Hindus of Pakistan reject CAA, do not want Indian Prime Minister Modi’s offer of citizenship
Dubai: Pakistani minorities have strongly condemned the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which discriminates against Muslims.
They have also rejected India’s offer to grant them citizenship under the new law. They said they are not interested in taking refuge in India and rejected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘humanitarian’ gesture.
Speaking to Gulf News, Dileep Kumar, a Dubai-based Pakistani Hindu, said: “The law from India is totally against [the] spiritual norms of humanity and Sanatana dharma.” Sanatana dharma is a term used in Hinduism to denote the set of duties or religiously ordained practices incumbent upon all Hindus, regardless of class, caste or sect.
“As humans, we cannot discriminate, irrespective of any religious followings. We do not want [the] Muslims of India to face terror. We condemn the law as religious persecution is unacceptable to [the] Hindus of Pakistan,” Kumar added.
Reverend Johan Qadir, a Sharjah-based Pakistani Christian community leader, said that the Pakistani Christian community also rejected the new Citizenship Amendment Bill. “We, the Christians of Pakistan, are not at all interested [in taking] refuge in India. I must say that the Modi’s citizenship bill does not favour the minorities at all as it is discriminatory and against basic human rights.”
What is the issue?
Citing the harassment of minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the Indian parliament recently amended its citizenship law, offering citizenship rights to Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi and Jain communities migrating from these countries.
Citizenship Amendment Act is a newly-passed law that applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They can apply for citizenship under a religious persecution clause.
The law, however, does not include Muslim refugees or migrants — it's a move that critics are calling a clear indication of the changing politics in secular India. India has a Hindu population but is also home to 200 million Muslims and other minorities.
This amendment of the Citizenship Act 1955, which requires the applicant (regardless of religion or country of origin) to have resided in India for 11 of the past 14 years, relaxes this requirement from 11 years to six years, but only for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from the three nations.
“Pakistan’s Hindu community unanimously rejects this bill, which is tantamount to dividing India on communal lines,” Raja Asar Manglani, patron of the Pakistan Hindu Council, earlier told Anadolu Agency.
“This is a unanimous message from Pakistan’s entire Hindu community to Indian Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi. A true Hindu will never support this legislation,” he said. He added that the law has violated India’s own constitution.
Senator Anwar Lal Dean, a Christian member of the Pakistani parliament’s upper house, also said the law is meant to pitch religious communities against each other, reported the Express Tribune.
“This is a clear violation of fundamental human rights. We categorically reject it,” said Dean, a leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party.
“Through such unjust and uncalled steps, the Modi government wants to pitch religious communities against each other,” he said.
Pakistan’s tiny Sikh community has also denounced the controversial law. “Not only Pakistani Sikhs but the entire Sikh community in the world, including those in India, also condemn this move,” said Gopal Singh, leader of the Baba Guru Nanak in Pakistan.
“The Sikh community is a minority both in India and Pakistan. Being a member of a minority, I can feel the pain and the fears of the Muslim minority [in India]. This is simply persecution,” he said. Singh urged Modi not to push minorities' “backs to the wall.”
Hindu population in Pakistan
Though there are no exact official numbers available, the Pakistan Hindu Council says that there are more than 8 million Hindus currently living Pakistan.
They constitute about 4 per cent of the population of 220 million. They live primarily in the urban areas of the province of Sindh in the lower Indus valley and more than half are concentrated in the south-east district of Tharparkar which borders India.
For the most part, Hindus in Pakistan are well educated and active in commerce, trade and the civil service.
According to the Council, approximately 94 per cent of Hindus are living in Sindh Province, and more than 4 per cent are living in Punjab Province of Pakistan, whereas a small portion of this population is settled in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Provinces.
Courtesy: gulfnews.com
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Actress sexual assault: Court says Prosecution 'miserably' failed to prove conspiracy against Dileep
Kochi (PTI): The prosecution had "miserably" failed to prove the conspiracy charge against Dileep in the sensational 2017 actress sexual assault case, a local court has observed while citing inconsistencies and lack of sufficient evidence against the Malayalam star.
The full judgement of Ernakulam District and Principal Sessions Court Judge Honey M Varghese was released late on Friday, and has revealed the judge also pointing out at unsustainable arguments put forth by the prosecution.
"The prosecution miserably failed to prove the conspiracy between accused No.1 (Pulsar Suni) and accused No.8 (Dileep) in executing the offence against the victim," the court held.
It examined in detail, the prosecution's allegation that Dileep had hired the prime accused to sexually assault the survivor and record visuals, including close-up footage of a gold ring she was wearing, to establish her identity.
On page 1130 of the judgment, under paragraph 703, the court framed the issue as whether the prosecution's contention that NS Sunil (Pulsar Suni) recorded visuals of the gold ring worn by the victim at the time of the occurrence, so as to clearly disclose her identity, was sustainable.
The prosecution contended Dileep and Suni had planned the recording so that the actress' identity would be unmistakable, with the video of the gold ring intended to convince Dileep that the visuals were genuine.
However, the court noted that this contention was not stated in the first charge sheet and was introduced only in the second one.
As part of this claim, a gold ring was seized after the victim produced it before the police.
The court observed that multiple statements of the victim were recorded from February 18, 2017, following the incident, and that she first raised allegations against Dileep only on June 3, 2017.
Even on that day, nothing was mentioned about filming of the ring as claimed by the prosecution, the court said.
The prosecution failed to explain why the victim did not disclose this fact at the earliest available opportunities.
It further noted that although the victim had viewed the sexual assault visuals twice, she did not mention any specific recording of the gold ring on those occasions, which remained unexplained.
The court also examined the approvers' statements.
One approver told the magistrate that Dileep had instructed Pulsar Suni to record the victim's wedding ring.
The court observed that no such wedding ring was available with her at that time.
During the trial, the approver changed his version, the court said.
The Special Public Prosecutor put a leading question to the approver on whether Dileep had instructed the recording of the ring, after which he deposed that the instruction was to record it to prove the victim's identity.
The court observed that the approver changed his account to corroborate the victim's evidence.
When the same question was put to another approver, he repeated the claim during the trial but admitted he had never stated this fact before the investigating officer.
The court noted that the second approver even went to the extent of claiming Dileep had instructed the execution of the crime as the victim's engagement was over.
This showed that the evidence of the second approver regarding the shooting of the ring was untrue, as her engagement had taken place after the crime.
The court further observed that the visuals themselves clearly revealed the victim's identity and that there was no need to capture images of the ring to establish identity.
In paragraph 887, the court examined the alleged motive behind the crime and noted that in the first charge sheet, the prosecution had claimed that accused persons 1 to 6 had kidnapped the victim with the common intention of capturing nude visuals to extort money by threatening to circulate them and there was no mention about Dileep's role in it.
The court also rejected the prosecution's claim that the accused had been planning the assault on Dileep's instructions since 2013, noting that the allegation was not supported by reliable evidence.
It similarly ruled out the claim that Suni attempted to sexually assault the victim in Goa in January 2017, stating that witness statements showed no such misconduct when he served as the driver of the vehicle used by the actress there.
The court also discussed various controversies that followed Dileep's arrest and the evidence relied upon by the prosecution, ultimately finding that the case had not been proved.
Pronouning its verdict on the sensational case on December 8, the court acquitted Dileep and three others.
Later, the court sentenced six accused, including the prime accused Suni, to 20 years' rigorous imprisonment.
The assault on the multilingual actress, after the accused allegedly forced their way into her car and held it under their control for two hours on February 17, 2017, had shocked Kerala.
Pulsar Suni sexually assaulted the actress and video recorded the act with the help of the other convicted persons in the moving car.
