Independence Day Lashker e Tayyaba attack threat on 3 cities

After the lull following the 26/11 terror attack, Pakistan based terror outfit Lashker-e-Tayyaba is planning fresh terror strikes around Independence Day in three major cities -Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Specific intelligence inputs gathered by security agencies reveal that the LeT, responsible for innumerable terror strikes including 26/11 in Mumbai, is trying to sneak militants into the country with the aid of Pakistani authorities. "We don't see any indication that Pakistani authorities have reduced their support to the militants. A 400 500 metre long tunnel dug by the militants to enter the valley has been discovered by security agencies. This could not have been done without help from Pakistani authorities," a senior home ministry official said.

Pointing towards the increase in infiltration bids in the last few months, the official confessed that even as major bids have been foiled recently some militants might have been able to sneak into the country.

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Woman, 26, held for killing mom

A 26-year-old woman was arrested along with her boyfriend for the brutal murder by stabbing of her 55-year-old mother at their Paschim Vihar residence on May 28. The police had initially thought this murder had been carried out by a gang of robbers.

The police on Tuesday arrested the daughter, Sakshi, a nursery school teacher, and her 20-year-old boyfriend, Sunny Batra, an engineering student, for the murder of 55-year-old Kiran Kapoor. The woman was killed after she unexpectedly returned home and caught the couple in a compromising position.

The duo was put behind bars after allegedly confessing to the crime. Earlier, to give the police the impression that robbery was the motive behind the murder, Sakshi had asked Sunny to take cash and jewellery worth Rs 3 lakhs away from the house, the police said.

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Gujjars paralyse Delhi

At least two persons were killed, one of them in police firing, and 14 security personnel injured in violent clashes between Gujjar demonstrators and the security forces in Delhi and Haryana on Thursday. The Gujjars took over the areas bordering the national capital and paralysed rail and road traffic, completely disrupting normal life till late in the afternoon.

One person was killed when the police opened fire on agitators, blocking traffic on the national highway at Patti Kalyana in Panipat district, while the other died in a stampede reportedly triggered by the police action at Samalkha in Haryana. State chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda ordered a magisterial inquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of the two persons.

On the war path over their demand for Scheduled Tribe status, the Gujjar community, observing "martyrs' day", poured into the national capital region since the early hours of the morning and blocked major roads leading to New Delhi. The security forces resorted to lathicharges, lobbed teargas shells and fired rubber bullets to disperse violent mobs at Mehrauli, Mathura Road, Gazaipur and Anand Vihar, among other areas. Nearly 110 agitators were detained by the police.

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Delhi forced to do U-turn on Maoists

On Sunday afternoon Mr Shiv Shankar Mukherjee drove out from the gates of the Indian embassy at Lainchaur in Kathmandu and headed straight to Maoist leader Prachanda's residence at Nayabazar. The Indian ambassador went there, of course, to congratulate the Maoist leader on his party's stunning performance in the recently concluded Constituent Assembly elections, but for Nepal watchers it heralded a major shift in New Delhi's dealings with the Maoists.

Lainchaur is only a few kilometers away from Nayabazar, but the Indian ambassador had not made the journey before. At least not since October 31, 2006, when he made his first, much-publicised, direct contact with Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, and his deputy Baburam Bhattarai at the Indian embassy.Prachanda drew flak from certain quarters for visiting the Indian embassy regularly. In that sense, Sunday's meeting was a departure, and its significance was not lost on Nepal watchers.

Dr Ajai Sahni of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management is least surprised by the recent turn of events. The Maoist victory in the Constituent Assembly elections, he said, is a "delayed consequence of our own actions in the last one and a half years," he told this newspaper on Monday. "We engineered the Maoists to come to power, we emasculated the political parties by pushing them into a grouping with a rampant power like the Maoists,"

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India to launch 2 more Israeli spy sats

India and Israel are working together to launch two more spy satellites with the schedule requiring at least one of these to be placed in orbit within this year. The successful launch of the 300-kg TecSar has been generated considerable enthusiasm in both India and Israel with the satellite expected to start sending the first images in early February.

The decision to launch the TecSar spy satellite, which is also referred to as Polaris, was taken shortly after the UPA government came to power. The deal was finalised during the visit of Israeli defence ministry director-general Amos Yaron to New Delhi three years ago. It is the first of three such satellites agreed upon between the two governments with the government here oblivious to the adverse reaction to the launch from its traditional friends in West Asia. The launch was effected in great secrecy with only a couple of mainstream Israeli newspapers getting a whiff of the new cooperation between New Delhi and Tel Aviv just a week before the launch.

The Israeli media, which has had access to more information than given out by the government here, has pointed out that the satellite was intended to spy on Iran and Syria. The government here has tried to give the strategic cooperation a "commercial" colour by highlighting the fact that India is virtually renting out its launching pad for such satellites. It did the same for Italy, it is pointed out, at a cost that is supposedly 70 per cent less than offered by other such countries for putting satellites in orbit. This runs counter to reports in the Israeli and international media of growing strategic cooperation between the two countries and that India hopes to benefit from the satellite with information on Pakistan, which is not outside the orbit of TecSar.

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Image and Article source: Asian Age
Article taken from the issue:24 Jan 2008