IBNLive : Arunima's Blog : Witness protection or decimation? Tuesday , December 20, 2011 at 16 : 58 How often have you seen a road accident...or an eve teasing incident or any crime in your surrounding?
How often have you taken the pain to go to police about it? Most of us stay away, for who will take the pain of becoming a witness and going to court? Who will take leave from work and run after lawyers day in and day out? Imagine then a man who not only risked exposing a 1.76 crore rupees (CAG estimate subject to debate) scam but who is also facing the ignominy of being a witness! In the 2G court room these days, Aseervatham Achary is in the witness box. Jeered, mocked at by the defence camp trying to break his confidence..Achary so far has refused to be cowered down. Jethmalani- Mr Achary, is it true that you own a mobile phone costing Rs 4 lakh almost? Did you pay the custom duty of Rs 25000 on it? Jethmalani's tactics could not shake Achary but did it have a vice versa effect? Achary - I did. Achary - I am a small fry sir. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Pro-environment activists and believers in Goa have had their bit of learning after the arrival of the Justice MB Shah Commission on illegal mining, an initiative by the Union government to assess, curtail and hopefully compensate Goa for being looted by its own ministers and their cronies.
First and foremost, echoing the call of many small-town Indians is a growing dislike for TV news channels, who descend on Panjim like a certain species of bird. Take the case of a woman battling both ministers and miners, who’s called at 5.30 pm to appear on a panel on illegal mining at 6.30 pm. Or take the case of another channel that blocked the time of a person neck-deep in pursuing the mining industry in the courts, then cancelled the programme without informing him.
It’s not that environment activists in Goa haven’t received such treatment before. More than a year ago, a news channel in Delhi was contacted and asked to cover the obvious crimes related to mining. An open letter to Tarun Tejpal: Hartman de Souza. On 27 October the Hindustan Times published an article by Hartman de Souza and on 30 October a response to it by Tarun Tejpal, editor of Tehelka newsmagazine.
This guest post by HARTMAN DE SOUZA is his rejoinder There are some of us in Goa who will know in about 20 days or so, thanks to two RTIs filed, whether Tarun Tejpal did in fact get all the necessary permissions and clearances needed to add to the lovely property he now owns in the village of Moira… or, as he more pointedly said of the village when he called me up in the Pune, “I mean, look at Moira man, it’s a dying Goan village” …emphasis on ‘dying’, and the implication being one suspects, that the Tejpals of the world can and will breathe life into it. I wonder if he remembers and can parse what I said to him in reply. This is perhaps the only time in my life that I wished I had a sexier phone so I could have recorded the damn conversation.
But Tejpal wants facts, so let’s give him facts: I think Tejpal got the plot a bit wrong. Media: TV, Print, Online, Jobs, Ranking.