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Punjab wants death for drug peddlers and Malegaon locals save five from being lynched

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Punjab wants death penalty for drug smugglers and peddlers. After an emergency meeting called by chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, the Punjab cabinet Monday decided to approach the Centre to introduce the death penalty for drug smugglers, reports Hindustan Times.

Police data from Maharashtra point to an intriguing pattern. Violence sparked by WhatsApp rumours of child-lifting is concentrated in three clusters. According to the data, attacks against 14 “strangers” were registered over the last 25 days in 12 districts spread across the state — in the north, west and northeast. This has led to 60 arrests, reports The Indian Express.

Meanwhile, five people were saved from being lynched in Malegaon:  Barely 10 hours after five people were lynched in Dhule, a group of five, including a two-year-old and two women, was saved by locals when a mob attacked them on the suspicion of being kidnappers. The locals held the surging mob back until a 130-strong police contingent rescued the five, reports The Times Of India.

Cauvery authority directs Karnataka to release water to Tamil Nadu: At its first meeting Monday, the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) directed Karnataka to release water to Tamil Nadu and other states, but did not discuss the former’s decision to challenge the CWMA’s constitution in the Supreme Court, reports The Hindu.

NRC final draft to be out by July 30. Authorities in Assam said they won’t seek any further extensions from the Supreme Court to publish the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) and promised the list will be “100 per cent” out by the month-end, reports Ruhi Tiwari for ThePrint.

People wait to check their names on the first draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam
People wait to check their names on the first draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam | Getty

SC seeks time-frame for when Lokpal will be functional. With the Centre failing to appoint a Lokpal in four years, the Supreme Court Monday set a 10-day deadline for the government to furnish a time-frame within which the anti-graft ombudsman would be picked, reports The Times of India.

The AAP-led Delhi government has not rejected any request to cut trees since 2015. According to records maintained by Delhi’s forest department, the administration has allowed the felling of over 17,115 trees in its north, south, and west zones, reports Apurva Vishwanath for ThePrint.

Red Corner Notice Against Nirav Modi, brother and employee. Now, the 192 member states of the Interpol will be allowed to arrest/detain the Modi brothers and an employee, reports The Tribune. Since escaping India, Modi has reportedly travelled to several countries on several passports.

Census data to be stored electronically from 2021. With records running into crores of pages that need a lot of space, data will now be stored electronically, said a government official. Any tampering with the data will invite punishment under the Information Technology Act, 2000, reports The Hindu.

Business Class

One-fourth of the Indian pharma market to be under price control. Only 17 per cent of the Rs 1.2-trillion Indian pharma market is currently under price control, reports Business Standard.

Over 200 million UPI transactions in June. As many as 246.37 million transactions, amounting to Rs 40,834.04 crore, took place through the unified payments interface in June, an increase of 30 per cent compared to May, reports Livemint.

News it’s just kinda cool to know

Happiness classes in Delhi have begun. The Delhi government rolled out Monday a “happiness curriculum” for students of nursery to Class VIII at an event attended by the Dalai Lama, reports The Tribune. The 45-minute class looks to reinforce the belief that the “wealth of happiness” forms the essence of “real wellbeing”.

Astronomers photographed a planet’s birth for the first time. Thanks to European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, a group of astronomers has taken the first photograph of a planet being formed around a young dwarf star called PDS 70. Not only is the photograph spectacular, it also teaches scientists a lot more about planetary formations.

Amazon can deliver packages anywhere, even in towns 11,562 feet up in the Himalayas: With big ambitions in India, Amazon has recruited hundreds of small businesses to get packages to the remotest customers in Leh. Amazon began offering doorstep delivery in this region last year, as part of an effort to better serve India, reports The New York Times.

Amazon
Packages move along a conveyor belt at the Amazon.com Inc. fulfilment centre in Hyderabad | Bloomberg

Point of View

Commenting on the anger and helplessness of Punjab in its war against drugs, Aarish Chhabra of Hindustan Times, in a column, refers to the recent viral videos depicting the state’s rampant drug abuse. “Data on arrests, of several users sucked into crime by the very addiction, can never tell you a story. Nor can videos always be the ultimate proof of everything,” he says.

Environmentalist Pradip Krishen comments in The Indian Express that forest departments have never had any experience or record of doing any ecological restoration work. “It is not part of the department’s brief, and is not taught to foresters in their training. So to expect the forest department to achieve any kind of afforestation that is even remotely akin to a natural wilderness is like baying at the moon,” he writes.

The Tribune, in an editorial, talks about the recent fall of the rupee and the anxiety it has created. “The depreciation of the national currency is a complex economic phenomenon and can be triggered by different kinds of reasons. However, to most ordinary citizens, it is perceived to be a national calamity with the international image of the nation taking a beating,” it writes.

Prime Time

WhatsApp rumours continue to trigger killings

On his show, NDTV India’s Ravish Kumar dealt with the lynchings triggered by social media rumours. “With every such incident, it is getting easier for a crowd to lynch a person on mere suspicion. It has killed both Hindus and Muslims,” he said. Kumar also quoted a piece written by Shivam Vij of ThePrint that said 29 people had allegedly been killed so far by mobs provoked by one WhatsApp forward about child-lifting.

Pratik Sinha of Alt News said the child-lifting WhatsApp rumour originated last year from Jharkhand. “It is being translated in every language, from Marathi to Gujarati, it is being localised. Every message is being modified to suit a specific city and locality,” said Sinha.

‘Three lynchings in three BJP-ruled states’

India Today’s Padmaja Joshi took the debate forward on her show. “One week, three lynching incidents in three BJP-ruled states; State inaction stoking rumour mongering?” she asked. Congress’ Amee Yajnik pointed out that since these incidents occurred in BJP-ruled states, there was something clearly wrong with the implementation of the law. “If you link up all the incidents of lynching, then it is definitely a mass phenomenon which has some degree of state sanction,” said Fuad Halim of the CPI(M).

Defending his party, the BJP’s Narendra Taneja remarked, “The BJP represents peace in the country.”


Contributors: Prateek Gupta, Ratnadeep Choudhary.

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