This article provides a detailed report about the charges against former bureaucrat Ashish Joshi and the detention of Hindutva influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj following their respective incidents.
Former civil servant Ashish Joshi was interrogated by plainclothes police personnel on Wednesday for several hours over a social media post. He later confirmed that an FIR had been registered against him under sections pertaining to provocation with the intent to cause a riot. The video shared by Joshi, which was originally posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called on its state units to ‘rip apart the propaganda’ of ‘dimagi Naxals’, or persons with ‘Naxal mentality’.
Meanwhile, a Hindutva influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj was detained by Delhi Police for assaulting Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Aazad during demonstrations at Jantar Mantar. This came after a purported video of Bharadwaj that was widely shared online showed him claiming that he was not jailed despite having ‘cracked the skull’ of Kumar.
Following the controversy over the video, members of the Cockroach Janta Party held a protest outside the Parliament Street police station, demanding that charges under provisions relating to attempt to murder be added to the first information report registered in the case.
In a separate development, HarperCollins India announced that it will publish Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, in the subcontinent. This comes after Penguin Random House India, which was originally supposed to publish the book, backed out.
According to media reports, Penguin India had dropped the memoir after Gandhi rejected certain ‘editorial changes and deletions’ that the publisher wanted in the manuscript. However, Penguin Random House India denied these claims and stated that the decision was a mutual one due to the timing of the book’s release.
Finally, the toll in the flash flood and mudslide in Nepal and China, which occurred on August 26, rose to 1,311. Of these, 1,290 deaths were reported in Nepal. The remaining 21 deaths were on the Chinese side of the border. Nearly 5,000 persons were missing in Nepal and more than 500 in China. Those missing in Nepal included 601 foreigners.
Source:
Scroll.in
