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B’desh hangs six
militants
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Hindu mythology being lost in Pakistan Baghdad, March 30 Nearly 400 people have been killed over the past three days in violence-wracked Iraq as insurgents and sectarian militias ripped through a much-touted US security crackdown concentrated in Baghdad. SAARC summit
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Dhaka, March 30 Bangla Bhai was hanged in the northern Mymensingh jail while Shayek was executed at the eastern Comilla prison. The police said their bodies had been sent to their respective villages in different districts. The six were sentenced to death by the high court in May last year for masterminding or involvement in a series of bomb attacks which killed at least 30 persons and wounded 150 in 2005. The victims included judges, lawyers, police and other officials. The police said security had been beefed up across the country as intelligence reports said followers of the condemned men were trying to stage protests, mainly at their home districts. Bangladesh has been under a state of emergency since January 11 and is run by an interim government until the next election -- for which no date has yet been set. The interim government leaders earlier said that ahead of the election they would cleanse the country of everything, including corrupt politicians and terrorists, who in the name of Islam kill people.
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Hindu mythology being lost in Pakistan Many historical and religious locations in Pakistan are getting lost and merging with the ordinary due to lack of knowledge about Hindu mythology and interest in history pertaining to Hindu gods and goddesses after Partition. Pakistani Hindus are mainly concentrated in the Sindh province and in big cities. They have maintained the existing Hindu temples in the areas they live, but with the pre-Partition generation getting extinct, stories associated with other locations which were earlier passed on for generations by word of mouth are being lost. One such place located on the outskirts of the town of Nankana Sahib is still referred to some by the name of “Sita Rani da khu” or ‘Sita wala’ (the well of Sita, wife of Lord Rama). Located at Dhaular (royal palace) outside Nankana Sahib towards the south and close to the grave of Rai Bular Bhatti, a contemporary of Guru Nanak, the well is no more than a depression with raised mud boundary giving the shape of a bowl. Not many villagers are aware of the history associated with it, but village elders say in their childhood they used to hear stories that Sita and Rama had stayed there during their exile. “It is said that Sita even stayed next to a well that existed there at that time.Thus, the name, ‘Sita Rani da khu’. But the place located on a mound that is higher than the rest of the village today is said to have been destroyed some centuries ago and more than this story nothing much is known. We have heard this from elders in the village, but we know nothing more than this”, says Afzal, a resident. According to a story,the area had seven wells, all connected underground. An equally old well to the east of the mound is entered as Balawala well in the revenue records of the place and is said to have derived its name from Bhai Bala, a contemporary of Guru Nanak.Lord Rama and Sita travelled to this area as their sons, Luv and Kush, were born at Ram Tirath on the outskirts of Amritsar (on the Lopoke road), a little over 100 km from here. Lahore and Kasur are named after Luv and Kush, lending credence to Sita’s association with this place. This place is said to have two trees in the vicinity, symbolising Ram and Sita. This correspondent could not locate two trees with independent trunks, but did find a tree with two trunks emerging out of one root. Dhaular village (about 80 km from Lahore), now flattened except for a small mound, was once said to have existed at a height from where one could see Shahkot town, located 30 km away. Today the area only has some graves, but no temple or place of worship.
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Baghdad, March 30 A series of coordinated bombings of Shi’ite marketplaces in and north of the capital flouted a latest plea from embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a joint effort to curb the bloodshed threatening to tear his country apart. “The country is facing many challenges which need a consolidated front in which all Iraqis must participate,” Maliki said just hours before 125 people were killed in marketplace bombings in Baghdad and the Shi’ite town of Khalis. Although US and Iraqi officials claim violence has fallen in Baghdad where nearly 80,000 troops are deployed to curb the bloodletting, two suicide bombers tore through a popular market on Thursday and killed 82 people. Men, women and children were slaughtered as they shopped before the evening curfew and ahead of Friday, the Muslim day of rest. The bombings in the Al-Shaab district, close to the Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City, bore the hallmark of Al-Qaida-linked Sunni extremists waging sectarian attacks on Shi’ites in a bid to keep alive the brutal communal warfare. The attacks are seen as the latest challenge to the Mahdi Army militia made up of impoverished Shi’ite youths who have led the counter-attack on Sunnis but who have recently melted into rural villages to escape the Baghdad crackdown. Hours before the Baghdad bombings, a string of vehicle bombs, roadside bombs and mortar attacks killed another 43 people and wounded dozens in Khalis. — PTI
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SAARC summit Sri Lanka will raise the issue of terrorism at the upcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in the wake of the LTTE air attack on the country’s main air base at Katunayaka on March 26. President Mahinda Rajapakse will lead Sri Lanka’s delegation to the summit along with foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama and other high-ranking government officials. The Foreign Ministry says Sri Lanka SAARC will call on member nations to revisit the associations’ modalities in countering terrorism in all its manifestations. The issue of terrorism, particularly in the region, has gained shaper focus in Sri Lanka since the LTTE’s first air attack, which has shaken the government and the military from its sense of complacency in recent weeks after the military gained control of several LTTE-controlled areas in eastern Sri Lanka. Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shanker Menon, when asked about the attack, has only gone as far as to say that India is very concerned at the escalation of violence in Sri Lanka in the past few weeks and this incident is one part of a pattern of escalating violence that is seen.
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