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DSP murder case: CBI team visits Pratapgarh
Pratapgarh (UP): A ten-member CBI team, headed by a DIG-level officer, on Friday visited a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Pratapgarh district in connection with the probe into the killings of a police officer and two others there last week.
CBI sources said the team, led by DIG Anurag Garg, met an IG-level officer of the state police and also visited the local police station in Balipur village in Kunda in the district to understand correct sequence of events on the night of violence on Saturday in which DSP Zia-ul-Haq, village head Nanhe Yadav and his brother Suresh were killed.
They said CBI has demanded details of wireless conversations and evidence collected by the local police and is likely to question police officers which accompanied Haq to the village.
The team, accompanied with forensic analysts, would examine the crime site and meet the family of the slain village head, they said.
The agency is considering seeking the custody of two accused in the case Guddu Singh and Rajeev Singh, said to be close aides of independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya who has also been booked.
The team may seek a fresh post-mortem in the case, the sources said but added that it would be decided later.
CBI had on Thursday registered four FIRs relating to the killings and the violence. Raja Bhaiya, along with his four associates, have been booked under IPC sections relating to murder and criminal conspiracy in the killing of Haq on the basis of allegations levelled by the slain officer’s wife. — PTI
Manmohan targets Jaitley in Rajya Sabha
NEW DELHI: Expressing confidence that growth would bounce back to 7-8 per cent, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Friday that the opposition should be more objective in assessing the work of the government.
Dr Singh also said “men of envy” disparage everything.
“I agree to Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley saying that country needs a growth of 7-8 per cent to get rid of poverty. I would like to remind this House that this is precisely the intention of the UPA government,”
Dr Singh said in the Rajya Sabha.
“The Congress government in early nineties opened up our economy and the path of economic reforms to create an environment for rapid industrialisation,” he said while replying to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address.
“Jaitley should be more objective in assessing work of UPA government whether agriculture, growth rate or industrialisation as the record of the UPA speaks for itself and we don’t have to go in more details,” he said.
Attacking the Opposition, Dr Singh said: “When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it is good or bad.”
Referring to the growth rate during the BJP-led NDA government in 1998-2004,
Dr Singh said: “Growth rate in the country has been highest since the UPA came to power and it is only in 2012-13 that growth rate will be 5 per cent.”
“We are confident that the growth will bounce back with our efforts to 7 to 8 per cent. If leader of opposition, colleagues reflect calmly they will conclude that the path we have chosen is the right path,” he said.
He said the government was doing everything possible for farmers and growth in agriculture had increased during the last few years. — IANS
'Shocked' Vijender denies links with drug dealer
NEW DELHI: Stunned by allegations that he has links with a drug dealer caught by the Punjab Police, star Indian boxer Vijender Singh on Friday said the “ridiculous charges” would be proved wrong in investigations.
The former world number one, who gave India its first Olympic medal in boxing in 2008, said he was shocked to hear his name crop up after his wife’s car was found outside a flat in Zirakpur from where 26kg of heroin worth Rs. 130 crore was recovered.
“I am shocked. I am in Mumbai right now for work. My friends dropped me at the airport in my wife’s car. I don’t know how it reached outside that Zirakpur flat,” Vijender, an Asian Games gold-medallist, told PTI over phone.
“My friends could have used that car after dropping me but I don’t understand how can my name be dragged into this. The police has already clarified that nothing was recovered from the car. And they have not even contacted me,” he said.
The heroin was recovered from an NRI’s house in Zirakpur, on the outskirts of Chandigarh on Thursday.
Fatehgarh Sahib SSP Hardial Singh Mann said the police had recently arrested an NRI Anup Singh Kahlon and his associate Kulwinder Singh in connection with the drugs recovery.
Kahlon has reportedly claimed links with Vijender and his close friend Ram Singh, who is also a national—level boxer.
But Vijender rejected the allegations.
“If he is a drug peddler then how can his word be trusted. If I abuse drugs, won’t I be caught in dope tests? Even now, I am open to being tested if it is required,” he said.
“I am sure by evening everything will become clear. I have no links to any of the persons being named by the police,” he added.
Earlier, the suspects were presented in a court which remanded them in police custody for four days.
The police had recovered Rs 13.86 lakh from them.
As per the SSP, the NRI, along with his family, has been living in Canada since 1995. As per the police, he was a truck driver and later developed ties with drug mafia in the European countries and the US.
The NRI used to visit India frequently and set up a drug supplies network in the country, said the SSP. — PTI
US arrests Osama's son-in-law
Washington: Osama bin Laden's spokesman and son-in-law has been captured by the United States, officials said on Thursday, in what a senior congressman called a "very significant victory" in the fight against al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda propagandist Sulaiman Abu Ghaith is expected to be in US federal court in New York on Friday in an initial hearing to face terror charges, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to release the information.
The trial will make one of the relatively few prosecutions of senior al Qaeda leaders on US soil.
Representative Peter King, the former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, credited the CIA and FBI with catching Abu Ghaith in Jordan within the last week. He said the capture was confirmed to him by US law enforcement officials.
A Jordanian security official confirmed that Abu Ghaith was handed over last week to US law enforcement officials under both nations' extradition treaty. He declined to disclose other details and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Chavez body to be preserved forever
Caracas: Chavez's body will be preserved and forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum not far from the presidential palace from which he ruled for 14 years, his successor has announced in a Caribbean version of the treatment given Communist revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi
Minh.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's acting head of state, said Chavez would first lie in state for "at least" seven more days at the museum, which will eventually become his permanent home.
It was not clear when exactly he would be moved from the military academy where his body has been since Wednesday.
A state funeral will be held today attended by more than 30 heads of government, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Iranian leader Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. US Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William
Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, will represent the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year.
Maduro said the ceremony would begin at 11 a.m., but did not say where.
"We have decided to prepare the body of our 'Comandante President,' to embalm it so that it remains open for all time for the people. Just like Ho Chi
Minh. Just like Lenin. Just like Mao Zedong," Maduro said.
He said the body would be held in a "crystal urn" at the Museum of the Revolution, a stone's throw from Miraflores presidential palace.
The announcement followed two emotional days in which Chavez's supporters compared him to Jesus Christ, and accused his national and international critics of subversion.
A sea of sobbing, heartbroken humanity jammed Venezuela's main military academy yesterday to see Chavez's body, some waiting 10 hours under the twinkling stars and the searing Caribbean sun to file past his coffin. Last night, Castro and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica visited the viewing site.
At the military academy, Chavez lay in a glass-covered coffin wearing the olive-green military uniform and red beret of his paratrooper days and looking gaunt and pale, his lips pressed together.
— AP
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