Vijayapura, Karnataka, Apr 5 : The process for deporting 24 illegal Bangladesh nationals who were staying illegally has been undertaken in this North Karnataka city as per Court order by the local police from Thursday.
Police said on Friday that the illegal migrants, who had entered the country without valid Passport and working in a beef packaging factory here were arrested during a raid in 2016 and charge-sheets were filed against them.
The JMFC Court in 2017 sentenced them to two year and three months jail term and after their convicted term ended, they should be deported, the court order had said.
Permission of the Court for deporting them was sought by the police and other central agencies from Bangladesh Ambassador Office in India and steps were taken to deport them.
A team of Police officers were sent on Thursday to handover the illegal infiltrators to Indian authorities at Petropaul Check Post on India-Bangladesh and they have already left the country, according to Superintendent of Police Prakash Nikkam.

BThe People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) filed a complaint with the state human rights commission against HD Kumaraswamy Human rights activists have filed a complaint against Chief Minister Kumaraswamy with the Human right commission on Wednesday over his shootout statement.

In the complaint by the civil liberties group, they demanded the human right commission to act against the CM over the shootout statement given by him and also mentioned that Kumaraswamy’s statement is unlawful, by giving such comments he has hurt the feeling of the people of the state.

Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy has got embroiled in a controversy after a purported video, showing him ordering a police official to “shoot mercilessly” those who killed a JD(S) worker in Mandya, went viral.

After drawing flak over his comments, the chief minister said “it was an emotional outburst” and he did not mean it.

The opposition BJP lashed out at Kumaraswamy over the issue and termed it “irresponsible and nonsense”.

JD(S) worker H Prakash (50) was allegedly hacked to death by four men in Maddur town of Mandya district Monday evening, police said.  The assailants stopped Prakash’s car when he was going home and hacked him to death with machetes. Prakash was a former Zila Panchayat member.

Tension prevailed in Maddur and Mandya after the incident as people ‘gheraoed’ the police station demanding immediate arrest of the murderers.

Following the killing of his party man, Kumaraswamy purportedly gave instruction over phone, which was caught on camera and went viral.

PTI

U India has called for international efforts to bring to justice those violating international human rights laws and to ensure protection of humanitarian workers in conflict situations.

“The parties to armed conflicts, including the non-state actors continue to flout the international humanitarian law and perpetrate egregious abuses of human rights with impunity,” India’s Deputy Permanent Representative Tanmaya Lal told the General Assembly on Friday.

“Women and children remain the most vulnerable and need special measures for their protection. We must strengthen framework for international cooperation to bring perpetrators to justice.”

At a session on strengthening coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, he spoke on behalf of both India and Sweden, which are both long-standing contributors to the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund.

Lal said that protecting humanitarian workers, especially in the situations of armed conflict, was a matter of concern and needed serious attention.

“We welcome the resolution on safety and security of humanitarian personnel and protection of UN personnel,” he said.

The resolution, however, included a call to all nations to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which India has not signed while Sweden has.

India has reservations about the court because of its potential for over-reach and the influence over it of the Security Council’s permanent members.

When that paragraph was put to vote, India absented itself rather than vote against it or formally abstain. The provision was retained by 95 votes to 14, with 25 abstentions.

Turning to the conduct of humanitarian organisations, including those of the UN, Lal said that they should strictly enforce the policy of zero tolerance on sexual exploitation and abuse and ensure protection for the victims.

Outlining the efforts of India to provide humanitarian assistance to countries and people facing conflicts or natural disasters, Lal said that it had rescued 90,000 people including from 50 other countries over the past four years.

India has provided immediate relief to several countries hit by natural disasters as well financial assistance for recovery, he said.

PTI

The death toll from the destructive wildfires have reached 80, with 993 people still unaccounted for, authorities said.

As of Sunday evening, there were 77 deaths and 9,700 homes destroyed as a result of the 149,000-acre Camp Fire in Northern California, which started on November 8, according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.

A second blaze in Southern California called the Woolsey Fire started northwest of Los Angeles also on November 8, has killed at least three people with more than 96,000 acres torched, CNN reported.

According to Cal Fire, the state’s forestry and fire protection agency, the Woolsey Fire was now 88 per cent contained

But Cal Fire said that Camp Fire was only 65 per cent contained as of Sunday evening and won’t be fully doused until November 30.

Hundreds of deputies, National Guard troops, coroners and anthropologists were sifting through levelled homes and mangled cars for remains.

Officials said the death toll from Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, could keep rising.

IANS

Woman BBMP health officer committed suicide at her residence on Monday.

The deceased, Dr Ashwini(32), was working as the BBMP health officer in Vijayanagar ward.

It has been learnt that, Ashwini got married a year ago and was unhappy in her married life was back to her maternal home. Her parents complained that her in-laws demanded dowry and harassed her.

The police visited the house and recovered a handwritten note in which she has written ‘Sorry’.

A case was registered under Section 174 of CrPc at the Nandini Layout police station.

PTI

Afghanistan, which is working to reform its education system, will adopt the Happiness Curriculum devised by the Delhi government with a focus on holistic education — to bring peace to the mind of children.

“I am very attracted with the idea of the Happiness Curriculum. We are living in the same region and so the tension children (suffer), I think, is the same. But I will say the tension in Afghanistan is more than India because of the conflict situation that we have,” Afghanistan’s Acting Education Minister Mohammad Mirwais Balkhi told IANS, adding that being a conflict zone, children in his country go through a lot of mental trauma.

“Sometimes a young child (in Afghanistan) has a tension level of an aged person because of the war. So, the approach can bring peace to the mind of our children so that they can learn in a peaceful environment,” said Balkhi, who was in Delhi to attend the Asian Summit on Education and Skills organised by the Delhi government.

The Happiness Curriculum — introduced in July for government school students between nursery and class VIII — was started to improve their physical and mental health and to solve problems caused due to negative and destructive emotions like anger, hatred and jealousy.

During the 45-minute “Happiness Class”, the students immerse themselves in meditation, value education and mental exercises. The curriculum, designed and prepared by a team of 40 Delhi government teachers, educators and volunteers over a period of six months, is activity-based and without a formal examination.

Balkhi, along with Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia, visited a government schools here, studied the curriculum and also attended a happiness class.

“We have to see how we can adopt and implement that in Afghanistan and localise the text and guide books. Sisodia promised to help us in this regard and also to see how teachers can be trained,” Balkhi said.

“Trainers from our country can come to Delhi and can learn from the experience,” he said.

Afghanistan, he said, will also work in the field of curriculum development from the Indian experience.

Calling the education system in his country “very traditional”, he said Afghanistan is taking steps to overcome challenges and to modernise the system.

“We have a very traditional education system in Afghanistan which was modernised and systemised only after 2001 (when the Taliban was ousted from power. Our aim is to bring all children — boys and girls from different parts of the country — into the classroom.”

Apart from the curriculum, the country is also reforming its education sector by starting capacity-building exercises for teachers and adding more women in the ministry.

“Our Education Ministry is very huge. We are also increasing the contribution of the women in the ministry. Already, 37 per cent of the Education Ministry is being run by women. We are working on bringing more women to the ministry from the top to the bottom level,” he said.

“Capacity-building for teachers is also going on in different fields. Over 50 per cent schools lack buildings and are running under tress and or in tents. We also need an additional 52,000 teachers,” he added.

Through a national test, the country had recruited 8,000 teachers with 50 per cent of the seats reserved for women.

“In the coming months we will conduct another test to recruit 24,000 more teachers with 50 per cent of the seats reserved for women.”

Speaking about the challenges, he said the country was facing both the traditional and non-traditional varieties.

“Till now, most of our steps (in the education sector) were without any direction. In 2018, we defined the knowledge and skill-based education in the country. We targeted the social and market needs of the country,” he said.

“The war with the Taliban is the biggest challenge we have. They do not allow modern schools in Afghanistan. They want to take the country back to the madarsa system and do not want girls in schools. Some families also do not allow girls in schools.

“The displacement is also very high in the country due to various reasons, including the war, drought, floods and other natural disasters,” he said.

Shouting pro-independence slogans, hundreds of mourners on Wednesday attended the funeral prayers of a militant killed by security forces in Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir.

The mourners were from Sopore and adjoining areas and thronged the funeral prayers of Abdul Majeed Mir, who was killed in a 20-hour long gunfight in Nowpora village of Sopore on Tuesday.

Security forces did not intervene to stop the funeral procession. The militant was buried in his native Tujjar area.

The mourners kept shouting pro-independence and pro-Islam slogans.

Also killed with Mir was a top commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) identified as Abu Maaz, a foreigner.

(IANS)

Photographs of a boy crying next to the body of his father who died while cleaning a sewer last week in India prompted social media users to raise nearly $70,000 to support the family.

The photos, tweeted by a New Delhi-based journalist on Monday, showed the 11-year-old child sobbing next to his father Anil at a local crematorium.

A “manual scavenger” – or worker who cleans sewers by hand and often without proper equipment –
Anil died on Friday when the rope around his waist snapped, causing his fall into the seven-metre deep sewer. Police told the local media the rope was unable to bear his weight.

“The boy walked up to his father’s body at a crematorium, moved the sheet from the face, held the cheeks with both hands, just said ‘papa’ & began sobbing,” posted journalist Shiv Sunny, who works for an English-language newspaper in New Delhi, along with the photographs on Twitter.

“The man was yet another poor labourer who died in a Delhi sewer on Friday. Family did not have money for cremating him,” the journalist added in his post, which was shared more than 15,000 times so far.

The boy walked up to his father’s body at a crematorium, moved the sheet from the face, held the cheeks with both hands, just said ‘papa’ & began sobbing.

The man was yet another poor labourer who died in a Delhi sewer on Friday. Family did not have money even for cremating him.

Local media reports said 37-year-old Anil was the only earning member in his family and is survived by his wife and three children. The family lost an infant daughter to pneunomia last week.

Anger and sympathy
The death of yet another manual scavenger, a practice that continues in India despite a 2013 Supreme Court ban, angered many in India. At least six such deaths occurred in New Delhi last week, 11 across the country.

A report released earlier this week by the National Commission for Safai Karamacharis, a government agency, said one manual scavenger has died every five days in India since January 1, 2017.

As soon as Sunny posted the photos on Twitter, social media users began writing back to him, asking how they could help the family. He shared their bank details, and as more people, including a famous film actor, shared his post, money started trickling in.

Soon, a crowdfunding campaign was launched by Rahul Verma, founder of a non-government organisation called Uday Foundation, with the help of Ketto, a crowdfunding platform. He said the campaign has so far raised nearly $70,000 (five million rupees).

“When I saw the pictures on Twitter, I got in touch with Anil’s son. That little boy used to stay near that open manhole in the sewer, guarding his dad’s clothes and shoes. For him, the sewer was his dad’s office. His words horrified me,” Verma told media.

“People were getting emotional online, but my main concern was: there is no bread-earner left, what happens to this child, this family? Our attention spans are limited. I thought people might move on after 24-48 hours of outrage. So, I thought we must raise funds immediately so that this boy’s childhood is not lost,” he said.

Activist Bezwada Wilson, who launched the Safai Karmachari Andolan – a campaign against manual scavenging – in 1995, told Al Jazeera there is no political will to end the practice, which primarily engages the lowest rungs of the Dalit caste.

“There is a law in place but nobody will punish anyone here. Law enforcement is weak because there is no political will. Budget allocation shows sanitation workers are not a priority at all,” said Wilson.

“It’s getting difficult for this community to survive because they are already marginalised. Any person can call for a worker to clean their sewers. Neither can they refuse to work nor are they safe in those manholes. This is a vicious circle. In the past four years, more than 1000 people across India have died while cleaning sewers,” he added.

Verma added: “I shudder to think about what happens to other families when such deaths occur away from the media glare.”

(Aljazeera)

The bodies of five members of a family who drowned after their vehicle plunged into the Dikhow river in Assam were found on Wednesday – four days after the tragedy.

Divers from the Indian Navy, Army, State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) as well as people from near Dechial village where the accident took place had started the rescue efforts on Saturday evening.

“We could trace the vehicle about 12 feet away from the place where the vehicle fell into the river,” an NDRF official said.

On September 1, businessman Haren Bora, his mother, wife and two teenaged daughters were returning to their home in Sivasagar district from his sister’s house.

On reaching Dechial village, their vehicle skidded off the road and fell into the Dikhow river, which was in spate.