The Mumbai Police has to answer a more basic question: why is it playing hand-maiden to its political masters and going after a media house that is part of the fourth estate, a protected institution in a democracy? There is something eerie and intimidating about how the Mumbai Police have gone about trying to silence one of the most vociferous critics of the Maharashtra coalition headed by the Shiv Sena: Arnab Goswami of Republic TV. On Thursday (8 October), Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh directly accused the channel of manipulating its TRPs (television rating points) in order to garner high advertising revenues. Four people involved in such manipulation, one former employee of Hansa Research, which is involved in the monitoring of TRPs on behalf of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), two small channel owners, of Fakth Marathi and Box Cinema, and an ex-staffer of a film production firm have been arrested for this “crime”. Republic TV has only been verbally...

  A fresh FIR has been filed against Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami for allegedly manhandling a woman cop who was part of the team that arrested him on Wednesday (November 4) morning. Police have also filed an FIR against his wife Samyabrata Ray Goswami and son under Section 353 of the IPC for obstructing police officers during the arrest. The journalist who was arrested by Raigad police from his Mumbai home on charges of suicide abetment of an interior designer in 2018, told an Alibaug court that he was assaulted by police officers and sustained injuries on his hand and back during the arrest. He was then taken back to the Alibaug police station for an examination by a civil surgeon. Here's video of the arrest:  Meanwhile, Republic TV has approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission alleging that the Mumbai and Raigad police had “unjustly and illegally” manhandled, assaulted and arrested Goswami. Earlier in the ...

  There are various moments that has showcased the inadequacy of Shiv Sena to govern the state of Maharashtra. They have used the Marathi sentiment wisely and gotten their votes. There are so many cases pending against the party members and they walk free. They have always taken violence as a weapon to scare the public away. People who oppose them are beaten up and they are defamed.  It's now up to current generation to make their decision and choose wisely. So that they have better future.  These are the few reasons why Shiv Sena is incapable of governing a state:  1. They don't care about public health and maintenance of infrastructure Bandra's Kala Nagar, where Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray resides, faced water-logging and demanded the saffron party, which heads the city's civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), apologise to citizens for "submerging" the city. 25 lives were lost in wall collapse incidents in Malad, Kalyan, Pune. Roads got w...

When doing research for this story, I was overwhelmed with information to write about but I wanted to know how a person living in Mumbai felt about Shiv Sena and their party members. So, I called up my friend in Mumbai, and this is what he had to say.  Is Shiv Sena A Party Of Modern Day Gundas And Goons? Yes. A big YES! And this comes from a marathi manoos, living in Mumbai Metropolitan region, considered to be a stronghold of the party. The display of hooliganism by their former MP, Ravindra Gaikwad is a proof enough of this. Not only did he hit an Airline staff with a footwear 25 times, that shameless man bragged about it on TV. Air India and 6 other airlines had banned him on their travel list and cancelled his tickets 4 times. Poor he had to travel by train, vehicle and Chartered plane. Man I enjoyed all this time. Sadly, the ban was lifted, which was surely to happen, though I expected some more ticket cancellations. What he did was definitely wrong, and it was so unbecoming o...

If one has to summarise the love-hate relationship between the Thackerays and Bollywood, two separate incidents last week would say it all.  While inaugurating a BMC-run hospital in suburban Mumbai, named after former Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray, party president Uddhav Thackeray narrated an anecdote on how Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan after his near-fatal accident on the sets of Coolie in Bengaluru was brought to Mumbai and rushed to Breach Candy Hospital in a Sena ambulance. Uddhav also quoted an old tweet by Bachchan recalling how there were no ambulances in those days which could ‘accommodate’ a person of Big B's height. Bachchan had tweeted about the incident after Bal Thackeray’s death in 2012. The second incident, of course, is that of Shah Rukh Khan meeting Raj Thackeray at the latter's Dadar residence to ensure a smooth release of his upcoming movie, Raees.                              ...

  Thackeray Sr had actually hosted Miandad just a few years after the 1993 serial blasts simmered the city he loved so immensely. And as fate would have it, Miandad ended up marrying his son to the daughter of Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of the 1993 mayhem in Mumbai. But this was not all. GR Khairnar, the then municipal commissioner of Mumbai, who set about demolishing Dawood's benami properties in the late 1990s, went on record to say that the late Shiv Sena leader had actually telephoned him to call off his demolition drive in the city. According to him, Thackeray told him that "anyone who donates to the Shiv Sena is a Shiv Sainik. Dawood, too, is a Shiv Sainik. I will not allow his property to be destroyed". Interestingly, in the 1980s and '90s, it was Thackeray who had classified criminals in the name of religion. So much so that he would publicly declare his support for Arun Gawli, a home-grown Mumbai don, on the ground that he was "our" don, as agai...

  The Thackeray family, with the power of Shiv Sena, instill fear into the public and commit lots of crimes against people who are helpless.  The below are few of the  brutal crimes committed by Shiv Sena. Navy Veteran Attacked By Shiv Sena Goons A veteran of the Indian Navy was attacked by Shiv Sena goons in Maharashtra on Friday for sharing a cartoon on WhatsApp. A complaint filed has been filed and an FIR has been registered regarding the matter, Times Now has reported. The veteran confirmed that he was brutalised for sharing the WhatsApp forward. He also said that the Police has first come to arrest him. The veteran also said that he had never expected such a thing to happen to him in his own country. He said that he was helped by the local MLA who is from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis urged Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to put an end to the ‘Gundaraj’ and demanded strong punishment for the guilty. CCTV footage of the incident a...

Once upon a time there was a great city called Bombay, a multicultural cosmopolitan metropolis, which welcomed one and all. It was India’s greatest city, its people insisted, and definitely a much better place than Delhi. Then came Bal Thackeray, the vigilante who ruled the city by force, destroying what was once Bombay, making it Mumbai, a city that could anytime be gripped with fear. Or, so went the liberal narrative. The same Shiv Sena has today become the darling of Indian liberals, as it breaks away from its old ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party. To keep the BJP out and check the unbridled power of Modi-Shah, the Shiv Sena is suddenly kosher for liberals. With Uddhav Thackeray’s imminent occupation of the chief minister’s chair in Mumbai’s Mantralaya building, it seems like it was another era when Bal Thackeray was India’s most extremist politician. The Shiv Sena was more Right-wing than the BJP and its parent organisation, the RSS. Bloodshed in Behrampada One saw the worst of the ...