70% of over 7,000 civilian deaths due to Israeli bombing on Gaza are women and children

Bengaluru: The ruling Congress plunged into bedlam after one lawmaker publicly called for Siddaramaiah to be replaced by DK Shivakumar as Karnataka chief minister, a topic that awaited unravelling after the Lok Sabha polls.

This was countered by a senior minister who made a case for a new Karnataka Congress president, a post currently held by Shivakumar.

The hurly-burly began with Channagiri Congress MLA Basavaraju Shivaganga asking for Shivakumar, the deputy CM, to get a promotion.

“Siddaramaiah was CM for five years. And, he’s been the CM for the last 1.5 years. All MLAs have cooperated. Let D K Shivakumar become the CM now,” Shivaganga said.

This statement added to the Congress’ woes as the party is already facing demands for the appointment of more deputy chief ministers.

“Congress won nine Lok Sabha seats, up from just one five years ago. This was because of Shivakumar’s organisation skills. If the party wants to benefit from that going forward, Shivakumar should become CM,” Shivaganga argued.

Shivaganga even pointed out that as per convention, Shivakumar should have become the CM after Congress won the Assembly polls last year. “Conventionally, the Karnataka Congress president becomes the CM,” he said.

Cooperation Minister K N Rajanna, who has been pushing for the appointment of additional deputy CMs from the Veerashaiva-Lingayat, SC/ST and minority communities, said the Congress high command should decide on making Shivakumar the CM.

However, Rajanna raised the ‘one man, one post’ policy to hint that Shivakumar, being deputy CM, should give up the KPCC president’s post. “I’d like to remind (the party) that Shivakumar was to continue as KPCC president till the Parliament elections,” he said.

Talk in Congress circles is that some leaders are trying to convince the party to make Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre, a Lingayat, the next Karnataka Congress president.

The likes of Rajanna and Public Works Minister Satish Jarkiholi are batting for more deputy CMs, which Shivakumar is not in favour of. In fact, the demand for more deputies, first raised last year, is seen as a plan to counterbalance Shivakumar.

Reacting to the demand for more deputies, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the Congress high command’s decision will be final on this.

The Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which filed a chargesheet against former CM and BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa and three others, has claimed that Yediyurappa not just sexually assaulted minor at his house but also tried to cover it up by giving cash. 

In the chargesheet, three of Yediyurappa’s aides have been charged for destruction of evidence and trying to cover up the case on his behalf. 

The charges have been filed under IPC Sections 354A (sexual harassment), 204 (destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence), 214 (offering gift or restoration of property in consideration of screening offender) and Section 8 (sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.

Bengaluru Police had registered an FIR against the 81-year-old BJP leader on March 15 under the law based on a complaint from a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her 17-year-old daughter. The girl had allegedly gone to meet the leader along with her mother at his home in February this year, seeking his help to speed up a probe into a past rape case. Her mother, who had made the complaint against Yediyurappa, died of lung cancer last month.

The government later transferred the case to the CID. A Bengaluru court had issued a non-bailable warrant for the leader’s arrest earlier this month, but the Karnataka High Court halted his arrest.

With the case back in the news last month, the BJP had sharply retaliated at the renewed interest, insinuating that the Congress government was doing this to divert attention from its loss in the recent general elections in the state. Yediyurappa had denied the charges, saying “people would teach a lesson to those indulging in conspiracies against me.”

750-page chargesheet

The 750-page chargesheet filed by the CID explains the minor girl’s ordeal.  The investigators found that on February 2, 2024, at around 11.15 am, the survivor, along with her 54-year-old mother, the complainant who died on May 26, visited Yediyurappa, 81, at his residence in Dollar’s Colony, Bengaluru seeking help in a previous case of sexual assault and other matters. While Yediyurappa was speaking with the mother, he was holding the survivor’s right wrist with his left hand.

Yediyurappa then called the minor inside a meeting room next to the hall and locked the door. He then asked the survivor, if she remembered the face of the person who had sexually assaulted her earlier. After the survivor replied twice that she did, Yediyurappa asked her what her age was then and proceeded to sexually assault her, the investigations found.

The survivor, startled, pushed the former CM’s hand, moved away and asked him to open the door. Yediyurappa put some cash in the hand of the survivor from his pocket and exited the room. He told the survivor’s mother that he couldn’t help them, gave her some money from his pocket and sent them away, the investigations revealed.

On February 20, after the survivor’s mother uploaded a video related to the crime on her Facebook account. Arun Y M, accused No.2, at the behest of Yediyurappa, along with Rudresh M and G Mariswamy, accused No.3 and 4, initiated contact with the survivor and her mother.

Rudresh and Mariswamy, along with another person listed as the witness, went to the survivor’s house and ferried her and her mother to Yediyurappa’s residence in their car. Investigations found that the three accused then coerced the survivor’s mother into taking down the video from her Facebook account and deleted the video from her iPhone’s gallery.

At Yediyurappa’s directions, Rudresh paid the survivor Rs 2 lakh in cash, the investigations revealed. Another conversation recorded by the survivor in her phone, which was not deleted, and the voice samples of Yediyurappa, formed key pieces of the evidence, reported Deccan Herald quoting sources.

The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) has drawn attention to the number of child casualties in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, saying thousands of kids remain buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Palestinian territory.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban made the remarks on Wednesday during a UN Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict.

He said that Palestinian children continue to endure “incomprehensible suffering,” particularly those in the Gaza Strip amid a “staggering” scale of death and destruction there.

Chaiban noted that more than 23,000 cases of children killed or maimed in 2023 have yet to be verified due to insecurity, movement restrictions and significant risks to humanitarian personnel operating in Gaza. 

“The bodies of thousands of missing children remain buried under rubble, and none of this includes the thousands of violations reported so far in 2024,” he added.

The UNICEF official also highlighted the obstacles that are impeding aid deliveries to Gaza and thus increasing the number of acutely malnourished children, noting “After nearly nine months of horrible conflict, UNICEF and other humanitarian actors are still struggling to reach those in need."

He further called for “a complete ceasefire” in Gaza, where many children are losing their lives due to Israel’s starvation imposed on the besieged territory.

Israel unleashed its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 37,718 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 86,377 others in Gaza.

Also speaking at the Security Council meeting was Palestine's UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour who recalled that Israel has killed more children in recent months than in all armed conflict globally over the past 4 years.

He estimated that nearly 16,000 Palestinian children were killed in Israel’s aggression against Gaza while another 21,000 are missing.

The Gaza Strip, once a vibrant place where children set world records in sports, has now been reduced to a graveyard, Mansour said, calling for “collective resolve and responsibility to pressure Israel to stop the madness.”

‘Most of patients were children’

Meanwhile, Adam Hamawy, a former US Army combat surgeon who returned from a medical mission to Gaza, said that children made up most of his patients.

“The level of civilian casualties that I experienced was beyond anything I’d seen before,” the 54-year-old medic told AFP.

“Most of our patients were children under the age of 14.”

Hamawy also said that humanitarian aid must enter Gaza in “sufficient volumes to meet the demands”.