) for the structural and composition studies of ionosphere.

The other 28 international satellites ― 25 3U type, two 6U type and one 2U type nano satellites ― are from Lithuania (two), Spain (one), Switzerland (one) and the United States (24).

All these satellites are being launched under commercial arrangements, the ISRO said.

In February, ISRO launched India’s communication satellite GSAT-31 from the European launch service provider Ariane from French Guiana.

People in the music industry mourned rapper Nipsey Hussle after he was reportedly shot and killed outside his Los Angeles store on Sunday.

The 33-year-old, whose birth name is Ermias Asghedom, was nominated for a Grammy in 2019 for Best Rap Album for his album “Victory Lap.” He was born in South Los Angeles and spoke in interviews about his involvement in gang culture as a teen before he emerged as a community organizer, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Hussle was reportedly shot several times outside his store, Marathon Clothing. Two other individuals were also injured in the shooting. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department said the shooter was still at large as of 5:30 p.m., local time. 

“My spirit is shaken by this,” Rihanna posted. 

Other celebrities also shared their reactions. 

“This is awful,” wrote actress Rachel Bloom. Hussle had a cameo in an episode of Bloom’s CW show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” 

NBA star LeBron James also shared his disbelief over the news.

The reactions are continuing to pour in.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

The group of men accused of beating Mohammad Akhlaq to death in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri were reportedly seen cheering Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during a rally on Sunday. 

NDTV reported that Vishal Rana, the main accused, and three others were seen who are out on bail, were cheering on during the rally held in Greater Noida’s Bisada village. 

Akhlaq was brutally and mercilessly beaten and murdered in front of his family on suspicions having killed a cow. His son Danish was also beaten brutally, but survived the attack. 

Yogi Adityanath did mention the incident during his speech, and politicised it by blaming the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party over the incident. 

PTI quoted Adityanath as saying, “Who does not know what had happened in Bisahda? Everybody knows it. How shamefully the Samajwadi Party government tried to suppress the sentiments then and I can say as soon as our government was formed we got all illegal slaughter houses stopped in one go and ensured its strict implementation.”

Adtiyanath also accused the previous governments of harassing the majority community by lodging false cases against them and thus creating a “breeding ground” for riots.

“During my two years, has there has been any Bisahada-like incident in the state? Has there been safety concern to sisters and mothers? No. This cannot happen because we have said that we will guarantee safety and development to 23 crore citizens of the state, bring every one into mainstream. We won’t differentiate between people but won’t engage in appeasement politics,” he said.

He said the law and order situation in UP and that in India under Modi has become exemplary.

“I have been wanting for a long time to come to Bisahada and meet people of this region and nearby areas,” he said as he campaigned for Mahesh Sharma, the BJP candidate from Gautam Buddh Nagar.

Danish told Huffpost India in an interview last week that these elections were life and death for him. He has had two brain surgeries, but the injuries to his brain have weakened his memory. 

NEW DELHI — Nine medium intensity earthquakes, with a magnitude ranging from 4.7 to 5.2, hit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Monday morning, all in a span of two hours, according to the National Centre for Seismology.

The first jolt with a magnitude of 4.9 occurred at 5.14 am, followed by another jolt with a magnitude of 5 a couple of minutes later.

The last jolt was recorded at 6.54 am with a magnitude of 5.2, it said.

The Andaman and the Nicobar archipelago is prone to earthquakes.

It is also not unusual for the islands to witness more than two-three quakes a day.

A 21-year-old University of South Carolina student is believed to have been kidnapped and murdered after entering a vehicle she mistook for her Uber ride early Friday, authorities said.

Samantha Josephson was out with friends in Columbia, South Carolina, when she was last seen getting into a black Chevrolet Impala around 2 a.m. Her body was found the next afternoon in a wooded area by turkey hunters, police said.

“What we know now is that she had, in fact, summoned an Uber ride and was waiting for that Uber ride to come,” Columbia Police Department Chief Skip Holbrook said at a press conference. “We believe that she simply mistakenly got into this car thinking it was her Uber ride.”

A search for the Impala led to Saturday’s early morning arrest of 24-year-old Nathaniel David Rowland on kidnapping and homicide charges. Holbrook said Rowland was pulled over during a traffic stop after he was seen driving a vehicle that matched the suspect’s vehicle description. After Rowland was asked to step out of his car, he allegedly attempted to run on foot from an officer.

When officers looked into his vehicle, they could see what appeared to be blood. After a search warrant was acquired, blood found inside the trunk and passenger seat tested positive for Josephson’s blood, Holbrook said.

Josephson’s cell phone was also found inside Rowland’s vehicle, along with bleach, window cleaner and germicide wipes. The vehicle’s child safety locks were also found initiated, which Holbrook noted would prevent someone from escaping.

Authorities have not released a possible motive or say how Josephson died. Rowland was only described as having previously lived in the area where the woman’s body was found, roughly 40 feet off of a dirt road.

Holbrook described that wooded area as being “very difficult to get to unless you knew how to get there.”

Samantha was a senior political science major from Robbinsville, New Jersey, according to local Columbia station WIS-TV.

USC President Harris Pastides released a statement expressing condolences to Josephson’s family and friends and urging students to look out for one another and be “active bystanders.”