 Hello everyone and welcome to Newsclick. I am Apoorva. I am Praveen and we will take a look at the new stories today. The top story of today is Bilkis Banu. The Supreme Court has ordered Gujarat government to pay 50 lakh rupees as compensation to Bilkis Banu who was raped, her three-year-old daughter and her 14 family members killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Her story was among the most horrific single incidents of violence during the 2002 riots. On the day of this important order, here is a look back at how the Gujarat government failed the victims. On March 3, 2002, communal violence had spread across Gujarat after the Godra incident. Thousands of families were moving to safer places. One of those families was of 19-year-old Bilkis Banu, pregnant at the time. The family was moving in a truck. There were 17 people in it. They suddenly found themselves under attack from a mob of about 30-35 writers. In the next hour or so, all 14 members of Banu's family were killed. Every woman of the family was gang-raped and murdered. Among the deceased was the three-year-old Saleha, daughter of Bilkis. Saleha's head was smashed with a rock. Bilkis was five months pregnant and signs of pregnancies were visible. She was gang-raped, brutalized and left to die. However, she survived and took refuge with a tribal family. She gathered courage to approach the police and lodge a rape complaint. One year later, police cited inconsistencies in her statement and the magistrate closed the case, citing lack of evidence. The police threatened her with dire consequences if she proceeded with the matter. Banu then approached the National Human Rights Commission and also petitioned the Supreme Court. The apex court heard the matter and also sought a response from the NHRC. The NHRC backed Bilkis Banu's petition in the Supreme Court, which in December 2003 ordered a CBI inquiry into the case. The CBI found the evidence which Gujarat Police claimed they had been unable to find and also exhumed the bodies of those killed for examination. In 2004, all the accused named by Bilkis Banu were arrested and tried in Sessions Court. And the sentence of life imprisonment of 11 confirmed by the Bombay High Court. The Bombay High Court also convicted five policemen and two doctors for not performing their duties and tampering with the evidence. Two individuals, Ashok Bochi and Kutubudu Nansari, became the iconic images of the Gujarat violence. Both of them today are campaigning in North Kerala for the CBI candidate P. Jairaj. All parliamentary constituencies in the state went to post today in Phase 3 of India's general elections. The presidents of two of India's biggest parties, the BJP and Congress, are among the key candidates in the third place which took place today. While the other states in this phase had good voter turnout, Jammu and Kashmir registered a very low turnout of just over 11% by 5pm. Joining us to discuss this and all the other election stories worth tracking is news click chief editor Praveer Purkayastha. So Praveer, if you could just take us through the violence that has happened in different states. Let's look at first the violence in Bengal because there are reports now that Murshidabad, North and South Malta, Janganipur have all seen violence. Five of the constituencies are going to post today in this phase. In Murshidabad, the sitting MP of the CPIM, Badrud Dujha Khan, was also intimidated, surrounded by TMC goons and threatened. So we seem to see what already special officer Naik had talked about that this time we are seeing unprecedented violence. Though of course we know that this level of violence has been there in previous elections in Bengal as well, particularly under the TMC regime. So I think this is something that the election commission has to take note of and what they will do, we have yet to see. In Tripura, already Tripura East, the vote was postponed there. It was originally scheduled for 18th, it's not taking place today. We have also seen Tripura West, large scale violence and in fact the election commission itself has agreed that there has been intimidation and boot capturing and so on. So we'll have to see what again the election commission does in Tripura, what they do about Tripura West, when finally they have to take stock and give a judgment about whether it should go for repoll or how many boots will go in for repoll. This is a story that is still to be seen because election commission has yet to take a final call on this one. We've also seen violence in Muradabad where a poll official has been killed. It appears by BJP carders, goons, whatever we want to call them. And that's again something that we have to monitor and see what's happening. Overall Gujarat today and Kerala had full state going to elections and the voter turnouts in both the states as you have said have been good. So we'll have to see what the results are. We have discussed earlier also that Kerala is a difficult state to call because quite often the assembly and the parliament voting is not similar and also because the margins are so low in Kerala because whichever party wins, wins by a margin. And Sabri Bala, what's been the effect of Sabri Bala on the elections we have to see. Alright, so moving along, the electoral scenario in Delhi has become clearer after all three major political parties declared their candidates for the seven seats. One interesting development is the announcement of the so-called celebrity candidates by both the Congress and BJP in the national capitals. Singer Hans Raj Hans will contest from Northwest Delhi for the BJP. Olympic Games medallist Vijendra Singh represents the Congress in South Delhi while ex-India cricketer Gautam Gambhir will take on Aap's Aatishi and Arvin Singh, lovely of the Congress. News Clicks Post journalists Leslie Xavier and Siddharth Ani chat about the appearances of these athletes in the mix. Does this appear to be a selection of celebrity or so-called celebrity big name candidates over people who have a proven track record or some substance in terms of governance? There will be dissent in the party ranks I'm sure because these guys are fresh in the game, pun intended. But Gambhir's case was expected in a way because the way he has been towing BJP's line in the last few years, tweeting, getting into controversies, I mean playing the nationalism game, things like that. And then he retired last December and last month he joined the BJP and this was expected. Vijendra is a surprise but maybe not to the boxer himself because he has always been a smart player and the way as shifted carriers through the years from the amateur ranks where he was not going anywhere, he shifted to professional boxing and in professional boxing he is not going anywhere. So I wanted to ask you on this, yes he won a bronze medal at Beijing in 2008 becoming one of the very few Indians to have achieved that fantastic feat but at the same time like you said a fairly rigged or sort of planned foray into professional boxing which didn't go anywhere because of age and various other reasons followed also there was a drug scandal in which he was sort of embroiled where heroin was found in his car that was registered in his name, his family's name but he got out of that. DSP in the police who has now resigned his role and moved into politics is this a wise choice for the Congress party from a place that's so much sort of South Delhi in the capital is this a wise choice? Congress has made a mistake no doubt about it because Vijendra being an Olympic medalist and all that, yeah he has done great in boxing but when you look at what he has done post that there have been a lot of controversies, the drug controversy which happened in 2012 and there was a lot of pulling of strings and all that by the way that time it was the Congress government and it was right before the London Olympics so they saved him. In international news a left wing activist has been assassinated in Philippines for more on that story we have Prashant. Thank you Apurva. The activist Toto Patigas was assassinated on April 22nd he is an activist of the Bayan Munna party and a counsellor for the city of Escalante. He was riding a scooter when unknown assailants hit him on the back of his head. This is the third attack on an activist of the Bayan Munna party since January when activist and negotiator Randy Malario was assassinated. Incidentally Patigas was actually a survivor of the infamous Escalante massacre in 1985 in which over 35 people were killed. This attack comes in the aftermath of the massacre of nearly 14 peasants in the province of Negro's Occidental in March where this attack also happened. Philippines is seeing its interim general elections next month and the government of Roderico Duterte has already initiated a massive crackdown on dissidents. Many of these dissidents are accused of being associated with the communist party of Philippines which is banned. This practice known as red tagging is then used to arrest and persecute many of these activists. Duterte's government is also infamous for its so-called war on drugs in which hundreds of innocent people have been killed. Last month the Philippines withdrew from the International Criminal Court after the latter insisted the investigation into these murders would continue. Our second story for the day is from Ukraine where a comedian has actually become a president. Vladimir Zelensky won a massive 72% of the vote and decisively defeated the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko who came to power in 2014 has been extremely unpopular due to the civil war in the country as well as his closeness to the US, the EU and NATO. During his time provinces dominated by Russian speakers started a rebellion and there was even a referendum in the province of Crimea in which people finally decided to even join Russia. It's unclear how much space Zelensky will have to implement his agenda. He has indicated that he wants to maintain the territorial continuity of Ukraine and is open to negotiations with Russia. At the same time the US, NATO and the EU are unlikely to give him much space. Ukraine has become one of the major fault lines in the world as the Western powers are trying their best to increase the span of influence which is being resisted by Russia. That's all we have time for today. Keep following some of these stories on our website newsclick.in and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thank you.