Mexican navy finds 32 bodies in Veracruz

Thirty-two bodies have been found in several locations in Mexico’s eastern port city of Veracruz, the navy says.

Mexico has deployed extra security to Veracruz state to combat an upsurge in drug-related violence

The discovery comes two weeks after 35 bodies were dumped in broad daylight on a busy road on the city outskirts.

The Mexican government has announced the deployment of extra security forces in the state, as gangs wage an escalating war over drug trafficking.

Some 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed since the army was sent in to combat drug gangs in 2006.

A statement from the navy said the 32 bodies were found in three houses in Veracruz as the military carried out its new Safe Veracruz campaign against the drug cartels.

Twenty of the bodies were in one house in a residential neighbourhood, the navy said.

A group calling itself the Zeta Killers has said it had killed the 35 people whose bodies were left in two lorries at an underpass on a busy road in Boca del Rio in Veracruz state.

The group said it was targeting one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels, which has been locked in an escalating war with the Gulf cartel.

Police have said that most of the dead found in Boca del Rio on 20 September had criminal records.

Earlier this week, officials said 18 police officers had been arrested on suspicion of working with the Zetas.

9 dead, 45 injured in Delhi High Court blast

NEW DELHI: At least ten people have been killed in an explosion outside the Delhi High Court on Wednesday morning, Geo News reported.

The explosion took place outside Gate No. 5 of the Delhi High Court at 10:17 AM injuring 45 others. The injured have been rushed to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and the Safdarjung Hospital with some of them reportedly in a critical condition.

Earlier, Union Home Secretary RK Singh confirmed that nine people died in the explosion.

UK Bansal, Secretary (Internal Security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, said that the explosive device was kept in a briefcase. He said that the blast was of was well planned and of high intensity.

National Security Guard (NSG) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) teams have also reached the blast site.

NSG Director General Rajen Medhekar said that ammonium nitrate has been used in the blast.

“Whatever we could gather from the blast investigations is that it is an IED (improvised explosive device) with ammonium nitrate. We are working with the Delhi Police to get details,” said Medhekar.

The Delhi Police said that Gate No. 5 is one of the busiest areas of the Delhi High Court and have cordoned off the area. Gate no. 5 of the Delhi High Court is where the passes are made for the litigants and the explosion happened outside the reception.

Police officials said that about 100 to 200 people were waiting in queue to get passes for entry into the court complex.

Forensic experts have reached the site and are examining forensic evidence to find out the nature of the blast. Fire tenders and ambulances have also reached the blast site.

Court business is usually heavy on Wednesday which is listed as a Public Interest Litation(PIL) day when the visitors come to the court in large numbers.

East India Suspected Insurgent Attack: Nine Police Officers Killed

Suspected Maoist insurgents killed nine policemen during an ambush in eastern India, authorities said Tuesday. A 10th officer is missing.

Police officials carry a coffin of a colleague on April 8, 2010, after his death in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh.

The attack took place Monday in a remote area of Gariaband in Chhattisgarh state when the officers were on their way to search a house as part of anti-Maoist operation, said state police spokesman Rajesh Mishra.

Their truck broke down, and they were attacked as they were waiting for a second vehicle to arrive, he said.

About 10 days ago, seven officers were killed when they were ambushed as they were returning from routine patrol, Mishra said.

“It’s a war-like situation here,” he said.

The Maoist movement is considered by the government as India’s greatest internal security threat.

The Maoist guerrillas are called Naxalites after Naxalbari, a village in neighboring West Bengal state where they originated in the late 1960s.

Officials say the Naxals aim to seize political power through what they call a protracted people’s war.

For their part, the insurgents have claimed since the 1960s to be fighting for the dispossessed.

Over the years, they targeted Indian security forces in several impoverished eastern Indian states that have become known as the “Red Corridor.”

The slow-churning unrest has killed about 2,000 people.

India’s Republic Day clouded by tensions in held Kashmir

NEW DELHI: India celebrated its Republic Day Wednesday under heavy security, with tensions running high in held Kashmir over efforts by Hindu nationalists to hold a rally in the troubled region’s state capital.

Security was especially tight in New Delhi where large sections of the capital were sealed off for the annual parade of military hardware that provides the centrepiece for the nationwide celebrations.

Around 35,000 police personnel, including 15,000 members of the paramilitary forces and elite National Security Guard, were deployed across New Delhi for the event, which is always considered a possible target of militant attack.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the guest of honour.

Snipers manned rooftops along the route of the parade, while helicopters and unmanned surveillance drones monitored the area from above.

In Muslim-majority Kashmir, a strict curfew was enforced in the summer capital, Srinagar.

The streets were completely deserted apart from the large numbers of security personnel who manned barbed-wire barricades across roads leading to main downtown area of Lal Chowk.

“No procession or gathering would be allowed in any part of the city, today,” Srinagar’s district magistrate Meraj Kakroo said.

Authorities also jammed local mobile phone networks.

The Kashmir Valley is usually tense on Republic Day, but particularly so this year because of a drive by India’s main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to march to Srinagar and hold a special rally to raise the national flag in Lal Chowk.

Authorities had blocked road links between Kashmir and neighbouring states on Tuesday as thousands of BJP activists gathered on the state border, shouting nationalist slogans and waving the Indian flag.

Several senior BJP leaders were arrested after refusing to turn back, amid appeals by the Kashmir government and the federal government in New Delhi to call off the “provocative” march.

Kashmir has been riven by religious and separatist conflict for the last 20 years.

The BJP favours a hardline approach in the region, refusing any dilution of national sovereignty or relaxation of tough military laws that have been condemned by human rights groups.

Government ministers had warned that the BJP rally could trigger fresh protests in the Kashmir Valley, where at least 100 protesters were killed in massive anti-India demonstrations last year.

BJP supporters vow to march to Kashmir

Thousands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters massed on a bridge to the disputed Kashmir region on Tuesday as officials sought to stop a flag-raising ceremony that could spark violence.

Workers of India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hold national flags and shout slogans during a protest on a bridge at Madhopur, in the northern Indian state of Punjab

Police faced off with flag-waving BJP workers as authorities sealed routes into Kashmir to thwart the planned raising of the national flag in the state that has been racked by unrest by Muslim separatists opposed to Indian rule.

Police forced about 7,000 marchers on to buses and drove them away, police sources said, while the remaining 2,500 protesters attempting to cross the border from the Jammu region into Kashmir faced arrest or detention.

Officials in Kashmir fear that the symbolic show of Indian cental control over the disputed region could reignite separatist protests in which more than 100 people were killed last year.

The BJP has gained political ground through recent pressure on the ruling coalition struggling with graft and it hopes to show the government’s weakness on Kashmir, a potent symbol of India’s territorial integrity, with state elections looming.

But the main oppostion party risks a backlash. The government has criticised it for “divisive politics” and its nationalistic rhetoric may alienate secular Indians and other political parties.

“There is no justification whatsoever to push a political agenda that will certainly affect peace and law and order in the state of Jammu and Kashmir,” Home Minister P. Chidamabaram said in a statement.

“It would be most unfortunate if the BJP leaders defy the restrictions placed by the state government or deliberately cause a breach of the peace.”

The state government, backed by the ruling Congress party, sealed all road links into the state, media reported, a day after BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were detained at the airport in the main Kashmiri city of Srinagar and sent back out.

Senior BJP officials have said raising the national flag in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, to celebrate India’s Republic Day on Wednesday, was a patriotic right, and have vowed to push on with their march to the city.

“We have started march towards J&K … We are marching in a group of 500 people holding tricolour (flag)… Huge police presence on the other side of the bridge,” Swaraj, the BJP leader in the lower house of parliament, posted on Twitter.

Republic Day has traditionally been a lightning rod for anti-Indian protests in the Himalayan region which is at the heart of hostilities between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, who both claim it.

“The (BJP’s) aggressive and adamant stand … betrays a dangerous inability to understand the subtlety and calibration needed in a place like Jammu and Kashmir,” the Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial.

“Aggressive postures aimed at little more than self-serving polarisation will do no good to any cause, least of all one proclaimed in the name of this country’s unity.”

Militants backed by Pakistan have been battling Indian security forces in Muslim-majority Kashmir since 1989. Tens of thosuands of people have been killed in the violence.

Aarushi Talwar murder investigation closed

The investigation into the 2008 murder of a well-known dentist’s schoolgirl daughter has been closed by authorities in India for lack of evidence.

Schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar was found dead in her bedroom with her throat slit

Aarushi Talwar, 14, was found with her throat slit and a fatal head injury at home in a Delhi suburb. A man servant’s body was found on the roof a day later.

Police briefly detained her father, saying he murdered his daughter because she found out he was having an affair.

Aarushi’s parents told Indian media that they would not give up.

Dr Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur, also a dentist, have always maintained they are innocent.

“I’m completely devastated and shocked. I don’t know what to do,” Dr Talwar told Indian media. “I have not got justice for my daughter.”

Aarushi’s mother said: “We are broken parents today.”

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote The agency has filed a final report in the court for closure of the case on grounds of insufficient evidence”

End Quote Central Bureau of Investigation spokesman The gruesome tale of murder in the affluent Delhi suburb of Noida has generated huge interest in India.

Aarushi was murdered in her bedroom in May 2008, while her parents were in the house.

A day later the bludgeoned body of their man servant, Hemraj, was discovered on the roof.

As well as Aarushi’s father, three other men were arrested during the investigation and later freed for lack of evidence.

They were Dr Talwar’s assistant in his dental practice and two servants employed by the Talwar family’s friends and neighbours.

After a 30-month inquiry, India’s federal detective agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), went to a court on Wednesday in Ghaziabad, near Delhi, to close the case.

“The agency has filed a final report in the court for closure of the case on grounds of insufficient evidence,” a CBI spokesperson said.

The murder weapon has never been found, and while Aarushi’s mobile phone was recovered nearly 15 months after her death, its memory had been deleted.

The CBI took over the case from Noida police, who were accused of a botch job.

The police had gathered 26 fingerprints from the crime scene, but 24 of those were reportedly spoiled because of faulty investigative techniques.

They had also been unable to gather any evidence from a bloody hand print, a half-drunk bottle of alcohol and a shoe print found at the murder scene.

Noida police were further criticised for some statements they made during their investigation.

Days after the murder, a senior police officer told media that Aarushi had been killed because she had discovered her father’s alleged extramarital relationship with another dentist.

The same police chief also suggested the teenager could have been killed because Dr Talwar had objected to her close relationship with the murdered servant.

Dr Talwar rejected the allegations. Several women’s and children’s groups described the police claims as in bad taste.

Indian parliament attack – what it achieved for India

By Momin Iftikhar

It might have been overshadowed by the Mumbai terrorist strike in Nov 2008 but attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 Dec 2001, on all accounts, remains a watershed in the jerky evolution of Indo-Pak relations, particularly in shaping the course of the Kashmir resistance movement. With the only accused awarded death penalty still awaiting the disposal of his mercy petition, the nine year old incident in which five unidentified gunmen attacked the building of the Indian Parliament, remains a happening thing, yet to be finally wrapped up.

All the five attackers were killed during the attack while four persons were arrested on charges of abetting the attackers as facilitators. These included Mohammad Afzal, a former JKLF militant who had surrendered in 1994, his cousin Shaukat Hussain Guru, Shaukat’s wife Afsan Guru and SA R Gilani, a lecturer of Arabic at the Delhi University. After a year of trial a POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) Court found all four guilty; awarding death sentence to men while Afsan was given five years’ rigorous imprisonment. On appeal the Delhi High Court acquitted Professor SA.R. Gilani and Afsan Guru on 29 Oct 2003 due to absence of incriminating evidence while upholding the death sentence for the remaining two. The case was raised to the Supreme Court, which in its verdict on Aug 3, 2005 lifted the death sentence for Shaukat leaving him with an imprisonment of ten years while confirming the death sentence for Afzal Guru. It is Afzal, the ultimate fall guy of the incident, who awaits the hangman’s noose pending the disposal of his mercy petition by the President of India for the sixth year running.

Coming within hundred days of the September 11 strike, the Parliament attack seemed fortuitous from an Indian foreign policy perspective; tightly following a well scripted narrative. Two aspects had made this charade compelling for India. First, the Taliban rout by US had opened new vistas for exploitation for India in its search for a foothold in Afghanistan. A marked Indian advantage was the coming to power of an anti Taliban Government in Kabul, lifted into saddle by authority of UN-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany. The new leadership comprised primarily of the Northern Alliance elements- a motley assortment of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara warlords whose desperate survival in face of the Taliban onslaught had only been made possible by a no-holds-barred Indo-Iranian support. Pakistan’s west flank stood exposed and India was bent upon making most of the unexpected opportunity by exploiting Pakistan’s proximity to the Taliban to project it as sponsor of terrorism.

Second; India wanted to use the windfall opportunity to paint the freedom struggle in Kashmir with the broad red brush of terrorism. Pakistan’s emergence as an indispensable US partner in the war on terror in Afghanistan didn’t augur well for the Indian designs. There was a need to not only shift the international anti terrorist spotlight on Pakistan itself but also on the Kashmir specific militant organizations whose claims to represent the internationally sanctioned cause of self determination bestowed upon them the status of freedom fighters – a mantle which chagrined India much.

Once the parliament attack materialized India developed the scenario with the alacrity of a preplanned war game. Within hours it had accused ISI – and Pakistan Government of complicity without the benefit of any supporting evidence. For the first time in thirty years it recalled its ambassador to Pakistan. It also ended rail and bus service between the two countries and banned Pakistani commercial aircraft use of India air space. In a most alarming gesture it started the mobilization of troops within a week of the incident along the entire 1800 miles border between the two countries, confronting Pakistan with the largest ever hostile concentration of forces.

The ratcheting up of the coercive diplomacy yielded tangible results for India. On 26 December the US responded by the addition of LeT and JeM, both Kashmir centric militant organizations, to a State Department list of “designated terrorist organizations” – a momentous step that Washington had apparently been trying to avoid. This US action reinforced India’s long sought position that supporting the Kashmiri armed struggle was illegitimate. As summarized by the New York Times; “Pakistan after 50 years of battling India over Kashmir, must now abandon the armed struggle there and rely hence forth on political means of confronting India.”

To divest the Kashmiri armed struggle of its indigenous moorings the term “cross border terrorism” began to circulate immediately following the attack and became inseparable component of any Indian diplomatic interaction related to Kashmir Issue. It is worth recalling that till then Indians had not referred to decade long uprising in Kashmir as terrorism. The Lahore Declaration signed by Indian Premier Vajpaee bears ample testimony to this fact. But following 9/11 the world changed and the line separating freedom struggle from terrorism had vanished, providing India with a great opportunity to project itself as a victim of terrorism instead of being an unabashed oppressor of Kashmiri population.

Immediately following the parliament attack India unleashed a reign of terror to break the back of Kashmiri resistance. To drive home the ‘victim of terror syndrome’, it managed to airlift hundreds of Taliban fighters from Afghanistan jails and used them as clay pigeons to conduct fake encounters in IHK; cashing in on India’s long association with Northern Alliance warlords, now in power in Kabul. The trend become deeply embedded in the Indian army culture whereby fake encounters in Kashmir have become the short cut for the up and coming ambitious Indian army officers intent upon securing a promising career.

India accused Pakistan for it and treated the attack on the Indian parliament as a casus belli; taking the subcontinent to the brink of a war. It would be interesting, though, to note as to what the Indian judicial system found out after four years of deliberations. The Indian Supreme Court, in its verdict of Aug 2005 cast aside charges of a ‘Pakistani Connection’; throwing overboard the story of conspiracy linking ISI, Masood Azhar, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Ghazi Baba, Tariq, and the rest. All that the judgment refers to is that five unidentified armed men attacked Indian parliament and died, and that Mohammad Afzal participated in the conspiracy. Sadly, this aspect has gone unnoticed in India by design and the world at large by default.

Two CRPF troopers kill each other

Guwahati, Two paramilitary troopers killed each other following a heated altercation over a personal matter in Assam, police said today.

A police spokesperson said the two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers were on duty at a road patrol post at Tetelitol in Golaghat district in eastern Assam late on Sunday.

“Probably the two got engaged in a verbal duel and fired at each other with their service weapons,” a senior police official said.

Trooper Rugnesh Singh from Rajasthan died on the spot while Venkatesh Berlu from Andhra Pradesh was admitted to a local hospital with bullet injuries on his chest. Venkatesh succumbed to his injuries early today.

Author Arundhati Roy defends Kashmir statements

NEW DELHI – Indian author Arundhati Roy, facing possible sedition charges over remarks she made about disputed Indian Kashmir, said on Tuesday she had only been calling for “justice” for the region.

The Booker prize winning Indian author, Arundhathi Roy

Roy’s statement came after police in New Delhi said they were weighing whether to bring sedition charges against the Booker prize-winning author over comments she made about Kashmir in recent days.

The author of the novel “The God of Small Things” issued a statement Tuesday saying her remarks urging “azadi” or freedom for Kashmir were “fundamentally a call for justice.”

The region has been beset by anti-India violence, curfews and strikes since early June, when a 17-year-old student was killed by a police teargas shell. Since then, a total of 111 protesters and bystanders have died.

“What I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their fingernails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians,” she said in an emailed statement.

Arundhati, who has emerged in recent years as a prominent social activist, has spoken out on two occasions in recent days on Kashmir, in one instance sharing a stage with hardline separatist Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has objected strongly to Roy’s remarks, calling them “seditious” and accusing the Congress-led government of “looking the other way” by not taking any legal action against Roy.

Law Minister Veerappa Moily said the comments were “most unfortunate”. While there is freedom of speech, “it can’t violate the patriotic sentiments of the people,” Moily said, according to the Press Trust of India.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but claim it in full. India insists that Kashmir is an “integral part” of the country.

The Himalayan region, which has triggered two wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours, has been wracked by a militant insurgency against Indian rule since 1989.

Rebel violence has declined sharply since the start of a peace process between India and Pakistan.

Roy said in her statement that she had read in Indian newspapers that she might be arrested on charges of sedition for her remarks supporting freedom for Kashmir.

“I said what millions of people here (in Kashmir) say every day. I said what I as well as other commentators have written and said for years,” she said.

“Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice,” she said.

Geelani also faces the threat of sedition charges for comments he made while sharing the podium with Roy, according to the Indian media.

When told of the possible charges, the elderly separatist leader said 90 such cases had already been filed against him.

“Let this be the 91st,” he declared.

Thousands rally in Azad Kashmir against India

MUZAFFARABAD: Thousands of people rallied in Azad Kashmir on Wednesday at the behest of a new movement campaigning for independence for the mountain region and condemning Indian “brutalities”.

Pakistani Kashmiri activists shout slogans during a protest rally in Islamabad.

It was the first rally organised by Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir (TAK) and was attended by activists from jihad groups including Hizb-ul-Mujahidin and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).

The new coalition has been organising two days of rallies in Azad Kashmir and planned to hold a rally in Islamabad later on Wednesday.

A crowd of around 2,500 people shouted “Al-Jihad”, “Allahu Akbar” and “We want Freedom”, as they arrived in Muzaffarabad.

Indian Kashmir has been hit by a surge in protests since June 11, when a 17-year old student was killed by a police teargas shell.

Since then Indian security forces have been accused of killing a total of 107 people, mostly teenagers and students.

“The ongoing freedom movement will transcend beyond the boundaries of Kashmir if the international community fails to take notice of Indian brutalities against this peaceful struggle,” JuD leader Abdur Rehman Makki said.

He criticised both Islamabad and New Delhi over stalled efforts to resolve the fate of Kashmir.

“There should be only one-point agenda of any talks between the two countries … the Kashmir issue.”

TAK spokesman Shafqat Hussain told a news agency that the new movement wanted to provide a platform to all political and religious parties campaigning for freedom in Kashmir, but stressed it would remain an unarmed organisation.

JuD is blacklisted as a terror group by the UN and considered a front for the armed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group that Washington and New Delhi blamed for the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.