SonyLIV, an Indian streaming service, is producing a series on the partition of the subcontinent, and the casting choices are a bit surprising. Adapted from the book of the same name, ‘Freedom at Midnight’ is about India’s fight for freedom from British rule. It will also talk about the time when India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947. The show plans to tell stories that haven’t been heard before and show important events from the tumultuous time.
The focus is on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder. Actor Arif Zakaria, who played Nehru in the ZEE5 show ‘Hutatma,’ will play Jinnah. “In preparing to portray Mohammed Ali Jinnah, I realized how important it was to depict him as a flawed and complicated human being rather than an untouchable hero,” he said. “I want to explore Jinnah’s character deeply, showing his complexity and the reasons behind his actions. By doing this, I aim to present a more real and complete picture of Jinnah.” Well, in the hands of the extremist right-wing wave in Bollywood, that just sounds like he wants to villainize the founder of Pakistan.
Ira Dubey, known for her role in the Netflix show ‘Scoop,’ will play Fatima Jinnah, Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s younger sister and close aide. Dubey emphasized how important Fatima Jinnah was in her brother’s life, highlighting their close relationship. After Pakistan was formed, Fatima Jinnah helped start the Pakistan Women’s Association, which was crucial for women who migrated.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah led the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan was created, and he became its first governor-general until he passed away in 1948. His sister Fatima played a big role by his side during his political journey, helping the new nation grow. The series is based on a famous book from 1975 by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. It aims to show the complexities of the independence movement, giving viewers a rich story filled with history. It promises to be exciting as it explores important historical figures and their stories during India’s fight for freedom.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to meet the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission next week to talk about a new loan programme, ARY News reported on Monday.
Sources in ARY claimed that the prime minister is expected to talk about getting more money from lenders, and reassure the Fund about meeting targets in the new loan programme.
They will discuss continuing stringent economic policies in the budget for the upcoming year.
Pakistan is seeking a $6 to $8 billion bailout package from the international lender for three to four years to address its financial woes.
Founder Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan held talks with journalists in Adiala Jail on Monday in which he stated that maverick party leader Sher Afzal Marwat did great work for the party but kept violating party policy despite warnings.
On Saturday, PTI served a show-cause notice to Marwat for allegedly breaching the party’s code of conduct and undermining its interests with his recent remarks targeting senior party leaders and Saudi Arabia.
Marwat was also expelled from the party’s core and political committees, as directed by party founder Imran Khan.
Journalist Zubair Ali Khan took to X (formerly Twitter) to share details of what Imran said. “Sher Afzal Marwat was told many times not to violate party policy. He used to attack some party leader or the other every day. On the occasion of the visit of the [Saudi] delegation, Sher Afzal Marwat made a controversial statement.”
Khan also remarked that there is no issue with Marwat if he still follows the party policy.
Many students of the esteemed Duke University left their graduation ceremony on Sunday, some of them shouting “Free Palestine” when guest speaker, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, started giving a speech.
Seinfeld is a known Zionist who has shown support for Israel during the Gaza genocide and according to media reports, sent money to the violent counter-agitators who attacked pro-Palestine student protestors at UCLA. A video on social media shows students in graduation robes and hats leaving the ceremony. Some were holding Palestinian flags. The ceremony was held in the university’s football stadium in North Carolina. Reuters confirmed the date and place of the video.
One person wore a keffiyeh, a scarf often used to show support for Palestinians. Some others cheered “Jerry! Jerry!” when Seinfeld got an honorary degree. Seinfeld gave his speech without big interruptions.
Many of you are probably thinking, ‘I can’t believe they asked him to come.’ But it’s too late,” he said, promising to “defend” the idea of privilege. “I believe you should use your privilege. I grew up as a Jewish kid from New York. That’s a privilege if you want to be a comedian,” he added. “We know that people feel strongly in our community, and just like we’ve done all year, we support everyone’s right at Duke to share their opinions peacefully. But we also want graduates and their families to enjoy their special day,” said Duke spokesperson Frank Tramble in a statement.
Seinfeld has been to Israel and openly supported it since October 7, when Israel started the genocide in Gaza. This action led to more than 35,000 deaths including 15,000 children, as reported by health officials. The White House mentioned on Tuesday that President Joe Biden is okay with peaceful protests during college graduation ceremonies where he and other officials will speak. The walkout at Duke University’s graduation is the latest example of protests happening on US campuses. Students are asking universities to stop investing in companies that profit from war and to give amnesty to students and staff who have faced consequences for protesting.
At Emerson College in Boston, there were interruptions during the president’s speech at their graduation ceremony on Sunday. Some students walked across the stage holding signs supporting Palestinians. One woman even unfurled a Palestinian flag. Because of these protests, some universities like Columbia in New York and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, have canceled their graduation ceremonies this month. Others have changed the location or format of their ceremonies.
The May 9 report from the caretaker government doesn’t just talk about the role of incarcerated Prime Minister Imran Khan in the riots but also reveals how multiple Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) leaders encouraged party workers to participate in violent protests.
The report revealed that on May 9, protests flared up at 300 locations in the country, going on to describe the role of every individual in the entire event.
“Upon Mr Khan’s arrest, PTI leaders promptly took to social media to spread lies about Mr Khan’s custody and encourage people to violence. It was widely alleged that Mr Khan was being tortured and that he was likely to be assassinated. The language employed was sensationalist, inflammatory and it consistently encouraged violence,” said the report presented before the present cabinet a few days back.
“Some instances of lies and incitement to violence by PTI leaders on that day are as follows. Hammad Azhar tweeted at 1437 hours to allege that Mr Khan was being tortured. Ms Zartaj expressed fear at 1510 hours that Mr Khan would be killed in custody. Murad Saeed tweeted at 1437 hours, 1444 hours and 1620 hours in which he, respectively, called PTI workers to gather at designated spots, not to let authorities torture and kill Mr Khan, and to make earth hell for those who consider themselves powerful. Farrukh Habib tweeted at 1651 hours asking people to lay down their lives but not let the police torture Mr Khan. Ali Amin Gandapur tweeted at 1712 hours telling workers it was now or never and to protect Khan with their lives. Ali Zaidi tweeted at 1623 hours and asked his workers to shut down the province (Sindh). Ms Anam Sheikh, Ms Shandana Gulzar Khan, Ms Kanwal Shauzab tweeted within a short span of each other encouraging people to protest at GHQ Rawalpindi. Senator Ejaz Chaudhary tweeted at 1428 hours calling all party workers to shut down the whole country. Faisal Javed tweeted at 1448 hours alleging Mr Khan was being tortured. Shahryar Afridi tweeted at 1536 hours implying that the traitors who had arrested Mr Khan had attacked the nation. Omar Malik tweeted a video message at 1555 hours encouraging people to march towards the residence of Corps Commander, Lahore.”
“Shortly after Mr Khan’s arrest, certain foreign based vloggers uploaded video messages making unsubstantiated allegations of torture and encouraged people to attack state institutions. Many of these vloggers incited general public to attack military installations. Most alarmingly, they tried to incite rebellion amongst armed forces and encouraged army officers and jawans to revolt against their command. These vloggers included Adil Raja, Haider Mehdi, Wajahat Khan, Moeed Pirzada and Shaheen Sehbai. Adil Raja and Haider Mehdi encouraged army officers to revolt,” said the report.
CNN has published and aired a damning report with the help of Israeli whistleblowers working at the Sde Teiman detention camp in Israel. The exposé has revealed systemic abuses by the military, including prisoners being restrained, blindfolded, and forced to wear diapers.
Israel’s military base, which is now a detention center in the Negev desert, was photographed twice by an Israeli worker of a scene that he says continues to haunt him.
Picture showed rows of men in gray tracksuits sitting on paper-thin mattresses, ringfenced by barbed wire. The detainees were blindfolded, their heads hanging heavy under the harsh glare of floodlights.
The whistleblower told CNN about the conditions these men were kept in, detailing that they are forbidden from speaking to each other, so they mumble to themselves.
“We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.” Guards were instructed “to scream uskot” – shut up in Arabic – and told to “pick people out that were problematic and punish them,” the report laid out.
Where is Sde Teiman?
Sde Teiman is located some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier and is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapers and fed through straws. “They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital. “(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower. “It was punishment for what they (the Palestinians) did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”
Why is it a paradise for medical interns?
The whistleblowers give a peek into the very common practice of amputation of prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained by constant handcuffing. The detention centre is also called “a paradise for interns” because sometimes underqualified medics perform procedures here and learn through practice.
Accounts of Palestinians held in the Israeli detention centre
CNN interviewed Dr. Mohammed al-Ran who headed the surgical unit at Northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be shut down and raided as Israel carried out its aerial, ground and naval offensive.
He was arrested on December 18, he said, outside Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where he had been working for three days after fleeing his hospital in the heavily bombarded north.
He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the middle of the desert.
“We looked forward to the night so we could sleep. Then we looked forward to the morning in hopes that our situation might change,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, recalled.
Al-Ran was held in a military detention center for 44 days, he told CNN. “Our days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our agony,” said al-Ran.
Punishment for speaking to each other
A prisoner who committed an offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position.
For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran.
Unleashing dogs as form of “the nightly torture”
That whistleblower and al-Ran also described a routine search when the guards would unleash large dogs on sleeping detainees, lobbing a sound grenade at the enclosure as troops barged in. Al-Ran called this “the nightly torture.”
“While we were cabled, they unleashed the dogs that would move between us, and trample over us,” said al-Ran. “You’d be lying on your belly, your face pressed against the ground. You can’t move, and they’re moving above you.”
The same whistleblower recounted the search in the same harrowing detail. “It was a special unit of the military police that did the so-called search,” said the source. “But really it was an excuse to hit them. It was a terrifying situation.”
“There was a lot of screaming and dogs barking.”
Strapped to beds in the hospital
“If you imagine yourself being unable to move, being unable to see what’s going on, and being completely naked, that leaves you completely exposed,” the whistleblower said. “I think that’s something that borders on, if not crosses to, psychological torture.”
Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.
Response of IDF
The Israeli Defence Forces did not directly deny accounts of people being stripped of their clothing or held in diapers. Instead, the Israeli military said that the detainees are given back their clothing once the IDF has determined that they pose no security risk.
Two Palestinian prisoners associations said last week that 18 Palestinians – including leading Gaza surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh – had died in Israeli custody over the course of the war.
Sde Teiman and other military detention camps have been shrouded in secrecy since their inception. Israel has repeatedly refused requests to disclose the number of detainees held at the facilities, or to reveal the whereabouts of Gazan prisoners.
Sindh Police took action on Sunday after footage of a Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) serving tea to political leaders went viral on social media.
Sindh Inspector General (IG) Ghulam Nabi Memon termed the officer’s action “very wrong”, adding that a written explanation will be sought from him.
IG Memon added that though the act was done in an individual capacity, nonetheless the officer will have to give an answer.
The viral video shows the senior cop serving tea to political leaders who are participating in a ceremony. Sindh minister and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Saeed Ghani can also be seen in the video.
A SSP is a BPS-19 grade officer in the government of Pakistan.
A suspected serial-killer of the police and alleged member of the banned militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Faizan Butt, who was reportedly involved in three attacks on police officials in Lahore within a week, was killed along with three other terrorists during an encounter in Karol Ghatti on Sunday night.
The counter-terrorism department’s spokesperson told the media that the team took the arrested terrorists to Karol Jungle for seizure of weapons. Meanwhile, about six terrorists opened fire on the police, as a result, four of the terrorists were shot dead by the firing of their accomplices while three managed to escape.
The police seized two Kalashnikovs and a pistol from the spot, he said.
UPDATE: “The target killer involved in killings’s of Lahore police was himself killed in a gun battle with militants during a recovery operation.”
The Counter Terrorism Department Punjab in a statement claimed that Faizan Butt who went by pseudonym Usman Khurasani was taken to… https://t.co/FcHiZebeU2
— The Khorasan Diary (@khorasandiary) May 12, 2024
Faizan had shot dead a sub-inspector and a constable after following them when they were unarmed on their way back home. He had also shot and injured another police constable. Investigations revealed that he recorded the attacks by using a pen camera, ensuring that the victim was dead before leaving. He then sent the recordings to his handlers as proof.
Initial investigations suggested that the suspect was frustrated because the police had registered a case against him.
The CTD had received information that he had contacted some people in his area to help him join a militant organisation.
Later, Faizan got arrested for carrying explosives and he was sent to prison. There he met a jailed leader of a banned sectarian outfit who helped him in getting released on bail.
He went to Afghanistan where he had meetings with TTP leaders who assigned him the task of killing six policemen to prove his loyalty.
The suspect revealed in police custody that the banned group had arranged a 30-bore and a 9mm pistol for the killings.
Faizan’s father was a manager in a factory and lived in Shadbagh. His mother had separated from him and lived in the private housing society.
As Mother’s Day comes to pass, celebrities are using social media to show love for their moms, including actors, models, and musicians. One common theme in their posts is talking about family love. Veteran actress Nadia Jamil wrote a heartfelt letter to her mom along with a montage of pictures, set to a Bollywood song.
In her post, she talked about how strong and brave her mom is. “Happy Mother’s Day to my rock, where my strength began from, where my life began from,” she joyously expressed. “My friend, confidant, the most generous, forgiving, loving woman I know, one of the most, beyond beautiful women to have lived on this planet.” She continued, “I love you Ma. Here’s to healing and learning and unlearning and to the adventure of life still left for us to enjoy together. With Aba, Baba Zain, Nana, Nani, Puchi Khala, all watching us. Please say a prayer for the health and happiness of my best friend… my Ma.”
Meanwhile, music icon Faisal Kapadia shared a sweet post on Instagram to celebrate Mother’s Day. One picture shows him as a child in his mother’s arms, while another shows his wife Seema with their two sons, Armaan and Gibran. In the caption, Faisal wrote, “Happy Mother’s Day!”
Singer Zoe Viccaji celebrated Mother’s Day by posting a cute picture with her daughter. They both had matching butterfly-themed face paints and smiled at the camera. Zoe wrote, “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there,” in a short note.
Joining the Mother’s Day celebration trend, Shaniera Akram shared a loving picture representing maternal love through the generations. She posted photos with her husband, former cricketer Waseem Akram, and their three children, two of them from the cricketer’s marriage to his late wife. Shaniera happily wrote, “My children are what makes my life full. I am blessed to have these three.”
She also said, “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, stepmoms, grandmas, new moms, mothers-in-law, and those who we keep in our hearts.” Moms are always there for us, giving hugs when we’re tired or saying comforting words when things get tough. They show endless love and care. So, while Mother’s Day is a special time to say thanks, let’s remember to appreciate and honor moms every day for everything they do for us.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) adopted a resolution on Sunday, demanding that the federal government declare former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a national democratic hero and put his picture on currency notes, ARY News reported.
The resolution was passed during a seminar titled ‘Bhutto Reference and History’, discussing the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reference.
The resolution praised the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision to acknowledge that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto didn’t get a fair trial, which resulted in his execution. The resolution called on the federal government to give him the title of “Quaid-e-Awam” (Leader of the People) and to award him the highest civilian honour, Nishan-e-Pakistan.
On March 6, the SC announced that the former prime minister, who was hanged 44 years ago, didn’t get a fair trial. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged in 1979 after a trial under the military regime of the late General Zia-ul-Haq.
