Submit your Article

A man died after being struck by a lightning in Taplejung.

The deceased has been identified as Mukesh Bhattarai (23) of Ambegudin Lhasa Tole of Sirijunga Rural Municipality-2.

According to Inspector Kailash Kumar Adhikari, spokesperson at the District Police Office, the incident occurred at around 9 pm yesterday.

Critically injured in the incident, Bhattarai was rushed to a hospital but doctors pronounced him dead on arrival.

A 36-hour curfew has been declared in Sri Lanka, as a state of emergency is enforced amid violent protests against food and fuel shortages, BBC reported.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa issued a notice prohibiting anyone from being on any public road, in a park, on trains, or on the seashore, unless they have written permission from the authorities. 

The curfew began at dusk on Saturday.

Social media sites have been blocked, including Facebook and Twitter.

WhatsApp is also down, and mobile phone users received a message saying this was "as directed by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission". 

The stringent restrictions are aimed at preventing new protests, after crowds were accused of setting vehicles ablaze near the president's private residence on Thursday.

The military has since been deployed and now has the power to arrest suspects without warrants, according to BBC.

The island nation is in the midst of a major economic crisis. It is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which is used to pay for fuel imports.

Faced with power cuts lasting half a day or more, and a lack of fuel and essential food and medicines, public anger has reached a new high.

Thursday's protest outside President Rajapaksa's Colombo house began peacefully, but participants said things turned violent after police fired tear gas, water cannons and also beat people present.

Protesters retaliated against the police by pelting them with stones.

At least two dozen police personnel were reportedly injured during the clashes, according to an official cited by Reuters news agency. 

On Friday, 53 demonstrators were arrested, and local media reported that five news photographers were detained and tortured at a police station. The government said it would investigate the latter claim. 

Despite the crackdown, protests continued, and spread to other parts of the country.

Demonstrators in the capital carried placards calling for the president's resignation, BBC reported.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's decision to impose a state of emergency has come as a shock to many. 

One of the most draconian pieces of legislation in Sri Lanka, it is meant to be deployed in situations of "exceptional threat, danger or disaster". 

One of the last times it was invoked, for instance, was in the aftermath of the deadly Easter Sunday bombings in 2019. 

The law allows for the detention of people without proof or the presumption of innocence, and severely restricts fundamental rights such as the freedom of movement and expression. 

It also allows the police and military to arrest and detain people without warrants.

This has given rise to fears that the government is going to resort to a brutal crackdown on protesters, who are angry about the toll taken on their lives by the ongoing economic crisis. 

Civil protesters and journalists have already reported being tortured by police for simply being present at the protests outside Mr Rajapaksa's home, and one of the organisers was taken in for questioning late on Friday night. 

The imposition of the law cannot be challenged in the courts, although parliament will need to ratify it within 14 days of its declaration. 

The government has the majority in parliament to pass it. Thereafter it will need to be extended on a monthly basis, according to BBC.

President Rajapaksa said the decision to declare a state of emergency was taken in the interests of public security, the protection of public order, and to ensure the maintenance of supplies and essential services.

The demonstrations mark a massive turnaround in popularity for Mr Rajapaksa, who swept into power with a majority win in 2019, promising stability and a "strong hand" to rule the country, BBC reported.

Nepal reported 11 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 083 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 10 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 277 people underwent antigen tests, of which one was tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 90 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 942 active cases in the country.

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced four people to death for killing a blogger and science writer critical of hardline religious thought seven years ago, Aljazeera reported.

Ananta Bijoy Das, known for his critical writings on religions, was attacked by masked men with machetes near his home in the northeastern city of Sylhet on May 12, 2015.

His murder happened only three months after US-based Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy was killed in a similar fashion by machete-wielding assailants in the capital Dhaka. Roy had founded a website called Mukto-Mona (Free Thinkers) for which Das also used to write.

Between 2013 and 2016, Bangladesh saw a series of deadly attacks on bloggers, secular activists and religious minorities, claimed by armed groups linked to ISIL (ISIS) or al-Qaeda.

While delivering the verdict on Wednesday, Judge Nurul Amin Biplob of the Sylhet Anti-Terrorism Tribunal told a packed courtroom that “if these accused are not given exemplary punishment, people of other terrorist, extremist ideologies will be encouraged to commit such killings”.

The four men given the death penalty for Das’s murder are Abul Hossain, 25; Abul Khayer Rashid Ahmed, 24; Faysal Ahmed, 27; and Mamunur Rashid, 25.

A fifth accused, Safiur Rahman Farabi, was acquitted for lack of evidence against him. However, Farabi is already serving a life sentence for Roy’s murder, according to Aljazeera.

Farabi and Rashid Ahmed were present in court on Wednesday when the verdict was announced, the remaining three convicts are absconding.

‘Fear and apprehension’

While delivering the verdict, Judge Biplob said Das was brutally murdered in broad daylight for practising his fundamental right to free speech.

“The main purpose (of the killing) was to spread fear and apprehension among writers who wrote or spoke about liberalism, progressivism, science and prejudice prevalent in the society through the brutality and horror of the killing,” he said.

Mominur Rahman Titu, special counsel for the state in the Sylhet anti-terrorism tribunal, said: “Justice has been ensured through this verdict. We are satisfied.”

However, another lawyer Misbah Uddin Siraj, who appeared on behalf of the prosecution, said he was “not entirely satisfied” with the verdict as Farabi was acquitted in the case, Aljazeera reported.

“We were able to prove Farabi’s guilt in court. However, I do not understand the reason for his release. We will appeal to the high court in this regard,” Siraj told Al Jazeera.

The defendants’ lawyer Abdul Ahad called the verdict “a serious violation of justice” and said he will appeal in a higher court.

“Abul Khayer was not involved in the killings,” he said. “At that time, he did not use Facebook or blog. He did not even know Ananta Bijoy.”

Das’s brother-in-law Samar Vijay Shri Shekhar was present in the court when the verdict was announced and called for speedy implementation of the verdict.

“Once the verdict is implemented, the family will get some relief. Besides, three convicts are fugitives. They should be arrested soon,” he told Al Jazeera.

Das, a banker by profession and the general secretary of the Council for Science and Rationalism of Bangladesh, used to edit a magazine called Jukti (Logic), besides being associated with Roy’s Mukto-Mona blog where he mostly wrote on evolutionary theories in science.

After Roy’s murder in 2015, Das feared he could also be killed by the same assailants and tried to flee the country. But he failed, according to Aljazeera.

In April of that year, he was invited to attend a press freedom event organised by the Swedish PEN organisation, but he could not get a visa for Sweden.

“Murders of Avijit or Ananta put a dent in the face of our nation. It was a slap in the face of secularism,” Bangladesh rights activist Nur Khan Liton told Al Jazeera.

“Yes, verdicts in both the cases have been delivered. But Bangladesh still fails to create a space where people can freely express their opinion without fear,” he said.

Sweden-based exiled Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil condemned the capital punishment given to Das’s killers. “It can never be a tool for ensuring justice. This horrible medieval practice has no place in a modern, civilised society,” he told Al Jazeera.

However, Khalil added that by “slaughtering” Das and other Bangladeshi rationalists, the killers “successfully ensured that religious issues are now a taboo topic in the country”.

“Very few, if any, dare to speak up on religion these days, lest they too are killed while the government watches from the sideline.”