-Article-14.com The arrests and continued incarceration of fact-checker Mohammad Zubair, political activist Javed Mohammed and the exoneration of 121 Adivasis accused of terrorism are the latest evidence of how the State adopts extra legal methods of dealing with ‘inconvenient citizens’—including journalists, dissidents, activists or the poorest Indians—to push official narratives of conspiracy and terrorism. The common threads: manipulation or egregious misinterpretation of laws, changing accusations, unknown or untraceable complainants and the...

-Scroll.in Now, open spaces for Friday prayers could disappear altogether. On November 24, Hindu residents of Gurugram’s Khandsa village sent the district deputy commissioner a letter. A field where the local children play cricket, they complained, was being used by Muslim worshippers for Friday prayers. On November 19, the letter claimed, children who had gone there to play had been told rudely to clear the grounds. “There is fear in the minds...

-The Indian Express “The name Mohammad can be spelt in many ways. Then there are elderly people, whose dates of birth vary from document to document, simply because they were born at home, and no one kept exact records,” said Maqsood. The unusual advisory is issued just before Friday prayers begin: gather your ID papers, keep them ready. Then, there are tutorial videos on WhatsApp groups, and seminars and workshops, to...

-The Times of India AGRA: With the Supreme Court holding instant talaq, or talaq-e-biddat, unconstitutional, madrassas in Uttar Pradesh have begun preparations to teach Muslim men the "correct way to divorce". Maulana Shahbudin Razvi, national general secretary, Jamat Raza-e-Mustafa, an influential organisation of the Sunni Barelvi sect, said, "Following the apex court order on triple talaq, we conducted a meeting of clerics associated with madrassas and have urged them to inform the...

-The Hindu Court defers petition to June 27 for omnibus hearing The Supreme Court on Friday refrained to order an interim stay on a series of government notifications requiring citizens to have Aadhaar by June 30, 2017, to equally access benefits and entitlements, even as the Centre denied imposing any such ‘deadline” to force people to get Aadhaar. The government was responding to a petition challenging 17 notifications issued by various government departments...