Justice and injustice

The law finally caught up with RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin on Tuesday when he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Bihar. This was the week's most covered story in the Hindi press.

Rajasthan Patrika took it as the lead in its May 9 edition. The paper detailed the history of the case which involved the kidnapping of a CPI(ML) worker, Chotelal Gupta, in 1999. The paper reported that the MP has more than 30 criminal cases pending against him. Accompanied by a picture of Shahabuddin, the report also included the reactions of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and CPI(ML) leader, Ramjatan Sharma.

Dainik Bhaskar reported the Lok Sabha proceedings in the aftermath of the judgement. BJP MPs stormed the well of the house and demanded Shahabuddin's suspension. They were bettered by Congress, SP and Left MPs who demanded Narendra Modi's resignation for the events surrounding the Gujarat fake encounter.

On the day after the Shahabuddin verdict, the pronouncement of sentences in the 1993 Mumbai blasts trial was to begin, and Punjab Kesari took the news stories concomitantly. Almost all dailies reported the acquittal of 23 accused in the case on their front pages in their May 10 editions.

The developments in Pakistan and the allegations against Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw by Gohar Ayub Khan, former Pakistan foreign minister, did not grab much attention in the Kannada newspapers. All the leading newspapers like Vijaya Karnataka, Praja Vani and Kannada Prabha carried the developments on the inside pages.

Only Praja Vani had an editorial on the subject. The newspaper sought to dismiss the allegations as mischievous in nature: "Gohar Ayub Khan has a history of tossing such allegations. No importance needs to be attached to them. If the allegations were true, Pakistan should have scored an easy victory over India in the crucial war. The government should stay away from the issue."

Among other issues that made it to the headlines was Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's directive to the Karnataka State Open University vice-chancellor to retain contract employees who are on strike for the last one year. Since issuing such a directive is outside the chief minister's purview, the issue has taken on political ramifications. The vice-chancellor expressed his inability to implement the chief minister's directive and sought the intervention of Governor T N Chaturvedi, the chancellor for all universities in Karnataka. This issue was the lead news on the front pages in all Kannada dailies for two days.

Marathi newspapers nearly ignored the allegations made by Gohar Khan against Manekshaw, with Loksatta not publishing a single story on the issue. Though neither Maharashtra Times nor Sakal carried any stories on the issue, they wrote editorials on it, condemning Gohar Khan for making baseless allegations.

As May 3 was former BJP leader Pramod Mahajan's first death anniversary, many pieces remembering him were carried in the papers. They were mostly written by his close associates.

However, the issue that dominated the Marathi press was the feud between the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments over GAIL's pipeline between Dahej and Uran. The Gujarat government has ordered the stopping of all work on the pipeline because of its dispute with GAIL. The pipeline is crucial for the future of the Dabhol power project on whose completion Maharashtra's precarious power situation hinges.

Besides these, many other local stories like Airbus's new super jumbo jet A-370 coming on a Mumbai tour, UP elections, fake encounters and Uddhav Thackeray's son's debut as a poet through a collection""White & Black""constituted the front pages of the Marathi newspapers.

The allegations against Manekshaw did not hit the pages of leading Tamil daily, Dinamalar. It, however, reported on the Gujarat fake encounter, the mercury soaring to about 43 degrees Celsius and the Cauvery issue.