By Kenneth Rapoza, Contributor
India’s Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said despite the tough outlook for government finances, and an election coming up, New Delhi has no plans to overspend to win the hearts and minds of the electorate. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By <a href="/author-detail/3699933">Megan Slack</a>
On his second day in New Delhi, Vice President Biden met with Indian leaders to discuss the increasingly important bilateral relationship between our two countries.
In meetings with Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari and others, Vice President Biden emphasized a range of opportunities for our countries to work more closely together on issues such as economic growth, trade, energy and climate change, security and investments in innovation and education.
In the evening, the Vice President discussed the importance of the U.S.-India relationship at a dinner hosted by Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House
The Indian general who commanded the 1984 Amritsar Golden Temple assault had his throat slashed in a deliberate revenge attack by a Sikh gang, a London court heard Tuesday.
Retired lieutenant general Kuldip Singh Brar, 78, the commander of Operation Blue Star, was ambushed by a gang of four men, Southwark Crown Court was told.
He was slashed across the neck as he walked with his wife near London’s main shopping thoroughfare Oxford Street on September 30 last year during a holiday visit.
Two men, Mandeep Singh Sandhu, 34, and Dilbag Singh, 37, and one woman, Harjit Kaur, 39, all pleaded not guilty to wounding with intent.
At their trial, prosecutor Annabel Darlow told the court that Barjinder Singh Sangha, 33, has separately pleaded guilty to wounding with intent. Another man allegedly involved in the attack is still at large.
The operation Brar commanded was aimed at flushing out militants occupying Sikhdom’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, demanding an independent Sikh homeland.
“Mr Brar is now retired but during his career as a general in the Indian army oversaw a number of military operations which have made him a target for Sikh extremist groups,” Darlow said.
The accused “deliberately set out to attack general Brar, a stranger they had never met, in revenge for his actions during his military career.
“This was no random attack. This was a highly premeditated assault.”
Darlow alleged that Kaur was “shadowing” the Brars as they left their hotel. She got on the same bus as them and was in regular telephone contact with the alleged attackers, the prosecutor said.
“She played a crucial role, silently and unobtrusively following this couple who were unaware they were being followed by a woman who was relaying information to four men that were bent on attacking Brar,” Darlow said.
One attacker dropped his mobile telephone as he fled, leaving vital clues for the police about the assault.
“Although Operation Blue Star took place some years ago, it has not been forgotten — not least by these defendants,” Darlow claimed.
Four months after the Amritsar raid, then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in retaliation.
That triggered anti-Sikh riots in which thousands of people were killed, most of them in the streets of the Indian capital New Delhi.
The jury was told that Brar had survived several assassination attempts in India and still receives death threats.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Indian police arrested eight suspects on Tuesday over the gang-rape of four schoolgirls abducted from their convent boarding house in the country’s east, officials said.
A group of men armed with knives barged into the hostel Sunday night and kidnapped the girls aged between 12 and 14, before assaulting them in a nearby forest in the tribal state of Jharkhand, a police officer said.
“We have made some arrests and we are interrogating eight persons accused in the case,” police superintendent Y. S. Ramesh told AFP.
“These girls are shocked and frightened after the incident,” he said, adding that police would press for a speedy trial if the men were charged over the crime.
India faces intense scrutiny over its efforts to curb violence against women following the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi last December which sparked major protests.
The school principal told police that the gang locked him and other teachers inside a room at the school run by a Christian missionary in the state’s Pakur district.
The men then entered the dormitory and took away four girls, all belonging to a local tribal community, police said.
Ramesh said medical tests on the girls had confirmed that they were raped.
Mass protests erupted nationwide in December and January following the fatal gang-rape, which brought simmering anger about the treatment of women in India to the surface.
Parliament has passed laws aimed at better protecting women, including doubling the minimum prison sentence for gang-rape to 20 years.
Jharkhand is a densely forested state comprising large numbers of indigenous people.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Thousands of Indians crammed into telegram offices on Sunday to send souvenir messages to friends and family in a last-minute rush before the service shuts down after 162 years.
Sunday is the last day that messages will be accepted by the service, the world’s last major commercial telegram operation, and the Central Telegraph Office in New Delhi said it was geared up to tackle the expected rush.
“We have increased the number of staff in the expectation that the number of people will grow at our counters,” telegraph senior general manager Shameem Akhtar told AFP.
“We will take the final telegram at 10:00 pm (1630 GMT) Sunday and try to deliver them all the same night and the remaining would be sent on Monday,” he added as dozens waited to hand over messages handwritten on slips of paper.
Leave for all staff has been cancelled in a bid to handle the volume of messages, which cost a minimum of 29 rupees (50 US cents) and are hand-delivered by delivery workers on bicycles.
On Sunday morning joggers, housewives and students were among those sending messages to loved ones. Many were seen making calls on their mobile phones to get the postal addresses of their friends so they could send the last dispatch.
“I have never seen such a rush before. They are some people who are sending 20 telegrams in one go,” said Ranjana Das who is in charge of transmitting the telegrams.
“The service would not have been killed had there been this kind of rush through the year,” added worker Vinod Rai.
The service, known popularly as the “Taar” or wire, will close on Monday because of mounting financial losses.
“While we communicate with improving modern means, let us sample a bit of history,” said one of the last telegrams sent.
“Keep this safely as a piece of history. Mom,” read another.
In the days before mobile phones and the Internet, the telegram network was the main form of long-distance communication, with 20 million messages dispatched from India during the subcontinent’s bloody partition in 1947.
At its peak in 1985 the state-run utility sent 600,000 telegrams a day across India but the figure has dwindled to 5,000 at present, telegraph senior general manager Shameem Akhtar told AFP.
Most of these are believed to be sent from government departments.
“Since 2008 we started redeploying our telegraph staff… and at present more than 90 percent have been redeployed and only 968 telegraph staff remain,” Akhtar said.
One five-word telegram sent from the centre summed up the change.
“The End of an Era,” it read.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Veteran Indian actor Pran, who played villains and character roles in more than 400 movies, was cremated on Saturday in the western city of Mumbai following his death at the age of 93.
Pran Sikand, dubbed the “godfather of Indian villains” and best known by his first name, was one of Bollywood’s most beloved actors for nearly six decades.
Pran, who died late Friday after a bout of ill health, ruled the industry with his baritone voice and his ability to bring charm to his villainy.
In a condolence message, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: “Pran entertained several generations of Indians with his riveting performances in hundreds of celluloid roles.
“He worked with doyens of film industry among which he was an icon.”
Family, fans, friends and Bollywood celebrities attended his funeral in Mumbai.
Pran’s roles had an enormous impact on Indian audiences and parents stopped naming their children ‘Pran’ (life) at the height of his fame because of his role as a “Bollywood baddie”.
Born into a wealthy family in New Delhi, Pran grew up in Lahore where he pursued a course in photography before landing his first film role.
After British rule over the subcontinent ended with its split into mainly Hindu India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Pran moved to the entertainment capital of Mumbai and worked his way into more film roles.
Pran appeared in over 400 films and played the villain opposite all the top cinema heroes of his era — from Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor to Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan.
“Truly the end of a magnificent and glorious era. He was a gentleman superstar,” tweeted leading Bollywood director Karan Johar.
In his private life, Pran was renowned as a gentleman — far removed from the dark characters he played on screen.
The actor is survived by his wife Shukla, daughter Pinky, sons Arvind and Sunil as well as grandchildren.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A child disappears. Police are called. Nothing happens.
Child rights activists say the rape last week of a 5-year-old girl is just the latest case in which Indian police failed to take urgent action on a report of a missing child. Three days after the attack, the girl was found alone in locked room in the same New Delhi building where her family lives.
More than 90,000 children go missing in India each year; more than 34,000 are never found. Some parents say they lost crucial time because police wrongly dismissed their missing children as runaways, refused to file reports or treated the cases as nuisances.
The parents of the 5-year-old said that after their daughter disappeared, they repeatedly begged police to register a complaint and begin a search, but they were rejected.
Three days later, neighbors heard the sound of a child crying from a locked room in the tenement. They broke down the door and rushed the brutalized girl to the police station.
The parents said the police response was to offer the couple 2,000 rupees ($37) to keep quiet about what had happened.
“They just wanted us to go away. They didn’t want to register a case even after they saw how badly our daughter was injured,” said the girl’s father, who cannot be identified because Indian law requires a rape victim’s identity be kept secret.
Delhi’s Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar admitted Monday that local police had erred in handling the case.
“There have been shortfalls, so the station house officer and his deputy have been suspended,” Kumar told reporters.
Other poor parents of missing children say they also have found police reluctant to help them.
In 2010, police took 15 days to register a missing-persons case for 14-year-old Pankaj Singh. His mother is still waiting for him to come home.
“Every day my husband and my father would go wait at the police station, but they would shoo them away,” Pravesh Kumari Singh said as she sat on her son’s bed, surrounded by his pictures and books.
One morning in
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/bs1Vju6–qk/
By The Huffington Post News Editors
NEW DELHI — A second suspect was arrested Monday in the rape of a 5-year-old girl who New Delhi police say was left for dead in a locked room, a case that has brought a new wave of protests against how Indian authorities handle sex crimes.
Pradeep Kumar was arrested Monday in the eastern state of Bihar, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from New Delhi, and was being brought to the capital, police said.
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/india-child-rape_n_3130008.html
A second suspect was arrested Monday in the rape of a 5-year-old girl who New Delhi police say was left for dead in a locked room, a case that has brought a new wave of protests against how Indian authorities handle sex crimes.
Pradeep Kumar was arrested Monday in the eastern state of Bihar, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from New Delhi, and was being brought to the capital, police said.
Police said questioning of the first man arrested in the case, Manoj Kumar, led them to the second suspect. Manoj Kumar, 24, was arrested Saturday in Bihar and has since been flown back to New Delhi. Kumar is a common last name in India and the two men are not related.
The men are accused of abducting, raping and attempting to murder the 5-year-old, who went missing April 15 and was found two days later by neighbors who heard her crying in a locked room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her family. The girl was alone when she was found, having been left for dead by her attackers, police say.
The girl was in critical condition when she was transferred Thursday from a local hospital to the largest government-run hospital in the country. D.K. Sharma, medical superintendent of the state-run hospital in New Delhi where the girl was being treated, said Monday that she was responding well to treatment and that her condition had stabilized.
“She is much better today and her wounds are healing well,” Sharma told reporters.
The attack came four months after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country.
For the second consecutive day, hundreds of people protested Sunday outside police headquarters in the capital, angry over allegations that police failed to act after the girl’s parents told them she was missing.
About 100 supporters of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party protested outside the home of the chief of the ruling Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, demanding that the government ensure the safety and security of women and girls in the city.
The protesters also demanded that the Delhi police chief be removed from office and that police officials accused of failing to act on the parents’
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/jKP7ZTrOvdc/
A doctor says the condition of a 5-year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man and then left alone in a locked room in India‘s capital for more than two days has improved.
D. K. Sharma said Sunday the girl was responding well to treatment and that her condition was stable.
Police say the girl went missing April 15 and was found two days later by neighbors who heard her crying in a room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her family.
A 24-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident.
For the second consecutive day, hundreds of people protested Sunday outside police headquarters, angry over allegations that police had ignored complaints by the girl’s parents that she was missing.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/AXeIjoqPGN4/
A 5-year-old girl was in serious condition today after being raped and tortured by a man who held her in a locked room in India‘s capital for two days, officials said. The incident—which came four months after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus…
From: http://www.newser.com/story/166555/assault-on-girl-5-in-india-sets-off-protests.html
Officials say a 5-year-old girl is in serious condition after being raped and tortured by a man who held her in a locked room in India‘s capital for two days.
Police say the girl went missing Monday and was found Wednesday by neighbors who heard her crying in a room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her parents. The girl was found alone, but police say the man who lives in the room was arrested Saturday in Bihar state, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of New Delhi.
D.K. Sharma, medical superintendent of India‘s largest government-run hospital, said the girl had serious injuries, including a slashed neck and bite marks.
New Delhi residents protested Saturday against what they said was a lack of police action.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/b4sRA3Gdfwg/
Seismologists say a major earthquake has struck a region near the Iran-Pakistan border, less than a week after a quake in Iran killed at least 37 people.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the 7.8 quake struck the slightly populated region. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but the quake was felt as far away as New Delhi and Gulf cities of Dubai and Bahrain. The USGS report says Tuesday’s quake was at a depth of 15.2 kilometers (nine miles).
Across the Gulf, high-rise buildings swayed and officials ordered evacuations. Dubai has the world’s tallest tower, the 828-meter (2,717 -foot) Burj Khalifa.
Last week, a deadly 6.1 magnitude quake about 96 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Bushehr, the site of Iran‘s reactor.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/OwFDnQDN16k/
DEVELOPING — A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck a remote region of Iran near its border with Pakistan on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological survey.
Tremors were reportedly felt across the Gulf region and in New Delhi.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/lArRoP5ApRw/
By Kate Seamons 
From: http://www.newser.com/story/166308/78-magnitude-quake-rocks-iran.html
The Suryanelli girl goes to the office in the morning with her long, wavy hair neatly combed, tiny gold earrings glinting, packed lunch in hand, like a normal working woman in India.
But once she leaves her front gate, she holds her body tight, with shoulders hunched and arms wrapped around her, and looks down. If she makes eye contact, a stranger at the bus stop might recognize her and point her out as the former 16-year-old who was raped by more than 40 men over more than 40 days. Worse still, if she dares to raise her face, she may spot the men themselves.
For all but one of her attackers walked free, while it is the Suryanelli girl who might as well be in prison. For 17 years now, her life has been put on hold, frozen at the night of Jan. 16, 1996. There has been no justice, no closure that would allow her to move on and salvage the pieces of who she used to be.
It would have been easier if she had quietly disappeared, as do most of the tens of thousands of survivors of rape in India every year. Instead, her fight for an elusive justice has marked her, she says sadly, as a “shameless woman.” And her punishment is to be victimized, again and again, by the police, the courts, the local officials and the society in which she lives.
Since Indian law does not permit the naming of rape victims or their families during trial, her moniker comes from the beautiful hillside village in the southern state of Kerala that was once her home. Yet it has been eight years since she lived in Suryanelli. Her family was hounded out because taxis and buses full of tourists were stopping outside their house.
As she talks about the rapes, she anxiously twirls the edge of her traditional powder blue dupatta scarf. Her smile is childlike and eager to please, her soft, whispery voice still that of a shy 16-year-old.
“I did nothing wrong, but I’m the only one still suffering,” she says. “My side of the story was not heard by anyone.”
___
All across India — in Suryanelli, in New Delhi, in Mumbai and Kolkata — there are nameless, faceless girls who have been raped.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/cG8238ikDug/
By The Huffington Post News Editors
By Devidutta Tripathy
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Police in India are investigating to determine whether U.S. Internet Google Inc violated rules in a competition that asked users to add information about their local areas for its online map services after a government agency raised security concerns.
Google, which ran the “Mapathon” in India in February and March, said its aim was to make more local information accessible to all and that it did not break any laws.
Police are acting on a complaint filed by Survey of India, the country’s national survey and mapping agency, which said the contest was illegal and may threaten national security.
“One complaint has been received and we are forwarding it to the cybercell for further action,” said Chhaya Sharma, a deputy commissioner of police in New Delhi.
Google officials said the company had not yet received an official communication from the police.
Google invited users to help “create better maps for India” by adding knowledge of their neighborhoods and promised the top 1,000 mappers prizes of tablets, smartphones and gift vouchers.
Survey of India first wrote to Google saying its “Mapathon” was against rules and then filed a police complaint, R.C. Padhi, a top official at the agency, told Reuters.
“We have to ensure that security is not compromised at any cost,” Padhi said, adding that some information uploaded on Google Maps could be “sensitive”.
Google is open to discussing specific concerns over the issue with public authorities in India, Paroma Roy Chowdhury, a company spokeswoman in India said in a statement.
“Google takes security and national regulations very seriously, and the Mapathon adhered to applicable laws,” Roy Chowdhury said.
LATEST IN SERIES OF DISPUTES
The investigation is the latest in a series of disputes between various governments and Google over privacy and security issues involving its popular mapping products. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Police in northern India are investigating an attack on four sisters who had acid thrown on them as they walked home from work, an official said Wednesday.
Two men on a motorcycle threw acid on the women and sped off in Tuesday’s attack in Shamli town in Uttar Pradesh state, said Arun Kumar, the state’s director general of police.
The sisters were hospitalized with serious burns. They’re all in their 20s and teach at the same college.
No arrests have been made so far, Kumar said.
It was not immediately clear what provoked the attack, he said. Police were waiting for the women’s conditions to improve before speaking to them.
Shamli is about 85 miles north of New Delhi.
In recent months, there has been growing outrage across India over violent assaults on women.
The fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus in December spurred the government to pass tough new laws for attacks on women, including a 10-year maximum sentence for acid attacks.
A fatal gang rape in New Delhi didn’t deter Carolina De Paolo and Canan Wahner from traveling to India.
Then a man fondled Wahner on a train. On another journey, a different man grabbed De Paolo‘s breasts.
The two German women insist they would come to India again. But many tourists are choosing not to come at all.
Violence against women — and publicity generated by recent attacks here — are threatening India‘s $17.7 billion tourism industry. A survey by an Indian business group says tourism has plunged, especially among women, since a 23-year-old Indian student was raped on a New Delhi bus.
The government disputes that tourism has dropped, but merchants say they are already suffering.
An American woman and her French companion were brutally assaulted and held for hours aboard a public transport van they boarded in Rio de Janeiro’s showcase Copacabana beach neighborhood, police said in a statement.
The victims’ nationalities were identified by The New York Times. The two were held for around six hours starting shortly after midnight on Saturday, police said. Two men aged 20 and 22 have been taken into custody and a third is being sought in connection with the incident .
Police said the suspects forced other passengers to get out of the van and then sexually assaulted the American woman, 21, inside the vehicle, which was one of a fleet of vans that serve bus routes and seat about a dozen people. During the alleged assault, the tourists were driven to the poor suburban neighborhood of Sao Goncalo, where the two suspects were apprehended, the statement said.
Reports said the two had been studying Portuguese in Rio for about a month and that both left the country following the incident.
The statement said one of the victims’ cellphone was found in the suspects’ possession. The suspects had also used a debit card belonging to one of the victims at two gas stations, the statement said.
The Globo television network broadcast surveillance camera images of two men filling up the white van and showed police images of a metal bar the suspects are thought to have used to beat and intimidate the victims.
The victims positively identified the two suspects, and a Brazilian woman has said she’d also been assaulted by the pair on March 23, the statement said.
In an interview with Globo television, commanding officer Alexandre Braga, who heads the Rio police unit specializing in crimes against tourists, said the suspects had gone on a sex crime spree.
“The characteristics of both crimes, both the Brazilian case and the one with the foreigners, lead us to believe that they (the suspects) wanted to have a `party of evil,’ in quotes,” Braga said. “The principal motive appears to have been the satisfaction of their lust.”
He added that the robbery and other crimes appear to have been “secondary.”
Multiple calls to police seeking further detail Monday have not been returned.
The incident raises new questions about security in Rio, which has cracked down on once-endemic drug violence in preparation for hosting next year’s soccer World Cup and the 2016 summer Olympic games.
The city will also be playing host to World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage expected to draw some 2 million people in late July.
The attack also drew comparisons with the fatal December beating and gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus. Six men beset a 23-year-old university student and male friend after they boarded a private bus, touching off a wave of protests across India demanding stronger protection for women.
In Brazil, more than 5,300 cases of sexual assault were reported between January and June 2012, according to the country’s Health Ministry.
Click for more from The New York Times
The Associated Press contributed …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
