Abu Salem gets life in jail, Raghuram Rajan speaks on demonetisation: Top stories to bring you up to date | Latest News India - Hindustan Times
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Abu Salem gets life in jail, Raghuram Rajan speaks on demonetisation: Top stories to bring you up to date

Hindustan Times | By
Sep 08, 2017 08:05 AM IST

Desmond Tutu criticises Suu Kyi over Rohingya crisis, BJP?IT cell clarifies on the accounts PM follows on Twitter: A digest of stories in the last 24 hours.

1- Abu Salem gets life in jail, two sentenced to death in 1993 Mumbai blasts case

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan speaks to Hindustan Times on his new book – I do what I do- on Thursday.(HT Photo)
Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan speaks to Hindustan Times on his new book – I do what I do- on Thursday.(HT Photo)

A court on Thursday sentenced two men to death and two more, including gangster Abu Salem, to life in jail for the 1993 Mumbai serial bombings that killed 257 people. A fifth convict, Riyaz Siddiqui, was given 10 years in prison. The verdict came 24 years after the dozen blasts in India’s financial capital and nearly 80 days after they were found guilty by the Special Tada Court. The 50-year-old Salem was spared the gallows because of an extradition treaty with Portugal, where he was hiding before being brought to India. Salem and his former actress-girlfriend Monica Bedi were arrested by Interpol in Lisbon in 2002 and were handed to Indian agencies in November 2005.

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2- Raghuram Rajan: Demonetisation put new interest burden on RBI as people found ways to convert black money

The failure to stop dodgy cash coming back into the banking system after demonetisation has likely burdened the Reserve Bank of India with additional interest payments running into tens of thousands of crores, former governor of the central bank Raghuram Rajan said Thursday. Latest Reserve Bank of India data shows that all but 1% of the high-value bank notes demonetised on November 8 last year have returned to the banking system, meaning black money hoarders found ways to legitimise their cash that now earns interest. Rajan estimates this burden could be as high as Rs 24,000 crore a year, if one assumes there was about Rs 4 lakh crore worth illegal cash at the time of the note ban.

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3- Raghuram Rajan speaks on demonetisation, economy and life after RBI: Full text of interview

Economist and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan spoke to HT about the impact of demonetisation, the benefits of GST, Indians’ knack for ‘jugaad’ and working on building a liberal arts university in India. Q. You have talked about an RBI note to government on the preparations and the time required for demonetisation. Can you share the details?

A. I have a duty not to reveal specific communications. Let me step back from whatever note was given and not represent what was said there. As a monetary economist, what you would like to see in any such exercise is that the day you do it you should be ready to replace all the currency withdrawn. We have seen the cash demand is now tapering off, but you should have been ready with that sort of cash on the day we did it. The less you are ready, the more you have to print in order to roll out the currency, the more economic life is disrupted.

Read the interview here.

4- If PM Modi follows someone on Twitter, it doesn’t mean he’s giving a character certificate: BJP IT cell

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s action of following somebody on Twitter does not amount to issuing the person a character certificate, the BJP social media team said on Thursday. Amit Malviya, the ruling party’s national head for information and technology, issued this statement after the Congress noted how at least four people followed by Modi on the social networking site tweeted hate messages in the wake of journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder in Bengaluru on Tuesday. “PM following someone is not a character certificate of the person, and is not in any way a guarantee of how the person would conduct himself,” Malviya said, pointing out that Modi follows the Twitter handles of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal as well.

Read the story here.

5- China reacts to Indian Army chief’s remarks, says ties should not be derailed

India and China need to ensure that their ties, which were “affected and undermined” in the past few months, are not derailed again, foreign minister Wang Yi said on Thursday, adding it is important to ensure relations remained on track. The Chinese foreign ministry also reacted to Indian Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat’s remarks that the country should be prepared for a potential two-front war with China and Pakistan, and said Rawat should refer to President Xi Jinping’s contention that the two countries are each other’s development opportunities and not threats.

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6- Man threatens women activists, authors, journo for being ‘anti-national’, booked

Delhi Police on Thursday registered an FIR against a man who openly threatened to eliminate four eminent women and a noted journalist, all of whom he termed “anti-national”, a senior police officer said. The FIR was registered following a complaint from journalist Sagarika Ghose whose name appears in the list of women which include authors Shobha De and Arundhati Roy, and activists Kavitha Krishnan and Shehla Rashid.“We have registered an FIR after receiving a complaint from Sagarika Ghose under the Information Technology (IT) Act. She, in her complaint, stated that she saw an open threat posts from a man who had two different accounts on the names of ‘Vikram Aditya Rana and Vikramjb Rana’ at social networking site Facebook. He is a native of Shillong,” police said.

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7- Vijay Rupani reacts to ‘Vikas has gone crazy’ social media campaign mocking BJP’s development plank

A concerted social media campaign titled “Vikas Gando Thayo Che (Development has gone crazy)” targeting the BJP in Gujarat triggered a response from chief minister Vijay Rupani on Thursday. “BJP and Vikas (development) have become synonymous with each other… And today, people criticise it... ‘Vikas gando thayo chhe... Vikas may have gone mad, but poverty has not gone mad. Vikas may have gone mad, but unemployment has not gone mad,” Rupani said at a function on affordable housing in Ahmedabad. The campaign has unleashed memes with funny captions taking on the BJP’s development plank and pitch.

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8- One dead, 5 injured in grenade blast in Srinagar’s Jehangir Chowk

One person was killed and five others were injured in a grenade blast Srinagar on Thursday, including the man who threw the explosive, police said. A militant hurled a hand grenade at a passing vehicle of the security forces in Jehangir Chowk area and it exploded on the road, injuring him and five other passers-by, police said. The injured were shifted to hospital for treatment, where one of them succumbed to his injuries, police said. The site of the blast is close to the secretariat which houses the offices of the chief minister, her cabinet colleagues and all top bureaucrats.

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9- India refuses to be part of declaration of an international meet over Rohingya issue

India dissociated itself on Thursday from a declaration adopted at an international conference as it carried a reference to violence in Rakhine state of Myanmar, from where 125,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh. An Indian parliamentary delegation, led by Speaker Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan, refused to be a part of the Bali Declaration adoped at the World Parliamentary Forum on Sustainable Development held here in Indonesia.

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10- South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu slams Suu Kyi over Rohingya crisis

South Africa’s outspoken Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Thursday castigated Aung San Suu Kyi over the Myanmar government’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslims and urged her to intervene in the crisis. Suu Kyi, feted for her years of peaceful opposition to Myanmar’s junta rulers, has been urged to speak up for the Rohingya, with Muslim nations and the UN leading condemnation of her government. Tutu, who helped dismantle apartheid in South Africa and became the moral voice of the nation, joined in the condemnation. “If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep,” Tutu said in a statement.

Read the story here.

11- New fires in empty Rohingya village challenge Myanmar claims

Journalists saw new fires burning Thursday in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and pages ripped from Islamic texts that were left on the ground. That intensifies doubts about government claims that members of the persecuted minority have been destroying their own homes. About two dozen journalists saw the fires in Gawdu Zara village in northern Rakhine state on a government-controlled trip. About 164,000 Rohingya from the area have fled across the border into Bangladesh in less than two weeks since Aug. 25.

Read the story here.

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