Three killed in blast at Posco site

KENDRAPADA: At least three persons were killed and two others injured in a bomb blast in Posco project area in Jagatsinghpur district on Saturday evening, police said.

"A bomb went off at Patna village under Dhinkia panchayat. We have information about three deaths so far," Jagatsinghpur SP Satyabrata Bhoi told TOI over phone. Police were yet to identity the deceased till the filing of this report.

Police sources said a group of around eight to 10 persons were making the crude bombs behind the residence of one Sura Das when one of them went off accidentally at around 7.30 pm. While two persons died on the spot, another succumbed to injuries at Kujang hospital. The two injured persons were said to have sustained serious burn injuries.

Bhoi said police are investigating into the incident. Sources said those involved in making the bombs were amateurs. Police and forensic teams went to the spot for a first-hand assessment of the situation while the village was tense.

Dhinkia panchayat has been in the forefront of the movement against the government's land acquisition process for the proposed 12-million-tonne integrated steel plant project by Posco with anti-Posco protesters putting up a stiff resistance for quite some time.

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India increases aid to Sri Lanka

CHENNAI: Even as the anti-Sri Lanka mood in Tamil Nadu is getting more belligerent, the Centre has increased its annual grant to the island nation in the Union Budget. The allocation has gone up to Rs 500 crore for 2013-2014 from Rs 290 crore last year. It was Rs 181.94 crore in 2011-2012. The Budget has allocated Rs 5,550 crore as aid for foreign governments and organizations.

The grants for Sri Lanka are meant for rehabilitation of internally displaced Tamils, but parties in Tamil Nadu have accused the government there of diverting the Indian aid for other purposes. The issue could be raised again with the two main Dravidian parties, the ruling AIADMK and the opposition DMK, using it to corner the UPA government. The move comes at a time when political parties in the state have stepped up their offensive against the Lankan government for alleged war crimes.

Recently, UK's Channel 4 had released pictures allegedly showing Balachandran, son of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, minutes before and after he was killed towards the end of the decades-long civil war in 2009. Former Indian ambassador to Italy K P Fabian pointed out that increasing the grant to Sri Lanka was important. "It is not only in the interest of Sri Lanka. It is also in our interest. The Indo-Sri Lanka relationship is important." Sri Lanka should also understand that there is a growing international concern about the manner in which it has dealt with the Tamil question, he said.

Under the non-plan category, the Indian government has proposed to donate Rs 4,143 crore to various foreign governments and organizations, besides Rs 1,406 crore under the plan category to Afghanistan, Bhutan and Myanmar. But unlike 2012-13, when the government allocated Rs 550 crore to Bhutan and Maldives, in the budget for 2013-14, there is no loan component to any country and all the money is treated as grant alone.

Prof V Suryanarayana, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies, said India has committed to help the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka in recent years. "Housing scheme and other development projects have been announced by the Indian government with the good intention of helping Tamils," Suryanarayana told TOI. But most of the projects have been getting delayed due to 'non-cooperative attitude' of the Sri Lankan government, he said. "For instance, housing for internally displaced Tamils have been delayed due to non-allotment of land by the local government," Suryanarayana said.

He also pointed to the speedy progress of Chinese projects in Sri Lanka. "The projects of the Chinese government are being completed quickly with the co-operation of the Sri Lankan government," he said.

In another strategic move, the Centre has increased grants for all the neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The Indian government has not allocated any aid for Pakistan for the last three years. "It is important for India to promote development in its neighbourhood in SAARC region as well as African nations. Allocating funds to neighbours is not to compete with China. In our own foreign policy, we have expanded system of technical and financial assistance in recent years," said Fabian.

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Sariska villagers block tourists’ entry

ALWAR: About 2,500 villagers on Thursday blocked the main entrance of the Sariska Tiger Reserve, protesting their relocation from areas near the sanctuary.

Sariska field director RS Shekhawat said the villagers had locked the entrance and didn't allow tourists to enter the park. "We are trying to sort out the problem on a priority basis," Shekhawat said.

The villagers, who are on an indefinite sit-in, said they would not clear the blockade unless their demands were met. This is the third such protest in the past eight months against the relocation plan.

Tension began in Sariska when about 2,500 people from 50 villages gathered for a mahapanchayat against the alleged "cheating" by the district administration. "We had called off the agitation in May last year when the district administration agreed on some of our demands including lifting ban on the registry of land, construction of a concrete road and earmarking a grazing area. But now they have backtracked on the promise citing the Supreme Court orders," said Jaikishan Gujjar, a villager.

Since 2008, the farmers in the periphery of the reserve have been protesting the state government and wildlife authorities' decision to relocate them. On February 20, villagers thrashed a few senior sanctuary officials when 70 cattle were seized while grazing in the sanctuary area.

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After thaw, UK opens floodgates for Gujarat

AHMEDABAD: After the thaw, relations between the UK and Narendra Modi's Gujarat are all set to get warmer. One of UK's biggest industry associations, led by UK member of Parliament Ian Swales, will visit the state next month. Later in April, a delegation of British MPs is likely to visit Gujarat.

Swales is bringing a 20-member delegation of the North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), which will visit Vapi and Dahej on March 4 and 5. They will explore trade and investment opportunities with companies here to source active pharmaceutical ingredients, besides specialty chemicals from the state.

The NEPIC cluster represents 560 industrial units. It accounts for 60% of UK's petrochemicals output, and around 35% of the pharmaceutical production. Goods worth 11 billion pounds are exported from the cluster annually.

After cold-shouldering Modi for more than a decade over the 2002 post-Godhra riots, the UK government has only recently started engaging with the chief minister at the diplomatic level. The UK India Business Council had even partnered the Vibrant Gujarat investor summit in January with the British high commissioner to India, James Bevan, attending the event.

During the visit in March, the delegation will meet potential customers and partners, besides networking with local businessmen, said an official of the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), which is supporting the trip. Four British universities will also be part of the delegation to search for setting up campuses and franchises in the state.

Bilateral trade between India and the UK is being pegged at 14 billion pounds per annum and Gujarat is enjoying a lion's share in it.

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Rail Budget 2013: Raising funds an uphill journey

When he hiked passenger fares in late January, railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had argued that the extent to which freight earnings had been used to subsidise passenger operations was unsustainable. On Tuesday, however, he said he would not affect any changes in passenger fares while imposing an across-the-board 5.8% increase in freight rates.

According to Bansal, losses on passenger operations are estimated to have risen from Rs 4,955 crore in 2001-02 to about Rs 24,600 crore in 2012-13. Considering that the earnings from passengers were Rs 32,500 crore in 2012-13, that suggests that the railways recover only about 55% of their costs on carrying passengers, the rest coming from the surplus generated in freight operations.

That explains why Bansal has bucked the trend of over a decade in recent weeks and announced measures that will yield him an estimated Rs 7,000 crore plus from passengers. Despite such a sizeable mop-up, Railway finances as projected for 2013-14 look only somewhat better than in the last couple of years.

The operating ratio - a measure of what percentage of revenues is used up in running expenses - is pegged at 88.8% for the current year and 87.8% for the coming year. In other words barely 12% of what the Railways earn will be available for investing in building future assets. While this is significantly better than the situation in the last couple of years when the OR had touched 95%, it is still a far cry from the 2007-08 scenario in which nearly 25% of earnings were available for investment.

The squeeze on resources was evident in the minister's lament that the 12th Plan target of investing Rs 5.19 lakh crore on the Railways with Rs 1.05 lakh crore coming from internal resources was beginning to look like an increasingly tall order. He pointed out that only Rs 10,000 crore had been contributed by internal resources in the first year. Yet, the budget for 2013-14 does not do very much better with Rs 14,260 crore of internal accruals contributing to an annual Plan size of Rs 63,363 crore.

Put together, therefore, the first two years of the Plan are now estimated to add up to investments of Rs 1.16 lakh crore with internal resources contributing just over Rs 24,000 crore. That means the Railways will have to invest over Rs 4 lakh crore in the remaining three years of the Plan and find nearly Rs 81,000 crore of that internally, clearly a tall order.

Budget 2013 > Rail Budget 2013 > Economic Survey 2013

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94% women feel unsafe travelling alone in India, survey finds

NEW DELHI: The Delhi gang-rape incident has not just bruised the image of the national Capital, but the country as well. A travel survey has found that 94% women feel unsafe traveling alone, while 84% voted for Delhi as the most unsafe metro. The findings come at a time when an increasing number of women admitted that they preferred to travel alone both for work and leisure.

TripAdvisor, a leading travel site, surveyed 500 women to find that 84% women claimed to have travelled alone for leisure, business or both. The respondents were a mix of working women, including a number of self employed, as well as homemakers.

The survey also brings to light the disturbing fact that 94% women worry about their safety — always or at least sometimes — when they travel alone within India. Among women who said they travel alone on work, 37% agreed that they don't mind travelling alone but worry about their safety.

Even more dismal is the fact that more women travelers have a better sense of safety overseas than in India. Around 24% respondents said they worry when they travel within India but not when they travel to international destinations, while only 6% suggested otherwise.

Despite the fear and worry, only 33% women said they carry any item for self defense when travelling to a new or unfamiliar city.

Due to the recent spate of crime against women, Delhi has gained notoriety with 84% women claiming it to be the most unsafe metro in the country. Mumbai came out on top as the city considered safest by 34% women. Ahmedabad and Bangalore were tied at a distant second with 12% each.

Among the states, Delhi NCR again topped the hall of shame with 60% women voting it as the most unsafe. At a distant second is Bihar (18%), followed by Uttar Pradesh (8%). A majority of 27% respondents said they considered Maharashtra to be the safest state, followed by Gujarat (15%) and Karnataka (10%).

According to TripAdvisor country manager Nikhil Ganju, "The rise in women travelling alone on business is understandable fallout of the increase in the number of working women. The real surprise is the significant number of Indian women who are choosing to travel solo on vacation. Another interesting insight that highlights a latent opportunity for the hospitality sector is that 78% respondents said they would prefer to stay in an all women's hotel or on a women exclusive floor in a hotel, when travelling alone."

In a break from tradition, Indian women enjoy traveling alone for leisure. Among women who travel alone, 41% respondents said they actually enjoyed travelling alone for work. In addition, 76% said they enjoy going solo on holidays.

And lack of company is definitely not a complaint. In fact, majority (58%) said their biggest incentive for solo vacations was that they could do all the things they want without having to worry about what someone else wants. Around 34% women indicated they loved travelling alone as it was adventurous and exciting. Another 32% claimed the thrill of managing everything by themselves was a motivator as well.

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Riyaz Bhatkal: Shy student to terror mastermind

MUMBAI: Seventeen-year-old Riyaz Shahbandri from Kurla was a shy civil engineering student at Nagpada's Saboo Siddik polytechnic in 1993. He would maintain a low profile and hardly participated in any college events. However, girls found his chocolate-boy looks appealing. Two decades later, he began making headlines as Riyaz Bhatkal, a suspected terrorist who has killed more people than the feared Dawood Ibrahim or the hanged Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab—more than 344 killed from 15 bomb blasts. Still elusive, today he is the most dreaded face of the banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen.

Born in 1976 as Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri in Bhatkal village of Karnataka, he came to be known as Roshan Jamal, while staying at the 60-year-old, two-storey building Qadir Mansion in Kurla here. Today his family owns two rooms in the building, which have been rented out as they wanted to stay away from the police who would often land up at their place inquiring about his whereabouts. His father, Ismail, had shifted from Karnataka to Mumbai for setting up a purse-making business much before Riyaz was born. Despite obtaining a degree in civil engineering, Riyaz couldn't find a job and began helping his father in his business. By then, his elder brother Iqbal had joined a local developer's firm as a civil engineer.

In 2001, Riyaz fell in love with a girl from Kurla but his family disapproved of the relationship and he was finally married to Nashua, the daughter of a Bhatkal-based businessman. A few months before his wedding, he came in touch with the Kurla unit of Students' Islamic Moment of India (SIMI). When he became a member of the outfit, it was already divided into two factions, extremists and the moderates. Riyaz preferred to stay with the first group. While the outfit was banned and its members arrested, he managed to evade the police. Soon he started preaching the SIMI ideology and was considered as a key figure among his associates. At the same time, Riyaz came in touch with local goons and started extorting money from traders in order to fund the activities of SIMI. "In 2002, he allegedly gave supari to kill the owner of Deepak Farsan in Kurla. The shooters killed the owner's bodyguard and Riyaz was never arrested," said an investigator of the case.

A city crime branch official said, "A year later, he entered Pakistan illegally and got training in operating fire arms and assembling explosives at a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) camp. In 2004, along with Atif Ameen (who was later killed in the Batla House encounter in 2008), Sadiq Asrar Shaikh (who is behind bars in Mumbai), Subhan Qureishi alias Tauqeer and Yasin Bhatkal (both absconding), he conducted his first training for Indian men at Jolly Beach, a farm house in Bhatkal. Yasin, though hailing from Bhatkal, is not related to Riyaz. In 2005, the quintet executed their first terror blast at Sankat Mochan temple in Uttar Pradesh. While Riyaz provided the explosives, Tauqeer and Shaikh recruited the men. This was the time the group decided to name itself Indian Mujahideen (IM). Cops were unaware of its existence. Iqbal too had got influenced by the extremist ideology. He was one of the founder members of the IM.

"Soon after executing the bombings at the court premises in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad on November 23, 2007, IM sent its first email to a news channel, claiming responsibility," the charge sheet on these blasts reads. In 2008, IM carried out bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and for the first time Riyaz's name cropped up during the probe. He had conducted a seven-day training session for new recruits at Bhatkal prior to the blasts." After police started visiting Bhatkal frequently in search of him, Riyaz escaped to Pakistan in 2008 via Bangladesh. That was the last time his family saw him," a senior ATS officer added. Meanwhile, his father was last spotted in Mumbai on April 16, 2008, when he had gone to collect rent for his two rooms in Qadir Mansion.

In March 2010, Riyaz travelled to Colombo and met Yasin Bhatkal, Mohsin Chaudhry and Mirza Himayat Bain to plan Pune's German Bakery bomb blast. In July 2011, a red corner notice was issued against Riyaz in connection with the 2008 Bangalore blast. The chargesheet in Mumbai's July 13, 2011, triple blast cases said that "the entire criminal conspiracy was hatched by Riyaz and Yasin Bhatkal", who are "the chief cogs of the notorious" IM. The banned terrorist group, it adds, was created by Pakistani spy agency ISI "to spread terror in India". Riyaz and his brother Iqbal Bhatkal "operate from Pakistan" and impart instructions via electronic means to their associates based here through Yasin. According to forensic reports, Trinitrotoluene (TNT), ammonium nitrate and petroleum oil were used in the Mumbai bomb blasts.

This is the story as narrated by Riyaz's proteges, neighbors, friends and police. However, no one knows Riyaz's side of the story.

Riyaz Bhatkal's bloody trail:

Oct 29, 2005: Paharganj, Sarojini Nagar and Gopal Nagar in Delhi, killed 62

March 7, 2006: Sankat Mochan temple, Kashi Viswanath temple in Varanasi, killed 28

Nov 24, 2006: Faizabad, Lucknow and Varanasi courts

May 25, 2007: Gorakhpur market

Aug 25, 2007: Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat in Hyderabad, killed 42

May 23, 2008: Jaipur, killed 80

July 24, 2008: Bangalore, killed 02

July 25, 2008: Ahmedabad serial explosions, killed 56

July 26, 2008: Surat (bombs defused)

Sept 13, 2008: Delhi, killed 30

Feb 13, 2010: Pune German Bakery blast, killed 17

July 13, 2011: Mumbai triple blasts, killed 27

August 1, 2012: Pune serial bomb blasts

Total killed: 344

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Stuck to rubber, terrorists let go of gun

AGARTALA: Ranjit Debbarma still remembers the day 11 years ago when, as an area commander with banned terrorist group NLFT, he trekked for two months -- from the Jampui hills to Rangamurra and then to border areas of Bangladesh before finally reaching Burma -- to carry back Ak 47, 56, M 16 and SK guns for the insurgency back home in Tripura.

Today, though, the 37-year-old can be seen going from one rubber tree to another, collecting latex and talking to his labourers in the plantation at Jarul Bachai, about 13 km from Agartala. His daughter is in an English school and he now wants to buy a motorbike so that it's easier for him to drop her to class every day.

"We were safe in the camps of both Bangladesh and Burma then," the National Liberation Front of Tripura guerrilla says, squinting under an unusually bright February sun. "But I now realize that we were misled. I spent six years of my life carrying arms and collecting protection money from terrified people. We were told Tripura should be for its indigenous people and that even our king has been dispossessed by the Bengalis who came here much after we did. We had taken this falsehood as religion. Rubber is the only thing that matters to me now, my only god."

Tripura's burgeoning rubber trade, which has grown from a cultivable area of just 3500 hectares in 1982 to a massive 57,620 hectares in 2012, has changed the life of Debbarma and hundreds of other former militants like him in Tripura. A senior Rubber Board official puts the number at 754. "I have personally trained 60 of them," he says. "This has been a major rehabilitation effort, and I would go to the extent of saying it helped curb insurgency. People like Debbarma will always be grateful to the CPM government for this, if nothing else."

A state done in by lack of connectivity with the rest of the country and an even greater absence of industry, Tripura has been quick to latch on to rubber, spreading fear in many that the way things are going no one will be cultivating anything else in the near future. "Now it is second only to Kerala in terms of production," says Madhu Chatterjee, who has around 100 kanis (6.25 kanis make a hectare) devoted to the crop. "More than 50,000 farmers are involved in this these days as the returns are very high - a kg goes for Rs 210 on an average and profits can be more than Rs 100 - and the state has just the kind of weather that suits this thing. Even those with very little money can invest in it."

A rubber board official, who doesn't want to be named, says that the government is still reluctant to come clean regarding the names or numbers of former rebels who have either been given money to invest in rubber or have been provided small patches of land. "Most of those who came for training used their nom de guerre and went away leaving behind their nom de guerre," he says, adding, "I think we are better off not knowing who they really were, how many they killed and how many lives they ruined. That was the quid pro quo - give us a new life and we'll leave you in peace."

Back in Debbarma's field, he says he knows at least ten others like him who are leading normal lives, stuck to latex, and working as farmers and plantation managers. "If every government helps terrorists in this way, few will pick up the gun,'' he says. "After all, it is only us poor who because of hunger and penury are easy targets for recruitment. You can brainwash easily a man with no food on his table."

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Hyderabad, hotbed of home-grown terror, under lens

NEW DELHI: For the veterans of security establishment the bomb blasts have revived concerns about the critical nature of Hyderabad and surroundings in the growth of home-grown terrorism in India.

Officials point out that Hyderabad has been intricately linked to the growth of the present phase of domestic terrorism. When the first definite information about Muslim youth going to Pakistan for terror camps emerged more than a decade ago, with Hyderabad resident Shahid Bilal as a key figure, the government was alarmed at the highest levels. Once India confirmed that over 60 youth have gone across to Pakistan from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in 2005-06 the issue was taken up with Bangladeshi and Nepalese governments because most of them were going via either of these countries.

"Even if the bombers are from outside, they have received local logistical support," says one official. "There is a history here," he says about Hyderabad's brush with blasts as well as with fringe sympathisers.

A day before the twin blasts, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had, in fact, filed its first charge sheet in the case of Bangalore-Hubli-Nanded terror module run from Saudi Arabia by LeT-HuJI handlers. One name among the 12 accused stood out: Obaidur Rehman. The 26-year-old Hyderabad resident is the nephew of Maulana Mohammed Naseeruddin, a radical preacher presently languishing in a Gujarat jail in connection with the murder of Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya.

The charge sheet also mentioned the man handling the group from Saudi Arabia as Farhatullah Ghori, maternal uncle of slain HuJI operative Shahid Bilal. Both belong to Hyderabad.

The blasts that followed the charge sheet have only come as a grim reminder of the Andhra Pradesh capital having become a favourite recruiting ground for terror groups. In fact, the city has been in terror crosshairs for close to a decade and a half providing strong base to both LeT and HuJI.

According to intelligence agencies, Hyderabad first came on terror radar in late '90s with several radical religious organizations becoming a springboard to youth taking to terror. While there was an entrenched sense of victimhood and injustice post Babri masjid demolition among Muslims in the state, their anger was first organized and harnessed by Mohammed Abdul Shahid alias Shahid Bilal under aegis of HuJI.

The first effects of this endeavor manifested itself in the terror attack on the office of Hyderabad Special Task Force in 2003. Bilal's maternal uncle Farhatullah Ghori's name prominently cropped up in the investigations. He was also a suspect in the Akshardham Temple attack in Gujarat in 2002.

Following this, Bilal was found to be instrumental in conducting several blasts across south India between 2004 and 2007. During this period he also helped 26/11 accused and LeT operative Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal escape to Pakistan via Bangladesh along with his associate Fayyaz Kagzi after the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul in Maharashtra. In October 2007, Bilal was himself killed in Karachi along with his brother Samad. However, sources say, he has five more brothers who are in Pakistan and elsewhere. And the network he has left behind across India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia keeps recruiting people for Jihadi activities.

In 2008, Maulana Naseeruddin's son, Riyazuddin Nasir, was arrested in Dharwad, Karnataka for planning to carry out terror strikes in the state. In 2012, with Obaidur Rehman's arrest in the Bangalore terror module, the city again struggled to shake off the terror tag.

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British intel had warned of Indian Mujahideen attack

NEW DELHI: The British intelligence had warned India about a possible terrorist attack by the homegrown terror outfit, Indian Mujahideen (IM). The alert led to a general nationwide alert on Wednesday.

The British intelligence alert is believed to have been received by Indian agencies just as British PM David Cameron was about to land in Mumbai on Monday. The input did not speak of any specific movements of terrorists or any particular module. Sources said it may have been based on inputs gathered by the heightened British intelligence gathering in the region ahead of Cameron's visit.

On Wednesday, a general alert was issued by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) about a possible attack by the IM. The alert was based on the British input, and came after several weeks of silence about any IM activity.

There are no dependable inputs with agencies until now about any IM module being active of late, sources said. However, investigations of recent times have indicated that the entire network of the homegrown terror group may not have been unearthed.

The IM tentacles are not just limited to some Indian cities, but it also has very strong affiliations among the Indian diaspora. The activities of IM are believed to have regular funding from West Asian countries. Also, some of the first Indian terrorists to have emerged in the communally vicious times of the 1990s — mostly having undergone terror training in Pakistan — are now based in the Gulf region. Among them is C A M Basheer, a former senior SIMI leader.

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West Bengal govt plans to depoliticize students' union polls

KOLKATA: Increasing incidence of violence on campuses in West Bengal has forced the Mamata Banerjee government to explore ways to depoliticise students' union elections. The state education department has drawn up a draft guideline that proposes to delink student bodies from political parties and make college union polls a 'once-in-two-years' event.

Education minister Bratya Basu is expected to submit the draft to chief minister Mamata Banerjee early next week. "Only after the chief minister's go-ahead, a final draft will be prepared and placed before the cabinet for approval," Basu told TOI on Wednesday.

The proposal comes barely a week after a policeman was shot dead during clashes between students' groups in a city college.

Calcutta University vice-chancellor Suranjan Das, higher education council chairman Sugata Marjit and the education minister have put their heads together to draw up the draft which will be put on the higher education department website on Thursday for stakeholders to give their suggestions.

The guidelines loosely follow the model of Bengal Engineering and Science University (Besu) where the student union has been replaced by a senate with several associate societies or clubs. The move has gone a long way in calming the restive Besu campus.

The latest move has been welcomed by academics. "This is an excellent attempt by the education minister. All my life, I have tried to propagate the idea to delink college politics from party politics. This is a move in the right direction. Now, the question is to implement the draft proposals," said former principal of Presidency College Amal Mukhopadhyay.

According to the draft, college elections will not be fought on political symbols. The student union will be renamed student council and its president will be nominated by the senior most teacher of the college. The vice-president will be nominated by the teachers' council. In case of universities, the vice-chancellor will select the president. The two vice-presidents will be nominated by the executive council and the court - the two top bodies in university administration.

The draft provides for election to the post of general secretary, assistant general secretary and five other secretaries who would look after student activities such as culture, drama, sports, etc. All students would either vote to elect these representatives as in the case of Jawaharlal Nehru University or Jadavpur University or the general secretary would be elected from among class representatives as is done in Calcutta University.

In keeping with the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Commission, an election observer will oversee the process and complete it within a month. The observer may wind up the entire process within 15 days, if he deems it fit.

Primacy has been given to the elected representatives. The elected general secretary will represent students in the college governing body while the general secretary of the students' council will make way to the university's highest body - the executive council.

The purpose is to integrate the students' bodies in the overall academic system rather than turning them into power centres of political parties.

Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad leader Shanku Deb Panda, however, reacted cautiously to the move. "We will have to see how far the guidelines can be implemented," he said.

"I have already sent the draft of the students' senate in Besu to the committee formed by the state government and our ideas have been appreciated. We will now wait to read the draft as prepared by the higher education department," said Ajay Ray, vice-chancellor of Besu.

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No trace of 3,772 children missing from Delhi in last 5 years

NEW DELHI: Over 3,700 children, majority of whom are girls, went missing from Delhi homes in the last five years and are still untraceable yet the Delhi government says it has no evidence of organized gangs operating in the national capital indulging in kidnapping or trafficking of children.

The Delhi home department through advocate S Wasim Qadri cited a special initiative taken by Delhi Police under 'Pehchan' scheme to photograph children belonging to poorer sections of society living in slums.

"This scheme covers areas from where most children go missing and the police are unable to make any headway in tracing them as poor families seldom have photographs of their children. Delhi Police has so far photographed 64,755 children in the last last months," it said.

But the National Human Rights Commission was sceptical about the intent of state governments in protecting children from being kidnapped or trafficked. NHRC's affidavit filed through advocate Shobha said the states had confined to paper the guidelines for protection of children and went through the motion of filing periodic data before the commission.

On Tuesday, this made a bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justices A R Dave and Vikramjit Sen to observe, "We are dealing with a PIL concerning children, who constitute 42% of the population. But this does not seem to bother the states which are supposed to be their guardians. This is possibly because they do not have voice."

Though the Delhi government listed its initiatives, it was discernible that the number of missing children not being traced in the last five years had registered a steady increase. Another disturbing factor in the statistics was that majority of the untraced children were girls.

In 2008, a total of 413 missing children remained untraceable of which 222 were girls. Corresponding figures in the next four years are - 485 untraceable of which 213 were girls (2009), 854 of which 416 were girls (2010), 981 of which 559 were girls (2011) and 1,139 of which 623 were girls (2012).

The Sheila Dikshit government said it was pro-active in analyzing the trends in kidnapping or missing children. "Involvement of organized gangs in kidnapping or trafficking of children for any unlawful activity has so far not come to notice in Delhi," it said.

On the other hand, the NHRC was scathing in its affidavit. It recognized the importance of the issue of missing children raised by by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan through senior advocate H S Phoolka and said, "This is high time the issue is given top-most priority by the central government, all state governments and all other government and non-government actors/stakeholders."

The commission said it had constituted a committee after the Nithari serial rape-cum-murders to address the issue of missing children. The committee had issued guidelines and sent it to all states.

"But what happens to most of the recommendations, guidelines and reports has happened to the guidelines sent by the commission. The status remains the same, the guidelines became part of record, some states have simply filled up the form and sent back to the commission, while rest still have to find time to complete the paper formality," the NHRC said.

Taking note of Phoolka's allegation that nearly 200 children went missing every day from various states and 100 remained untraceable, the bench said, "Still no one seems to be bothered about it." It listed the matter for detailed hearing on April 15.

On March 17 last year, the court had issued notices to the Centre and states on the NGO's PIL seeking an advanced scientific mechanism to investigate and recover missing children. "In India, in the period from January 2008 to January 2010, over 1.17 lakh children have gone missing in 392 districts in India. Out of them, 41,546 are still untraced," it had said.

The petitioner had sought a direction to the Union government to formulate a National Action Plan on the issue of missing children which should include investigation, recovery, counseling and standard operating procedures for law enforcing agencies on coordinating their efforts.

dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com

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Wait of Rajiv killer's mother continues

CHENNAI: A shiver runs down her spine every time 66-year-old Arputham Ammal recalls the hanging of Afzal Guru, convicted for the Parliament attack. Her son Perarivalan, one of the three convicts on death row in Vellore prison for his role in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, is awaiting a verdict from the Supreme Court as his mercy plea was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee. The case is now pending for a different reason — the 11-year delay in execution.

The fact that the letter informing Guru's wife about the hanging, sent by speed post, was delayed, is stuck in her mind. "I dread the morning news flashes or seeing the postman on the street," she said. When she met her son last Thursday, Perarivalan talked about Guru's hanging.

A badge pinned on her sari that reads 'Marana Thandanai Ozhipom' (abolish capital punishment) says everything she feels about the death penalty. It's a badge she has decided to wear for the rest of her life. Ammal said she and her family are wedded to the ideals of Periyar and Dravida Kazhagam.

"He (Perarivalan) was 19 when he was arrested, now he is 41. All I can do is meet him in prison and talk. I have done that for the last 22 years and he gives me courage during my visits," said Ammal, who finished her SSLC in 1963. Ammal, 66, lives with her grandson in Chennai, while her 76-year-old husband Kuyil Dasan aka Gnanasekaran, a Tamil poet, stays with one of her two daughters.

"Arivu (as she calls her son) and I us used to sing together," she said, recalling the days when her son was free. "He sings better than me, especially the melodies of Ilayaraja. I like the older MGR songs," says Ammal. She has a reason to like MGR songs. "His movies and songs were about people and their lives. Unlike others, his songs had a substance of life, and those lyrics had something we could easily relate to," she said.

"He (Arivu) was an avid reader since school. Other than reading history, he enjoyed Bharathiyar and Bharathidasan poems. He continues to maintain the habit of reading and discusses about the latest novels and poems published in Tamil when we meet," she said.

Whenever she meets her son, she takes a bundle of books he's asked for, mostly international history, poems and novels. "We never gave him any luxury in life. Following Periyar's ideology, we lived a simple life. Throughout his school days, he was the best student and passed his higher secondary examination with distinction," she said. "Everyone likes him. Even the retired jail officers have great regard for him. I hope I can live with him before I die."

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ED attaches 225 acres of land under PMLA

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached 225 acres of land in Khargone near Indore and a villa in Lavasa under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 in a case involving cheating, forgery and fraud by former employees of wind energy major Suzlon.

The Pune police had filed a chargesheet against these former employees of Suzlon based on complaint filed by one of the group companies of the wind energy player. The police invoked charges of cheating, forgery and other offences under the Indian Penal Code.

"These former employees were charged with cheating and defrauding the company by siphoning off revenues and laundering them through shell companies," ED sources said.

Shortly after the chargesheet was filed, the ED initiated money laundering investigations under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

Sources said investigation by the ED has shown that proceeds of crime were laundered through a network of companies in India and abroad and invested in a large number of properties.

Detailed investigations carried out by ED into the money trail revealed that the laundered funds were used to purchase large tracts of land near Indore. The large tract of land in Khargone and the villa in Lavasa were attached by the agency.

The ED is continuing its investigation in India and abroad and sources said this may lead to a number of attachments and prosecutions under PMLA

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Finmeccanica ex-CEO denies knowing kin of former air chief

NEW DELHI: Former Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi has denied knowing the family of Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi in the ongoing investigations in Italy into the alleged payment of kickbacks of Rs 362 for supplying 12 VVIP choppers to India.

Orsi was arrested earlier this week by the Italian investigators in connection with the Rs 3,600 crore deal. Appearing before an Italian magistrate there, Orsi said "three Nos" to queries about any mandate to the Swiss-American Guido Hashcke for "any type of manoeuvre" for the Indian operations, knowing the Tyagi family and about adopting "illegal manoeuvres for the deal", Orsi's lawyer Ennio Amodio was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA.

Haschke has been alleged to be one of the middlemen acting on behalf of Orsi for swinging the deal in favour of AgustaWestland. Amodio said Haschke's statement about Orsi's role in the deal "may have been inspired by someone" as he has "radically changed compared to the initial version". Orsi's lawyer also denied that his client had in any way tried to pressurize the Italian court looking into the matter and getting the prosecutor changed.

Orsi resigned on Friday as the chairman and director of the firm. India has already initiated steps to cancel the helicopter deal and issued a show cause notice. pti

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Police nab Suryanelli absconder Dharmarajan

KOTTAYAM: Dharmarajan, the absconding convict in the Suryanelli sex scandal, over which Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P J Kurien is facing the heat, was arrested on Friday by Kerala police from a hotel at Sagar in Karnataka.

The third accused in the 17-year-old case, Dharmarajan, a former lawyer, was arrested by a five-member special team of Kerala police, said C Rajagopal, superintendent of police, Kottayam. The accused will be presented before the Kottayam special court on Saturday.

Dharmarajan's hideout was located around 11am on Friday by tracking signals from his cellphone. At the time of arrest, Dharmarajan was found with his head tonsured and wearing a cap. He told the police that he stood by whatever he had said about the case so far. The phone he was using was in the name of Sasikumar of Chickmagalur.

Dharmarajan had told a television channel from an undisclosed location a few days ago that P J Kurien was involved in the case as charged by the victim. Thereafter, the special court here had issued a warrant to arrest him. This is the second time that Dharmarajan is being arrested in the case. The police first arrested him in 2000 from a village in Udupi district, where he was working in a rock quarry.

In 2002, the special court awarded life term to all the accused in the case, including Dharmarajan. In 2005, the high court set aside this verdict and freed all the accused, except Dharmarajan. However, his life term was reduced to five years. He was out on bail in April 2005 and was to report back on May 20. Since then he was absconding.

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Two kids crushed to death as school bus falls into gorge

DEHRADUN: Two school kids, six to seven years old, were crushed to death and four others seriously injured after a school mini bus fell into a gorge in Haridwar district of Uttarakhand on Thursday.

Haridwar SSP Arun Kumar Joshi said incident occurred at 8.10 am as the bus driver, Sunil, was trying to overtake a tempo. Joshi said that in the process the speeding bus overturned and fell into a gorge.

Joshi said these two kids, Diwanshu (6) and Radhika (7), died due to serious injuries on way to the hospital.

Sunil ran away from the spot. He was later arrested by police near Roorkee. Joshi said police have registered cases against driver on charge of rash and negligence driving.

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When loves turns into hate

Once, love was all about getting romantic. Now, it's about getting back. The number of cases of possessive lovers hacking mail accounts and spamming their ex-partners have soared. "Creating fake profiles and indiscriminate sending of mails for harassment are complaints that we often encounter," admits a senior police officer in Bangalore, the country's IT capital which regularly sees such cases.

A recent survey, conducted by online security firm McAfee, which covered 967 respondents in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi and a few other cities, found that more than 26% of the 200-odd ex-lovers interviewed in Chennai admitted to have threatened their former partners of making public their intimate pictures and messages. What's more, all of them carried out the threats. In Mumbai, more than 34% of the respondents said they had faced these threats from their ex-partners, and that 77% had carried out the threats. In Delhi, the rate of those who had received such threats was 31%, with 71% carrying out the threats. In fact, the survey which was replicated in nine other countries, found that Indian respondents ranked the highest, in terms of having behaved in a way so as to disturb or damage the relationship of the ex-partner and their new partner.

Many attribute this retaliatory behavior to the way relationships are structured now in an increasingly online environment where every moment of your partner's life can be tracked. "Everything about dating has changed in the age of social networking," says Rushali Naik, a postgraduate student. "Gone are the days when one could admire someone from a distance and daydream about them. Now, we have so much access to the other person's life that it's frightening."

And once the relationship turns sour, it just takes a few clicks to turn life hell for the person you once loved. BN Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry, Nimhans, says that it's a dangerous trend. "An adverse post on Facebook can even send someone into depression."

A flip side of these heartbreaks and the resultant hatred is that a number of websites have sprouted to provide ex-lovers an outlet. A few like Neverlikeditanyway.com are e-commerce driven which allow you to sell gifts given by your ex in order to let go of the pain. Lucknow-based Richa who was recently dumped by her boyfriend is planning to sell a ruby ring gifted by him. "Whenever I see the ring, it just reminds me on how he cheated on me. It will be a catharsis getting rid of it."

(Reports by Arun Dev in Bangalore; M Ramya in Chennai and Priyangi Agarwal in Lucknow)

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India bought helicopters Obama rejected as ‘costly’

NEW DELHI: US president Barack Obama had found a variant of the AW-101 helicopters too exorbitant to pass muster in 2009. But the Indian government had no such qualms while inking the Rs 3,546-crore deal for 12 plush AW-101 helicopters just a year later in 2010.

The American "Marine One", the call sign of the US Marine Corps helicopter which ferries the US President, would of course have been much more high-tech and "souped-up" helicopter compared to the Indian variant.

Obama had shot down the Marine One project, under which the US Navy was to have acquired 28 helicopters, after cost escalations had taken the overall cost to over $13 billion in June 2009, as per some estimates.

Money, instead, was invested to upgrade the existing US Presidential helicopter fleet. Last heard, another AW-101 variant was again in contention to bag the US Navy's latest programme to develop the "Marine One Presidential Helicopter".

Three of the 12 AW-101choppers contracted by India — eight in VVIP configuration and four in non-VVIP - have already been inducted in the IAF's elite Communication Squadron, which ferries around the President, PM and other VVIPs, at the Palam airbase. They are slated to replace the ageing Russian-origin Mi-8s and Mi-17s being currently used to fly VVIPs within the country.

Indian VVIPs have been getting plush new aircraft and helicopters to travel in style and security over the last decade. The AW-101s, for instance, have robust self-defence systems like missile-approach warners, chaff and flare dispensers and directed infra-red electronic counter-measures to protect VVIPs on board. In the VVIP configuration, they ferry only 10 passengers instead of the usual 40.

Another concern of the Special Protection Group (SPG), which provides proximate security to the PM, was the helicopters have "a high tail boom" to allow cars to come right next to the rear exit staircase without "exposing" VVIPs to a threat from anyone in the vicinity.

Earlier, India had inducted five mid-sized Embraer 135BJ Legacy jets, under a Rs 727-crore deal in September 2003, and three Business Boeing Jets (BBJs), under a Rs 937-crore contract in October 2005, for the travel of VVIPs. The BBJs also have advanced self-protection suites to guard against missiles and other threats. While the Legacy jets replaced old HS-748 Avros with the Communication Squadron, the BBJs substituted the two 737-200 aircraft bought in 1983.

Major defence scams

Jeep Scandal: One of the first scandals to hit independent India, and definitely the country's first brush with allegations of impropriety in defence procurement. In 1948, Indian high commissioner in Britain V K Krishna Menon was accused of bypassing procurement protocols to sign a deal worth Rs 80 lakh to buy 155 jeeps from the UK. Many also alleged they were second-hand jeeps. Government did not permit a judicial inquiry. Menon went on to become India's defence minister.

Bofors Scandal: The most infamous of all defence scandals the country has seen. Allegations emerged in the late 1980s that there were kickbacks in the purchase of Bofors guns from Sweden. Several high profile individuals figured among the accused, the investigations went on for many years and finally ended in a whimper. It brought down the fortunes of the young Rajiv
HDW Scandal: Allegations emerged in 1987 that the German defence firm had paid a commission for the purchase of submarines by India, in the early 80s. Former Navy chief and one of the architects of the 1971 war, Admiral S M Nanda, was among those raided. The CBI closed its investigations, failing to find any evidence of the alleged payment of bribes.

Tehelka Tapes: Two reporters who went around as representatives of a fake defence firm recorded many key political leaders, military officers and civil servants talking in detail about how bribes were paid in defence deals. Defence minister George Fernandes had to resign after his party's treasurer boasted in the tapes about collecting bribes along with Jaya Jaitly from arms dealers. Specific evidence emerged of paybacks in purchase of Barak missiles from Israel, upgunning of artillery guns etc. No major breakthrough in CBI investigations until today. It has closed at least one of the cases without any evidence.

Denel Scandal: Allegations emerged in South Africa that Denel, a government-controlled firm which had supplied anti-material rifle to Indian Army, had paid bribes to middlemen for the Indian contract. Chargesheet yet to be filed.

Sudipto Ghosh Scandal: In 2009, the CBI arrested the just-retired chief of Ordnance Factory Board Sudipto Ghosh and several of his associates for fixing contracts of OFB. After CBI found evidence of bribery, the government in March 2012 blacklisted six companies for 10 years -- Singapore Technologies, Israeli Military Industries, Germany's Rheinmetall Air Defence, Russian firm Corporation Defence, Indian firms T S Kisan & Company and R K Machine Tool.

Abhishek Verma Scandal: The son of former members of Parliament is in jail, and he and his wife are accused of stealing defence secrets and accepting bribes from defence firms. Investigations are continuing into the affairs of Verma, who may have also had a role in the VVIP helicopter deal.

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Punjab cop among 2 held for minor's rape

FARIDKOT: Police on Monday arrested two persons, including a Punjab Police constable, for allegedly abducting and gang raping a minor girl in a Faridkot village.

The accused have been identified as Kulwinder Singh, 25, a constable posted with the Faridkot police, and Kuldeep Singh, 24. Both the accused, who belong to the victim's village, were produced in the local court on Monday which remanded them in police custody of four days.

According to police complaint, the 14-year-old girl was abducted by the duo on Sunday evening and allegedly raped. The complaint was filed by the girl's grandfather after she did not return home till late Sunday evening.

Police have registered a case of abduction on Sunday night and arrested the accused and recovered the girl on Monday morning from near Hariwala village and added the charges of rape after medical examination confirmed the crime.

Sadar police station SHO Pratap Singh said the car used for abducting the minor girl has also been recovered. The car is registered in the name of Kulwinder's father, the SHO added.

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