Here are some important reports from the biggest newspapers of India:
1. Arms dealer offers help in Agusta chopper deal probe
A British arms dealer wanted in India in the now-scrapped AgustaWestland chopper deal has offered to "assist" in the probe provided he is not arrested.
The Hindustan Times reported that Christian Michel, 55, made the offer in a letter written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November, two months before he wrote to two international courts alleging that the Indian government sought evidence to link Congress president Sonia Gandhi to the chopper deal.
In his letter to Modi, Michel did not mention Gandhi though he referred to the meeting between the Indian PM and his Italian counterpart Matteo Renzi wherein the BJP government allegedly sought evidence against Gandhi in exchange for freeing two Italian marines who allegedly killed two fishermen off the Indian coast in 2012.
2. CBI to probe if netas pushed Mallya loans
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will investigate whether some public sector banks were pressured into lending and restructuring loans extended to the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
On a day when Vijay Mallya did not respond to an email from Enforcement Directorate asking him to appear before it on March 18 even as his close associate Ravi Nedungadi evaded answering questions fielded by the media, CBI sources said the role of "political pressure" would be the focus of their probe into cases involving the liquor baron.
The sources said the agency was seeking to find out the "real driver" of the decision of IDBI Bank to extend a loan of Rs 900 crore to KFA when the airline had subpar credit rating and auditors flagged concerns about its poor financial health, including failure to deposit with the tax department Rs 111 crore that it had deducted while making payments, as per Times of India report.
3. Staff of tuition centre booked for making students stand naked on road
The Mumbai Police on Saturday registered a case under the amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 against the management of a tuition centre in Malwani for allegedly punishing two students by making them stand naked outside the centre in the middle of a busy street.
The action was taken by the police after a video of the two boys, aged six and seven, standing naked outside the tuition centre and crying went viral on social media, followed by widespread public outrage.
According to police sources, the video was posted on messaging application WhatsApp by a Malwani resident, who was passing by the Shree Tutorials in Malad on Friday. The video showed one boy completely naked and the other with only a shirt on his body crying incessantly and trying to cover their private parts with their hands, the Hindu reported.
4. Next door in Dhaka, 18 sedition cases slapped on an editor
The echoes of JNU's sedition row are resonating 1,400 km east of Delhi where a similar charge is being used by Dhaka's ruling party and its leaders to harass one of its most respected editors and a 1971 war veteran who heads the largest English daily in Bangladesh.
Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, has been visiting lower courts across Bangladesh since last week for hearings related to 79 cases filed against him in February by supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League — 18 are related to sedition and the rest to defamation, the Indian Express reported.
5. As crorepati 'farmers' mushroom, tax officials go digging for evasion
In an internal letter dated March 10, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) asked its officials to verify the genuineness of agricultural income claims exceeding Rs 1 crore made by taxpayers in their income-tax (I-T) returns.
Agricultural income is exempt from tax and the CBDT has noticed that over the years, several taxpayers have declared significant agricultural income.
According to the Times of India, the CBDT has taken cognisance of a public interest litigation filed in the Patna high court, which states that agricultural income is often used as a conduit for money laundering.
6. Be a nationalist as long as you do not hurt somebody: Srikrishna
Explaining the evolution of the law on sedition in India at an event, former Supreme Court judge BN Srikrishna said that it had been challenged on several occasions even before it had become the subject of recent controversy.
Speaking at an event organised at IIT Bombay, and in response to a question about whether the law on sedition interferes with the right to free speech, he said the courts in India had adopted a British era federal court stand on the issue, The Hindu reported.
"When the British introduced the law on sedition their version was that anybody who said anything that generated disaffection with the elected government was guilty of sedition. The High Courts upheld this, but the federal court took a different view, saying that unless people were incited toward an act of violence it was not sedition," he explained.
7. JU professor jailed for CM cartoon to fight polls
Declaring a counter-movement against the "oppressive" Trinamool Congress government, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, who was arrested for circulating a cartoon of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the Internet, announced on Saturday that he will contest in the upcoming Assembly elections as an 'independent' candidate.
According to the Indian Express, Mahapatra, who is also the convenor of a human rights organisation, 'Aakranta Aamra' (we are the assaulted), will be contesting from Behala (east) against present mayor of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Sovan Chatterjee.
8. Fertile young couples too seek lab babies
Husband's got the sperm, wife's got the eggs, what they haven't got is the time to make a baby. Not when his job overseas — or on the high seas — takes him out of home most of the year, year after year. Or both work irreconcilable shifts. This is what's pushing fertile young couples to fertility clinics where they conceive through assisted reproductive technologies (ART).
Intra-uterine insemination (IUI) is a popular choice with such couples. In this the sperm is placed inside the uterus to facilitate fertilization. The number of couples seeking this process is on the rise, says Dr Kavitha Gautham, director at Chennai's Bloom Fertility Clinic.
This procedure is less expensive than the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) method used on couples with fertility issues, the Times of India reported.
9. Jharkhand has al-Qaeda training camps, Delhi Police tell court
Delhi Police revelations about an al-Qaeda training camp "somewhere in Jharkhand" has set alarm bells ringing in a state battling Left-wing extremist outfits.
Though Jharkhand Police on Saturday denied presence of any base of the terror outfit, the state has been a breeding ground of terrorists affiliated to different fundamentalist outfits.
In its application before a court in the national capital on Friday, Delhi Police said they were trying to trace one Abu Sufiyan of Jharkhand who had allegedly travelled to Pakistan and received training at camps of the Lashkare-Taiba (LeT) and al-Qaeda Indian Sub-Continent (AQIS), the Hindustan Times reported.
10. 'Media became our enemy overnight'
Art of Living founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar alias Ravi Shankar Ratnam is not accustomed to hostility from the media.
In fact, his highly efficient team of PR professionals dealing with bad press for the first time in 30 years thanks to the controversy surrounding the World Culture Festival organised by AoL on the banks of the Yamuna river in Delhi.
Such is the magnitude of the controversy this time that even a leading English newspaper, whose owners are known devotees of Ravi Shankar, carried front page stories on the culture festival that were less than congratulatory, according to the Hindustan Times.
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