New Delhi: Prime time debates still remain fixated on the farmers’ protests. Sunday saw most discussions dwell on 21-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi’s arrest over a ‘toolkit’ shared by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on the ongoing farmer protests or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s alleged U-turn in praising India’s handling of them.
India Today’s Nabila Jamal asked what one should make of Delhi Police’s charge that Ravi was “a key conspirator in this ‘toolkit’ case”.
“It is a day of great shame for Karnataka that our home minister, our DGP and Commissioner of Police allowed a brave daughter of Karnataka to be abducted today,” said Leo Saldanha, coordinator at a non-profit organisation called the Environment Support Group.
Jamal asked Vikram Singh, former Uttar Pradesh director general police, if there wasn’t a protocol where first an inquiry is conducted for someone like Ravi who doesn’t have a criminal background.
Jamal said there is a process but pointed out that the decision to put Ravi in five-day policy custody was given by the court, not the police.
There is nothing in the toolkit that calls for overthrowing of the Indian state or violence, said telecom & IT consultant Ravi Prasad.
In its report, Aaj Tak sought to explain to its viewers what is a ‘tool kit’. It is a document that helps an interest group trend a certain issue on Twitter, Aaj Tak said, in a summation of the explanation.
Through this document, which helps activists trend an issue online, Ravi was allegedly trying to hatch a conspiracy against India under the garb of the farmers’ protests.
‘Khalistan samarthakon ke saath milkar tool kit banayi (she made the toolkit along with a bunch of Khalistani sympathisers)’, said a huge banner headline that flashed across the screen. Then, came the next big crime committed by the 21-year-old: ‘Itna he nahi, usne tool kit ko phailane ke liye WhatsApp group bhi banaya thha! (Not only this, but she also made a WhatsApp group to share the toolkit widely)’.
Even as the country registers a positive response to Covid-19 control, the number of cases are still very high in Kerala and Maharashtra, remarked Mirror Now’s Afrida Rahman Ali.
Ali asked if the slight spike in cases in Maharashtra has anything to do with the opening of trains.
Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the Maharashtra government’s task force, said: “We really don’t have direct answers… but there is a total lack of respect for Covid-19 appropriate behaviour.”
When asked why Kerala is trailing in the fight against virus after making headlines with its initial Covid-19 response, immunologist Dr Padmanabha Shenoy suggested it may have to do with the fact that there is a lot of mobility within Kerala as most of it is “urbanised”, unlike Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which have a lot of rural spaces.
Dr Raman Gangakhedkar, former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at ICMR, said the decision to open schools in Maharashtra has to be reviewed.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau had made cautionary remarks on the handling of farm law protests, last year. Now he has commended the government’s efforts in initiating a dialogue with the farmers, said the Ministry of External Affairs Friday.
NewsX’s Vineet Malhotra remarked that this has come after India promised to send vaccines to Canada. He added: “Trudeau continues to (have) a blind eye to the separatists elements in Canada, be it his cabinet ministers or other Khalistanis.”
Former diplomat Deepak Vohra said: “Justin Trudeau is a kid. A Janus-faced hypocrite on the basic support for peaceful protest.”
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, foreign editor at Hindustan Times, said when former Canadian PM Stephen Harper had signed a counter-terrorism agreement with India, “that would have helped resolve a lot of our problems with Khalistani elements but Trudeau basically threw it in the bin saying ‘that’s not what my constituency wants’.”
Meanwhile, TV9 Bharatvarsh chose to focus on the Pulwama terrorist attack anniversary. “Terrorists are pets of the ISI and Pakistan army, and these are the three main culprits behind every conspiracy to attack India…but their plans are failing in Kashmir over the past couple of years,” declared anchor Gaurav Kapoor.
He then presented a report on the November 2020 Nagrota encounter in which four terrorists, purportedly from Jaish-e-Mohammed, were killed. “With the neutralisation of the four terrorists, Pakistan’s 26/11 part 2 plan also breathed its last in Kashmir,” the channel said.