作者： bharat.cn

India’s supreme court has ordered the government to review all restrictions in Indian-controlled Kashmir within a week, saying the indefinite suspension of people’s rights amounted to an abuse of power.

Last August, Modi revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy and split the state into two territories under the direct control of Delhi. The move was followed by a series of draconian measures including curfews, the detention of political leaders and the cutting off of all communications including phones and the internet.

The government has gradually restored landlines, and SMS services were restored on 31 December, but 7 million Kashmiris still do not have online access in the longest internet shutdown ever imposed in a democracy.

The government has repeatedly justified the continued internet suspension as necessary for preserving human life and preventing terrorism. In its justification, it said no one had died.

The court said any suspension of the internet, which it called intrinsic to free speech, must be accompanied by detailed reasons to allow aggrieved persons to challenge it in court.

The ruling came in response to petitions filed by Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of the Kashmir Times, the opposition Congress party leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and others.

A death warrant has been issued for the four men convicted of the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, which galvanised protests across India and brought global attention to the country’s sexual violence epidemic.

A court in the Indian capital scheduled the hangings for 22 January, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The warrant had been anticipated since India’s supreme court rejected one of the men’s final review pleas last month. The Indian president can still grant mercy, but this is not expected.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student referred to by Indian media as Nirbhaya, the Hindi word for fearless – because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified – was heading home from a cinema with a male friend in December 2012 when six men lured them on to a bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries.

The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death in 2013. Another hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family have insisted he was killed. The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and sentenced to three years in a reform institution.

It took a minute for Malhaar Rathod, then an aspiring teenage actress, to realize what the 65-year-old Indian film producer was asking her to do – and to make the decision to walk away.

“He claimed he had a part for me and then asked me to lift my top. I got so scared, I didn’t know what to do at first,” Rathod, now an up-and-coming television star, told AFP in Mumbai.

Her experience with what is euphemistically known as Bollywood’s “casting couch” culture underlines the challenges facing anyone seeking to break into India’s massive, insiders-only film industry, where the #MeToo movement has secured few wins.

After #MeToo triggered the downfall of top Hollywood powerbrokers like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, many women in Bollywood spoke up about their experience of sexual harassment, breaking a long-established culture of silence. 

The Indian industry has largely looked the other way however and many of the alleged perpetrators have been able to revive their careers after lying low for a few months.

Movie-mad India is the world’s largest producer of films, with around 1,800 releases a year in multiple languages, easily dwarfing Hollywood’s output – but forging a career in the nepotistic industry can be a challenge. 

Unlike the children of celebrities who are groomed for stardom and tailor-made debuts, outsiders have to fend off lecherous men and contend with a gruelling routine of auditions and rejections.

‘Dream come true’

“It’s very difficult to crack Bollywood if you don’t have connections. No one is going to offer you a launch, you have to do small parts and work your way up,” actor Paras Tthukral told AFP.

“I have done all kinds of jobs to survive. Worked in a call center, in corporate gifting, marketing, you name it,” Tthukral, who moved to Mumbai in 2008 and has since appeared in two TV shows and a couple of films, added.

“An alternative career would have been easier for sure… but being an actor is a dream come true.”

Rathod is one of the lucky ones. After her early brush with the casting couch, she is now a familiar face to Indian viewers, appearing in advertisements for global skincare brands including Garnier and Dove.

The sole breadwinner for a family of five including two younger sisters, she has managed to make inroads into television with a part in the hit show Hostages on India’s Disney-owned streaming platform Hotstar.

The 25-year-old is hoping to see that success translate to the silver screen, following in the footsteps of film stars such as Preity Zinta and Deepika Padukone who began their Bollywood career with advertisements.