An anticorruption protest leader whose arrest on Tuesday morning reverberated across India, inciting outrage at the government, ended the day with a very different twist: He refused an offer to be released from jail. By late Tuesday, the scene outside Tihar Jail was playing on all-news channels across the country. More than 1,000 supporters waved flags and banners, chanting slogans, as the protest leader, Anna Hazare, rejected a police release order...
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Deal Would Free Indian Activist and Allow Protests by Jim Yardley
The protest leader Anna Hazare appeared to strike a deal with the police early Thursday morning that would enable him to leave a local jail and begin staging a hunger strike against corruption later in the day, according to a close aide and reports in the Indian news media. One of Mr. Hazare’s aides, Kiran Bedi, announced via Twitter that Mr. Hazare had accepted a police offer to limit any...
More »The blind spots of India Shining by Vinay Sitapati
This “activist” was quite different from the suit-wearing PIL litigant or the Left-leaning jholawala. In the run up to Anna Hazare’s first fast over an anti-corruption law in April, a communications company provided the technical support to a service in which, if mobile users called a toll-free number, they would then receive free alerts on the protests. The service was one of an array of technologies — from Twitter updates...
More »Arrest complicates corruption debate by Soutik Biswas
Has India's battle against corruption become a contest between the tyranny of virtue and the tyranny of the state, as some analysts put it? The police have arrested anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare for pledging to go ahead with a hunger strike against a proposed new anti-corruption law. After nine meetings with the government, Mr Hazare and his supporters cobbled together their version of the Lokpal (Citizen's Ombudsman) bill. He insists that this...
More »Anna Hazare spends night in Tihar jail; UPA in bind, gropes for a face-saver
-The Times of India After Anna Hazare's refusal to walk out, Tihar jail authorities allotted him a room to spend night in the jail, TV channels reported. Anna is continuing his fast in the jail. The government on Tuesday was at sixes and sevens over Anna Hazare's steely determination to carry on with his indefinite fast despite his unexpected arrest and his equally sudden release in the face of mounting countrywide protests....
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