The Evening Wrap: Parliament security breach 'mastermind' sent to 7-day police custody

Friday’s Parliament session got off to a stormy start as the Lok Sabha adjourned within a minute of resuming. Opposition members protested, with some of them entering the Well of the House with placards. Rajya Sabha members were able to lay papers on the Table but protests broke out as soon as Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar refused to admit notices under Rule 267 to discuss the December 13 security breach. Even in the second half of the day, the Upper House had barely reconvened when protests started building up again, and Chairman Dhankhar adjourned the Rajya Sabha for the day. On Thursday, 13 MPs of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien were suspended for the remainder of the winter session for their misconduct in the house as the Opposition continued to demand a discussion on security breach that took place on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a Delhi court on December 15 sent Lalit Jha, arrested in the Parliament security breach case, to seven-day custody of the Delhi Police that claimed he was the “mastermind” of the shocking incident. Special Judge Hardeep Kaur remanded Jha in Delhi police’s custody on an application moved by the prosecution, which said he was required to be questioned to unearth the entire conspiracy. During the brief hearing, the prosecutor told the court that Jha was arrested on December 14 night, after which he was subjected to “detailed interrogation”. “He disclosed how he is the mastermind of the entire conspiracy... He is required to unearth the entire conspiracy and the modus operandi,” the public prosecutor told the court while seeking his remand for 15 days. Police also said he needed to be questioned about a phone he was using and has not been traced yet. Jha, accompanied by a man, turned himself in at the Kartavya Path police station in the national capital last evening where he was arrested before being handed over to the Special Cell, the specialised counter-terror unit of the city police. Police claimed Jha has admitted that the accused met many times to hatch a conspiracy to breach Parliament security. “Mr. Jha disclosed that they wanted to create anarchy in the country so that they could compel the government to meet their demands. He took the phones (of other accused) to hide them and to destroy evidence as part of the larger conspiracy. He disclosed that he threw his phone away on the way from Jaipur to Delhi,” police told the court. Police said Jha’s custodial interrogation was required for an “in-depth investigation to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the attack, involvement of other persons and to find the actual motive behind the attack”. Besides, he was also required to be interrogated to ascertain whether the accused had association with any enemy country or terrorist organisation, police said. “We need him to confront the accused with each other, to locate the mobile phones, to take him to locate the hotel where stayed for four days, and to know the financial transaction and funding behind the attack,” police told the court. In a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack on Wednesday, two men— Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan. D — jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery during Zero Hour, set off yellow smoke from canisters and shouted slogans before being overpowered by MPs. Around the same time, two others, including a woman, raised slogans and released yellow smoke from canisters outside the Parliament premises. They were promptly subdued by security personnel. CJI steps in after woman judge writes of sexual harassment in workplace Chief Justice India D.Y. Chandrachud has sought a report from the Allahabad High Court after a woman judge from Uttar Pradesh wrote an open letter to him, saying she has suffered the “personal humiliation” of being denied a fair hearing on her complaint of sexual harassment at the workplace and has lost her will to live. The woman judge said she was sexually harassed by a district judge and his associates. She said, in the letter circulated on social media, that she had complained to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court and Administrative Judge, but to no avail. The Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the High Court took six months and “a thousand emails” to even start an enquiry into her complaint filed in July. The woman judge called the enquiry “a farce and a sham” in which the witnesses were the subordinates of the district judge in question. Her plea to the ICC to transfer the district judge during the pendency of the enquiry was not allowed. She said the High Court, on the judicial side, had already given a finding that the evidence in the case was tampered with. She said the Supreme Court at least should have heard her case. However, the apex court dismissed her case in “eight seconds”. The case had come up before a Bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Sandeep Mehta on December 13. The Bench had dismissed her petition, observing in its order that the ICC was “already in seisin of the case and a resolution is already passed which is pending approval of the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court”. “I felt like my life, my dignity and my soul have been DISMISSED. It felt like a personal humiliation,” the open letter read. “The enquiry will now be conducted with the district judge in control of all the witnesses. We all know the fate of such an enquiry. What justice will I give to others when I am myself hopeless? I have no will to live anymore. I have been rendered into a walking corpse in the last year-and-half,” the letter said. BJP alleges links between Parliament security breach accused and Trinamool MLA Highlighting a photograph of one of the accused in Parliament security breach case, Lalit Jha, with Trinamool MLA Tapas Roy, the West Bengal BJP leadership on Friday alleged association between the State’s ruling party and the accused. BJP State president Sukanta Majumdar, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya and MP Locket Chatterjee all lapped up the photograph and raised a volley of allegations against the Trinamool Congress. “Lalit Jha, the mastermind of the attack on our Temple of Democracy, had been in close association with TMC’s Tapas Roy for a long time... Isn’t this proof enough for investigation into the connivance of the leader? @AITCofficial @TapasRoyAITC @abhishekaitc #shameontmc,” Sukanta Majumdar wrote on ‘X’. Malviya said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee could not remain silent on Lalit Jha’s association with her senior party leader Roy. “It is not a surprise that TMC MPs, scared of their party’s association emerging with those who breached Parliament security, were creating ruckus. This is a new low even by TMC’s low standards,” the BJP leader said. Quoting Malviya’s tweet, Adhikari alleged that “Mamata Banerjee has successfully created an ecosystem in West Bengal which nurtures Urban Naxals, encourages Tukde Tukde Gang, provides safe passage to illegal immigrants and intruders and facilitates their stay by helping create documentation.” Reacting to the BJP’s attack, Roy said there were many people who get photographed with him and the photograph in question was from February 2020. The Trinamool MLA said that by raising the photograph, the BJP leadership was diverting the question about the security breach of Parliament. Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said the BJP leadership was trying to muddle waters by raising questions such as which city the accused lived and whom he knew without answering the question on how did the security breach happen. “The question is how the accused were able to bypass the security of the Parliament and the role of the BJP MP who signed necessary passes for them,” Ghosh said. The Trinamool spokesperson said that for sharing her password of Parliament login Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra was expelled but no action had been taken against the BJP MP who had helped the accused to enter Parliament. Meanwhile, more details about Lalit Jha, who was arrested from Delhi on Thursday emerged. Sonu Jha, brother of the accused who resides in Kolkata, said that his younger brother Lalit Jha graduated from Kolkata and was working as a private tutor in the city. The brother said the family was not keeping in touch with Lalit and came to know about his alleged involvement in the Parliament breach of security from news reports. The family also has a residence in Kolkata’s Baguiati area which remains locked. Locals said that Lalit Jha used to stay on rent at 218 Rabindra Sarani and used to teach students at the place. After the breach of security on December 13, Lalit Jha had forwarded the video outside Parliament to a student Nilakhya Aich, who was also questioned by investigators along with Sonu Jha. Exports dipped again in November, but trade deficit eases 31% from record high India’s goods exports slipped back into contraction to drop 2.83% in November to $33.9 billion, while imports fell by a sharper 4.33% to $54.48 billion. Exports had recorded only their second uptick this year in October, and though the value of outbound shipments was up 1.1% on a month-on-month basis, they still marked the second-weakest level since November 2022. The trade deficit for November eased sharply beyond expectations to $20.58 billion from the all-time high of $29.91 billion recorded in October. November’s trade deficit is 6.7% lower on a year-on-year basis and 31.2% below October’s tally. The originally estimated deficit of $31.5 billion for October was revised downward thanks to a $1.6 billion correction from the initially released import tally of $65.03 billion. Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal asserted that trade is not one-way traffic and should be seen in a global context. “GDP growth is not high in many countries and interest rates have not gone down. Although global trade is suffering, we are holding fort and our exports have beaten the global trends in 2023 by a significant margin.” “The green shoots we saw in the last couple of months have stabilised. Exports have been positive in November and higher than the overall exports of the same month last year,” he said, referring to the total tally of merchandise exports and estimated service exports last month. While the actual services exports numbers will be available later, the Commerce Ministry pegged November’s intangible exports at $28.69 billion, 6.5% above last year, to put cumulative exports for the month at $62.6 billion, 1.2% higher than a year ago. “India’s merchandise trade deficit unexpectedly shrunk in November, with a better-than-expected performance of exports resulting in a narrower deficit than our projection of $23.5 billion,” said Aditi Nayar, chief economist at rating major ICRA. Nayar expects the monthly trade deficit to hover in the range of $20 billion to 25 billion through the rest of 2023-24. Between April and November 2023, merchandise exports from India are now 6.5% down at $278.8 billion, while imports have dropped 8.7% to $445.15 billion. At $166.35 billion, the trade deficit so far this fiscal is 12.1% below the same period last year when several commodity prices had shot up after the conflict in Ukraine. Officials reiterated that though the volumes of many major export goods had increased this year, their value had reduced due to the dip in global prices. In Brief: The Supreme Court on December 15 stayed the proceedings against Congress leader Randeep Surjewala in a Varanasi court in a 23-year-old case of damaging public property. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud issued notice to Uttar Pradesh. Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, for Surjewala, said it was a “political case”. “For 22 years of the 23 years of the case, no NBW or summons were issued to me,” he submitted. Singhvi said his client had a date in the Varanasi court on December 16. “I will be arrested and they will frame charges tomorrow,” he said. The case dates back to 2000 when Surjewala, who was the then national president of Youth Congress, was charged with allegedly creating ruckus while protesting against alleged false implication of Congress leaders in Samvasini scandal at Varanasi. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 15 December 2023 [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]( Parliament adjourned amid protests by Opposition demanding discussion on the security breach; court sends accused to 7-day police custody Friday’s Parliament session got off to a stormy start as the [Lok Sabha adjourned within a minute of resuming](. Opposition members protested, with some of them entering the Well of the House with placards. Rajya Sabha members were able to lay papers on the Table but protests broke out as soon as Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar refused to admit notices under Rule 267 to discuss the December 13 security breach. Even in the second half of the day, the Upper House had barely reconvened when protests started building up again, and Chairman Dhankhar adjourned the Rajya Sabha for the day. On Thursday, 13 MPs of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien were suspended for the remainder of the winter session for their misconduct in the house as the Opposition continued to demand a discussion on security breach that took place on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a Delhi court on December 15 sent Lalit Jha, arrested in the Parliament security breach case, [to seven-day custody of the Delhi Police]( that claimed he was the “mastermind” of the shocking incident. Special Judge Hardeep Kaur remanded Jha in Delhi police’s custody on an application moved by the prosecution, which said he was required to be questioned to unearth the entire conspiracy. During the brief hearing, the prosecutor told the court that Jha was arrested on December 14 night, after which he was subjected to “detailed interrogation”. “He disclosed how he is the mastermind of the entire conspiracy... He is required to unearth the entire conspiracy and the modus operandi,” the public prosecutor told the court while seeking his remand for 15 days. Police also said he needed to be questioned about a phone he was using and has not been traced yet. Jha, accompanied by a man, turned himself in at the Kartavya Path police station in the national capital last evening where he was arrested before being handed over to the Special Cell, the specialised counter-terror unit of the city police. Police claimed Jha has admitted that the accused met many times to hatch a conspiracy to breach Parliament security. “Mr. Jha disclosed that they wanted to create anarchy in the country so that they could compel the government to meet their demands. He took the phones (of other accused) to hide them and to destroy evidence as part of the larger conspiracy. He disclosed that he threw his phone away on the way from Jaipur to Delhi,” police told the court. Police said Jha’s custodial interrogation was required for an “in-depth investigation to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the attack, involvement of other persons and to find the actual motive behind the attack”. Besides, he was also required to be interrogated to ascertain whether the accused had association with any enemy country or terrorist organisation, police said. “We need him to confront the accused with each other, to locate the mobile phones, to take him to locate the hotel where stayed for four days, and to know the financial transaction and funding behind the attack,” police told the court. In a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack on Wednesday, two men— Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan. D — jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery during Zero Hour, set off yellow smoke from canisters and shouted slogans before being overpowered by MPs. Around the same time, two others, including a woman, raised slogans and released yellow smoke from canisters outside the Parliament premises. They were promptly subdued by security personnel. CJI steps in after woman judge writes of sexual harassment in workplace Chief Justice India D.Y. Chandrachud has [sought a report from the Allahabad High Court]( after a woman judge from Uttar Pradesh wrote an open letter to him, saying she has suffered the “personal humiliation” of being denied a fair hearing on her complaint of sexual harassment at the workplace and has lost her will to live. The woman judge said she was sexually harassed by a district judge and his associates. She said, in the letter circulated on social media, that she had complained to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court and Administrative Judge, but to no avail. The Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the High Court took six months and “a thousand emails” to even start an enquiry into her complaint filed in July. The woman judge called the enquiry “a farce and a sham” in which the witnesses were the subordinates of the district judge in question. Her plea to the ICC to transfer the district judge during the pendency of the enquiry was not allowed. She said the High Court, on the judicial side, had already given a finding that the evidence in the case was tampered with. She said the Supreme Court at least should have heard her case. However, the apex court dismissed her case in “eight seconds”. The case had come up before a Bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Sandeep Mehta on December 13. The Bench had dismissed her petition, observing in its order that the ICC was “already in seisin of the case and a resolution is already passed which is pending approval of the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court”. “I felt like my life, my dignity and my soul have been DISMISSED. It felt like a personal humiliation,” the open letter read. “The enquiry will now be conducted with the district judge in control of all the witnesses. We all know the fate of such an enquiry. What justice will I give to others when I am myself hopeless? I have no will to live anymore. I have been rendered into a walking corpse in the last year-and-half,” the letter said. BJP alleges links between Parliament security breach accused and Trinamool MLA Highlighting a photograph of one of the accused in Parliament security breach case, Lalit Jha, with Trinamool MLA Tapas Roy, the West Bengal BJP leadership on Friday [alleged association between the State’s ruling party and the accused]( BJP State president Sukanta Majumdar, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya and MP Locket Chatterjee all lapped up the photograph and raised a volley of allegations against the Trinamool Congress. “Lalit Jha, the mastermind of the attack on our Temple of Democracy, had been in close association with TMC’s Tapas Roy for a long time... Isn’t this proof enough for investigation into the connivance of the leader? @AITCofficial @TapasRoyAITC @abhishekaitc #shameontmc,” Sukanta Majumdar wrote on ‘X’. Malviya said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee could not remain silent on Lalit Jha’s association with her senior party leader Roy. “It is not a surprise that TMC MPs, scared of their party’s association emerging with those who breached Parliament security, were creating ruckus. This is a new low even by TMC’s low standards,” the BJP leader said. Quoting Malviya’s tweet, Adhikari alleged that “Mamata Banerjee has successfully created an ecosystem in West Bengal which nurtures Urban Naxals, encourages Tukde Tukde Gang, provides safe passage to illegal immigrants and intruders and facilitates their stay by helping create documentation.” Reacting to the BJP’s attack, Roy said there were many people who get photographed with him and the photograph in question was from February 2020. The Trinamool MLA said that by raising the photograph, the BJP leadership was diverting the question about the security breach of Parliament. Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said the BJP leadership was trying to muddle waters by raising questions such as which city the accused lived and whom he knew without answering the question on how did the security breach happen. “The question is how the accused were able to bypass the security of the Parliament and the role of the BJP MP who signed necessary passes for them,” Ghosh said. The Trinamool spokesperson said that for sharing her password of Parliament login Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra was expelled but no action had been taken against the BJP MP who had helped the accused to enter Parliament. Meanwhile, more details about Lalit Jha, who was arrested from Delhi on Thursday emerged. Sonu Jha, brother of the accused who resides in Kolkata, said that his younger brother Lalit Jha graduated from Kolkata and was working as a private tutor in the city. The brother said the family was not keeping in touch with Lalit and came to know about his alleged involvement in the Parliament breach of security from news reports. The family also has a residence in Kolkata’s Baguiati area which remains locked. Locals said that Lalit Jha used to stay on rent at 218 Rabindra Sarani and used to teach students at the place. After the breach of security on December 13, Lalit Jha had forwarded the video outside Parliament to a student Nilakhya Aich, who was also questioned by investigators along with Sonu Jha.  Exports dipped again in November, but trade deficit eases 31% from record high India’s goods [exports slipped back into contraction to drop 2.83% in November]( to $33.9 billion, while imports fell by a sharper 4.33% to $54.48 billion. Exports had recorded only their second uptick this year in October, and though the value of outbound shipments was up 1.1% on a month-on-month basis, they still marked the second-weakest level since November 2022. The trade deficit for November eased sharply beyond expectations to $20.58 billion from the all-time high of $29.91 billion recorded in October. November’s trade deficit is 6.7% lower on a year-on-year basis and 31.2% below October’s tally. The originally estimated deficit of $31.5 billion for October was revised downward thanks to a $1.6 billion correction from the initially released import tally of $65.03 billion. Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal asserted that trade is not one-way traffic and should be seen in a global context. “GDP growth is not high in many countries and interest rates have not gone down. Although global trade is suffering, we are holding fort and our exports have beaten the global trends in 2023 by a significant margin.” “The green shoots we saw in the last couple of months have stabilised. Exports have been positive in November and higher than the overall exports of the same month last year,” he said, referring to the total tally of merchandise exports and estimated service exports last month. While the actual services exports numbers will be available later, the Commerce Ministry pegged November’s intangible exports at $28.69 billion, 6.5% above last year, to put cumulative exports for the month at $62.6 billion, 1.2% higher than a year ago. “India’s merchandise trade deficit unexpectedly shrunk in November, with a better-than-expected performance of exports resulting in a narrower deficit than our projection of $23.5 billion,” said Aditi Nayar, chief economist at rating major ICRA. Nayar expects the monthly trade deficit to hover in the range of $20 billion to 25 billion through the rest of 2023-24. Between April and November 2023, merchandise exports from India are now 6.5% down at $278.8 billion, while imports have dropped 8.7% to $445.15 billion. At $166.35 billion, the trade deficit so far this fiscal is 12.1% below the same period last year when several commodity prices had shot up after the conflict in Ukraine. Officials reiterated that though the volumes of many major export goods had increased this year, their value had reduced due to the dip in global prices. In Brief: The Supreme Court on December 15 [stayed the proceedings against Congress leader Randeep Surjewala]( in a Varanasi court in a 23-year-old case of damaging public property. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud issued notice to Uttar Pradesh. Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, for Surjewala, said it was a “political case”. “For 22 years of the 23 years of the case, no NBW or summons were issued to me,” he submitted. Singhvi said his client had a date in the Varanasi court on December 16. “I will be arrested and they will frame charges tomorrow,” he said. The case dates back to 2000 when Surjewala, who was the then national president of Youth Congress, was charged with allegedly creating ruckus while protesting against alleged false implication of Congress leaders in Samvasini scandal at Varanasi. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [Sign up for free]( Today’s Top Picks [[19 Kuki-Zo victims of Manipur ethnic clash laid to rest in mass burial] 19 Kuki-Zo victims of Manipur ethnic clash laid to rest in mass burial]( [[Outcome of elections in Hindi heartland has shown that Opposition needs to consolidate anti-BJP votes, says Stalin] Outcome of elections in Hindi heartland has shown that Opposition needs to consolidate anti-BJP votes, says Stalin]( [[SC asks Indian named in murder-for-hire plot against Khalistani activist to approach Czech court] SC asks Indian named in murder-for-hire plot against Khalistani activist to approach Czech court]( [[U.P. BJP MLA Ramdular Gond sentenced to 25 years in prison in rape case, likely to lose Assembly seat] U.P. BJP MLA Ramdular Gond sentenced to 25 years in prison in rape case, likely to lose Assembly seat]( Copyright @ 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. If you are facing any trouble in viewing this newsletter, please [try here]( Manage your newsletter subscription preferences [here]( If you do not wish to receive such emails [go here](