Thursday, October 15, 2009



Why shouldn’t we register a case of murder against you, HC asks cops

Observing that Altaf Sheikh died in police custody, court asks additional public prosecutor for details of officers who detained him

By Hetal Vyas
Posted On Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 03:52:20 AM



Mehrunisa Sheikh has alleged that her son Altaf (pictured) was picked up by police on Sep 9 and died in police custody. She wants his body to be exhumed for a post-mortem
The Mumbai Police once again face a serious allegation of custodial death. Hearing a petition filed by Vikhroli resident Mehrunisa Sheikh, mother of 22-year-old Altaf, the Bombay High Court prima facie observed that the young man had died in police custody last month.

“You have killed him, why should we not register an FIR against you [police] under Section 302 (for murder)?” remarked the Division Bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A R Joshi. The court has now directed Additional Public Prosecutor K V Saste to submit an affidavit giving details of police officers who had detained Altaf.

Mehrunisa, who works as a domestic help, has sought HC directives that her son’s body be exhumed for a post-mortem, which may reveal the real cause of his death. Her petition alleges that police killed Altaf, a driver, in custody and later held a press conference saying that he had died of drug overdose.

According to the petition, the police had picked up Altaf from his Park Side residence around
4 am on September 9 and taken him to the police station. Later that evening, Mehrunisa received a call from the police saying that an injured Altaf had been admitted to Rajawadi Hospital. When she reached there, he was lying dead on a stretcher.

“His skull and ear were badly injured. His ears were bleeding, too, and when he was taken to the hospital, he was just wearing a shirt and underwear, no trousers,” Mehrunisa’s lawyer Yug Chaudhary told the court. He also drew the court’s attention to the post-mortem report, which lists many injuries on Altaf’s body.

“No FIR has been registered against the concerned officers,” Chaudhary argued, referring to Altaf’s address shown as “care of Ghatkopar Police Station” and “brought by police sub-inspector Shinde” in the post-mortem report. Chaudhary also mentioned that 20 per cent of all custodial deaths in
India happen in Maharashtra.

The court will hear the case again on Thursday.


Sy Hersh: The US Military is Racist


Sy Hersh: The US Military is Racist
October 14, 2009

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT



RUSH: Now, last night at Duke University in Durham, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh showed up to make a speech.  Now, this goes back to my opening comments on this program. "The Military," the Pentagon (which he hates, by the way) "is Waging War with the White House."  "The US military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's most renowned investigative journalist says.  The army is also 'in a war against the White House -- and they feel they have Obama boxed in,' Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University's Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. 'They think he's weak and the wrong color. Yes, there's racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it's true and we all know it.'  ...

"'A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,' [Hersh] said. ... 'If he gives them the extra troops they're asking for, he loses politically,' Hersh said. 'And if he doesn't give them the troops, he also loses politically.'" So here is what it's come to.  Everything -- exactly as I predicted, every bit of opposition to Obama -- is racist.  Now the entire Pentagon is racist and the entire military is racist, according to the world's most renowned investigative reporter and journalist,
Seymour Hersh, who is a lunatic.  So you see the pattern here.  And it's only going to get worse as Obama continues to fail, as Obama's policies continue to do the exact opposite of what he has promised everybody.  This economy is an embarrassment.  It needn't be this way.  This is the United States of America!

If this man and this administration would simply get out of everyone's way and turn the people who make this country work loose, we would have a vibrant recovery faster than you can snap your fingers.  And we would be creating 40,000 jobs a day in this country because it's the people who make this country work, and the people right now are being sandwiched. They're being fired. They're being laid off.  The people who make this country work face a desolate future.  There is no way this economy can recover and this economy can once again become what it was, the United States of America, as long as the controls which are in place and the additional controls that will be put in place occur.  It is just really frustrating. 




BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  You know, my friends, it's amazing how fast things change.  Just last year, one year ago, if you called a phony soldier a phony soldier, if you called a legitimately phony soldier a phony soldier, the president of the Senate, the Senate majority leader would run to the microphones and denounce you and demand that your syndication partner make you apologize, or more.  You were anti-American if you called a phony soldier a soldier.  And you were against the whole military.  That's what Harry Reid tried to portray me as.  Now, you can go to
Duke University, you can give a lecture that says the military is at war with Obama because they're all racists.  A year ago, it was only poor blacks and Hispanics and other people in the military.

Remember, a year ago, and for years prior to that, the only people in the military were poor blacks, poor minorities, and poor people who had no hope because
America was such a dastardly place.  America was so rotten, and the economy was so bad, there were no chances for education, no chances for job success.  You had to go to the military.  A year ago, it was fine and dandy to sully the members of the military who volunteered to put their lives on the line to defend the freedom of idiots like Harry Reid and Seymour Hersh to say and write what they do.  Now one year later the military is all a bunch of white supremacists, arrayed against Obama, wanting him to fail, one year, one year later.  It's all white supremacists in the Pentagon who want Obama to fail.

This racist nonsense, we are in the midst of yet another teachable moment.  Everybody sees how our media will just jump on anything without any regard whatsoever as to whether it is true or not.  They will use anything to advance their agenda, true or not, doesn't really matter to them, just like they do with their reporting of the regular news.  Don't forget that.  As they have run with fabricated, false, made-up quotes, as they have spread this filth into the mainstream, knowingly and purposefully, you need to judge every other news story they report with the same skepticism, the same sense of suspicion and disbelief that you are watching unfold with this whole National Football League, St. Louis Rams story.  It's amazing.  It can change inside of a year.