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Uber cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav convicted for raping woman passenger in Delhi

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Photo illustration of logo of car-sharing service app Uber on a smartphone over a reserved lane for taxis in a street in Madrid

New Delhi: A Delhi court has convicted an Uber cab driver of raping a young woman passenger last year.

On December 5, Shiv Kumar Yadav had sexually assaulted the woman, a finance executive working in Gurgaon, while she on her way back home in Inderlok in northwest Delhi.

Yadav was arrested two days later from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.

The court today convicted Yadav, 32, for offences including endangering a woman’s life while raping her, abducting and criminally intimidating her. Yadav faces a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. Arguments on sentencing will be heard on Friday.

The woman, who had hired the cab by using the taxi service’s app, had, in her statement, said that she fell asleep in the cab on her way home from dinner. She said she was then taken to a deserted area not far from her home where the driver raped her and threatened to violate her with an iron rod, a barbarous tactic used in the fatal gang-rape of a young student on a moving bus two years ago in the capital.

The incident had sparked massive outrage across the country, renewing debate on the safety of women in the national capital. The Delhi government later banned the Uber in the national capital.

Uber, with which Shiv Kumar Yadav had been registered, had drawn fire for failing to deliver on its promise of safety. It had not conducted any background checks on Yadav, who had at least five cases against him – two under the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act and the rest relating to sexual assaults.

(Agencies)

Maggi manufacture, sale is now allowed in Karnataka

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MAGGI

Bengaluru: The Congress government in Karnataka today decided allow manufacture and sale of Maggi noodles in the state as it decided to withhold the Centre’s directive banning it, saying it lacked clarity.

 

The state government would withhold the implementation of central order on not allowing the production and sale of Maggi because of lack of clarity on the permissible limits of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and lead, Karnataka Health Minister U T Khader told reporters here.

Khader said it was left to the company to decide on the start of production of noodles and other products.

“It is left to the company to decide on production of noodles and other products. We are clear in our stand that we will not be honouring the central order,” he added.

However, the Minister said the government would be very happy to implement the central order if it frames clear guidelines on the permissibility of the level of MSG and lead contents in noodles.

“We will be happy to implement the central order, there are no issues on this matter. But, it has to come out with clear guidelines,” Khader said.

Even if the company produces or manufactures noodles and other products, they should undergo laboratory test before hitting the market, he said.

On June 2 this year, the government had ordered random lifting of samples of Maggi noodles from across the state for laboratory testing after allegations of lapses in food safety standards came to the fore.

Khader said the government collected the samples and sent them to national-level laboratory units situated in Mysuru and another private laboratory in Bengaluru which found the lead and MSG contents in permissible levels.

However, the Central food safety regulator FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) rejected the test results and directed the government to send it to national laboratory at Kolkata, Khader said, adding accordingly the samples were sent to the lab.
“Inspite of the lapse of four months, there has been no response from the central authority, and therefore, no clarity on permissibility of level of MSG and lead content persists,” he said.

Maggi noodles came under the scanner in May after Uttar Pradesh Food Safety and Drug Administration asked Nestle India to withdraw a batch of the noodles “which were manufactured in February 2014” after it found presence of non-essential taste enhancer monosodium glutamate and high levels of lead in the samples.

(Agencies)

Dalit family set afire; two kids burnt alive

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dalit

Faridabad: Two children of a Dalit family were today burnt alive and their parents suffered injuries after a group of terrorists from so called upper caste set their house afire while they were sleeping.

The shocking incident occurred at around 2.30 AM at Sunped village on the outskirts of Delhi, police said, adding two persons have been arrested.

11 persons, including a father-son duo, have been booked on murder, rioting and other charges, a police spokesman said.

Vaibhav, who was two-and-a-half years old, and his sister, 11-month-old Divya, died after the attackers allegedly poured petrol from the window and set the house ablaze while the family was sleeping inside. A religious programme was being held nearby in the village at that time.

Their mother Rekha, 28, suffered serious burns and has been referred to Delhi for treatment while their father Jitender, 31, too suffered injuries while trying to save his family.

Concerned over the attack on the Dalit family, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Khattar over phone asking him to ensure security to everyone and prevent any recurrence of such incident, officials said in Delhi.

The Union Home Ministry also sought a report from the state administration.

A compensation of Rs 10 lakh has been announced for the family by the Haryana government, state officials said.

Jitender alleged that the attackers were from Rajput caste and the family had a confrontation with them over a murder in October after which a case had been registered.

“We were sleeping when they poured petrol from the window. I smelt the petrol and tried to wake up my wife but by then the fire had started. They locked the door from outside. My children died in the fire…,” said an inconsolable Jitender.

“They had threatened that they will finish my family, that I should never return to the village… I won’t but please give me back my children,” he said.

The incident has led to tension in the area and security has been tightened. Subhash Yadav, commissioner of police of Faridabad, reached the village and is monitoring the situation.

“Sunped resident Balwant and his son Dharm Singh are among 11 persons booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 324 (Voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).

“Two persons have been arrested,” the police spokesman said. An SC/ST Commission team met the victims’ family and assured them that they will get justice.

(Agencies)

Mumbai Police thrashed two young Muslims, asked them to go to Pakistan

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mumbai-indianmuslim-india-pakistanindia-bandra-asif

Mumbai: Residents of Mahim, two 19-year-olds Asif Shaikh and Danish Shaikh were allegedly detained and tortured by a few Bandra police officers on suspicion of being Pakistani terrorists or ISIS agents on Saturday, a leading daily reported.

Asif who works as a gym trainer was with Danish near Bandra Reclamation on the way back home from Bhabha Hospital, when they were allegedly picked up by the police.

Victims’ relatives and neighbours allege that both Asif and Danish were detained and grilled for over three hours and were beaten badly. They were even asked to “leave India and go to Pakistan” by the police, they said.

Asif was hit with belts and batons and Danish slapped and punched, after which the police finally made a call to their parents to take them back.

It is not clear whether the detention of Asif and Danish was made an official entry in police records.

Asif’s photo published in the news report shows the brutality he was treated with, but the police is yet to make comment on the incident.

(Agencies)

Kashmir truck attack victim dies, violence rages

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Kashmir truck attack victim dies

Srinagar: Violence raged in parts of the Kashmir Valley on Sunday after a victim of a bomb attack on a truck in Udhampur on October 9 died in Delhi, police and residents said.

Zahid Rasool Bhat, who was being treated for serious burn injuries in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital, died early on Sunday, a police officer told IANS here. Some reports said Bhat was 16 years old, while other reports said he was in his early 20s.

Bhat and another Kashmiri from Anantnag district, Showkat Ahmad Dar, 35, sustained major injuries when a mob hurled a petrol bomb on their stationary truck at Udhampur on the Jammu-Srinagar highway.

Udhampur District Magistrate Shahid Chowdhary on Sunday said that murder charges had been added to the FIR against the five attackers arrested earlier.

They were first accused of rioting and stoking communal passion.

The accused are Sandoor Singh, Danish alias Pamma, Harish Singh, Balbahadur Singh and Varinder Singh alias Kaka.

The accused were also booked under the Public Safety Act, normally used against terrorists in the country’s only Muslim-majority state.

The attack took place following a beef party hosted by independent legislator Engineer Rashid in Srinagar.

As news of the death in Delhi spread on Sunday, mobs took to the streets in the southern district of Anantnag in the Kashmir Valley and blocked the Jammu-Srinagar highway by burning tyres.

The highway is the most strategic road link between the Kashmir Valley and the rest of India.

They also pelted stones at security personnel who tried to disperse them with tear gas, triggering street battles.

Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq meanwhile said the government was to blame for Bhat’s death as it failed to provide security to the truckers.

The separatists have called for a shutdown in the Kashmir Valley on Monday.

Both the victims of the attack were flown to Safdarjung Hospital which specializes in treating burn injuries.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed had visited them at the hospital three days back.

(IANS)

Derecognise Shiv Sena, book its leaders, demands AAP

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Shiv Sena workers stormed the BCCI office in Mumbai and gherao BCCI Chief Shashank Manohar's desk. (ANI Photo)

Shiv Sena workers stormed the BCCI office in Mumbai and gherao BCCI Chief Shashank Manohar’s desk. (ANI Photo)

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) demanded that the Shiv Sena be derecognised in the backdrop of the latter’s recent activities, including Monday’s protests at BCCI office in Mumbai, saying in its nearly 50 years of existence the regional party has only contributed to “politics of hate and goondaism”.

“It’s been nearly 50 years of Shiv Sena’s existence and other than politics of hate and goondaism it has not made one credible contribution to the nation,” AAP spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon said.

Slamming the Sena, Menon said though the party has not ruled the state on its own even once, it claimed to be the voice of Maharashtra.

“Surviving on coalitions and politics of convenience, it has not ruled Maharashtra on its own even once, and yet poses as the voice of Maharashtra. It took more than two decades of existence for Shiv Sena to win one Lok Sabha seat and its best Assembly performance was 73/288 in 1995, after nearly 30 years of existence,” she pointed out.

“So what exactly is the Shiv Sena? It is just a front for goondas who earn their living by threatening harmless people like singers, writers and holding the financial capital to ransom with its threats of bandhs and riots,” she said in a statement.

In the last few weeks, the Shiv Sena has threatened and cancelled Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali’s concert and attacked the organiser of a launch event of a book, written by a former Pakistani minister. Today they have attacked the BCCI offices which has led to cancellation of the India- Pakistan cricket meet, Menon said.

“This is completely unacceptable. Civil society must come together and demand a ban on Shiv Sena, as they neither understand, nor participate in upholding our Constitution or our democracy. Instead they are always ready to precipitate tensions with neighbouring countries,” she said.

“The AAP demands that the Election Commission should take note of Shiv Sena’s illegal and dangerous activities and de-recognise them. The state government should book Sena leaders for inciting violence and destroying the law and order of the state,” she demanded.

“What is worse is that the BJP and Shiv Sena are together supposed to be governing Maharashtra. Instead they have spent the last year fighting each other the BJP banned meat and the Shiv Sena protested and sold meat. The Shiv Sena threatened the book launch and BJP protected and conducted it,” Menon said in a statement.

“The only thing they come together on is politics of hate. On October 17, 2015, a Muslim college student was picked up for no apparent reason, and thrashed all night by policemen in Bandra Police station, he was told to go to Pakistan,” she alleged.

“This is a huge blot on the nation. How can we trust a government who cannot control its own police force? Or is this what the government is encouraging the police to do?” she asked.

Maharashtra is reeling under drought, farmers are committing suicide, rampant corruption has forced a builder and a police inspector to commit suicide. The state is fast slipping into anarchy, she said.

It has been a dismal 12 months for Maharashtra as the BJP-Sena government has not delivered on a single poll promise but has wreaked anarchy in the state, she further alleged.

“The AAP feels that the government has lost its moral right to rule Maharashtra,” Menon said.

(Agencies)

Shiv Sena workers storm BCCI office, Shukla condemns attack

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shiv-sena-bcci

New Delhi: Taking forward its campaign against Pakistani personalties, Shiv Sena workers today stormed the Indian Cricket Board headquarters in protest against planned talks with Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Shaharyar Khan here for resumption of bilateral cricketing ties.

The noisy protests by over a hundred slogan shouting members at the Board office during which BCCI President Shashank Manohar was ghearoed forced the cancellation of the much-anticipated talks today between him and Khan.

IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla strongly condemned the attack on the BCCI’s headquarters at the Wankhede Stadium. “Strongly condemns the attack on BCCI Office by Shiv Sena,” Shukla, a top BCCI functionary, wrote on his twitter handle.

“BCCI is a responsible body and will not do anything against national interest. Cricketing decisions should be left to BCCI.”

“Cricket is a gentleman’s game and the spirit of the game expects same generosity and tolerance from those who love the game,” he further tweeted.

The proposed series is the latest to come under attack from the right-wing party which has been protesting anything that has to do with Pakistan.

The talks on the proposed bilateral series have now been rescheduled to be held in Delhi tomorrow.

“The talks have not been called off. Mr Manohar and Mr Khan will speak to each other in evening today and tomorrow they are coming to Delhi for another round of talks,” Rajiv Shukla told PTI.

The protesting Sena workers were later taken into custody by the police.

Shouting slogans against Pakistan and the PCB chairman, the Sena workers surrounded Manohar, asking him not to have any ties with the neighbouring country, which they said sponsors terrorism.

Waving black and saffron flags, the workers sought to know from Manohar if he would go ahead with his meeting with the PCB chief here.

Sena Vibhag Pramukh Pandurang Sakpal told reporters that his party is firm that there should be no cricket matches between the two countries.

Asked about Sena being a part of the Maharashtra government, Sakpal said, “The government will do its job, we will do ours.”

“What we did today is Sena’s stance,” he said.

Manohar had invited Khan for talks on the much-anticipated cricket series scheduled in December.

Khan and PCB’s executive committee head Najam Sethi are in the city for the meeting after discussing the planned series with BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur earlier on the sidelines of the ICC meeting in Dubai.

Thakur had assured him that a final decision could be taken later this month and conveyed Manohar’s invitation to visit India.

There is speculation that the two neighbours could play either a bilateral series in the UAE or agree to a possible triangular series in December also involving Bangladesh.

Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Congress leader Manish Tewari condemend the incident.

Tiwari described the incident as “abominable” and said law and order had completely broken down in Maharashtra.

He said Mumbai had been reduced to “mobocracy”, citing a spate of recent incidents, including the cancellation of ghazal singer Ghulam Ali’s show due to Sena’s protests.

“It is extremely unfortunate… This is extremely abominable. Law and order has completely broken down in Maharashtra. The President of India should take cognizance of this,” he said.

In the recent days, Sena activists had blackened the face of former BJP strategist Sudheendra Kulkarni, Chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, over his refusal to cancel the book launch function of former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, prompting strong condemnation from political parties.

The Shiv Sena also forced the organisers to cancel the Mumbai concert of renowned Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali.

(PTI)

Australian couple harassed for sporting ‘goddess’ tattoo on leg

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Yellamma-Tattoo

Bengaluru: In a shocking incident, a group of miscreants, said to be Hindutva activists, abused and harassed an Australian couple at a restaurant here, even threatening to skin the young man’s leg, for sporting the tattoo of Hindu “goddess” Yellamma on his shin.

 

Their ordeal did not end there as the city police not only detained them but also forced the helpless man to apologise to the group of miscreants for ‘hurting their religious sentiments.’

The incident happened around 2 p.m. when Matthew Gordon (21) and his girl friend Emily Kassianou (20) from Melbourne were spotted by the group.

“One of them came to me and confronted me about my tattoo. Soon, they surrounded us and threatened to skin my leg and remove the tattoo,” a shaken Gordon, a law student, said.

The group soon called in more people and over 25 men gathered outside the eatery, not allowing the couple to leave. “A policeman arrived and said this is India and one couldn’t sport such a tattoo on the leg,” Mr. Gordon recalled.

(Agencies)

RSS justifies Dadri lynching, says Vedas encourage killing

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New Delhi: Justifying the brutal lynching of 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri over false beef rumours, the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya recently carried a cover story stating that the Vedas permit the killing of “sinners” who slaughter cows.

In the article titled ‘Is Utpat ke Us paar’, writer Tufail Chaturvedi alias Vinay Krishna Chaturvedi slammed the writers for returning their awards and stated that while they expressed their resentment over the death of Akhlaq, they completely ignored that the latter had killed a cow.

The writer deliberately hid the fact that the assailants had falsely accused Akhlaq of killing a cow and storing beef in his home. Probe and laboratory tests had proved that it was not beef.

Citing several instances of Vedas that prohibit cow slaughter, Chaturvedi expressed that ‘cow slaughter is an issue of honour for Hindus and for social harmony it is important that we respect faiths of each other.’

The article also refrained from mentioning the fact that in several instances prominent Hindu religious scriptures including Vedas and Upanishads allowed and encouraged beef consumption.

People who kill the ‘sinners’ (one who slaughter cows) will be glorified and remembered by the society, claims the article.

The article also vouches that all the Muslims, including Akhlaq, were Hindus until a few generations ago.

(Agencies)

 

Ink attack on J&K MLA Engineer Rashid at Press Club of India

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Engineer Rashid

New Delhi: Engineer Rashid, an independent MLA from Jammu and Kashmir, was attacked with ink and oil by three men at Press Club of India premises on Monday afternoon.

 

The attack took place minutes after Mr. Rashid addressed the media on the issue of death of one of the three persons attacked in Udhampur over beef rumours earlier this month.

Two people behind the attack in Delhi’s Press Club were detained by police.

According to news agencies, Vishnu Gupta-led Hindu Sena has claimed responsibility for the attack on Mr. Rashid.

The legislator later told the media that “the world will see what India has turned into.”

“They say Pakistan has been taken over by Taliban but look what’s happening here,” he said.

Only a few days back, Mr. Rashid was assaulted by BJP legislators in Jammu & Kashmir Assembly, for hosting a ‘beef party’.

Prior to the attack, Mr. Rashid had hit out at the Central Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for their “intolerance” towards the minority community. He had demanded that Mr. Modi apologise for the Dadri and Udhampur incidents.

The families of the victims have demanded compensation equal to that paid to the kin of the Dadri lynch victim. They have also sought that the case be fast-tracked and the guilty hanged soon.

(Agencies)

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