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Bizarre Bazaar: 12th Feb 2009
NEW DELHI, India
India’s main Hindu nationalist opposition said it will construct a temple that has been a flashpoint of tension between Hindus and Muslims for years, if the party is voted to power in the coming elections. Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meeting in the western city of Nagpur, said they will build the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The BJP rose to prominence on the back of a Hindu revivalist campaign.
NEW DELHI, India
The Supreme Court has halted the Uttar Pradesh police plan to grant a small-time politician bail so they could subject him to lie detector and brain-mapping tests to ascertain his role in a double murder last year. Former student leader Abhay Singh was charged in connection with the murder of two men in Lucknow on March 31, 2007. The court had refused to allow the police to put Singh to various tests, saying that it violated his fundamental rights.
NEW DELHI, India
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government has come under fire for allegedly fostering anti-immigrant sentiment after an Indian man was brutally beaten and set on fire. Opposition leader Walter Veltroni said the attack was due to “xenophobic preaching and a climate of hate and fear” created by Berlusconi's centre-right administration. The 35-year-old immigrant from Punjab, was attacked while he was sleeping on a bench at a railway station in Nettuno, some 60 kilometres south of Rome.
MOHALI, India
A married woman with a two-year-old daughter allegedly set on fire a former lover who later died in a hospital, the police said. According to police, Meera, 23, was in a relationship with Satish Kumar, 25, a resident of Ambala in Haryana, around 50 km from here. Meera’s husband is in Saudi Arabia where he works with a transport company. The accused doused the victim by sprinkling kerosene on him during a visit, a police official said. The police have arrested Meera.
NEW DELHI, India
A New Delhi high court judge has dismissed an obscenity charge against a married couple in India who kissed in public. Wondering how police could have brought charges against an “expression of love by a young married couple,” Judge S. Muralidhar quashed the criminal proceedings against the 28-year-old man and his 23-year-old wife.
PATIALA, India
Authorities say five babies, all less than a week old, died in Patiala, India, when their incubator caught fire in a hospital maternity ward. Two other babies were seriously injured in the fire, caused by a short circuit in a phototherapy machine used to treat the newborns with a special light, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was deeply grieved by the tragedy and was releasing money from his National Relief Fund to assist the families of the babies.
GUWAHATI, India
Nine big cats have died at Assam’s Kaziranga National Park in the past three months, but wildlife authorities in the state say the tigers were not victims of poachers. “Three died of old age, one each died in cases of infighting, poisoning by local villagers, fights with buffaloes, besides three other decomposed bodies found,” said Assam’s Chief Wildlife Warden M.C. Malakar. The 430 sq km park is home to about 86 Royal Bengal tigers. At present only 1,400 tigers are left in India.
NEW DELHI, India
An accountant charged with hijacking a plane in India allegedly told flight attendants he had infected needles holding a sedative. Jitendra Kumar Mohala, 42, has been ordered held for at least 14 days, The Times of India reported. He allegedly claimed to flight attendants at various times that he was a sky marshal or a pilot before making his boast about the needles. He also allegedly told the crew he knew how to make people bleed to death after a single cut in a nerve.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
A Pakistani militant group linked to Al-Qaeda has claimed it beheaded a Polish engineer kidnapped in 2008 to pressure Islamabad to release detained insurgents. A spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said its men decapitated Piotr Stanczak after the Pakistani government failed to meet the group’s demands. Stanczak was seized on Sept. 28 by armed men who killed his two drivers and bodyguard in northwestern town of Attock.
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