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Ex-corporator of Delhi convicted of murder
BJP changes plank for national convention
Boost in security ties with Myanmar
Domestic Violence Act fails test in SC
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Balakrishnan next CJI
Naga rebel leader arrives in India
Sino-Indian expedition to study glaciers
Malegaon blasts probe handed over to CBI
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Ex-corporator of Delhi convicted of murder
New Delhi, December 21 Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Bharat Prashar also convicted eight other co-accused for participating in the criminal conspiracy to kidnap Gupta after a Congress rally at the Firozshah Kotla grounds here and taking him to Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh where he was murdered. The eight co-accused convicted by the court, include three U P policemen, ASI Sripal Raghav and constables Satender and Rakesh Kumar and Sharda Jain’s brother Raj Kumar Jain. The other co accused - Roshan Singh, Rajender alias Raju, Pushpender and Nirvikar - are members of a gang, allegedly hired by Sharda Jain to kidnap Gupta as she did not like his “intimacy” with other woman party corporator Memwati Bharwala. All three former corporators had, however, been suspended from the party after the sordid episode hit the headlines after Gupta went messing from the rally on Agust 24, 2002. ASJ Prashar fixed pronouncement of the judgement on sentence for tomorrow after hearing arguments on it. “The prosecution has been successful in proving its case against all the accused persons beyond shadows of all reasonable doubts to the effect that the accused hatched a criminal conspiracy to abduct and murder Gupta,” the court said. While Sharda Jain, her brother and the four UP gangsters were held guilty of kidnapping and murder, the three policemen were convicted for destroying the evidence. They were also found guilty under the Arms Act. The Court rejected the plea of innocence of Jain and her brother, holding that the evidence on record and circumstantial facts were “incompatible” with their arguments in this regard. There were clear evidence to prove that Gupta was kidnapped with a motive and after the murder his body was dumped near a canal in Bulandshahr district. The badly dicomposed body of Gupta was recovered on August 31, 2002, almost a week after he went missing from the rally and his identification was established by his identity-card found in the possession of Pushpender, a sharp shooter hired by Jain. He was arrested on September 6, 2002 after a manhunt was launched jointly by Delhi and U P Police. His arrest led to rounding up of the other gangster. According to the prosecution, Gupta was first taken by the gangsters to Ghajjupur village in Ghaziabad on August 24 after the rally with a pretext to show him piece of land there and later shot dead there.
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BJP changes plank for national convention
Lucknow, December 21 Not only is the man who brought the Hindutva agenda on the center-stage of national politics visibly out of favour, even the Hindutva brigade’s hard selling of a Ram mandir at Ayodhya does not figure in the list of items to be discussed at the 3-day high-powered BJP meet. When the BJP top brass meets in Lucknow’s Saraswati Shishu Mandir complex re-christened after late RSS ideologue as Sundar Singh Bhandari Nagar for the conclave, they will give final touches to the party’s refurbished plans to regain lost ground in crucial Uttar Pradesh on an aggressive Hindutva agenda chalked out by party’s new chief Rajnath Singh. The national council will formally ratify the new president Rajnath Singh’s re-election and also symbolically pave the way for the exist of Advani and all that he stood for. An indication of this shift was clear when the media asked senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi about Ram Mandir at a press briefing on Wednesday. “You people never seem to forget the Mandir,” he retorted. Party spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said for the BJP, the Ram Mandir was a ‘sankalp’ (pledge) that required no discussion. An inkling of the sidelining of people close to former president Advani could also be seen. The day-long meeting of senior party functionaries at Rajnath Singh’s residence did not see the presence of former spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sushma Swaraj . Incidentally, Swaraj is scheduled to present a resolution on ‘appeasement and internal security’ on December 23 at the inaugural day of the National Council. Former party president Venkaih Naidu is to present the other resolution on ‘betrayal of the common man’. With Rajnath Singh the days ahead promise a wider role for the RSS. Signs of the RSS' full support to Rajnath emerged ahead of the party's ratification of his re-election as BJP chief. The RSS mouthpiece described him as a "mass leader" and the one who was "committed" and "uncompromising" on principles. Rajnath will flag off the National Executive by delivering the presidential address and outlining the party's strategy, followed by a review of the party's preparedness for the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur. The twin pronged attack on the UPA and SP-led state government that the BJP National Council was launching consists mainly of the issues of internal security and appeasement of the minorities as also of UPA's failures in containing price rise and inflation to keep the ‘common man’ happy. Despite the hype that the saffron party has created over its relatively good showing in the UP local body elections, insiders admit that the real test of the party’s popularity and that of its president lies ahead in the Assembly polls, where the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are very dominant forces. How Rajnath faces the challenge of dissidence within the party in his home state of UP on the eve of Assembly elections and indeed during the next four days of the National Executive, National Council and the ‘parivartan rally’ is beingn watched keenly. Strangely, senior party leaders like Kalyan Singh and Murli Manohar set the tone by not being present at Amausi airport on Wednesday to receive newly re-elected party president Rajnath Singh on his arrival. Officially, they were busy attending the death anniversary function of Mahatam Rai, the father of Kusum Rai, a former minister and close associate of Kalyan Singh.
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Boost in security ties with Myanmar
New Delhi, December 20 At a meeting between Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and the visiting Home Minister of Myanmar Major General Maung Oo here today, both the sides also agreed to work together on various issues mutual interest and concern to both the countries. The visit of Mr Oo assumes great significance as New Delhi has been seeking Yangoon’s cooperation in smashing insurgent camps in their country and checking cross border movement of insurgents and drug traffickers. Mr Patil assured the visiting dignitaries of all possible assistance in the field of training and capacity-building of the Myanmar Home Ministry officials, sources said. Major General
Oo, who is leading a four-member delegation, visited Bangalore and Hyderabad from December 17 and 20, before his arrival here yesterday.
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Domestic Violence Act fails test in SC
New Delhi, December 21 The court not only declined the plea of city-based Taruna Batra to claim a right under Section 2(s) of the newly passed Domestic Violence Act in the house owned by her mother-in-law after she was divorced by her husband, it termed the section’s definition as not properly worded to draw a definite conclusion. “No doubt, the definition of ‘shared household’ in Section 2(s) of the Act is not very happily worded, and appears to be the result of clumsy drafting, but we have to give it an interpretation which is sensible and which does not lead to chaos in society,” a Bench of Mr Justice S B Sinha and Mr Justice Markandey Katju ruled. Rejecting Taruna Batra’s plea that she has a rightful claim under the “shared household” definition given in Section 2(s) of the Act even if it was owned by her mother-in-law for reasons that she had stayed there with her husband after the marriage, the Bench said: “We cannot agree with this submission.” Attacking the legislation for the manner in which it was drafted not to give a clear-cut meaning to the “shared houshold”, the court said:“If this submission is accepted, then it will mean that wherever the husband and wife lived together in the past that property becomes a shared household.” On the face of this stand, a wife could claim a share in every house where she had stayed with her husband, whether it was owned by his parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces, the court pointed out. If the interpretation of the Act as sought by the counsel for Taruna Batra was accepted, all these houses of the husband’s relatives will be “shared households” and the wife “can well insist in living in all these houses because she had stayed with her husband for some time in those houses in the past. Such a view would lead to chaos and would be absurd,” the court said. “Under Section 17(1) of the Act in our opinion the wife is only entitled to claim a right to residence in a shared household, and a ‘shared household’ would only mean the house belonging to or taken on rent by the husband, or the house which belongs to the joint family of which the husband is a member,” Mr Justice Katju, writing the verdict for the Bench ruled.
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Naga rebel leader arrives in India
New Delhi, December 21 Stating that he was here to iron out “persisting differences”, the Naga separatist leader who came to India after a gap of two years, said, “All I will say is that this time around there is more hope and expectations are
high. We are firm in our demands and there is no going back. We expect the Indian government will respond with sincerity.” Muivah arrived in here barely days after his group held a round of discussion with the Group of Ministers led by Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes in Amsterdam. More negotiations were expected over the issue of Naga insurgency when the Naga leaders return from Nagaland after Christmas celebrations. Though Muivah was tight-lipped about what issues to be taken up, it was expected that the NSCN-IM leaders would mount fresh pressure for integration of the Naga-dominated areas in neighbouring Manipur, Arunachal and Assam.
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Sino-Indian expedition to study glaciers
New Delhi, December 21 The area of the proposed expedition is the largest water reservoir in the world, other than the Polar region, that fulfills water requirements of close to one billion people in India and China. The event also has enormous strategic importance as India has some major concerns vis-ŕ-vis China over the Brahmaputra system of rivers, which originate in Tibet. The India-China cooperation in this context beckons well for the bilateral relations. Undertaken by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the expedition will collect data that will help in developing a model for glacier recession forecasting in present climate change scenario. Keeping in mind the impact of drastic climate changes in the Himalayas due to greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol emissions, environmentalists have given the glaciers a maximum life of 30 to 40 years. This region is not only facing strong climate effects like monsoon oscillations, but also effects of increasingly high human population. The study will help in the future management of water resources of these perennial rivers that are expected to become seasonal once climate change manifests itself in its true form, resulting in melting of permanent ice shelves and glaciers. The last known and recorded exploration to the sources of the two rivers was undertaken more than a century ago by a British explorer, Sir Young Husband. Other than that there is not much information is available on the sources of the two rivers, IMF president Maj H.P.S Ahluwali said before signing an MoU for the joint expedition with CAS director Liang
Lamin. The expedition will be undertaken in June-July, next year, and the duration of the entire study is expected to be four to five years. The Indian side, which is yet to be finalised, will include six members, all top experts in the field who will be accompanied by necessary support team, including mountaineers. “The crisis is particularly grave in Himalayas, where the glaciers are receding at such an alarming rate that within the next decade or two, the Indus, the Sutlej, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra that are sustaining life for centuries are likely to become seasonal rivers instead,” Major Ahluwalia said, adding that it was the first expedition of its kind in the world.
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Malegaon blasts probe handed over to CBI
Mumbai, December 21
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New Delhi, December 21
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