Dawood Ibrahim wants to return to India: lawyer
Thane: Fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim is "keen to return to India" if he would be lodged in the high-secure precincts of Arthur Road Central Jail (ARCJ) in Mumbai, officials told to court here.
Criminal Lawyer Shyam Keswani on Tuesday said, "He (Dawood) had conveyed his intentions through (former union minister and eminent lawyer) Ram Jethmalani a few years ago but the Indian government has not entertained any of his preconditions to return."
Mr Keswani's statement on Dawood's desire to return came more than six months after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray made a similar revelation in Mumbai.
The case pertains to alleged extortion of Rs. 3 crore from a builder in a deal involving a 38-acre plot of land worth crores of rupees in Gorai, a coastal village in south-west Thane.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
