The Evening Wrap: Supreme Court dismisses NIA appeal against Anand Teltumbde’s bail

Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a National Investigation Agency (NIA) appeal against a decision of the Bombay High Court to grant bail to academician Anand Teltumbde in the Bhima Koregaon case. “We will not interfere,” a Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli said shortly after a hearing which continued through the lunch break. Teltumbde is scheduled to be released from prison later in the day. The High Court had on November 18 given the NIA a week’s time to contest its bail order in the Supreme Court. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, for NIA, argued that Teltumbde was “actively involved” in Maoist activities which extended to transfer of funds, planning, propagation and recruitment. She referred to several electronic documents to buttress her claim. She said that Teltumbde had participated in various “Maoist conferences”. “He is in custody till today,” Bhati submitted. She urged the court to issue notice and stay the order. For Teltumbde, senior advocate Kapil Sibal countered that “none of the documents shown or attributed to me (Teltumbde) are recovered from me”. He said three emails allegedly traced to his account were “all about fact-finding”. “These are academicians… He is the author of a theoretical treaty on ‘neo-liberal globalisation versus Dalit rights’. Basically that is his subject. Wherever there is an issue of Dalits, he is out there as an academician to deal with it,” Sibal submitted. Dismissing the appeal, the court however said that the observations made by the High Court would not be taken as “conclusive final findings in all proceedings”. When Sibal asked the Bench to add a line in the order to ensure Teltumbde’s release without delay, Bhati said the High Court decision has already covered the issue. “It will be done,” Bhati assured. The High Court had granted bail to Teltumbde while noting that the only prima facie case made out against him related to alleged association with a terror outfit and support given to it, for which the maximum punishment was imprisonment upto a period of 10 years. The High Court had noted that Teltumbde had already spent more than two years in jail. The High Court, however, had stayed its order for a week so that NIA could approach the Supreme Court. Supreme Court seeks govt response on including same-sex marriage under Special Marriage Act The Supreme Court on Friday sought the government’s response to pleas to allow solemnisation of same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act. The Special Marriage Act of 1954 provides a civil form of marriage for couples who cannot marry under their personal law. The Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli agreed to hear partners Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty and Abhay Dang, who said the non-recognition of same sex marriage amounted to discrimination that struck at the root of dignity and self-fulfillment of LGBTQ+ couples. A separate petition was also filed by Parth Phiroze Mehrotra and Uday Raj Anand. The Bench issued separate notices to the Union of India and the Attorney General of India and listed the case for hearing after four weeks. It transferred various pending issues before various High Courts, including in Kerala and Delhi, to itself. The government too had said in the High Courts that the issue should be taken up by the apex court. Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Menaka Guruswamy and advocate Arundhati Katju argued that this was a sequel to the 2018 Constitution Bench judgment in the Navtej Johar case in which homosexuality was de-criminalised. “A plethora of living issues arise out of this case… Your Lordships have also upheld privacy as a constitutional right in the Puttaswamy case,” Rohatgi submitted. The petitioners said the 1954 Act should grant same sex couple the same protection it allowed inter-caste and inter-faith couples who want to marry. Rohatgi said the petition did not touch on the personal laws but only sought to make the 1954 Act gender-neutral. “The Act only says marriage should be between ‘two persons’. It does not say it is a union of A and B,” Rohatgi submitted. Kaul said there were about 15 legislations which guaranteed the rights of wages, gratuity, adoption, surrogacy, etc, which was not available to the LGBTQ+ citizens. Guruswamy said the fundamental issue here is “how do I protect my family”. “The Act is ultra vires the Constitution to the extent it discriminates between same-sex couples and opposite sex couples, denying same-sex couples both legal rights as well as the social recognition and status that flows from marriage… The Special Marriage Act of 1954 ought to apply to a marriage between any two persons, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation,” the petition said. If not, the Act, in its present form, it said, should be declared violative of the fundamental rights to a dignified life and equality as “it does not provide for solemnisation of marriage between same sex couple”. The petition was also represented by advocates Shristi Borthakur and Priya Puri. Enough has not been done by just decriminalising homosexuality, equality must extend to all spheres of life, including the home, the workplace and public places, for LGBTQ+ citizens who form 7% to 8% of the population of the country, it said. “At the heart of personal liberty lies the freedom to choose who we are, to love whom we will, and to live a life that is true to our conscience, not only without the fear of persecution but in full-hearted joy and as equal citizens of this country. Despite being free to love each other, Supriyo and Abhay still cannot have a happy marriage filled with joy and recognition,” the petition said. It said marriage brought with it a host of rights, privileges and obligations bestowed and protected by the law. They can adopt children or have children by surrogacy or ART. They have automatic rights to consortium, inheritance, maintenance and tax benefits. They are beneficiaries under a host of employment statutes. The state’s protection to a spouse continues even after death in the form of pension or compassionate appointments,” it argued. Marriage was key to social acceptance and respect. The Supreme Court had decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, urging the LGBTQ+ community to forgive history for their “brutal” suppression. A five-judge Constitution Bench had unanimously held that criminalisation of private consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was clearly unconstitutional. It had declared the 156-year-old “tyranny” of Section 377 as “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”. Section 377 punished homosexuality with a 10-year imprisonment. Twitter to launch colour coded “Verified” feature next week, Musk says Twitter will be launching “Verified” next week, Musk tweeted. He said that all accounts with the “verified” tick will be manually authenticated before activation. Gold verification ticks will be given to companies, while grey will be given for government accounts. Individuals will be given blue ticks regardless of whether they are celebrities or not. Calling it “painful but necessary”, Musk tweeted the information in response to a tweet from Crypto King. Musk further mentioned that all verified humans will have the same blue check. He further shared that “Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.” He said that he will reveal longer explanations next week. Elon Musk had introduced the blue tick verification for $8 earlier this month but that resulted in impersonation and fake accounts. This led to Twitter holding off the launch of Twitter Blue. China’s ‘iPhone city’ under COVID-19 lockdown after violent clashes Six million people were on Friday under Covid lockdown in a Chinese city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, after clashes between police and workers furious over pay. Authorities have ordered residents of eight districts in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, not to leave the area for the next five days, setting up barriers around “high-risk” apartment buildings and checkpoints to restrict travel. There have been only a handful of coronavirus cases in the city but under China’s zero-Covid policy even tiny outbreaks can spark gruelling lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing. The lockdown in Zhengzhou follows protests by hundreds of employees over conditions and pay at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory on the outskirts of the city, with images of fresh rallies emerging Friday. Footage published on social media and geolocated by AFP showed a large group of people walking down a street in the east of the city, some holding signs. “So many people,” a man can be heard saying. AFP was unable to verify precisely when the protests took place. Workers previously told AFP the demonstrations had begun over a dispute over promised bonuses at the factory. Scores of workers left the plant Thursday with payouts of 10,000 yuan ($1,400) from Foxconn. On Friday posts on Chinese short-video apps said the Taiwanese tech giant was turning away many of thousands of people who had answered hiring ads from the firm after a raft of departures last month. Some who arrived to take up newly vacant posts had been sent to quarantine hotels outside the plant despite in the end being refused a job, multiple workers told AFP. “We are in a quarantine hotel, and have no way of going to the Foxconn campus,” one worker who asked to remain anonymous said. Another employee said those turned away had been promised 10,000 yuan in compensation for being forced to quarantine, but had received only a fraction of that amount. “They are not letting us start the job and we cannot return home,” one worker isolated in nearby Ruzhou city told AFP. He added that there had been multiple small protests in other Henan cities by Foxconn workers made to quarantine and unable to start work. Other videos posted online on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed angry workers knocking down furniture and swearing at police in the lobby of a hotel in Nanyang city, about 280 kilometres (174 miles) from Zhengzhou. The workers appeared to have been quarantined in the hotel, with a man heard saying in one clip: “Everyone who’s online, please share this.” The unrest in Zhengzhou comes against the backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid. China’s daily caseload stood at 33,000 on Friday -- a record for the country of 1.4 billion although small by global standards. The unrelenting zero-Covid push has sparked sporadic protests and hit productivity in the world’s second-largest economy. In the southeastern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, millions of people have been ordered not to leave their homes without a negative virus test. Social media footage published on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed residents of the city’s Haizhu district dismantling barricades and throwing objects at police in hazmat suits. “What are you doing? What are you doing?” one police officer holding a shield can be heard asking as he and his colleagues back away from the projectiles. In Brief: The government has convened an all-party meeting on December 6 to discuss the legislative business and important issues likely to be taken up during the winter session of Parliament. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi has sent out invitations to the floor leaders of political parties in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for the meeting. The winter session of Parliament will commence from December 7 and continue till December 29 having 17 sittings spread over 23 days. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 25 NOVEMBER 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Supreme Court dismisses NIA appeal against Teltumbde’s bail Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court on Friday [dismissed a National Investigation Agency (NIA) appeal against a decision of the Bombay High Court to grant bail to academician Anand Teltumbde]( in the Bhima Koregaon case. “We will not interfere,” a Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli said shortly after a hearing which continued through the lunch break. Teltumbde is scheduled to be released from prison later in the day. The High Court had on November 18 given the NIA a week’s time to contest its bail order in the Supreme Court. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, for NIA, argued that Teltumbde was “actively involved” in Maoist activities which extended to transfer of funds, planning, propagation and recruitment. She referred to several electronic documents to buttress her claim. She said that Teltumbde had participated in various “Maoist conferences”. “He is in custody till today,” Bhati submitted. She urged the court to issue notice and stay the order. For Teltumbde, senior advocate Kapil Sibal countered that “none of the documents shown or attributed to me (Teltumbde) are recovered from me”. He said three emails allegedly traced to his account were “all about fact-finding”. “These are academicians… He is the author of a theoretical treaty on ‘neo-liberal globalisation versus Dalit rights’. Basically that is his subject. Wherever there is an issue of Dalits, he is out there as an academician to deal with it,” Sibal submitted. Dismissing the appeal, the court however said that the observations made by the High Court would not be taken as “conclusive final findings in all proceedings”. When Sibal asked the Bench to add a line in the order to ensure Teltumbde’s release without delay, Bhati said the High Court decision has already covered the issue. “It will be done,” Bhati assured. The High Court had granted bail to Teltumbde while noting that the only prima facie case made out against him related to alleged association with a terror outfit and support given to it, for which the maximum punishment was imprisonment upto a period of 10 years. The High Court had noted that Teltumbde had already spent more than two years in jail. The High Court, however, had stayed its order for a week so that NIA could approach the Supreme Court. Supreme Court seeks govt response on including same-sex marriage under Special Marriage Act The Supreme Court on Friday [sought the government’s response to pleas to allow solemnisation of same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act](. The Special Marriage Act of 1954 provides a civil form of marriage for couples who cannot marry under their personal law. The Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli agreed to hear partners Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty and Abhay Dang, who said the non-recognition of same sex marriage amounted to discrimination that struck at the root of dignity and self-fulfillment of LGBTQ+ couples. A separate petition was also filed by Parth Phiroze Mehrotra and Uday Raj Anand. The Bench issued separate notices to the Union of India and the Attorney General of India and listed the case for hearing after four weeks. It transferred various pending issues before various High Courts, including in Kerala and Delhi, to itself. The government too had said in the High Courts that the issue should be taken up by the apex court. Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Menaka Guruswamy and advocate Arundhati Katju argued that this was a sequel to the 2018 Constitution Bench judgment in the Navtej Johar case in which homosexuality was de-criminalised. “A plethora of living issues arise out of this case… Your Lordships have also upheld privacy as a constitutional right in the Puttaswamy case,” Rohatgi submitted. The petitioners said the 1954 Act should grant same sex couple the same protection it allowed inter-caste and inter-faith couples who want to marry. Rohatgi said the petition did not touch on the personal laws but only sought to make the 1954 Act gender-neutral. “The Act only says marriage should be between ‘two persons’. It does not say it is a union of A and B,” Rohatgi submitted. Kaul said there were about 15 legislations which guaranteed the rights of wages, gratuity, adoption, surrogacy, etc, which was not available to the LGBTQ+ citizens. Guruswamy said the fundamental issue here is “how do I protect my family”. “The Act is ultra vires the Constitution to the extent it discriminates between same-sex couples and opposite sex couples, denying same-sex couples both legal rights as well as the social recognition and status that flows from marriage… The Special Marriage Act of 1954 ought to apply to a marriage between any two persons, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation,” the petition said. If not, the Act, in its present form, it said, should be declared violative of the fundamental rights to a dignified life and equality as “it does not provide for solemnisation of marriage between same sex couple”. The petition was also represented by advocates Shristi Borthakur and Priya Puri. Enough has not been done by just decriminalising homosexuality, equality must extend to all spheres of life, including the home, the workplace and public places, for LGBTQ+ citizens who form 7% to 8% of the population of the country, it said. “At the heart of personal liberty lies the freedom to choose who we are, to love whom we will, and to live a life that is true to our conscience, not only without the fear of persecution but in full-hearted joy and as equal citizens of this country. Despite being free to love each other, Supriyo and Abhay still cannot have a happy marriage filled with joy and recognition,” the petition said. It said marriage brought with it a host of rights, privileges and obligations bestowed and protected by the law. They can adopt children or have children by surrogacy or ART. They have automatic rights to consortium, inheritance, maintenance and tax benefits. They are beneficiaries under a host of employment statutes. The state’s protection to a spouse continues even after death in the form of pension or compassionate appointments,” it argued. Marriage was key to social acceptance and respect. The Supreme Court had decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, urging the LGBTQ+ community to forgive history for their “brutal” suppression. A five-judge Constitution Bench had unanimously held that criminalisation of private consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was clearly unconstitutional. It had declared the 156-year-old “tyranny” of Section 377 as “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”. Section 377 punished homosexuality with a 10-year imprisonment. Twitter to launch colour coded “Verified” feature next week, Musk says [Twitter will be launching “Verified” next week]( Musk tweeted. He said that all accounts with the “verified” tick will be manually authenticated before activation. Gold verification ticks will be given to companies, while grey will be given for government accounts. Individuals will be given blue ticks regardless of whether they are celebrities or not. Calling it “painful but necessary”, Musk tweeted the information in response to a tweet from Crypto King. Musk further mentioned that all verified humans will have the same blue check. He further shared that “Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.” He said that he will reveal longer explanations next week. Elon Musk had introduced the blue tick verification for $8 earlier this month but that resulted in impersonation and fake accounts. This led to Twitter holding off the launch of Twitter Blue. China’s ‘iPhone city’ under COVID-19 lockdown after violent clashes Six million people were on Friday under [Covid lockdown in a Chinese city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory]( after clashes between police and workers furious over pay. Authorities have ordered residents of eight districts in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, not to leave the area for the next five days, setting up barriers around “high-risk” apartment buildings and checkpoints to restrict travel. There have been only a handful of coronavirus cases in the city but under China’s zero-Covid policy even tiny outbreaks can spark gruelling lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing. The lockdown in Zhengzhou follows protests by hundreds of employees over conditions and pay at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory on the outskirts of the city, with images of fresh rallies emerging Friday. Footage published on social media and geolocated by AFP showed a large group of people walking down a street in the east of the city, some holding signs. “So many people,” a man can be heard saying. AFP was unable to verify precisely when the protests took place. Workers previously told AFP the demonstrations had begun over a dispute over promised bonuses at the factory. Scores of workers left the plant Thursday with payouts of 10,000 yuan ($1,400) from Foxconn. On Friday posts on Chinese short-video apps said the Taiwanese tech giant was turning away many of thousands of people who had answered hiring ads from the firm after a raft of departures last month. Some who arrived to take up newly vacant posts had been sent to quarantine hotels outside the plant despite in the end being refused a job, multiple workers told AFP. “We are in a quarantine hotel, and have no way of going to the Foxconn campus,” one worker who asked to remain anonymous said. Another employee said those turned away had been promised 10,000 yuan in compensation for being forced to quarantine, but had received only a fraction of that amount. “They are not letting us start the job and we cannot return home,” one worker isolated in nearby Ruzhou city told AFP. He added that there had been multiple small protests in other Henan cities by Foxconn workers made to quarantine and unable to start work. Other videos posted online on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed angry workers knocking down furniture and swearing at police in the lobby of a hotel in Nanyang city, about 280 kilometres (174 miles) from Zhengzhou. The workers appeared to have been quarantined in the hotel, with a man heard saying in one clip: “Everyone who’s online, please share this.” The unrest in Zhengzhou comes against the backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid. China’s daily caseload stood at 33,000 on Friday -- a record for the country of 1.4 billion although small by global standards. The unrelenting zero-Covid push has sparked sporadic protests and hit productivity in the world’s second-largest economy. In the southeastern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, millions of people have been ordered not to leave their homes without a negative virus test. Social media footage published on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed residents of the city’s Haizhu district dismantling barricades and throwing objects at police in hazmat suits. “What are you doing? What are you doing?” one police officer holding a shield can be heard asking as he and his colleagues back away from the projectiles. In Brief: The government has convened an [all-party meeting on December 6]( to discuss the legislative business and important issues likely to be taken up during the winter session of Parliament. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi has sent out invitations to the floor leaders of political parties in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for the meeting. The winter session of Parliament will commence from December 7 and continue till December 29 having 17 sittings spread over 23 days. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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