The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) conducted a raid on the Byatarayanapura police station in west Bangalore on Tuesday and found 11 people, including two minors, illegally detained. Byatarayanapura police had not registered any case against the eleven people. There was no record of any of them in the crime diary. Those rescued include Aniyappa (15) and Rajesh (12).

And then we have the commissioner of police calling the raids on the police station unreasonable. Source

Chairman of Karnataka State Human Rights Commission, Justice SR Nayak, said that this was the worst kind of human rights violation. “Children are assets, and we treat them like this,” he said. “The city police have crossed all limits. They do not require any medical evidence to prove that a child is a minor. They have not even registered a case or produced any of them before the magistrate, which has to be done 24 hours after someone is arrested.”
City Police Commissioner, Shankar M Bidari said that it was unreasonable for the SHRC to raid police stations and make statements that people are being detained illegally. “People have to be interrogated and police will keep them in the police station. How else can we detect crime?” he questioned.

Its interesting to note that Mr. Bidari has managed to find plenty of fault with the SHRC while keeping absolutely quite about the grossly illegal acts by his own department. Mr. Bidari since when did you start torturing 12 year old kids to detect crime. It’s not the kids who have committed a crime, rather its your very own department that has. And perhaps instead of finding fault with the SHRC, you should instead find (and fix) the problems with your own department. And yeah, admitting a mistake is not a bad thing if you go ahead and fix it. Try accepting the mistakes and fixing them instead of blaming people who expose the illegal acts of your department.

In the U.S., the median real-time download speed was 2.3 Mbps. That lags significantly behind other industrialized nations such as Japan, with an average download speed of 63 Mbps; South Korea, with 49 Mbps; and France, with 17 Mbps on average.

Makes me wonder if the 64/128/256kbps connection that some vendors like to call broadband are really broadband.. And also wondering why the hell is bandwidth so damn expensive in India :-(

Sachin Uppal who was at the scene says:

The scene was busy with people getting anxious and asking what’s going on, however I have not see anything in particular. It was all filled with Police men trying to sort out the chaotic traffic and managing people.

The injured have been admitted to St John’s and Mallya hospitals. The helpline phone number is (+91) 80 4031 2706

Phone networks are jammed so please be patient when trying to reach your near and dear ones. As of now there are conflicting reports about the number of blasts and the death count. Police maintains that there were 6 blasts and one dead; but the home ministry talks of 8 blasts and two dead; and most of the media is reporting 7 blasts with one death.

Bangalore seems to extremely sensitive this this kind of incidents. I hope that the situation remains under control and does not flare up.

Link: http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1555590

Times of India reports:

Is the city heading towards a dry-out scenario? It is already facing a fuel shortage of 30%. Plus oil companies have “unofficially’’ asked bunk owners to go slow on “regular’’ petrol/diesel and focus on “premium’’ products. The rationing has started and regular petrol is out of stock, say many consumers.
Confirming the shortage, Bhushan Narang, president, Bangalore Petroleum Dealers’ Association and Akhila Karnataka Petroleum Dealers’ Association, said: “The reason is purely economical. Oil companies are unable to source sufficient quantity of oil. This has led to a 30% decline in supply, while the demand for fuel is growing day by day. It’s a matter of time before the shortage scenario turns worse in the city and across the country. This could be avoided if the gover nment revises prices.’’

Around 35 per cent of Bangalore’s corporate citizens fall in the medium health risk category and are likely to be affected by at least one among the ailments like hypertension, diabetes and cardiac disorders, a health study indicated.

Confirmation of what we already knew. Read the complete Rediff report.

For now it is All about the music, but I wonder how long will it last? Radio City used to be pretty cool a while back, till they decided that they need to be catering to the lowest common denominator and seems to have completely ruined itself. Mirchi was sad to start with (hell, I can’t make head or tail of Kannada and thats what they seem to like talking in). Never serioulsy checked Big FM, but guess that too is heavily kannada laden.

We have seen a boom in the number of FM channels that are on air, but the quality seems to have only gone down (IMO). If you exclude Indigo (91.9 MHz), there is no other channel that can even be considered worth listening to. Will Fever live upto the promise of being all about the music, or will it go the city way? Too early to say. Hope it does not get influenced by the dark side, may the force be with you, fever :-)

Thanks to this Bandh, we achieved the following:

1. Karunanidhi said that Tamil Nadu will be happy with just 215 TMC ft of Kaveri water, and Karnataka can have 465 TMC ft as it had desired.
2. Union Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz said that his earlier statment that Cauvery verdict will be implemented was taken out of context and clarified that this was never his stand.
3. Productivity of all the industries in Karnataka sky rocketed.
4. The average citizen (or clueless guys like me) became more sympathetic to the cause.

If we did not achieve any of the above by having yet another bandh, will someone enlighten me on what was the whole point of having this forced shutdown?

Btw, Is Bangalore City turning into a Bandh City?

Click here to see the footage. The complete NDTV report can be found here. Footage Courtesy: NDTV

While the report exposes the police excessiveness and brutality, Mr. N Achyut Rao (Police Commissioner, Bangalore) had this to say:

This could be either false or imaginary. There cannot be an atrocity on the (part of the) police….. This could only be to quell the rioting mobs (that) one has to be firm…

Well dear commissioner, are you saying that a lonely guy on the streets was “the rioting mobs”? Ah, now that’s a good joke.

Incidentally, the one person killed in police firing was a 12 year old boy – Fazil (May his soul rest in peace). While it’s not impossible, I don’t think it’s probable that a 12 year old was part of the rioting mobs. So essentially we have our police force brutally attacking and butchering innocent people in the name of maintaining law and order.

Karnataka Judge’s car parked in Brigade Road – Bangalore.
If he can park in the no parking area, then y can’t I do..?????????
Looks like law and order don’t apply to the judiciary system…

I personally am of the belief that traffic rules should apply to all vehicles (I am okay with exemptions for ambulances, but not for official cars). And it’s kind of interesting to note that we seem to have a different set of laws for those who wield some power (executive, legislature, judiciary) and another set for the normal folks like you and me…

Thanks to the picture of this car belonging to the Judge of Karnataka High Court parked where you and I can’t, we now know that some people are above traffic laws. Bangalore traffic is a power game where those who interpret the laws are not bound by them.