• Rizwanur Rahman’s death is a serious blot on India’s secular credentials. Our Constitution guarantees a secular nation and protects the rights of the individual. So why is it that when it comes to marriage, all hell breaks loose if one dares to fall in love with a person from a different faith? More than anything else, marriage has to be an understanding and when two consenting individuals want to enter into matrimony it is but natural that they would have thought through the consequences. Should not a personal decision of two adults be respected? CBI probe or not, the gross reality is that Rizwanur is dead and his wife, Priyanka, is left to lament her fate. It is not only her father Ashok Todi who is to blame, but all those in our society who bring up their children with much fanfare but refuse to respect their decisions. If Todi is so innocent, why hasn’t he come out in the open even once on this case? Why is Priyanka being kept hidden? The police commissioner of Kolkata should be sacked immediately for dismissing the death as suicide even before the medical reports came in.

— Neha Rathi New Delhi

Gowda and gaddi

• Now that the political situation in Karnataka has become clearer, the only conclusion one can reach is that H.D. Deve Gowda can go to any extent to retain power. The man who was once the prime minister of India exhibits no shame about indulging in amoral politics.

Although the BJP is also responsible for this situation, Gowda has revealed that he is not to be trusted by anyone. Why are we, the people, not raising our voices against politicians like this? The time has come for citizens to forget their differences and struggle to establish credible politics.

— Shailesh Kumar Bangalore

• Karnataka, like its neighbours Tamil Nadu, is slowly becoming another Bihar, where might is always right. The Deve Gowda family is reigning supreme in the state by clinging to power and expanding its family businesses in all fields, especially land acquisition. Given this, it is disappointing to see even national-level parties like the BJP and the Congress falling into the trap set by the Deve Gowda family for petty gains. Now that Deve Gowda’s duplicity has been revealed, one hopes the people and political partners will be wiser in the future.

— V.S. Ganeshan

Bangalore

Convening disgrace

• There was nothing wrong with the NDA convener George Fernandes meeting Anand Mohan at Beur Central Jail to lend him support (George visits Anand Mohan...), but I was shocked to read what Fernandes said on that occasion (“that they will raise the issue among the masses and unmask the Nitish Kumar government”). People like former the JD(U) MP and his wife, Lovely, also a former MP, are involved in a heinous crime involving the killing of former Gopalganj DM, G. Krishnaiah, in December 1994. Those who are involved in this killing are a disgrace to the nation and deserve no leniency — least of all from a senior political leader like Fernandes.

— Bidyut K. Chatterjee

Faridabad

Spy spice

• Spy tales do make spicy reading. But what reader interest does The Sunday Express see in its front page ‘tit-bit’, ‘Chinese connection’ between its officer...' except to reveal that some things are better left unsaid? More than the recent books on the subject of spies, the media has been playing hell with a system that is meant to defend our national interest.

— Mukund B. Kunte

New Delhi