New Delhi, January 13
Defence Minister AK Antony today unveiled the country’s first ever Defence Production Policy (DPrP) that lays down a clear goal to attain self-reliance in design, development and production of defence equipment and weapons while cutting down on imports. The policy aims to allow more private participation as well as address issues of delays.

Unveiling the policy, Antony said the present scale of dependence on foreign suppliers was not acceptable. “The policy aims to build a defence industrial base.” Dependence on other countries should be reduced as it could cause problems, he said, adding that “the Defence Acquisition Council has decided that whenever possible we will produce in India.”

The Defence Ministry has nine public sector undertakings working dedicatedly under it besides a clutch of ordnance factories that produce ammunition and laboratories under the DRDO. “We will protect and strengthen these public sector undertakings,” Antony clarified.

At present, India imports more than 70 per cent of its equipment and weapon needs. Antony said he was aiming to bring down the imports to 50 per cent but went on to add that “Rome was not built in a day” to emphasise that the process might take some time. The solution lies in involving the private sector, which will reduce the space for foreign suppliers, Antony said. The PSUs and the ordnance factory board cannot meet the growing demand, he added. He remained non-committal when asked if the term “growing demand” indicated a rise in defence spending in the forthcoming budget.

Defence preparedness was the top priority of the country, he said. “The government will meet the needs of the forces.” India intends to spend some $100 billion over the next decade to modernise its forces and foreign firms are eyeing that market.

Under the new policy, the government will set up a separate fund to provide resources to public sector, private, academic and scientific institutions to support research and development of defence products.

Based on the approved long-term plan, systems will be developed within the country. Sub-systems that are not economically viable for production within the country may be imported, ensuring their availability at all times.

New Delhi, January 13
India is likely to ask Australia to show flexibility in its stand that it would not export uranium to New Delhi when External Affairs Minister SM Krishna holds talks with Australian leaders during his visit Down Under next week.

The other major issue that will figure prominently during the talks between the two sides will be the steps taken by the Australian Government to prevent racial and ethnic violence against Indians settled in that country.

Indian officials are hopeful that the new Julia Gillard Government in Canberra would have a re-look at its policy of not exporting uranium to India since it is not a signatory to the NPT, in view of the fact that the global community is slowly coming around to supporting New Delhi on the supply of nuclear fuel. “We do hope that we can engage Australia in serious discussions on the issue before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Australia later this year,” sources said.

Though the Australian Government has given no indication of reversing its stand on uranium sales, a debate is now raging on in that country on increasing trade ties and greater engagement with India. In fact, the Opposition Liberal Party has strongly been pitching for overturning the policy of not selling uranium to India, if meant for energy purposes.

Australia, which is home to some 40 per cent of the world’s known uranium reserves and boast of annual exports crossing $1 billion, already supplies the mineral to the US, France and Britain.

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 13
Kerala's LDF Government today ordered a vigilance probe against ex-CJI K G Balakrishnan's son-in-law P V Sreenijan on charges of amassing wealth in a further embarrassment for the country's former top judge.

The order for the vigilance probe came a day after a local court directed police to investigate the charges of amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income against three family members of Balakrishnan - two sons-in-law and his brother. Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan issued the order based on a report given by Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau Director favouring a vigilance probe, official sources said.

The sources said the VACB Director in his report had stated that vigilance probe could be ordered against Sreenijan, a former Youth Congress functionary, under the PCA.

The VACB legal adviser had earlier expressed doubts over holding a vigilance probe under the PCA as Sreenijan would not come under the definition of a public servant, but the Vigilance Director took the stand that the government had the authority to order any type of inquiry. — PTI

Kochi, January 13
The NIA today filed a chargesheet against 30 hardcore SIMI activists from nine states accusing them of sedition, waging war against the state and other offences for holding a terror training camp in Kerala in 2007.

The accused were involved in various terror acts in the country, including blasts in Ahmedabad that killed 57 on July 26, 2008, the chargesheet filed before a CBI court here said.

From December 10-12, 2007, they held a secret training camp at Thangalpara in Wagamon in Kerala, where classes on “Jihad in India” were also conducted. — PTI

New Delhi, January 13
China today made it clear that it would not issue visas to any official from Arunachal Pradesh, over which it lays claims, and would continue to issue stapled visas to non-officials from that state. Speaking against the backdrop of reports that two Arunachal men have got stapled visas which was departure from past practice, an official in Chinese embassy, on the condition of anonymity, said there was no change in their visa policy for residents of Arunachal Pradesh.

“There is no change in our visa policy for residents of Arunachal Pradesh. China does not issue visas to officials from that state and will still not do it. For non-officials, we only issue stapled visas,” the official said. The incident of issuance of stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh came to light when two sportsmen from that state were prevented by immigration officials from boarding a flight yesterday from New Delhi to Beijing since they had stapled visas given by Chinese Embassy on their passports.

Indian Weightlifting Federation's joint secretary Abraham K Techi along with a weightlifter of the state were taken aback when immigration officials at New Delhi's IGI Airport stopped them and turned them away because of the stapled visas issued by the Chinese Embassy.

Reacting to the Chinese action, the Ministry of External Affairs said India considered Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India and had conveyed to the Chinese side that a uniform process of issue of visas to Indian citizens be followed regardless of applicant's ethnicity or place of domicile. Maintaining that both athletes were reportedly domiciles of Arunachal Pradesh, the ministry recalled that a travel advisory had been issued in November, 2009 cautioning Indian citizens that Chinese visas stapled to passports were not valid for travel outside the country. — PTI

Lucknow, January 13
The Uttar Pradesh Government today suspended three police officers, lodged an FIR against one of them and ordered an inquiry against the then DIG of Kanpur in the Divya sexual assault and death case of September last year.

Addressing the media, Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said that on the basis of the CB-CID report submitted today, the state government has ordered the suspension of Kalyanpur police station SHO Anil Kumar. An FIR has also been filed against him for illegal detention and falsification of evidence.

The other two suspended officials are Kanpur ASP (rural) Lal Bahadur and Circle Officer Laxmi Narain Misra. A departmental inquiry has also been ordered against them.

Action has also been recommended against the then Kanpur DIG Prem Prakash for lax supervision of the case. The ADG (Law and Order) would investigate the charges against him and submit a report to the state government within a fortnight.

The Cabinet Secretary said the government has also informed the Medical Council of India about the conduct of a private doctor, Dr Abha Misra, who examined Divya and wrote in her report that the 12-year-old was pregnant and died after a miscarriage and subsequent excessive bleeding.

The Kanpur police had refused to accept Divya’s mother’s allegation that the victim was sexually abused in school. The police had implicated and arrested Divya’s neighbor Munna and charged him with sexually assaulting the girl. Following the public outcry over the botched up police probe, the National Women's Commission took up the investigation.

Chandigarh, January 13
INS Kirpan former Commander Rishi Raj Sood may have chosen not to reply to charges of dereliction of duty and running away after his sister ship INS Khukri was torpedoed by a Pak submarine in the 1971 war, but a gunner aboard Kirpan today said the Commander had taken evasive action to save the ship.

Gunner Bakhtawar Singh has taken on the duty to defend Capt Sood after another Chandigarh resident Chanchal Singh Gill, who was a survivor from the INS Khukri, petitioned the Chandigarh bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal accusing then Commander Sood of committing dereliction of duty. Gill has asserted that Kirpan should have tried to rescue the victims of the Khukri, which sank in few minutes after being torpedoed by a Pak submarine off the coast of Gujarat on December 9, 1971.

Talking to TNS, Bakhtawar Singh said INS Kirpan’s sonar had detected the torpedos fired by the Pak submarine Hangor and that the ship turned hard port by nearly 45 degrees to avert a hit. He said INS Khukri was, however, not so lucky and a torpedo exploded under its ammunition store ensuring it sank in three minutes only.

The gunner said INS Kirpan fired limbos and depth charges immediately even as it moved away from the attack site. “This is part of war tactics”, he said, adding it was also the duty of the Commander to save the ship.

While ruing the loss of precious lives because the Kirpan arrived back at the attack site only early next morning, Bakhtawar said the frigate could have done little even it had remained there. “The ship was under darkness. It would have been difficult to affect any rescue”, he said adding staying at the spot would have also made the Kirpan vulnerable to a torpedo attack.

Bakhtawar maintains the frigate was back at the site of the torpedo attack at 4 o’clock next morning and that it rescued survivors who had managed to get onto lifeboats. He says Commander Sood was the man in charge and he took the decision to follow the war manual and move out of Torpedo Danger Zone (TDZ), adding coming back to the spot at night was not feasible under the conditions.

The Khukri and Kirpan, two anti-submarine frigates, had been dispatched from Mumbai to hunt for the Pakistani submarine Hangor that had been detected in the Arabian Sea, south of Diu. However, the submarine detected the warship first and attacked them.

While Bakhtawar’s first person account is a general account of what happened, it is in variance with retired Rear Admiral’s Vir Chakra citation. The citation credits him with repealing the attack by the Pak submarine. It says “When INS Khukri received multiple torpedo hits from an enemy submarine, Commander Sood rushed his ship into a counter-attack, which was conducted so fiercely and relentlessly that the enemy submarine could not carry out any further attack and had to retreat.”

New Delhi, January 13
India and Sri Lanka were today involved in a fresh row over the killing of an Indian fisherman, allegedly in firing by the Sri Lankan Navy along the Tamil Nadu coastline.

With tempers running high in Tamil Nadu over the incident, India summoned Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India Prasad Kariyawasam to the foreign office and lodged a strong protest over it. The South Block also sought from him full details of the incident.

Simultaneously, the Indian envoy in Sri Lanka took up the matter with Colombo and expressed deep concern and regret over the incident.

Talking to the media after his meeting with Indian officials, the Sri Lankan envoy denied that the navy personnel of the island nation had fired on Indian fishermen. In any case, the navy, he said, had been instructed not to fire at fishermen even if they stray into the Sri Lankan waters. Colombo would, however, conduct an inquiry into the matter, he promised.

The authorities in Colombo are understood to have referred the matter to the country’s defence secretary. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G L Peiris had close-door meetings with top officials on the incident.

In response to questions, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said New Delhi had emphasised that resorting to firing in these situations had no justification and called on the Sri Lankan authorities to desist from using force.

The Sri Lankan Navy reportedly opened fire on three Indian fishermen at sea near the Tamil Nadu coast, resulting in the death of one of them, identified as Veerapandian, on Wednesday night.

The Indian spokesman said India had consistently impressed upon the Sri Lankan Government to refrain from firing on Indian fishermen and scrupulously adhere to the October 2008 understanding reached between the two governments. “We call on the Sri Lankan Navy to exercise maximum restraint and avoid the use of force in such situations,” he added.

The safety of fishermen in the waters between India and Sri Lanka has been receiving the high priority of the UPA Government in view of the fact that any an attack on them has always found its echo in Tamil Nadu.

The latest incident has also triggered reactions in the southern state. Chief Minister M Karunanidhi is learnt to have sent a message to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to immediately take up the matter with Sri Lanka.

“The atrocities of the Sri Lankan Navy are continuing unabated, in spite of repeated assurances given by both the Government of India as well as the Sri Lankan Government. This particular incident may be taken up with the Government of Sri Lanka for immediate action against those responsible for shooting and killing. Your personal intervention is requested for firm action to put an end to such killings," he said in his message to the PM.

Seeking to draw political mileage out of the issue, the AIADMK slammed the Tamil Nadu Government for not taking enough steps to stop the atrocities against fishermen and said the matter should have been taken up at the highest level when Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse visited India in October last year.

The Sri Lankan Navy, meanwhile, denied reports that they had fired at Indian fishermen in waters near Tamil Nadu. “No such incident had been reported,” Lankan Navy spokesperson Capt Athula Senarth was quoted as saying by agencies.

New Delhi, January 13
In a major twist to the Aarushi murder case, a former member of the National Commission for Women (NCW) has alleged that the panel chairperson, Girija Vyas, buried the probe in the case under someone’s pressure.

Nirmala Venkatesh, the former NCW member who was ousted from the commission in the aftermath of her inquiry into the Mangalore pub case that almost exonerated the Hindu radicals who harassed the partygoers in the pub, has come up with these serious allegations. She said she received frantic calls from Vyas just an hour after she landed at Nupur Talwar’s Noida home on the day of the murders.

“We had just finished a round of Nupur Talwar’s bedroom and were about to move to Hemraj’s room. We smelt foul play all along. There was certainly something wrong with the way things were. But the moment we were to go into the room of Hemraj, the house help of Talwars, I received five calls from Vyas. She asked us to drop the probe immediately and come back. When we counter-questioned, she said we should return,” Nirmala has said. The NCW had constituted the committee comprising Nirmala and commission’s legal adviser Sweety Sood at that time to look into the murders and submit a report. The report, which Nirmala submitted was, however, never forwarded to the Women and Child Development Ministry, or pursued.

For her part, Vyas denied the allegations questioning their timing and said she would not act under anyone’s pressure and that the accusation was absurd. “What was my interest in calling back the investigators? No one can believe I can do that. I may have made calls for other reasons. As for the report, we did not pursue it because the matter was handed over to the CBI,” Vyas added.

Nirmala, however, alleged that Vyas acted under someone’s pressure to bury the probe, which could have supported the case.

Chandigarh, January 13
With India emerging as a major hub for sale of drugs through illegally operating Internet pharmacies, courier and postal services seem to have become the first choice of smugglers for sending the contraband out of the country.

If figures from the recently released Annual Report (2009) of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) are any indication, important seizures of drugs during the year from courier parcels outnumber (in weight) those made from the airports in the country.

As against 88.343 kg of drugs seized from various airports in country, the bureau recovered 113.585 kg from parcels being sent to various destinations in Europe and South Africa.

While the largest seizure was of 70.32 kg of Ephedrine, contraband used to manufacture stimulant drugs, the second largest consignment of 29.942 kg of hashish was confiscated from the city beautiful on April 29, 2009. The hashish consignment was being sent to Netherlands and was concealed in dining tables being couriered from here.

The data released by the NCB shows that smugglers used innovative methods for smuggling the drugs, by concealing them in gift tea bags, pen stands, photo frames, buttons, tarot cards and even walls of carton boxes, by courier and postal services.

A senior NCB official admitted that there exists a huge gap in coordination between the law enforcing agencies and the postal services and the smugglers were using this situation to their advantage.

According to International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an independent and quasi-judicial control organ monitoring the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions, in recent years, heroin and diazepam have been the drugs most frequently found in seized parcels, while morphine, cannabis herb, cannabis resin, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine have been seized occasionally. It states that the majority of clandestine shipments of controlled substances detected in India were destined for Australia and countries in North America and Europe.

An INCB report also states that India has become one of the main sources of drugs sold through illegally operating Internet pharmacies. “Orders placed with such pharmacies are often dispatched to buyers in other countries using courier or postal services”, it adds. According to the report, intelligence provided by Indian law enforcement agencies led to the seizure of 100 kg of ephedrine in New York in February 2008.

BRIEFLY

RTI plea on Prez kitchen bill
New Delhi: What is the expenditure of the President of India over her meals? The President's Secretariat was flummoxed to find such a query in a RTI plea, which was curtly informed that such information was exempted from disclosure as it was personal. His query regarding travels undertaken by her was denied on security grounds. But the enthusiastic applicant did not relent and filed a second appeal with Central Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra, who himself heard the case, accepted the argument of the President Secretariat's officials. — PTI

Onion theft lands M’rashtra man in jail
Malegaon: Onions, which are prized commodity these days, literally left a man in tears after he landed in a police lockup for allegedly stealing the staple bulbs from a field. Pramod Jadhav, a resident of village Wake in Malegaon taluka of Nashik district, was arrested for stealing a quintal of onions, police said. The prized bulbs were worth Rs 2,000 in the local market. Farm-owner Arjun Bachhav had lodged a complaint that Jadhav stole two bags of onions from the field last night, they added. — PTI

Sri Sri seeks corruption watchdog
Mumbai: Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has said there was a need to set up an "independent body" to keep a check on corruption and financial scams. "Agencies that are supposed to check the scams are also involved in the same scams. We need to have people of character and honesty to check corruption. Such a body must be positioned independent from the government," Sri Sri Ravi Shankar told reporters. "It should be set up to check the wrong doings in all spheres of public life," the spiritual leader said. — IANS