New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday termed as “very serious” the forced recruitment of minor girls in orchestras mainly in Bihar and West Bengal and massage parlors in Delhi and Rajasthan and their subsequent sexual exploitation and trafficking and sought a comprehensive response from governments on steps for their safety.Senior advocate HS Phulka, appearing for NGO ‘Just Rights for Children Alliance’, told a bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi that girls aged 10-16 years are forcibly employed in orchestras, spas and massage parlors to repay the debts of their parents and subsequently under the Child and Adolescent Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, They are sexually exploited and trafficked in clear violation of the 1986 Act, which bans their employment. Hazardous industries.To get around the law, Phulka said, many sectors – orchestras, dance bars, dance troupes, gimmick performances, massage parlours, spas and salons, which are not listed in the hazardous category – have evolved over the years to become organized industries of child trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse. The bench also issued notice to NCPR and NHRC.The NGO said that in the March-December period last year, more than 200 minors were rescued from orchestras, dance troupes and nautanki groups from various places in Bihar and West Bengal, while more than a dozen were rescued from massage parlors and spas in Delhi and Rajasthan.“Children often aged between 10 and 16 are lured and recruited from poor, tribal and marginalized communities through deception and promises of employment, glamour, dance training, marriage or economic upliftment,” it said.“These children are trafficked across districts, states and international borders, confined in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, deprived of education and freedom of movement, and forced into forced labour, explicit sexual performance and commercial sexual exploitation, in gross and flagrant violation of their constitutional and fundamental rights.”The NGO said orchestras and gimmick groups, which were originally conceived as indigenous cultural entertainment at weddings and social gatherings, now operate in an almost complete regulatory vacuum, enabling organized criminal networks to flourish with effective impunity.“Minor girls, mainly from poor, migrant, tribal and marginalized communities, are systematically deceived and lured through false promises of employment, glamour, artistic performance or marriage,” it said. In many cases, the families themselves are duped or financially forced to surrender their children in conditions of severe economic distress and insecurity.”“As a result, girls under the age of 12 are trafficked, bought for nominal sums, transported across district and state borders, and sold to orchestra conductors, generating substantial criminal profits for traffickers and conductors alike,” it said.Describing the plight of the trapped girls, the NGO said these minors are forced to perform in sexually provocative attire, are forced to dance to obscene music in front of an intoxicated audience, and face extreme violence including molestation, rape, threats and sometimes violence using weapons.

New Delhi: The BJP leadership has moved to set its house in order in Karnataka, where its state unit is plagued by dissonant voices, and is setting its sights on the only southern state where the party is in power amid a perception that it has not been able to effectively harness “anti-incumbency” sentiments against the Congress government even as its leadership has been openly at loggerheads for several months at the cost of governance.BJP President held a series of meetings with party officials including MPs and MLAs besides organizational officials. Nitin Nabin Was clear in emphasizing the need for unity.Describing Nabeen as a practical and approachable person, a party official said, “His main message was that everyone should work together in the interest of the party and keep aside any doubt on one’s senior or junior status in view of the upcoming challenges.”After losing to the Congress in the two recent assembly bypolls, the BJP is now keen to make its mark in the upcoming local body elections, including the prestigious Greater Bengaluru Authority, to script a victory story for the 2028 state elections.Karnataka has posed a unique set of challenges for the party, which have been further heightened by the withdrawal of former CM and the state’s tallest leader BS Yediyurappa from electoral politics and the emergence of his younger son Vijayendra as his political successor.Vijayendra was made the state BJP president in November 2023, but a section of senior party functionaries were less happy with his leadership.While the party has elected its presidents in most states after its membership drive, which is a traditional process, not in Karnataka as its national leadership navigates claims and counterclaims while trying to maintain a fine balance.Though Yediyurappa, the state’s biggest Lingayat face, often faced challenges within the BJP, his stature and political acumen helped him keep him on the periphery.The BJP was forced to expel Yediyurappa’s rival Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who had become increasingly vocal after his son took charge of the party last year, and oust two more MLAs for not voting for its candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections, almost unthinkable in its other state units.While the party’s reach in North, West and East India is wider than before, it is now expanding its influence in South India, where four states are ruled by opposition parties, while its ally TDP is the dominant party in Andhra Pradesh.

New Delhi: A special CBI court in Delhi has acquitted former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay’s brother and others in the coal block allocation case, strongly criticizing the prosecution’s investigation and evidence.The former minister’s brother, Sudhir Kumar Sahay, was one of the directors of SKS Ispat and Power Ltd, an accused in the case.“The entire case of prosecution for the offense of criminal conspiracy is based on conjectures and conjectures without any solid basis,” Special Judge Sunena Sharma said in her 271-page judgment last week. “The prosecution has miserably failed against all the accused in the absence of direct or indirect evidence to prove conspiracy under section 120B of the IPC,” the judge said.The case, one of 53 under the so-called “coal scam”, arose out of a 2012 reference by the Central Vigilance Commission into alleged irregularities in coal block allocation between 2006 and 2009.The CBI had alleged that SKS and its officials wrongly inflated the company’s investment, land possession, production capacity and environmental clearance to secure the allotment of Vijay Central Coal Block in Chhattisgarh. It also alleged that Sudhir Kumar Sahay misrepresented himself as a director and attempted to influence the process through recommendation letters, including one sent through his brother.However, given that the mining rights were held by Coal India Limited and not SKS, the court questioned how the private company could dishonestly obtain any ill-gotten gains and held that the allotment letter “cannot be construed as a grant of largesse” and was “more in the nature of coal linkage.”Rejecting the allegations of inflated financial muscle, the court said that the figures relied upon by SKS came from “audited balance sheets/annual reports” and were never alleged by the CBI to be fake.On the question of recommendation letters, Sahay’s lawyer, Neeraj Chaudhary, argued that “they were never considered by the coal or screening ministry”. The court agreed, saying there was “no evidence on record” to show the screening committee was influenced by the letters. It termed the prosecution’s interpretation of land and environmental clearance as “far-fetched” and “wholly unreasonable”.In 2014, the Supreme Court had quashed 214 coal block allocations made between 1993 and 2010, ordering a trial before a special CBI court.

New Delhi: Days after announcing the transformation of the country’s eastern and western borders into ‘smart borders’ by boosting technology amid a tight crackdown on infiltration, Home Minister Amit Shah will visit the border areas of four states – Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tripura and West Bengal – next month to review their security.Shah will start with a visit to BSF’s Sanchu border post in Rajasthan’s Bikaner on Tuesday morning, followed by a visit to Harami Nala in Gujarat’s Sir Creek area on May 29.At Sanchu, the Home Minister will inspect the border post, interact with the BSF personnel on duty and launch welfare schemes for them. Later in the day, he will chair a meeting to review the security arrangements in the five border districts of Rajasthan. The meeting will be attended by senior officials of the Home Ministry, Government of Rajasthan, BSF and the concerned District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police.On May 29, Shah is going to visit Bhuj in Gujarat. He will inspect the BSF post there and also visit Harami Nala in Sir Creek area.In June, he is scheduled to visit posts on the eastern border in Tripura and Bengal. Shah will visit the border areas of Tripura on June 5 to assess the security arrangements.On June 15, he will stop near the international border in Bengal and inspect BSF posts there.Delivering the Rustamji Memorial Lecture at the BSF investiture ceremony here recently, Shah had asked the BSF to take up the responsibility of detecting and stopping infiltration and said it was aimed at bringing unnatural demographic change in the border areas. He called upon the BSF to join forces with the local administration and police to create a structured mechanism to prevent illegal border crossings and expel those who have already infiltrated.Shah said the ‘Smart Border’ on the eastern and western sides will deploy latest technological solutions like drones, radar, smart cameras etc. to detect and counter infiltration, drug smuggling, cattle smuggling, circulation of fake Indian currency notes and drones carrying weapons and drugs.He said that now with the BJP coming to power in the border states of Tripura, Assam and Bengal, “every single infiltrator will be thrown out of the country”.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sentenced a man to life imprisonment for killing his wife over dowry, highlighting how parents’ anxiety to save their daughters’ marriage can lead many women into a death trap by sending them back to matrimonial homes despite complaints of torture.Amid the rising number of dowry cases, the apex court began its judgment by opening up a question for the society to ponder over. “Could young Soma Acharjee’s life have been saved? Was Soma thrown to the wolves because of fear of social humiliation?”. a bench of Justices PK Mishra and KV Vishwanathan asked.The court said Soma had repeatedly informed her parents about the abuse she faced, but was sent back when the elders attempted to mend her relationship with her husband.Describing the case as an eye-opener, Justice Vishwanathan, who wrote the judgment, said, “She made repeated appeals to her parents to save herself and even came to her parents’ house and stayed with them for a few days. However, every time she raised the issue, efforts were made to broker a reconciliation and send her back to the marital home.”The top court said village elders were involved and the resolutions were passed after an alleged compromise. It said, “Soma’s near and dear ones naively believed that somehow the situation would turn out for the better. A false sense of optimism engulfed them. Their hopes were betrayed when Soma met a tragic end in her marital home.”Rejecting the husband’s plea that Soma died by suicide after her body was found hanging 15 months after their marriage, the court said the medical and other evidence clearly pointed towards a murder related to dowry harassment.The evidence on record shows that Soma was harassed with demands for a motorcycle, TV and other items, even though her parents had accepted some of the demands.“The injuries found on the body of the deceased do not match a typical case of suicide by hanging,” the court said, adding that the injuries before the post-mortem were not self-inflicted. The bench said medical evidence indicated that Soma was subjected to violence before her death, ruling out the suicide theory and pointing to a case of “mock hanging”.