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The Allahabad High Court has acquitted the parents of Aarushi Talwar, who was found murdered nine years back in Noida, setting aside the CBI court's earlier order, in connection with the double murder case, which shook the nation in 2008. "The chain of evidence is not sufficient. The golden rule and cardinal principle in justice is if there is only circumstantial evidence, benefit of doubt goes to the accused," a bench of Justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra said while pronouncing the 'not guilty' verdict in a packed courtroom.
India is one of the few countries worldwide where child marriage continues to be widely accepted--legally and socially. In a blog, Bhagyashri Dengle, Executive Director of Plan India says that the latest Census report on the decadal headcount in 2011 reveals that child marriage is rampant, with almost one in every three married women being below 18 years. She points out that child marriages continue in India because of 'social acceptance' and 'legal loopholes'.
Anupam Kher's newest appointment has led to an outpouring of praise from most quarters, except for the one that should matter to him the most – the students of Pune's Film and Television Institute of India. Aside from his right-leaning politics, there is a much bigger concern with Kher's appointment, which his troopers seemed to have conveniently overlooked. He is the founder of a private acting school in Mumbai, which presents a conflict of interest for his new role at FTII — as though being married to a politician, who is a member of the ruling government, and being appointed to run a government-backed institution wasn't problematic enough already.
India is grappling with a "serious" hunger problem. The report from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has ranked the country on the 100th spot among 119 developing countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI). According to the report, India is behind North Korea, Bangladesh and even besieged Iraq.
The man who headed the CBI for a key part of the Aarushi-Hemraj murder investigation told NDTV, "There were loopholes in our investigation." AP Singh, who was the Director of the CBI for two years starting 2010, when the agency made the controversial disclosure in court that it believed Rajesh Talwar killed Aarushi but could not prove it and wanted to close the case said that the court has not said they (Talwars) are innocent.
On Thursday, the Election Commission announced the schedule for the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections. However, it didn't announce the dates for Gujarat, prompting the Congress to allege pressure by the Centre to get more time for announcing sops for the Prime Minister's home state. "The reason is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to Gujarat on October 16 as a false Santa Claus to announce sops and jumlas that he didn't implement for the last 22 years. The onus lies on the EC to ensure a level playing field," Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala alleged.
A 21-year-old engineering student hanged herself in her home after posting on Instagram that she was "afraid to be happy". This was right after she was allegedly scolded by her mother. In another part of Hyderabad, a Class 12 student committed suicide allegedly because of study pressure.
A village in Telangana's Siddipet district, Ibrahimpur, hit the headlines as south India's first cashless village. The villagers there have now returned to cash mode because of no ATMs and high transaction rates. "All of us returned our swiping machines to the bank as the authorities are collecting a rental charge of Rs 1,400 per month, irrespective of the volume of business we did. Even if we did not use the machine, we were forced to pay the amount," a villager told Hindustan Times.
"The saffron party is unlikely to nominate a chief ministerial candidate in either state and appears keen on projecting these polls as a Narendra Modi-versus-Rahul Gandhi contest, a strategy that paid it handsome dividends in 2014 general elections," writes DK Singh in an editorial for Hindustan Times explaining the strategies that the parties may use in the upcoming assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
In an editorial for Indian Express, Mani Shankar Aiyar writes that by not joining the 122 other member-states of the United Nations in voting for the resolution, India missed the opportunity of telling the world that it's consistent champions of the total abolition of nuclear weapons. "Had the wisdom of the first 67 years of consensual national foreign policy in the disarmament domain continued till the ICAN conference, the world today would be acknowledging us, as they did the Mahatma and newly independent India, as a major force for peace. Instead, we are seen as an also-ran in the nuclear race, quite unworthy of even being considered for a Nobel peace prize," he writes.
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