THIRUVANANTHAPURAM l thursday l may 22, 2025 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l LATE city EDITION Prima-facie money laundering CASE ESTABLISHED AGAINST sONIA, rAHUL: ED The Enforcement Directorate told a Delhi court that a prima-facie case of money laundering has been made out in the National Herald matter Court schedules Daily hearing from July 2 L142 cr rental income ‘proceeds of crime’ ED made the submission before Special Judge Vishal Gogne during the preliminary arguments on whether the court should take cognisance of the matter. The judge asked ED to provide a copy of the chargesheet to BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, on whose private complaint the case was registered. The court also scheduled daily hearings from July 2 to 8 ■ ■ Additional Solicitor General S V Raju and advocate Zoheb Hossain, representing the ED, argued that the case involved proceeds of crime The ED told the court that key transactions involving Congress-linked company Young Indian were illicit and involved “proceeds of crime”​ including rental income of D142 crore received by the accused A2,000 cr Worth of properties sought to be usurped by senior cong leaders: ed CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI 27 killed in encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur-Bijapur region Supreme commander of Maoists eliminated EJ A Z K A I S E R @ Raipur Security forces on Wednesday notched up their biggest strike ever by eliminating the supreme commander of the Maoist movement, along with 26 others, in a fierce encounter in the border region of Narayanpur-Bijapur, about 430 km south of Raipur. Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, the supreme commander of the banned CPIMaoist since 2018, lived and died by the gun. General secretary of the CPI-Maoist, he carried a reward of `1 crore on his head in Chhattisgarh. He was also a Politburo member and headed the CPI’s Central Military Commission. B a s av a r a j u t o o k charge as supreme c o m m a n d e r s eve n years ago from Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathy, then aged 71, who stepped down due to agerelated issues. Hailing from Andhra Pradesh, he did his BTech from Regional Engineering College, Warangal. Basavaraju was facing several cases in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. His name is being linked with the killing of Telugu Desam Party MLA Kidari Sarvewara Rao of Araku c o n s t i t u e n cy i n A n d h r a Pradesh in September 2018. Union home minister Amit Shah applauded the operation as a major breakthrough in the battle to eliminate Naxalism. In a post on X, Shah said: “In an operation in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, our security partial relief Ashoka Univ professor gets interim bail S uchitra K alyan M ohanty @ New Delhi Incarcerated Ashoka University associate professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad on Wednesday got partial relief, as the Supreme Court granted him interim bail. It, however, refused to stay two first information reports filed against him for his social media posts on Operation Sindoor. Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh directed the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter. “The SIT will not have officers from Haryana or Delhi,” Justice Kant said. Mahmudabad had moved the court challengProf Ali Khan Mahmudabad ing his arrest for a Facebook post on Operation Sindoor. While directing his release, the bench restrained him from making any further online posts or speeches on the issue. “He is retrained from making any comments on the crisis recently faced by India, which is a terrorist attack on Indian soil or the counter response given by our nation,” the court said. Taking exception to the language used by Mahmudabad in his posts, the court said some words could have dual meanings. While declining his plea to stay the probe, the bench said he had not made out any case for it. forces neutralised 27 dreaded Maoists, including Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, general secretary of CPI-Maoist, topmost leader, and the backbone of the Naxal movement. This is the first time in three decades of Bharat’s battle against Naxalism that a general secretary-ranked leader has been neutralised.” Based on intelligence inputs about the movement of Central Committee and Politburo members of the banned outfit as well as senior cadre of Maad division and People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army a team of , District Reserve Guard (DRG) from Narayanpur, Dantewada, Bijapur and Kondagaon was out on an operation to Abujhmad area for past three days, Sundarraj P inspector gener, al of police (Bastar Range), said. In the encounter on Wednesday several senior Mao, ist cadre have been killed or seriously injured in this operation in difficult geographical conditions amid multiple challenges. “So far, 27 bodies of Maoists have been recovered during search operations,” he added. A DRG personnel also died in the encounter. A huge cache of arms and ammunition were also recovered from the encounter site. Search operations are on. The identification of the bodies will be done after the operation is over. Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai commended the security personnel involved in the operation. “This fight is not just narayanpur Encounter site Bastar Bijapur E x pr e ss N e ws S e r v ic e @ Kozhikode engineer who engineered attacks A resident of Jiyannapeta village in Srikakulam district, Basavaraju did BTech at REC, Warangal Joined the banned CPI (Maoist) in 1970s, became its head in 2018 Sukma dantewada Had various aliases — Prakash, Krishna, Vijay, Umesh and Kamlu Expert in imparting military training and handling explosives, including landmines Proud of our forces for this remarkable success. Our govt is committed to eliminating the menace of Maoism and ensuring a life of peace and progress for our people — Narendra Modi, PM Reports of rift in banned outfit Ganapathy may get back the mantle There have been reports of rift within the banned CPI (Maoist) owing to which it could not nominate a new secretary of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee following the death of its DSZC head Ramanna in 2019 due to cardiac arrest As several sections of roads constructed under the NH 66 widening project continued to cave in and develop cracks in various parts of northern Kerala, people’s representatives have sought the urgent intervention of Union Minister for Road Transport and H i g h w ay s N i t i n Gadkari. On Wednesday mul, tiple landslips at the NH construction site at Kuppam in Kannur triggered protests by residents who blocked the road. The landslips were reported twice in a single day on the stretch. In Kasaragod, a crack measuring 72 feet in length appeared on the NH near Mavungal, near the location where a crack had developed on Tuesday. The service road near Kooliyangal, near Kanhangad, also collapsed, heightening concerns about the quality of road work in the area. IUML MP E T Muhammed Basheer, who met Gadkari in Delhi and raised the issue, said the minister has promised to take action against the contractor. “We have also called for the setting up of a panel comprising experts from IIT Delhi,” he said. Meanwhile, Kozhikode MP M K Raghavan, in a letter, asked Gadkari to take immediate steps to address the issue before the onset of monsoon. “There are many places in Kozhikode where hills were razed unscientifically for the construction of the road,” he said. Residents of Kuppam alleged landslips have been occurring in the area intermittently since Tuesday and they , fear the situation could worsen at night when visibility is poor. They claimed that neither the district collector nor officials from the National Highways Authority visited ● More on P4 the site. Following Basavaraju’s death, speculation is rife that the ageing Ganapathy might get back the responsibility of secretary of the Central Committee. Given the rift, he could be an acceptable face within the CPI (Maoist) against Maoists but also in favour of peace and development,” he said. This year, 200 bodies of Maoists have been recovered so far in various encounters in Chhattisgarh, including 182 killed in the Bastar division. Waqf is not essential to Islam, says Centre S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y A 21-day long Operation Black Forest, a crackdown launched on April 21 at the Karreguttalu hilly expanse, was also commended as immensely successful when 31 Maoists were killed and their major base dismantled. the Constitution. He said ‘waqf by user’ is not a fundamental right but was created by a statute. If a right is conferred by statute, the right can always be taken away by a statute, he said. He also drew the bench’s attention to the “historic misuse” of waqf by user to claim ownership of public or private lands without documentation. Mehta sought to distinguish between waqf and Hindu trusts and endowment boards that don’t allow non-Hindus to be members. He said Hindu endowment boards deal with religious activity whereas waqf bodies deal with secular activities. “Hindu endowment commissioner can go inside a temple. Pujari (priest) is decided by the state government. Waqf boards do not touch upon religious activity at all,” he said. EXPRESS READ CM’s stand on culling of wild boars stirs debate India expels Pak high commission staffer Kochi: At a time when the state is witnessing a spike in wild animal attacks, which have claimed 26 lives this year, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s statement advocating controlled culling of wild boars has ignited a debate on balancing human development with wildlife conservation. P5 India on Wednesday expelled a Pakistan high commission official on charges of espionage, in the second such expulsion in a week, and asked him to leave India within 24 hours. The Ministry of External Affairs said the Pakistani official indulged in “activities not in keeping with his official status” Residents stage protest following landslips at the NH construction site at Kuppam in Taliparamba, Kannur, on Wednesday Monsoon onset expected in 3-4 days, says IMD U nnikrishnan S @ T’Puram The India Meteorological Depar tment (IMD) has announced that the Southwest Monsoon has progressed further, with its onset expected in the next 3-4 days. If the monsoon sets in between May 23 and 27, it will be the earliest onset in the past 15 years. The last time it arrived this early was in 2009, when the onset was recorded on May 23. The monsoon winds, which usually reach Sri Lanka by May 26, have already entered the Comorin region, suggesting an early arrival in Kerala. The IMD had declared the monsoon’s onset over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on May 13 — 10 days ahead of schedule. “The westerly wind pattern has set in along the Kerala coast in the Arabian Sea. The state is likely to receive monsoon rain by May 23 or 24,” said Rajeevan Erikkulam, a meteorologist with the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority . Even when monsoon rain starts, IMD follows a set of criteria before declaring the onset. It includes rainfall over 60% of 14 designated stations, the presence of westerly winds up to 600 hPa depth, and satellite data showing strong atmospheric convection via Outgoing Longwave Radiation. Strong westerly and northwesterly winds are expected to persist over Kerala for the next seven days. The Met department has forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall across the state between May 23 ● More on P4 and 27.  16 pages, including 4 pages of THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Express Alphons says he & P J Joseph facilitated entry of pvt professional colleges in Kerala K S S r e e j ith @ T’Puram @ New Delhi WAQF is not an essential Islamic religious practice though it is an Islamic concept, the Centre told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Waqf means charity which is part of every , religion, and waqf bodies discharge secular functions. Therefore, it is necessary to include non-Muslims in waqf boards, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said in his arguments defending the Waqf (Amendment) Act. “Waqf is an Islamic concept. But it is not an essential part of Islam, unless that is shown. Other arguments fail. The judgments show that charity is part of every religion and can happen for Christianity also. Hindus have a system of daan. Sikhs also have it,” Mehta told a bench of Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih in response to a question whether the law infringed upon Articles 25 and 26 (freedom of religion and management of religious affairs) of Chhattisgarh Cracks and landslips on NH spark protests; Gadkari urged to act According to former top bureaucrat-tur ned-Union minister in the first Modi government, K J Alphons aka Alphons Kannanthanam, it was he and P J Joseph, the education minister in the E K Nayanar government in 2000, who surreptitiously facilitated the entry of private professional colleges in Kerala. In his latest book, ‘The Winning Formula: 52 Ways to Change Your Life’, Alphons reveals that as the then secretary of the higher education department, he went out of the way to issue no-objection certificates (NOCs) to 33 engineering colleges in the private sector and obtained the signature of the minister without knowledge of the cabinet. Later, when Nayanar got to know about it, according to Alphons, it was Joseph’s threat to resign from cabinet if any disciplinary action was taken against the bureaucrat that rescued him. In the book, Alphons says he had in fact persuaded the then chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to surpass the LDF government in issuing approvals. “When I became the higher education department secretary in Kerala in 2000, over 2 lakh Kerala students were doing engineering, medicine, nursing and MBA outside the state, as there were far too few seats here. In 2000, in the state, there were only 300 seats for MBBS, 3,000 seats for engineering, 700 seats for nursing and a few hundred seats for MBA. I told P J Joseph: our children need to study here and for this we must open up. The minister said: I completely agree with you, but it will never ever be cleared by the LDF’s Liaison Committee; it will never ever go up to the cabinet. I told him impetuously: Sir, don’t our children have the right to study? I have a simple solution: since you cannot approve the idea without the sanction of the cabinet, I as secretary will issue the sanction. You don’t have to be part of this decision at all. I will take the responsibility for whatever happens. He said ‘Go ahead’. I was pleasantly shocked and surprised. Mr Joseph was like that,” Al● More on P4 phons writes. i n t ’ l B o o k er Heart Lamp lights up a thousand hearts G AYAT H R I M K U R U P @ Bengaluru IT was a moment that felt like “a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky” for Banu Mushtaq as she became the first Kannada writer to win the International Booker Prize. Her short story collection Edeya Hanate, translated into English as Heart Lamp by Deepa Bhasthi, won the title for Kannada language literature under the translated fiction category It made Bhasthi the first . Indian translator to win the prestigious award for 2025. Accepting the award at London’s Tate Modern Museum, the 77-year-old author said, “This story is a love letter to my idea that no story is local, that a tale born under the banyan tree in my village can cast a shadow as far as this stage tonight... You have made my Kannada language a shared home, a language that sings of resilience and nuance. To write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder,” Banu said. Banu started writing in 1990, the stories curated over 33 years, revolving around the lives of women in South Indian Muslim communities. Inspired by real life incidents, Banu had referred to her experiences as a ‘seed’ that grows with the imagination of the reader, in a previous interview with this newspaper. Banu managed to finally implant the seed in the hearts of all readers—a story eve r y wo m a n could relate to, and every man could empa- thise with. Max Porter, chair of judges for the Booker prize, called the work as “something genuinely new for English readers: a radical translation” of “beautiful, busy life-affirm, ing stories”. Deepa Bhasthi, who selected and translated the original works, said, “The story of the world is a history of erasures, characterised by the effacement of women’s triumphs and the furtive rubbing away of collective memory of how women and those on the many margins in this world live and love. This prize is a small win in a long ongoing battle against such violences.”