[Indian Express] Cops chargesheet Essar official, Soni Sori in ‘Naxal payoff case’

The Special investigation team (SIT) probing the alleged Essar-Naxal payoff case has chargesheeted a senior company official with serious offences, including sedition, for “providing financial support” to the insurgents.
The chargesheet filed on Tuesday, a day before the 180-day period was to expire, names Essar GM D V C S Verma, suspected Naxals Lingaram Kodapi, Soni Sori, company’s chief contractor B K Lala and top Naxal commanders Raghu and Vinod.

The SIT, headed by IG P N Tiwari, has charged the accused under Sections 121 (waging or attempting or abetting war against nation), 124 (A) (sedition) and 120 (B) ( criminal conspiracy) of IPC, as well as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act. The chargesheet lists witnesses and Verma’s call details to claim he was providing Essar’s CSR money to the CPI (Maoist) through conduit Lala, the company’s chief contractor. [...]

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Debates around the National Counter Terrorism Centre

From The Hindu: Opinion/Editorial – Spies Shouldn’t Police Us

[...] Mr. Chidambaram may be right about the Constitution but there are three sound reasons why the mounting concerns over the NCTC must be taken seriously. First, the Intelligence Bureau is not an organisation that is, or ought to be, concerned with criminal justice. Like other intelligence services across the world, its task is to gather information that the police can use to guide and inform the course of a criminal investigation, not to make judgments on whether that intelligence has value as evidence. Blurring the distinction between intelligence-gathering and policing will open up the possibility of abuses — abuses for which Hoover’s FBI became notorious. [...]

Read the full editorial here.

From The Indian Express – NCTC Row: Centre Gets Hit From Left and Right

As more non-Congress chief ministers joined the protest against the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), the UPA government said today that the fight against terror should not be politicised and asserted that the Centre has no desire to infringe on the rights of states. Upping the ante, the BJP said NCTC was anti-constitutional. [...]

Read the full piece here.