Indian prosecutor drops case against Varun Gandhi after anti-Muslim speeches

Feroze Varun Gandhi, an estranged member of India's famous Nehru-Gandhi family, was jailed in the months before India's 2009 national election for making anti-Muslim speeches.

At one political rally, Gandhi told a throng of onlookers, “These people have scary names like Kareemullah and Mazaharulla. You will be scared if you run into them in the night. But if anyone raises a finger against Hindus or if someone thinks Hindus are weak, I swear on the Gita that I will cut that hand.”

Gandhi purportedly compared one of his political rivals to Osama bin Laden. Later confronted with the video tape, he denied making the comments. "That is not my voice. Those are not my words," Gandhi at the time told Times Now, a news channel in New Delhi.

Yet his comments stoked furious debate in India, which trumpets its standing as the world's largest democracy yet also has a history of religious-based violence. The magazine India Today called Gandhi a "messiah of hate."

After a 20-day detainment and two criminal charges of making hate speech, Gandhi was released on bail and won a seat in India's parliament. His victory came even though election officials found the video evidence of Gandhi's venomous comments to be authentic.

Four years on, India is again on the hot seat after a new, damning report by investigative magazine Tehelka claims that Gandhi, now 33, has been exonerated of all charges.

Of the 88 witnesses who were scheduled to testify against Gandhi, all have recanted.

"This is probably unprecedented in the history of a criminal case," Tehelka writes.

The magazine charges that witnesses were threatened and bribed by the police; testimonies were taken without a judge in court; crucial witnesses, including the forensic expert, were not summoned by the public prosecutor; many were not even questioned.

Tehelka reporters Rahul Kotiyal and Atul Chaurasia say they have many witnesses admitting all of this on camera.

Gandhi's comments received intense scrutiny largely because he is a great-grandson of India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, although Varun Gandhi has been estranged from India’s Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty for the majority of his life.

While his cousin Rahul Gandhi is seen by some as a future prime minister of India for the Congress Party, Varun Gandhi is the most visible young politician for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has a vocal and influential Hindu nationalist following.

Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state and the base of the Gandhi family's power, said Tuesday it would challenge Varun Gandhi's acquittal.

If there is good news to be found in the Gandhi scandal, it is that India's national media continues to come of age.

In 1990, India had just a single television channel. But today, there are hundreds of all-news cable channels and a flourishing newspaper and magazine industry, which thrives on reporting stories on government corruption and self-dealing.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

New Delhi turns to breathalyzers to keep drunks off metro

New Delhi's new metro is a symbol both of India's progress and of its problems. 

Started in 2002 and completed in 2010, the 189-kilometre metro is among the sprawling country's most impressive post-independence infrastructure projects, built on budget of less than $7 billion.

But after its completion, female passengers complained so often of being groped by men that the metro introduced ‘ladies only’ subway cars.

There are other rules to try to maintain order on board -- spitting is banned, as is sitting on the floor and public urination. No food and drinks are allowed on the metro, either.

Now, officials are adopting a new tactic in their battle to make rides more pleasant for commuters: they will be using breathalyzers to weed out drunk passengers.

Central Industrial Security Force deputy inspector Udyan Banerjee tells The Hindustan Times newspaper that the breathalyzers have already been tested in Rajiv Chowk, a metro station near Old Delhi, and will soon be rolled out at all 134 stations.

The hand-held breathalyzers will help police build a database of potential troublemakers, he said.

The move to address public drunkenness on the metro is just the latest in a string of recent efforts by Indian officials to highlight how the country's public transportation is safe, both for locals and tourists alike.

India’s latest "Incredible India" ad campaign to lure tourists shows Patricia Malone, co-star of the film The Mentalist, travelling across India alone, conveying a message that the country is a safe one for female tourists to explore on their own.

It's meant to showcase India as a safe destination after a number of recent high-profile assaults on tourists.

On March 15, a Swiss tourist was gang raped while on a cycling holiday with her husband in the central Madhya Pradesh state. Her husband was tied to a tree.

In another incident, a British woman jumped off the balcony of her second floor hotel room to escape a man she said tried to get into her room. That happened in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, the nation’s biggest tourist draw.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

PHOTO: Devotees in Mumbai

Devotees walk on a pathway made of cement bags to offer prayers at a shrine along the Arabian Sea in Mumbai on Thursday. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Indian state hopes solar panels covering canals will ease energy, water woes

With a population of 1.2 billion, India is among the fastest-growing countries and is poised during our lifetime to eclipse China as the world's largest.

That well-documented growth has led to a near-unrivalled thirst both for electricity and water. The World Resources Institute has estimated India is planning on building 455 new coal power plants -- four times as many that exists now.

India also recently proposed the building of 292 new dams through the Himalayas, which would double the country's hydropower capacity and perhaps help deal with the power outages that have become daily occurrences in large cities like New Delhi and Mumbai.

Amid worries about how the environment might be impacted by the many changes comes news out of western India of a novel method for dealing with two environmental problems.

In the state of Gujarat, India is building experimental solar panels overtop of irrigation canals.

The panels will produce electricity and also reduce evaporation of the canal water by as much as 237,750 gallons each year, Gujarat's state government says.

India faces a looming water crisis.

I wrote about this in 2009, noting that thanks to global warming and other environmental woes, India's agricultural output may be carved by 40 per cent over the next 70 years, according to the Center for Global Development, a U.S.-based think-tank.

Gujarat guarantees premium prices for the solar electricity, and those subsidies have helped the state become one of the largest renewable energy producing states in the country, according to a report on technology website GigaOM.

The Indian project, which produces 1 megawatt of electricity, covers a small section of the 458 kilometre canal.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Nigeria a newcomer in list of deadliest countries for journalists

Index of most dangerous countries for journalists. (Committee to Protect Journalists)

Nigeria is a new addition to the list of the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist, joining mainstays such as Pakistan, Somalia and Mexico.

Five journalists in Nigeria have been murdered since 2009. None of the cases have been solved.

“Investigations into these killings are usually carried out with sloppiness, and no real culprits are caught," said Ayode Longe, a senior officer with the Media Rights Agenda, a press freedom group in Nigeria. “That has emboldened others to assault journalists, believing nothing would be done to them."

The global index is released each year by the Committee to Protect Journalists and calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population.

The index also found soaring impunity rates in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil.

The CPJ said conditions for journalists are improving in Nepal and Russia, "although both nations remain dangerous for the press."

The analysis founds increasing anti-press violence in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil, where national leaders are unwilling or unable to address the issue. In Somalia, 23 journalist murders have gone unsolved over the past decade.

The CPJ report highlights the cased of Wali Khan Babar, a journalist with Geo TV in Pakistan who was murdered in 2011.

While several suspects connected to one of the country’s leading political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, are facing trial, the prosecution has been hindered by the murders of five people connected to the investigation, including witnesses and police officers.

In November 2012, an eyewitness was gunned down two days before he was due to give testimony, the CPJ said.

Iraq is said to be the most dangerous country in which to be a journalist. Over the past 10 years, there have been 93 unsolved killings of journalists in the country of 33 million. Somalia was ranked No. 2, followed by the Philippines, where 55 journalists have been murdered without any convictions in the country of 94 million.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Asian bank to delegates: Be careful what you wear in India

A young woman in Mumbai, one of many in urban India who are challenging the country's deeply entrenched traditions. (Rick Westhead/Toronto Star.)

 

Note to delegates attending the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in New Delhi: Leave your shorts and revealing clothes at home.

Amid a flurry of media coverage of sexual assauts across India, including a notable case in December in which a 23-year-old university student was gang-raped and later died in New Delhi, the ABD is warning visitors who arrive in India for its conference to be mindful of what they wear.

As many as 5,000 delegates from 67 different countries are expected to attend the four-day ADB meeting outside New Delhi, which begins today.

“Indians are very conservative about dress,” said the bank’s website in its guidelines on dressing appropriately in the capital city of India. It further advised women to “dress modestly, with legs covered.” Additionally, it said that shorts and short skirts are “offensive to many.”

For more suggestions on what not to wear in India, the bank’s website redirected readers to a travel website called TravelIndia.com. The website’s promise of providing a “wealth of information” for the “demanding and discerning traveler” includes suggestions on how to dress suitably in India.

“Staying well groomed and dressing ‘respectably’ vastly improves the impression you make on local people, and reduces sexual harassment too,” it says.

An ADB spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal's Aditi Malhotra that the bank  removed the link to the travel website, which was “inadvertently included.” The ADB spokesperson said the link was to provide information for delegates who “aren’t familiar with India.”

The ADB note highlights the paradox of modern India. While modesty and submission to males have been the norm for most Indian women, there is a new openness about sexuality throughout urban India and frankness about social mores has become a staple of the Indian media, particularly television.

TV commercials show women holding and drinking from soft-drink bottles in sexually suggestive ways while local newspapers, in a move that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, feature pictures of female models in full-page ads for condoms. It's an issue I wrote about in 2009 while covering India as the Star's South Asian correspondent.

In the New Delhi gang-rape case, five men were charged but denied wrongdoing, and their trial is under way in Delhi. One of the five hanged himself in his Delhi jail cell. The case has stoked outrage and protests throughout India.

RELATED: 5-year-old rape victim dies in India; two men arrested

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Women-led startups outperform rivals: study

Here’s some advice for venture capital funds looking to turn a profit on upstart businesses: bet on women.

According to a new study released by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy that analyzed 90,000 deals in the U.S. from 2000 to 2010, venture capital funds that invest in women-led companies had better results than those that didn’t.Women-owned businesses account for 28.7 per cent of U.S. companies and are a fast growing entrepreneurial sector.

Georgia topped U.S. states in the growth of female-owned businesses, reports the Atlanta Business Chronicle, which first reported on the study. Those firms performed well even though they received less private equity funding than their rivals, the study said.

The U.S. study’s results are hardly isolated.

In India, a recent study of nine Indian companies run by the female women managers outperformed the 30 leading listed firms on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Over five years through 2008, the nine companies had a compounded annual growth rate of around 35 per cent in pretax income, compared to 21 per cent for the BSE-30 firms.

In fact, many non-profit charities have made it a priority to focus on helping to finance female entrepreneurs. For good reason. The International Monetary Fund forecasted last year that Africa would have the fastest-growing economy of any continent over the next five years, and many new entrepreneurs in Africa are women.

The rate of female entrepreneurship is higher in Africa than in any other region of the world, The New York Times reported last year, citing World Bank statistics.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

World's first Braille smartphone unveiled by Indian inventor

The iPhone has been a godsend for many blind consumers.

Austin Seraphin, an American blind since birth, wrote in a blog post in 2010 that he could use the phone's voice activation function to tap an item to hear it.

He wrote that his mother "pulled out her phone, and sent me a text message. Within seconds, my phone alerted me, and said her name. I simply swiped my finger and it read her message: Hi Austin."

But what about the millions of blind consumers who can't afford Apple's high-end phones?

An Indian inventor has come up with a lower-cost alternative.

Sumit Dagar, who works out of the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, says he has created the world’s first Braille smartphone, according to a report in the India Times.

Messages and texts are sent like other smartphones. But instead of a smooth glass panel, the phone comes with a series of pins under the screen which elevate or depress to form letters and words in Braille. The pins can be felt on the screen.

A prototype is being tested at an eye institute in Hyderabad.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

PHOTO: Protesting a rape in India

Yuva Shere Punjab Welfare Association activists hold posters and dolls during a protest against the rape of a five-year old girl, in Amritsar on Monday. Indian police arrested a second man over the kidnap and rape of a five-year-old girl in New Delhi, but officers faced protests and a hail of criticism over their insensitive handling of the case. (NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images)

READ MORE: Second suspect arrested in rape of 5-year-old Indian girl; child’s condition improving

Share the lions, top Indian court tells two provinces

A file photo of Asiatic lions lounging in the shade in the Gir National Park in Gujarat, India. (AFP photo)

Share the endangered lions: that is the message India’s highest court had for two squabbling provinces earlier this week.

The Asiatic lions are an endangered species and have almost been wiped out in the sub-continent but conservation efforts have saved them in Gujarat, a western province in India.

There are about 400 lions in Gujarat’s forests.

There are reportedly almost no big cats in Madhya Pradesh, a neighbouring province; they are believed to have been killed by poachers or driven away from their habitat by human encroachment.

Gujarat had opposed Madhya Pradesh’s appeal for lions, pointing to its poor record on protecting its own wildlife in national parks.

But India’s supreme court ruled against it, saying the two neighbours had to share. The court, relying on expert opinion, said the lions should have a second home to stop them being eliminated by an epidemic or a fire.

Environmentalists have also said that the move will make the lions less vulnerable to diseases, establish a new community and eventually help reduce inbreeding.

Exactly how many big cats will move to a new forest home is not clear yet.

The move will happen within the next six months.

Gujarat has increased its population of Asiatic lions from about 50 to 400 through breeding programs.

Raveena Aulakh is the Star's environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh