SUNDAY Vol. 34 No. 31 | SUNDAY | DECEMBER 4, 2022 | 19 Pages | ` 5 EDITIONS: MUMBAI*, Pune, Nashik, Konkan, Indore, Bhopal, E-paper LARGE CARRIER PLAN PUT ON HOLD Voice matters The voice industry has seen a tremendous shift but voice artistes are still awaiting their due THE FP BULLETIN Umar discharged in 2020 riots case Option of another ship of the INS Vikrant class and a raft of other platforms, including Predator drones, is under consideration PTI / New Delhi A Delhi court has discharged former JNU student leader Umar Khalid and United Against Hate founder Khalid Saifi in a case relating to the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots. Mr Khalid is also facing charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. NATION The Indian Navy is looking at having a second indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) of the INS Vikrant class and is set to procure a raft of other platforms, including Predator drones from the U.S., to , bolster its capability Admiral R Hari Kumar said on Satur. day Addressing a press confer, ence a day ahead of Navy Day the Chief of Naval Staff said the plan to have a bigger indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC II) had been put on hold and the option of a repeat order of India is a part of me, says Pichai Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday received the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award, in the presence of his family in San Francisco. “India is a part of me. I carry it with me wherever I go,” Mr Pichai said while accepting the award from India’s Ambassador to the U.S. Taranjit Singh Sandhu. WORLD the recently commissioned IAC I (INS Vikrant) was being contemplated. Dec 4 is celebrated as Navy Day to commemorate its daring attack on Karachi harbour and its decisive role in the victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war. The Kashmir Files: Jurors back Lapid FPJ BUREAU / New Delhi Days after Israeli director and international jury head Nadav Lapid called The Kashmir Files “vulgar” at the International Film Festival of India, all jury members other than the one Indian on the panel have backed him. At the closing ceremony of IFFI, Mr Lapid had said his thoughts on the “propaganda” , film were shared by the jury but Sudipto Sen later disputed this claim. On Saturday fellow jury member Jinko Gotoh tweeted a statement expressing the support of all three foreign members of the jury for Lapid. The statement reads: “At the festival’s closing ceremony, Nadav Lapid, the jury’s president, made a statement on behalf of the jury members, stating: ‘We were all of us disturbed and shocked by the 15th film, The Kashmir Files, that felt to us like a vulgar propaganda movie, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival.” “We stand by his statement. Woman injured in high-rise fire A 43-year-old woman was injured after a blaze erupted in her third-floor residence while she was performing a havan on Saturday. It is yet to be ascertained if the ritual caused the mishap. CITY 3 killed in Bengal explosion Three people were killed in an explosion near the ancestral house of West Bengal’s Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in East Midnapore district. The explosion took place late on Friday night, hours before a rally of Trinamool Congress MP NATION Abhishek Banerjee. SOBO reservoir revamp put off The Rs698.5 crore project to reconstruct the 135-year-old Malabar Hill reservoir, which supplies water to south Mumbai, will begin in CITY January 2023. ‘Hitler was a great person’ I srael’s envoy to India Naor Gilon received anti-Semitic messages after filmmaker Nadav Lapid described The Kashmir Files as “vulgar”. “Just wanted to share one of a few DMs I got in this direction.... Even though he doesn’t deserve my protection, I decided to delete his identifying information,” the envoy tweeted. The screenshot read: “Hitler was great when he burned down s**** like you. immediately and f*** off from India… Hitler was a great person.” , And to clarify we were not taking a political stance on the film’s content. We were making an artistic statement, and it saddens us greatly to see the festival platform being used for politics and subsequent personal attacks on Nadav...” The statement is signed by Ms Gotoh, Pascale Chavance and Javier Angulo Barturen. Adm Hari Kumar also said a timeline of 2047 had been set to make the force ‘atmanirbhar’ (self-reliant) and highlighted various initiatives to meet the target, including to indigenously produce a twinengine deck-based fighter airCONTD. ON NATION craft. Pele moved to end-of-life care: Report IANS / Sao Paulo Football legend Pele has been ‘moved to end-of-life care’ in hospital as doctors have stopped chemotherapy as his body is not responding to it, Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported. , On Tuesday the 82-year-old Pele, whose real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, was admitted into the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo after suffering from ‘general swelling’ and ‘heart failure’. An update on Thursday said the three-time World Cup winner was ‘stable’. However, a report by Folha on Saturday said he wasn’t responding to the chemotherapy he had been undergoing for colon cancer since September last year. “He is now in palliative care and won’t be subjected to invasive tests or treatment,” the newspaper reported. Pele, regarded by many as the greatest footballer of all time, won three World Cups with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and scored 643 goals in 659 official matches for the Brazilian club Santos. NOW OYO TO REDUCE STAFF BY 10% SJVN bags solar project in state PTI / New Delhi State-owned SJVN said its arm SJVN Green Energy had bagged a 200MW solar project worth Rs1,200 crore from the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution CITY Company. Travel tech firm OYO on Saturday announced that it will reduce its workforce of about 3,700 by 10% by cutting 600 jobs in the some departments and hiring 250 employees in others. The company said the move is part of wideranging changes in its organisational struc- ture. It is downsizing its product and engineering, corporate headquarters, and OYO vacation homes teams while adding people in the partner relationship management and business development teams. Product and engineering teams are being merged for smoother functioning, it added. CONTD. ON NATION HC stays 2 orders to stop work started by MVA China eases Covid restrictions Several Chinese cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu and Shenzhen on Saturday scrapped mandatory Covid19 tests for public transport. The marginal lifting of curbs came after protests in several cities against the draconian zero-Covid lockdowns that are disrupting people’s WORLD livelihoods. STAFF REPORTER / Mumbai High Court says justice bulldozed Judiciary cannot turn a blind eye when the ends of justice are being bulldozed in daylight, the Delhi High Court said and set aside a 1995 order cancelling the lease of a charitable hospital. The appeal was filed by the Khosla NATION Medical Institute. Curious case of biowearables The Bombay High Court has temporarily stayed two orders of the Eknath Shinde-led State Government that suspended development work to the tune of Rs850 crore in rural areas. The Belewadi Village Panchayat had filed a petition challenging the suspension of work started by the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government but cancelled by the present State Government through orders dated July 19 and July 25. The works comprised basic facilities like construction of gutters as requested by the panchayat, religious tourism under the Konkan Tourism Development Programme, Sant Tirth Maharaj Sewalal Kshetra Development Scheme, as also subsidy for erecting monuments of renowned personalities. The panchayat had contended that the state had suspended the budget when it had already been sanctioned and incorporated in the Finance Act. As per the Government Resolution of March 31 this year, the work had to be completed before March 2023. If the works are not undertaken, the budget earmarked would lapse. CONTD. ON NATION 2 years in jail for abusive boyfriend BHAVNA UCHIL / Mumbai A special court has sentenced a 23-year-old man to two years of rigorous imprisonment for assaulting his girlfriend in public places. In a trial that concluded in just three months, the court rejected the man’s defence that his act was a result of “love” when she decided to end the relationship with him. The court also imposed a fine of Rs10,000. The 17-year-old victim and the accused had been in a relationship for two years before the FIR was registered at Colaba police station in February this CONTD. ON NATION year. Critical POCSO provision is mostly on paper PROCEDURAL HITCH POCSO ACT 27,512 Pending cases (Till Mar 31, 2021) (Dept of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice) Time taken for POCSO trials concluded in 2021 Cases that took more than a year: 42% (Praja Report) Cases that took 1 to 5 yrs: 60% (Praja Report) Crimes against children under POCSO in Mumbai 2021: 1,048 (NCRB) BHAVNA UCHIL / Mumbai statement of the victim came to be recorded only on Jan 5, 2017, more than The Protection of Children from Sexual three-and-a-half years later. It is Section 35 of the POCSO Act that Offences (POCSO) Act, a legislation designed to protect children from sexual specifies the time frame for recording of predators, requires the statement of a the child’s evidence. But the law also ofvictim to be recorded before a special fers a way out of the problem: the court court within 30 days of the court taking has to specify reasons for the delay in recording the evidence. cognizance of the offence. In re, Similarly the Act has a time , ality however, in most cases frame this task takes months, if not SPECIAL within for concluding a case: a year of the court takyears. For instance, in one case where the ing cognizance of the charge sheet. But victim was a 10-year-old, the charge this provision, too, has a loophole: the adsheet was filed on Aug 27, 2019, but the dition of the phrase ‘as far as possible’. There is reason the statement of a michild’s evidence was recorded before the special court only on Sep 7, 2021, nor victim of sexual assault needs to be . recorded speedily Unlike adults, more than two years after the incident. In another case where the victim was children forget details more easily and an 11-year-old, the complaint was this could hurt the quality of their testilodged on June 30, 2013, the charge mony before a court, making the child sheet filed the very next month and seem less credible. CONTD. ON NATION cognizance taken by the court, but the THE FPJ Health experts and a user look at the rising popularity of biowearables Still going strong Living legend of Indian theatre, Nadira Babbar, discusses factors that continue to inspire her COASTAL SECURITY GAPS MAY PERSIST FOR A YEAR ATEEQ SHAIKH / Mumbai Fourteen years after the 26/11 attack, gaps remain in the . country’s coastal security Bharat Electronics Limited, which is installing radar systems and establishing stations on India’s coast, has completed the first phase of the Coastal Security Network project and embarked on the second phase. The network comprises a coastal radar chain, automatic identification system stations and electro-optical payload that are like cameras to keep watch. These systems are under the Indian Coast Guard. Referring to the unmanned fishing trawler drifting to Harihareshwar in August, Vice Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, said it was like finding a needle in a haystack. CONTD. ON NATION Parties keep fingers crossed after slow voting in phase 1 DARSHAN DESAI / Ahmedabad Tough battle in Delhi today The high-decibel campaign for FPJ BUREAU / New Delhi the second and final phase of the Gujarat Assembly election It’s a keen tussle for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi on Dec 5 ended on Saturday , (MCD) on Sunday as even leaders of the BJP which ruled with political parties pulling the three civic bodies that were recently merged into one, out all stops to mobilise voters are sceptical of making it this time. after the first phase on Dec 1 Both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules the Delsaw the turnout drop. hi Assembly under Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and The second phase will see 93 the Congress are trying their best to capture power. Interconstituencies in North and , estingly BJP leaders see the Congress as a bigger threat Central Gujarat, including in . than AAP CONTD. ON NATION Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Gandhinagar, voting. gues there is no wave against century of 77 seats. The first phase GUJARAT parties the ruling party which is seekPolitical covered 89 constituencies in South ELECTIONS and candidates are ing its seventh term in a row. 2022 Another intriguing statistic surprised that despite Gujarat, Saurashtra three major parties that emerged from the detailed and Kutch and averaged a turnout of 63.31%, al- being in the fray this time, the polling data of the first phase most 4% lower than in 2017, polling percentage was not en- released by the Election Comwhen the BJP dropped to dou- couraging. While the Congress mission was the sluggish votble digits for the first time with and AAP hope the drop in ing by women, which was less 99 seats while the Congress got polling implies that BJP voters than their vote in 2017 in 83 out its highest tally in a quarter did not show up, the latter ar- of 89 seats. CONTD. ON NATION Biz man ends life in Colaba VISHAL SINGH / Mumbai Businessman Shahrukh Cyrus Engineer (58) ended his life on Friday by jumping from the 10th floor of Hotel Taj Wellington in Colaba, police . said on Saturday Mr Engineer was found on a fourth floor balcony of the building at 2:30pm on Friday and rushed to Bombay Hospital by his father and hotel staff but declared dead before admission. According to the police, Mr Engineer was found in the balcony of Room 404. His father, Cyrus Engineer, told police that Shahrukh, who ran a dry ice business in Dubai, had been under stress for the past few days owing to losses. The senior Mr Engineer was staying on the 10th floor of the Taj Wellington. His son had come to meet him. The police have registered an accidental death report.