Archives for July 2018

Former Sahibabad MLA and Congress leader Amar Pal Sharma, booked under the National Security Act (NSA) in connection with the murder of BJP leader Gajendra Bhati, was given bail by the Allahabad High Court on Tuesday.

Bhati was murdered on September 2, 2017, in Khoda locality bordering Delhi.

The Allahabad High Court declared imposition of NSA on the former MLA illegal and granted bail to him, Defence lawyer Deepak Thakur said.

He was detained in jail for 330 days due to the imposition of NSA, Thakur added.

Police in Ghaziabad had arrested sharpshooters Narendra Gurjar alias Narendra Fauzi and Raju, the two men who allegedly shot dead the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader.

Narendra Gurjar, who had been Sharma’s security officer, had allegedly confessed that he along with Raju killed Bhati at the former legislator’s behest.

Sharma represented Sahibabad as the Bahujan Samaj Party MLA in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly but joined the Congress after he was denied a ticket in the 2017 Assembly elections. He contested on Congress ticket but lost to BJP’s Sunil Sharma.

Amid repeated cases of alleged mob killing by cow vigilantes in Rajasthan’s Alwar, BJP MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja on Monday said cow slaughtering is a bigger crime than terrorism as cows are treated as mothers in India and any ‘misbehaviour’ with them cannot be tolerated.

Ahuja, who had earlier accused the local police for the recent case of alleged mob killing in which one Rakbar alias Akbar Khan died after being thrashed by a cow vigilante group, said terrorists kill 2-5 people, but cow slaughtering hurts sentiments of several thousand and even lakhs of people.

Speaking to reporters at the BJP headquarters, the legislator said cow slaughtering will incite people and hurt their sentiments, which will lead to some incidents.

“Court should accept this. How should such incidents be stopped?” he said.

The comments from Ahuja, BJP MLA from Ramgarh constituency in Alwar, follows the arrest of three women today in Alwar’s Govindgarh with nearly 40kg suspected beef after it was alleged that a family belonging to minority community allegedly slaughtered a cow at their residence to sell the beef.

Ahuja said India is a country which respects mother and “Geeta, Dharti (land), cow, Ganga, Tulsi and a birth giver” are treated as mother in the country.

He said any ‘misbehaviour’ or ‘goodanism’ with the mother is not tolerated in this country and therefore it is a bigger crime than terrorism.

While it was alleged by his rivals that the people involved in the Rakbar case were his men, Ahuja had blamed the local police for the incident and had demanded a judicial inquiry or a CBI probe into the case to ensure “unbiased investigation”.

Last week, Ahuja had also demanded release of three people arrested for allegedly killing of 28-year Rakbar on suspicion of the victim’s involvement in smuggling cows.

Ahuja made the demand after state Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria ordered a judicial inquiry considering Rakbar’s demise a case of ‘custodial death’.

Rakbar and another man, Aslam, were taking two cows from Alwar to their village in Haryana through a forest area when a group of people spotted them and caught Rakbar. He was badly beaten while Aslam managed to escape, as per the police.

The victim was taken to the community health centre in Ramgarh by the police after an alleged delay of nearly two and a half hours and he was declared brought dead at the hospital.

Embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on fraud charges, returned to Westminster Magistrates’ Court here today for closing arguments in his high-profile extradition trial.

The 62-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss, who has been on bail on an extradition warrant since his arrest in April last year, is fighting extradition to India on charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to around Rs 9,000 crores.

At the last hearing in the case on April 27, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had received a boost in the case as Judge Arbuthnot confirmed that the bulk of the evidence submitted by the Indian authorities will be admissible in the case.

The CBI had submitted a detailed set of documents to the UK court, which includes its case of conspiracy against former IDBI Bank Deputy Managing Director BK Batra, who was referred to in court as a new “villain” of sorts in the case.

As per the Indian authorities’ case of conspiracy, Batra reportedly colluded with Mallya in sanctioning some of the loans to the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines without following due diligence procedures.

In the separate extradition proceedings, if the judge rules in favour of the Indian government, the UK home secretary will have two months to sign Mallya’s extradition order. However, both sides will have the chance to appeal in higher courts in the UK against the Magistrates’ Court verdict.

Mallya’s defence team, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, has disputed the fraud allegations and also submitted further written material from UK-based prisons expert Dr Alan Mitchell, challenging some of the photographs of Barrack 12 of Mumbai Central Prison on Arthur Road, where Mallya is to be held if he is extradited from the UK.

The CPS team, led by barrister Mark Summers, dismissed the additional material as an “attempt to criticise” the information provided by the Indian authorities.

The extradition trial, which opened at the London court on December 4 last year, is aimed at laying out a prima facie case of fraud against Mallya, who has been based in the UK since he left India in March 2016. It also seeks to prove there are no “bars to extradition” and that the tycoon is assured a fair trial in India over his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines’ alleged default of over Rs 9,000 crores in loans from a consortium of Indian banks.

The CPS has argued that the evidence they have presented establishes “dishonesty” on the part of the businessman and that there are no bars to him being extradited from the UK to face Indian courts.

Mallya’s defence team has deposed a series of expert witnesses to claim he had no “fraudulent” intentions and that he is unlikely to get a fair trial in India.

Last month, after a prolonged period of silence, Mallya had issued a lengthy media statement, labelling the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) charges against him as untenable and blatantly false”.

He has since lost his appeal in the UK’s Court of Appeal against a High Court order in favour of 13 Indian banks to recover funds amounting to nearly 1.145 billion pounds.

The High Court order in favour of the State Bank of India (SBI) led consortium had reinforced a worldwide freezing order against Mallya’s assets.

It was followed by a related enforcement order last month granting permission to the UK High Court Enforcement Officer to enter Mallya’s properties in Hertfordshire, near London, where he is based.

Mallya has since said that he has handed over a full statement of his UK assets to the court and there was no question of the use of force to enter his home, Ladywalk, in the village of Tewin in England.

Three brothers were killed in a bomb blast in Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool town on Tuesday, police said.

The incident occurred near Nandyal checkpoint on the outskirts of Kurnool when the three brothers, including two real estate developers, were surveying a piece of land which they had purchased sometime back.

The deceased have been identified as J. Mallikarjuna, J. Rajasekhar — both real estate businessmen and J. Sreenu, an Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police.

Another person, identified as Sudhakar, a driver in the Survey Department, was injured.

According to the police, the blast occurred when some waste material was set on fire by some workers. While two brothers died on the spot, Sreenu succumbed at Kurnool Government Hospital.

The police suspect that country-made bombs were kept in the garbage. A police officer said an investigation is on to find out if somebody had concealed the bombs in the field or if they were deliberately planted to target the brothers.

According to people living in the vicinity, the brothers were well-known in the town as they had executed several projects. They had purchased that piece of land for Rs 20 crore.

A 28-year-old married man committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his house here and posted the live video of his final moments on Facebook, police said on Tuesday.

The deceased was identified as Amit Chauhan, a resident of Haily Mandi near Pataudi, 28 km from Gugugram city.

Police said Chauhan and his wife Preeti had differences over some family issue.

“Preeti left her in-laws home on Monday after a tiff with her husband and called her parents, who took her to their house in a village near Sohna,” police officer Subhash Boken said.

“Anguished, Chauhan hanged himself and the posted a video of the suicide on Facebook,” Boken said.

Chauhan requested his friends on the social site to further share his suicide video.

“The deceased posted two videos… He was also in depression and was being treated at PGIMS Rohtak for the last few months,” Boken added.

“Family members of the deceased on Tuesday cremated the body without informing the police. We are investigating the case,” he added.

The couple have two girl children. No one was arrested for the suicide.

Sexual abuse of vulnerable women and girls by international aid workers is “endemic” and has been happening for years, with perpetrators easily moving around the sector undetected, a UK government report revealed on Tuesday.

An inquiry heard “horrifying” stories of aid staff sexually exploiting the people they were meant to be helping, including one homeless girl in Haiti who was given $1 by a worker for a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) and raped, CNN quoted the report by the House of Commons International Development Committee as saying.

The scathing report comes after historical allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct by employees of several top NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, surfaced earlier this year.

Those allegations prompted the Committee to launch the inquiry into abuse in the aid sector in February.

Tuesday’s report noted that sexual misconduct by aid workers and peacekeepers had a “documented history stretching back nearly 20 years”.

It also recounted the sexual exploitation and abuse of girls between the ages of 13 and 18 by UN and aid agency staff in refugee camps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2001.

Abuses ranged from unwanted sexual comments to rape. Victims suffered problems including abortions and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS.

“The power imbalance is predominantly, although not exclusively, men abusing women and girls,” said the report, which warned that the cases that had come to light were likely just the “tip of the iceberg”.

The committee also criticized aid groups for failing to tackle the problem despite being aware of reports of abuse for years.

“Repeatedly, reports of sexual exploitation and abuse by aid workers and/or peacekeepers have emerged, the sector has reacted, but then the focus has faded,” the report found.

Chair of the committee, MP Stephen Twigg, told CNN that the report set out “the collective failure over period of at least 16 years by the aid sector to address sexual exploitation and abuse”.

He said that in effect, organisations had often put “their reputation ahead of women, children and other victims of sexual exploitation and abuse”.

Oxfam Chair of Trustees Caroline Thomson told CNN that Tuesday’s report made for “incredibly painful reading” for Oxfam and the wider aid sector.

“Oxfam exists to help improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people; we know we failed to protect vulnerable women in Haiti… We are truly sorry,” Thomson said.

Save the Children UK’s CEO Kevin Watkins said that the organisation had “made mistakes in our own handling of historical sexual harassment complaints from staff in the UK”.

 A powerful car bomb exploded in the Philippines island of Basilan early on Tuesday. The death toll has reached 10, according to military sources.

Earlier the military had put the number of deaths at six in the attack that took place at 5.50 a.m. when a white van was detonated at a military checkpoint in Colonia village in Lamitan City, Xinhua news agency reported.

There is a soldier, five militiamen and four civilians who have died in the attack that appears to have been caused after a vehicle was rigged in the southern island of the country.

A few others also sustained injuries in the attack that the military said might be linked to the Abu Sayyaf group believed to have ties with the Islamic State (IS).