L A T E S T      N E W S

HC grants bail to Bangaru Laxman in fake defence deal case

NEW DELHI: Jailed former BJP President Bangaru Laxman was on Thursday granted bail by the Delhi high court in a case against him for taking bribe in a fictitious defence deal.

"The convict appellant (Bangaru) is enlarged on bail on furnishing of a personal and surety bond of Rs 50,000 each," justice A K Pathak said.

72-year-old Bangaru was taken into custody on April 27 to serve a four year imprisonment awarded by a special CBI court for taking Rs one lakh as bribe from some undercover journalists in 2001 to fix a fictitious defence deal to supply some equipment to the Indian Army.

On September 4, Bangaru had moved the high court seeking bail in the case on the ground that he was old and suffering from various ailments.

He had also cited a high court judgement on sting operations and said that inducing a person to commit a crime is "prohibited".

Earlier, Bangaru was sentenced to four years in jail, besides a fine of Rs one lakh, after being convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act for accepting Rs one lakh bribe from a fake arms dealer in the fictitious deal in 2001.

Bangaru was caught on camera in the sting operation accepting money in his chamber in the party headquarters and had to quit as BJP chief shortly after the expose which had created a huge political storm.

The sting was conducted by news portal tehelka.com. The video CDs were released by the portal on March 13, 2001.

The scribes of the portal had posed as representatives of a fictitious UK-based company West End International and sought Bangaru's recommendation to the ministry for supply of "hand-held thermal imagers", a fictitious device, for the Indian Army. — PTI

Court seeks Centre’s response on PIL against Vadra

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Thursday asked the central government to respond to charges levelled against Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, by India Against Corruption (IAC) member Arvind Kejriwal.

The court, which was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) by activist Nutan Thakur, fixed November 21 as the next date for hearing.

The PIL sought a thorough probe into the charges levelled by Kejriwal and his colleagues. In her petition, Thakur told the court that she had also sent a letter to principal secretary in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) but was sure that it would not be responded to.

Last week, Kejriwal and lawyer Prashant Bhushan had alleged that Vadra had benefited immensely from a quid pro quo in deals with real estate giant DLF. — IANS

2G: BJP MPs boycott JPC meeting

NEW DELHI: BJP members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the 2G spectrum issue on Thursday boycotted the meeting of the panel in protest against Chairman P C Chacko’s refusal to accede to their demand to summon the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister.

The six BJP members in the JPC — Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Gopinath Munde, Harin Pathak, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Dharmendra Pradhan — did not attend the meeting held here on Thursday. They had staged a walkout in the last session when Chacko had refused to discuss their demand for calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

Sinha has also written a strongly worded letter on behalf of the BJP members to  Chacko to register his party’s protest. The party has alleged that Chacko is acting in an ’autocratic’ and ‘non-democratic’ manner.

The letter maintains that in a meeting in July, the main opposition had demanded that the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister be summoned.

“In this meeting, as well as in the meetings of the Committee we have strongly demanded that in order to arrive at the right conclusions, the Committee must record the evidence of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister. Their appearance before the Committee, in view of their role in the decision making process is absolutely necessary,” Sinha said.

The letter further states that there are questions which “they and they alone can answer“.

But it is the attack on Chacko’s style and manner of functioning which forms the larger part of the letter.

“You have been avoiding taking a decision on this issue for reasons best known to you. When we tried to raise this issue once again in the meeting of September 18, you behaved in a totally non-democratic, in fact, in an autocratic fashion and did not allow some of my colleagues and me to even raise the issue,” Sinha said.

He described this behaviour of Chacko as “shocking in the extreme” and said this left BJP members with no option but to stage a walkout from that meeting. — PTI

Delhi Police arrests 3 IM terror suspects

New Delhi: In a major breakthrough, the Delhi Police on Thursday arrested three terror suspects from Delhi on Thursday. The three suspects are believed to be operatives of banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen. Reports said that they had made base in a Delhi locality and were planning terror strikes under the directions of terror mastermind Yasin Bhatkal.

Besides arms and ammunition, bomb making equipment was recovered from their hideout, reports added. 

The arrested men are being questioned about the exact details about their operation and it is being ascertained whether they were part of any of the previous terror attacks in the country or whether they are part of a new sleeper cell.

Malala has to die: Pakistan Taliban

Islamabad: The Pakistan Taliban has defended the attack on 14-year-old peace activist Malala Yousafzai, saying she deserved it because she had "promoted secularism".

While stressing Islamic Shariah to defend the attack, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said they would target the child activist again if she survived.

On Tuesday night, a group of doctors successfully removed the bullet lodged near the spine of a 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl, who was attacked by Taliban for speaking out against the banned outfits' atrocities.

Ahmed Shah, the uncle of Malala Yousufzai, said that the doctors have advised against taking Malala, the first recipient of Pakistan's National Peace Award for Youth, outside Pakistan for treatment.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, TTP said they were against attacking women, but “whom so ever leads a campaign against Islam and Shariah is ordered to be killed by Shariah”.