Month: October 2012

Former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda and his aide Aruna Chaddah unleashed “a series of wilful and malicious acts of mental torture, threat, blackmail and stress” on former air hostess Geetika Sharma which led to her suicide, Delhi Police on Saturday said in its chargesheet filed in a court here.

The police accused the duo of “harassing, conspiring, intimidating and creating an atmosphere of terror and continuous pursuit” in the mind of 23-year-old Geetika that “she found no option but to end her life”.

Activist Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday stuck to his graft charges against Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, leading to a political slugfest with the BJP and others demanding a probe and the Congress rejecting it.

“We are not passing judgement. We have put certain facts in the public domain. Why doesn’t he (Vadra) answer them,” Kejriwal of India Against Corruption (IAC) asked while speaking to a news channel.

Kejriwal denied he was targeting Vadra for being related to the Gandhis and also to get mileage for his yet-to-be-named political outfit.

Radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was flown in from the UK along with four other terror suspects, will remain in detention till his formal arraignment on October 9, a US court has ordered.

Hamza, who had fought extradition to the US for years and made his initial appearance in a federal court here Saturday, will be charged for plotting to take hostages and conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda.

Besides Hamza, four others who were extradited are Adel Abdul Bary, Khalid al-Fawwaz, Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan.

In another shocker from Haryana, a teenage Dalit girl on Saturday immolated herself after allegedly being gangraped in Jind district of the state.

After allegedly being raped by two youths in Narwana sub division of the district, the shocked girl sprinkled kerosene and set herself on fire, police said.

She was rushed to a civil hospital in Jind district, and was later referred to PGIMS at Rohtak in serious condition.

The girl breathed her last this evening in the Rohtak hospital.

Two planes – with 297 and 384 passengers on board – collided while on the ground at Madrid’s Barajas airport, but there were no casualties, a media report said.

The incident occurred Saturday between an Air Europe flight – with 297 passengers – bound for Venezuelan capital Caracas, and an aircraft from the Iberworld airline – with 384 passengers – travelling to Mexico’s Cancun city, Xinhua reported.

Sources told Xinhua the incident took place when the Air Europe plane was being pushed back from its station, and its tail collided with the wing of the Iberworld aircraft.

Mr. Syed Aziz Pasha in a press statement urged the central and state governments to transform Waqf Board into Waqf commissionerate so as to ensure protection of Waqf properties worth 4 lakh crore. He said that the recklessness of department of Waqf board has been the cause of destruction of valuable Waqf properties in the state.

The Israel Air Force intercepted and shot down a drone that had penetrated the country’s airspace, the military said.

A military spokesman told Xinhua that two fighter jets were sent from a southern air base, after a ground control station identified the drone.

The drone was shot down over the Yatir forest in the Negev region.

Military spokesman Capt. Roni Kaplan said they could not tell from where the drone originated and what its objective was.

The military said the drone was initially spotted entering Israeli airspace from the Mediterranean Sea and heading south.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud Saturday named Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid, as the country’s new prime Minister, nearly a month after the president was elected.

At a joint news conference here, the Somali president made the announcement of Saaid’s nomination.

Saaid, a businessman by profession, is a newcomer to Somalia politics. He is expected to form the cabinet within the next few weeks in consultation with the country’s president and various other parties.

Fans of Adnan Sami were in for a musical treat as the popular singer-composer entertained them with some mesmerizing melodies and his unbeatable keyboard symphonies here at the Kingdom of Dreams’ second anniversary celebrations Saturday night.

Dressed in an all-black outfit, the 39-year-old British-born Pakistani singer kickstarted his performance with the “Mehbooba mehbooba” song from the film “Ajnabee”, and went on to sing his other popular tracks like “Salaam-e-ishq”, “Chain muzhe ab aaye na”, “Sun zara” and “Noor-e-khuda”.

Dozens of fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army have been killed in an operation by Syrian government forces in Homs province near the border with Lebanon, Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV reported.

A base of one of the armed groups near the village of al-Qusayr was destroyed. At least 40 rebels including the leader of the group were killed.

Several militants, four of them Turkish citizens, were killed Saturday in Aleppo, Syrian news agency SANA reported.

Government forces repelled an attack by militants who “supposedly came from Turkey” in the north of Aleppo, it said.

Seven Iranian aid workers, who were abducted by unidentified people and detained for over two months in Libya, have been set free, Iran’s Ambassador to Libya Hussein Akbari said.

The Iranians, who were freed Saturday, are from the Red Crescent Society of Iran, Xinhua reported.

They had been taken from their vehicle by unidentified kidnappers in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, according to the Libyan branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

A huge fire at a thermal power plant in Sweden caused an explosion in a turbine, but there were no reports of any casualties.

Control room personnel called rescue services when the fire alarm rang in the electricity company in Orebro city, around 160 km west of the capital city of Stockholm, Xinhua reported citing Swedish television channel SVT.

Rescue personnel were for some time unable to get into the building due to the heat inside. Firemen activated the sprinkler system an hour after the blaze started, which helped bring the fire under control.

Two eight-year-old girls were allegedly raped in two separate incidents here in the last 24 hours, police said Saturday evening. The accused involved in both the incidents have been arrested.

In the first incident, an eight-year-old was allegedly raped by her neighbour in south Delhi’s Fatehpur Beri Friday afternoon.

The accused Naveen, 21, was arrested from his residence.

New research has found mobile phones can damage personal relationships merely with their presence no matter they are being used or not.

According to psychologists who conducted the experiments at Essex University, mobile phones automatically trigger thoughts about wider social networks, reducing the level of empathy and understanding in face-to-face conversations, Daily Mail reported.

The two studies found if a mobile was visible during a conversation it caused people to feel less positive towards the person with whom they were talking.

A man in Britain allegedly fathered his step-daughter’s four children over a decade, a jury has heard.

The 60-year-old father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly first raped his step-daughter, now 29, when she was 15, Daily Mail reported.

His name was not on any of the children’s birth certificate. She was allegedly warned by him of going to prison for falsifying details if the reality emerged, Burnley Crown Court heard.

Former Minister and late Dr YSR’s brother YS Vivekananda Reddy has asserted that the Kadapa MP and YSRCP Chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy will come out clean from the jail even after six months.

Speaking to the media here on Saturday, Vivekananda Reddy responded on October Supreme Court’s rejection of Jagan’s bail plea and alleged that the ruling Congress party and the opposition TDP had colluded with each other and creating troubles to Jagan.

CBI has intensified its investigation into the alleged disproportionate assets of the YSR Congress chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy after obtaining court permission.

It is learnt that sleuths of the agency who have been searching the offices and residence for the past three days have conducted simultaneous raids on residential and office premises of Jagan on Saturday.

Four persons sustained serious injuries in a Gas cylinder blast that took place in a house at Uppal Chilukanagar this morning. The condition of two of them was stated to be critical.

Telangana Congress MPs and Telangana political JAC leaders have decided to oppose and boycott the State Formation Day Celebrations on November 1 and will force the Telangana Ministers to not to participate in the programme.

The BJP in Maharashtra Saturday demanded that a special investigation team (SIT) of top IAS officers probe the multi-crore rupee irrigation scam.

Vinod Tawde, leader of opposition in the state legislative council, said the committee must inquire into the entire gamut of the scam, estimated to run into over Rs.20,000 crore.

“It should be a white paper, not a whitewash paper giving a clean chit to officials involved,” Tawde told reporters here.

He said there was no need to set up commission headed by retired judicial officers or other officials.

Former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda gave a forged experience certificate to former flight attendant Geetika Sharma to create hurdles in her career moves, a chargesheet filed in a court here Saturday.

Kanda did not want to lose Geetika as an employee and forged the certificate in a bid to try and retain her in his company, police said.

The certificate was issued after Kanda came to know that she had got a job in the Emirates Airlines as a stewardess, the formal set of charges said.

Caught in a controversy over allegations that he was favoured by realty major DLF, Robert Vadra on Saturday broke his silence saying he can “handle all the negativity” even as Congress and BJP sparred over the issue.

DLF insisted that its “business relationship” with Vadra or his companies had been conducted in individual capacity as per the “highest standards of ethics and transparency” and that it had “not received any undue benefit from any state government or any government authorities in any part of India”.

DLF said in a statement that no unsecured loans were provided by it.

Transactions between two private individuals cannot be questioned on basis of “implied act of corruption”, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in response to a query if government will probe allegations against Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra for certain realty deals.

“I am not aware of the rightness or wrongness of the allegations …. Transactions between two private individuals cannot be questioned on the basis of certain imputed or implied act of corruption,” Chidambaram told reporters here.

West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Saturday expressed her unhappiness over the central government’s decision to hike the price of cooking gas by over Rs. 11.

“Do you know, how many times prices have been increased, affecting the interest of the common people during UPA-II? Today again, the central government has hiked LPG prices by 11.42 per cylinder. Very bad, very sad,” Banerjee posted on Facebook.

HDFC Bank has opened its first representative office in Abu Dhabi to provide services to large number of non-resident Indians (NRIs) based in the city.

This is the bank’s second representative office in the UAE, with the first situated in Dubai.

“The UAE is an important global business centre and this initiative reflects our commitment to bring world-class banking services to the doorstep of the Indian community in the region,” HDFC Bank Group Head (Equities, Private Banking, Third Party Products, NRI and International Consumer Business) Abhay Aima said.