[Source]

The Gujarat government has destroyed crucial records pertaining to the 2002 riots. This comes from none other than the Narendra Modi government itself. SB Vakil, state government counsel in the Nanavati Commission, said important records like incoming and outgoing call data, log books of government vehicles and officials’ movement have been destroyed. And that IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is lying about being present in the meeting that Narendra Modi convened then, because he knows the official records no longer exist.

Clearly.

VHP discovers SlutWalk:

A spokesman for the group said: “India will not tolerate anything that crosses the limits of our culture. In any case, India already offers women a lot of respect so I am unclear about the purpose of this event.”

I wish he develops a pair of breasts before he next boards a bus. Then we’ll talk.

[...]

Although organisers have changed the name to a tamer-sounding ‘Besharmi Morcha’ (Shameless Front) and asked women to wear their everyday attire, the VHP warned participants against donning western-style clothing.

“They will not be welcome if they march wearing western clothes, Indian society will not accept it,” the VHP spokesman said.

If this spokesman is guessing that Indian society won’t accept SlutWalk (or Besharmi Morcha) then I respect his opinion and hope that he is wrong.

If he is threatening participating women from wearing western attire then this ought to enrage every single Indian.

***

Some thoughts on SlutWalk here.

This girl wasn’t as lucky as that girl.

If you don’t want to click through:

Authorities say that an 8-year-old girl was tricked into carrying a concealed bomb close to a police vehicle, where it was remotely detonated, the Associated Press reports. Only she died.

[Haryana]

A woman allegedly killed her seven-month-old granddaughter by throwing her into a burning tandoor after thrusting an onion into her mouth.

Aamir Khan will be in an item song in Delhi Belly. The look of the song is a tribute to the disco-dancer era of Hindi films. Aamir adds:

I have copied Amitji’s hairstyle, Govinda and Mithunda’s dance style. Hair on my chest is from Anilji.

Given Aamir’s quest for perfection, I have to ask: Is that literal?

***

I like the music of Delhi Belly. This might not be the only reason why I like it, but Ram Sampath’s music sounds like Amit Trivedi’s.

***

Still on Bollywood, I heard Zoya Akhtar’s voice in this interview for the first time. She sounds like a female Farhan Akhtar. Whenever I hear the Akhtar siblings’ voice, I visualize a frequency spectrum filled with noise.

More On Arindham Chaudhari’s Lawsuit.

If the video I posted was too short for your laid-back life, check out this piece he wrote in The Sunday Indian.

I could paste excerpts where he comes across as an idiot but I’d rather that you read it in its entirety just to understand how wildly different someone’s interpretation of free speech can be. When Arindham sues Google — at this point, he is in effect suing the ‘internet’ — it could be for the following reasons:

1. He doesn’t understand how the internet works.

2. He understands how the internet works and truly believes that Google ought to be responsible for the content on the internet. (Perhaps he might have held a different belief if those damn bloggers weren’t trashing him online.)

3. If he only cared about Caravan’s piece on him, he would bully just them. Here he is taking on the internet giant which has a strong legal team. He wants to set a precedent so no one messes with him. From his piece, he wants Google to not make any money in India if anywhere in the world, it links to defamatory posts about an Indian. That’s HUGE.

In any country, he’d have the right to sue anyone to cause hassle. But if this lawsuit were in the U.S., his lawsuit and him would be held by their tail and ponytail respectively and be thrown out. In India, I’m not so sure. The government is on the verge of passing amendments to the IT Act that side with Arindham. He quotes the amendments in his article too.

Link via Gautam John.

***

Arindham’s article begins with:

“Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.” So wrote Daniel Lyons some years back, in a classic Forbes cover story titled ‘Attack of the Blogs’. As the Senior Editor of Forbes then, Dan was simply expressing his extreme frustration at the utter nastiness of the Internet community, which seemed to have a super-majority of calumnious commentators, who thrived on the faceless protection that the net provided in order to leave shamefully slanderous and defamatory comments left, right and center.

This is from a 2005 piece Dan Lyons wrote for Forbes. It was around the time traditional publishing was being clobbered by new media. Publishers had reason to be pissed off at bloggers and content aggregators. The piece mirrored their angst.

Funny fact though: In 2006, Dan Lyons started the now famous Fake Steve Jobs blog. That piece looks ironic now.

***

Arindham is in another ongoing lawsuit where he doesn’t seem to be doing too well.

In Syria:

After ghastly crimes carried out by security forces and others, a group of men in Syria have pledged to marry women who were raped during the violence that swept the country in the recent months.

All’s well that ends well.

Arindham Chaudhari files a Rs. 500 million lawsuit against Caravan Magazine, Penguin and Google India for defaming him — or as everyone else calls it, writing facts about him. Caravan will fight.

This is a good time to reflect on this video: Arindham Chaudhari on Internet Hooliganism

*

I hate to repeat this all the time, but freedom of speech is never meant to curb defamation. It is meant to do precisely the opposite: To let people speak their mind and reveal themselves as idiots.

Like Arindham Chaudhari has done in the above video.

[Source]

A high level of female infanticide and sex trafficking make India the fourth most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, according to a global survey released last week.

I have a modest readership and women make up for most of it. I can’t afford to lose you. Stay safe.

This would have been a hilarious piece if it weren’t about journalist J. Dey’s murder. Two days after cops said they had no clues, they now have made significant progress. Believe it.

Some excerpts:

Investigators have made crucial breakthroughs especially after cracking two of the four email IDs operated by the slain journalist. Investigators have managed to crack a rediffmail and a gmail account of J Dey, while work is underway to crack the other two accounts.

While J Dey used his rediffmail account more for his personal communications connected to his finances etc, it’s his gmail account that’s keeping investigators busy. There are close to 3,000 mails and 250 draft mails in this account. “After several attempts at cracking his account, it took a relatively high-end TIFR server to crack Dey’s 16-digit password,” revealed an officer closely linked with the investigations.

First, if they had a subpoena Google would have helped them out. And if they had to crack his e-mail account, it is probably illegal. In which case, it is stupid to mention this to a reporter.

***

The most profound bit:

Additional Commissioner (crime) Deven Bharti said, “While the 3,000 emails in his gmail account are an assortment of links and information that Dey was more interested in, it’s the collection of 250 drafts that are very crucial as they give us an insight into what he was planning to do.”

(Not if his drafts were anything like mine.)

***

Scratch that. This is the most profound bit:

According to a high placed source, Dey rarely ever forwarded emails from his one account to another.

Unlike all of us who spend the better part of our days forwarding e-mails from one account to another.

***

“I don’t see this as a revenge killing. The manner and urgency with which Dey was killed clearly indicate that he was murdered to prevent him from doing something,” Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Himanshu Roy told rediff.com.

…

***

“We have reconstructed the entire day starting from the morning to 3.30 pm including the escape of the assailants. There is still a gap of half an hour which we need to figure out. We are working on it,” Roy said.

Who wants to guess which is the half an hour the cops have no clue about?

***

No wonder MiDDay editor Sachin Kalbag is pissed off at the cops.

***

Yes, investigations are hard; there aren’t always clues. But it doesn’t have to be so obviously sloppy.