Tag: indian govt

  • Indian govt calls BBC Modi documentary ‘propaganda’

    Indian govt calls BBC Modi documentary ‘propaganda’

    The Indian foreign ministry has dismissed a BBC documentary about Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujrat riots as “propaganda”.

    The first of the two-part series was aired in the UK on Tuesday with the second part scheduled to hit airwaves a week later. The documentary tracks Modi’s first steps into politics, including his rise through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to his appointment as chief minister of Gujrat.

    Modi was still holding the position when communal riots rocked the state, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.

    According to the documentary the inquiry team had assessed that Modi had prevented the police from acting to stop the violence targeted against Muslims, stating that he had specifically ordered law-enforcing authorities not to intervene. The documentary also features a former top UK diplomat who says that the violence had been planned by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)

    Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, has termed the BBC documentary a “propaganda piece”.

    On Thursday, British PM Rishi Sunak was asked in parliament if he agreed with the report that Modi was directly responsible for the violence. In reply, Sunak defended his Indian counter-partner.

    “We don’t tolerate persecution anywhere”, the British Prime Minister said but added that “he did not agree with the characterisation” of Modi as depicted in the documentary.

  • Court allows divorce on grounds of mental cruelty to husband

    Court allows divorce on grounds of mental cruelty to husband

    An Indian state Chhattisgarh High Court bench granted a decree of divorce on grounds of mental cruelty to the husband.

    The court declared that if a wife insists that her husband to get separated from his parents and threatens to implicate him in a false dowry demand case, it would be counted as mental cruelty.

    Justices Goutam Bhaduri and NK Chandravanshi heard a petition filed by a husband challenging the order passed by a Family Court in 2017 by which his plea seeking divorce on the ground of cruelty was rejected.

    The judges noted that the marriage of the couple hardly worked for two months. The wife often left her matrimonial house as she wanted to live alone with her husband who made several attempts to reconcile but in vain.

    “In such a lower middle-class family, it is the responsibility of the eldest son to take care of his elderly parents, as he has deposed also in his statement. In such a situation, if the wife persistently creates constraints upon the husband to get separated from his family and to live with her at her parental house and also threatened him that, otherwise she will implicate him in the dowry case, it, itself amounts to mental cruelty on the husband,” the high court remarked.

    The Family Court was unjustified in making such an observation, the court said.