Disha bail plea order on Feb. 23
Cops allege she deleted evidence like emails
New Delhi, Feb. 20: If highlighting farmers’ protest globally is sedition, then she is “better in jail”, activist Disha Ravi told a Delhi court which on Saturday reserved for February 23 its order on her bail plea in the toolkit case after police alleged that she was part of a plan to instigate violence in India and had deleted “evidence” like emails.
Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana posed some scathing questions to the probe agency during the hearing on Ravi’s plea, asking it if it was only acting on “surmises, inferences, and conjectures” and questioned how the toolkit was connected to the violence during the farmers’ march. “...Unless I satisfy my conscience, I don’t move ahead,” the judge said.
Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju, appearing for the Delhi Police, told the court that the hyperlinks in the toolkit connected people to Khalistani websites that propagate hatred towards India. “This was not just a
toolkit. The real plan was to defame India and create unrest here,” he said. Ravi’s counsel, however, claimed there is no evidence linking the toolkit to the violence during the farmers’ march on January 26. He also questioned the contents of the FIR. “We all have different opinions. You may have a problem with farmers’ protest, I may not. If highlighting protest globally is sedition, I (Ravi) am better in jail. I (defence counsel) also support farmers. But if that’s an offence, let’s all go to jail,” defence counsel Sidharth Agarwal said. “There is an allegation in FIR that Yoga and Chai are being targeted. Is it an offence? We are now reducing the bar that somebody can’t have a point of view different,” the counsel said.
Ravi was arrested in Bengaluru on Saturday by a Cyber Cell team of the Delhi Police for allegedly creating the toolkit and was brought to Delhi. She was booked on sedition and other charges.
Opposing Ravi’s bail plea, the police alleged that she was preparing the toolkit with those advocating Khalistan. It alleged that Ravi deleted WhatsApp chats, emails and other evidence and was aware of legal action that she could face. Why did Disha Ravi cover her track and delete evidence if she did not commit wrong, the police said, alleging that his shows her guilty mind and sinister design.
“My part is that I sought support from Greta Thunberg, that too for farmers’ protest and not for Khalistan,” the defence counsel countered, and claimed that Ravi acted due to fear of being wrongly prosecuted. —
Barcelona, Feb. 20: Street protests over the imprisonment of a rapper turned violent for a fourth straight night in Spain on Saturday, as political responses to the disturbances strained relations inside the country's coalition government. Police in the northeastern region of Catalonia, which has seen most of this week's rioting, said some protesters pelted officers with bottles, stones, fireworks and paint in Barcelona and at least three other places. Others set fire to large street trash containers and used them to block streets.
In downtown Barcelona, some people broke into two bank branches and tried to set a fire inside, while others vandalized and ransacked stores, police said. In Girona, another Catalan city, protesters smashed the windows of three banks. Thousands of people joined the marches, but the violence
appeared to come from a smaller group.
The pitched battles raged hours after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the violence is inadmissible, in comments that accentuated a rift with his coalition government's junior partner.
In impromptu remarks at the start of a speech about the economy, Sánchez addressed the
rioting this week that has ignited a heated debate over the limits of free speech in Spain and a political storm over the use of violence by both the rapper's supporters and the police. “Violence is an attack on democracy,” Sánchez said, “and the government will take a stand against any form of violence to ensure people's safety.”
Moscow, Feb. 20: A Moscow court on Saturday rejected Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's appeal against his prison sentence, even as the country faced a top European rights court's order to free the Kremlin's most prominent foe.
Navalny was sentenced earlier this month by a lower court to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation. Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption crusader and President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, appealed the prison sentence and asked to be released. The Moscow City Court's judge on Saturday only slightly reduced his sentence to just over 2 1/2 years in prison, ruling that a month-andhalf Navalny spent under house arrest in early 2015 will be deducted from his sentence.
Navalny's arrest and imprisonment have fuelled a huge wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days. Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny's arrest and the crackdown on demonstrations as meddling in its internal affairs.
In a ruling Tuesday, the
European Court of Human Rights ordered the Russian government to release Navalny, citing “the nature and extent of risk to the applicant's life.”
The Strasbourg-based court noted that Navalny has contested Russian authorities' argument that they had taken sufficient measures to safeguard his life and well-being in custody following the nerve agent attack. The Russian government has rebuffed the Strasbourg-based court's demand, describing the ruling as unlawful and “inadmissible” meddling in Russia's affairs.
In the past, Moscow has abided by the ECHR's rulings awarding compensations to Russian citizens who have contested verdicts in Russian courts, but it never faced a demand by the European court to set a convict free. In a sign of its long-held annoyance with the Strasbourg court's verdicts, Russia last year adopted a constitutional amendment declaring the priority of national legislation over international law.