A Qatar court on October 26 handed death sentence to eight former Indian Navy officials who are currently detained in the Gulf country and are charged with spying on a submarine programme on behalf of Israel. Reacting to the verdict, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said it is “deeply shocked” and is “awaiting detailed judgement”.
We have initial information that the Court of First Instance of Qatar has today passed a judgement in the case involving 8 Indian employees of Al Dahra company,” the MEA said in a statement.
“We are deeply shocked by the verdict of death penalty and are awaiting the detailed judgement. We are in touch with the family members and the legal team, and we are exploring all legal options,” the Ministry added.
“We attach high importance to this case, and have been following it closely. We will continue to extend all consular and legal assistance. We will also take up the verdict with Qatari authorities,” the MEA statement said, adding, “due to the confidential nature of proceedings of this case, it would not be appropriate to make any further comment at this juncture”.
The former Indian Navy officers — Captain Navtej Singh Gill, Captain Birendra Kumar Verma, Captain Saurabh Vasisht, Commander Amit Nagpal, Commander Purnendu Tiwari, Commander Sugunakar Pakala, Commander Sanjeev Gupta and Sailor Ragesh — were arrested by Qatari intelligence service from Doha on August 30, 2022. The charges against them were not made public by Qatari authorities.
Cash-for-query row: Ethics Committee of Lok Sabha calls TMC MP Mahua Moitra on October 31
The Ethics Committee, headed by Ghairman Vinod Sonkar, has also sought assistance from Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) in probing the allegations against Moitra. Earlier in the day, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey and advocate Jai Dehadrai appeared before the Committee to record their statements and present evidence in connection with the allegations against her.
During the meeting, questions were raised on Dubey’s motivation behind accusing Moitra of getting financial benefits for raising questions in the parliament. Moitra has earlier questioned the authenticity of Dubey’s MBA degree.
In his complaint to Speaker Om Birla, Dubey cited documents shared by Dehadrai to back his cash-for-query allegations against Ms. Moitra. Birla had referred the matter to the committee headed by BJP member Sonkar.
Dehadrai was the first to record his statement before the Ethics Committee, while Dubey appeared before the panel in the afternoon, according to PTI. Dubey told reporters that he would reply to whatever questions the committee would ask him.
“Documents don’t lie,” Dubey said when pointed out that Moitra had refuted all the allegations levelled against her.
In the letter to Birla dated October 15, Dubey said the advocate, close to Moitra before they fell out, has shared “irrefutable evidence of bribes exchanged” between her and businessman Darshan Hiranandani to target the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The fiery TMC member dismissed the charges as a “jilted ex’s lies” — a reference to Dehadrai, and accused the Adani Group of being behind them to target her as she has been relentless in raising questions on the conglomerate’s practices and transactions.
In his letter to the Speaker, Dubey said 50 of 61 questions she asked in the Lok Sabha till recently were focused on the Adani Group. In a signed affidavit, Hiranandani, the CEO of real estate-to-energy eponymous group, who allegedly paid her to raise questions in Parliament, said the TMC leader targeted Gautam Adani to “malign and embarrass” PM Modi whose impeccable reputation gave the Opposition no opportunity to attack him.
ED summons Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot’s son in FEMA case
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 26 summoned Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot in a foreign exchange violation case. Vaibhav Gehlot has been asked to depose before the federal agency’s headquarters in New Delhi on October 27, the sources said.
However, he is expected to seek a fresh date for his appearance as he needs to gather documents dating from 2011 till now to furnish them to the ED investigators, they said.
The summons is linked to the recent ED raids against Rajasthan-based hospitality group Triton Hotels & Resorts Pvt. Ltd., Vardha Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. and its directors and promoters Shiv Shankar Sharma, Rattan Kant Sharma and others. The agency had searched the group and its promoters for three days in August at locations in Jaipur, Udaipur, Mumbai and Delhi. Rattan Kant Sharma’s alleged links with Vaibhav Gehlot are under the scanner of the ED and the agency is expected to question and record his statement under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). He has been a business partner of Vaibhav Gehlot in a car rental company in the past.
Unaccounted cash of ₹1.2 crore was seized by the ED after these searches. The Congress slammed the Centre over the ED’s action against its leaders in Rajasthan and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking the help of probe agencies in fighting polls, and said people would give the BJP a befitting reply.
Ashok Gehlot, reacting to the summons, said the Centre is misusing investigating agencies to target Congress leaders in Rajasthan because of the fear of BJP’s defeat in the upcoming Assembly election. “The ED raids on the premises of PCC president Govind Singh Dotasra and Congress candidate Om Prakash Hudla were made without any complaint being made to it,” he said at a press conference.
“ED issued a notice to Vaibhav Gehlot yesterday and summoned him to its office today. Is it a joke?” asked Ashok Gehlot.
ED raids were conducted a day after we announced two guarantees for people at a rally of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra yesterday. We are going to announce five more guarantees tomorrow. Let them prepare a list of five more Congress leaders in advance for raids, Gehlot added.
The ED on October 26 raided the premises of Rajasthan Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra and party candidate from Mahua Assembly seat as part of a money laundering investigation into the alleged exam paper leak case in the poll-bound State, official sources said.
The premises of Dotasra, a former Minister for School Education, in Sikar and Jaipur apart from party candidate from Mahua seat in Dausa, Omprakash Hudla, and some others are being searched, they said.
Listen to today’s episode of the In Focus podcast
Does India need to decriminalise abortion?
Earlier this month, a married woman, who was 26 weeks pregnant, approached the Supreme Court, asking to be allowed to terminate her pregnancy. This was the woman’s third pregnancy, and she told the Court that she did not want to have the baby. She also said she was suffering from post-partum depression and other health issues. She did not know of her pregnancy until quite late, as she was breastfeeding, which can temporarily prevent pregnancies. The Court first agreed to allow her to terminate. But subsequently, following a hospital report that said the foetus was viable and had a heartbeat, and a medical board report that said the pregnancy was not causing an immediate danger to the woman or foetus’s life, the Court rejected her plea to abort the foetus.
The case has sparked a pro-life vs pro-choice debate. Only last year, in a landmark ruling in a case known as X vs NCT the Supreme Court had said it is the woman alone who has the right over her body and was the ultimate decision-maker. But this apart, the case has also thrown into spotlight the laws surrounding abortion in India . So what do the laws, including the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act say? Why do women need to approach the Courts for a termination? Why is it that women across the country still find it hard to access safe and legal abortion services?
‘Rath Prabharis’ now called nodal officers for outreach events
The Congress had raised an objection, asking how the officials could be told to do such a pre-poll “political propaganda” for the government. Through an October 17 letter, all the departments were earlier told that Joint Secretaries, Directors, and Deputy Secretaries would be deployed as “Rath Prabharis” to coordinate for the preparations, planning, execution and monitoring of the programme.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the yatra on November 15, on the occasion of “Birsa Munda Jayanti – Jan-jaati Gaurav Diwas” by flagging of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) vans at Khunti in Jharkhand. The vans will be visiting the tribal districts initially and the remaining districts from November 22 onwards till January 25, 2024.
On Thursday, Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra said the programme would not be launched in the poll-bound States till the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct was in place. He said the programme’s objective was a nationwide outreach and awareness campaign to ensure that every eligible person was covered under 20 Central schemes.
Around 2.6 lakh gram panchayats (rural) and over 3,700 urban local bodies having around 14,000 locations (urban) would be covered during the campaign, other than the election-bound States. The teams would include field experts for training purposes, including the use of drones in farming. They would also interact with the beneficiaries of government schemes for feedback. Facilities such as on-the-spot registration under various schemes would also be provided.
Maine mass shooting | At least 18 dead, says Governor; police hunt for shooter as residents take shelter
Maine’s Governor says 18 people were killed and 13 were injured in shootings in Maine. Governor Janet Mills made the remarks at a press conference on October 26.
A man shot and killed the victims at a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston and then fled into the night, sparking a massive search by hundreds of officers while frightened residents stayed locked in their homes on October 26 under a shelter-in-place advisory.
Ms. Mills said the shooting suspect, Robert Card, is considered armed and dangerous, warns people not to approach him.
A police bulletin identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest in the attack that sent panicked bowlers scrambling behind pins when shots rang out around 7 p.m. Card was described as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.
Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief loses 4 family members in Israeli airstrike
Moments later, the Qatari-based satellite channel switched to footage of Dahdouh entering al-AqsaHospital in Gaza before giving way to grief as he peered over the body of his dead son.
“They take revenge on us in our children?” he said, kneeling over his son’s bloodied body, still wearing his protective press vest from that day’s work. Dahdouh’s grandson also was declared dead two hours later, the network reported.
The video was sure to reverberate across the Arab world, where the 53-year-old journalist is well-known as the face of Palestinians during many wars. He is revered in his native Gaza for telling people’s stories of suffering and hardship to the outside world.
According to Al Jazeera, Dahdouh’s family members were killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit Nuseirat Refugee Camp, located in an area of Gaza where the military had encouraged people to go to stay safe. It said a number of other relatives were still missing, and it remained unclear how many others were killed.
Dahdouh’s family were among the more than 1 million Gaza residents displaced by the war, now in its 19th day, and were staying in a house in Nuseirat when the strike hit, the network said. The Israeli strikes have killed more than 6,500 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry says. The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.
Late Wednesday, Al Jazeera replayed the moment Dahdouh was informed about the deaths. In an audio recording he is heard picking up a phone and telling a frantic caller multiple times: “Who are you with?”
Earlier, Dahdouh was on air, covering the aftermath of a separate strike that had killed at least 26 people, according to local officials. Throughout the war, Dahdouh has remained in Gaza City, despite Israeli calls for residents to head south ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to Nuseirat and other locations in central and southern Gaza, believing them to be safer. But Israeli strikes have continued to pound these areas, which are suffering dire shortages of water, medicine and fuel under an Israeli siege.
This is the safe area which the occupation army talked about, the moral army,” said Dahdouh with bitter sarcasm to a fellow a Al Jazeera reporter at the al-Aqsa hospital.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said Dahdouh’s family “home was targeted” in an “indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation.”
The Israeli army had no immediate comment. It says it strikes only Hamas military targets, but the Palestinians say thousands of civilians have died. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Israel has threatened to shut down Al Jazeera over its coverage of the war. Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-owned media network, and is deeply critical of Israel, particularly its treatment of Palestinians.
Over the last week, the gas-rich nation of Qatar has emerged as a key intermediary over the fate of more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas militants during their October 7 assault. Qatar has hosted Hamas’ political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade. The capital, Doha, is home to Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader, and also Khaled Mashaal, Haniyeh’s predecessor.
Four of the hostages have been released, a mother and daughter on Friday and two more on Monday. In an interview with Sky News this week, Mashaal said all Israeli hostages could be released if Israel stopped its aerial bombardment of the Gaza.
In Brief:
Israel ground forces raid Hamas sites in Gaza, withdraw
Israeli ground forces operated within the northern Gaza Strip on October 26, attacking multiple Hamas targets before withdrawing, the military said in a statement on what Israel’s Army Radio described as the biggest incursion of the current war. Video of the overnight action issued by the military showed armoured vehicles proceeding through a sandy border zone. A bulldozer is seen levelling part of a raised bank, tanks fire shells, and explosions are seen near or amid a row of damaged buildings. Over the last few days, increased Israeli airstrikes have been devastating parts of the Gaza Strip, jeopardising relief operations and leaving neighbourhoods in shambles. Strikes have destroyed homes and businesses and left many digging through the debris.
Canada welcomes India’s decision to resume some visa services; says ‘a good sign’ amid diplomatic row
Canada has welcomed India’s decision to resume some visa services in the country from October 26, saying the move was a “good sign” after “an anxious time” for many Canadians, amid a diplomatic row over the killing of a Sikh separatist. India’s High Commission in Canada said on October 25 that the country’s officials will resume processing some types of visa applications for Canadians applying from across the country as well as abroad.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
