9-yr-old girl gang-raped in Pak 

Lahore: A nine-year-old girl was in a critical condition in hospital after being raped by three men in Pakistans Punjab province,police said.
The girl was taken to a hospital in Bahawalpur after being raped on Wednesday.Doctors said she was in a critical condition due to loss of blood and internal injuries.
A medico-legal report confirmed the rape.Police registered a case against seven people for kidnap and rape.Five of them were named by the girls mother,The Express Tribune said.
The victim had gone missing from her home in Manzoorabad in Rahim Yar Khan on Wednesday morning and later found in a nearly unconscious state in the same area.
Police had been informed that the suspects had fled to another village.
According to the FIR,the student of class two was abducted by three women and a man.She was taken to a dera,where she was raped.The girl was beaten up before she was left in front of her home.The mother said when she was taking her child to the police,one of the kidnappers threatened to kill her if she informed police.PTI

 
UNDER THE GUN: With a strong presence on the ground in Afghanistan,India will be keen to ensure its own red lines about the accommodation of Taliban in a future Afghan government are respected 

Qaida chiefs brother held in Syria 

Kim Sengupta 


The brother of the head of al-Qaida is reported to have been captured by regime forces in Syria.Mohamed al-Zawahiri is said to have been seized in Deraa in the south-west where he was meeting opposition activists.
Rebel fighters insisted Mohamed al-Zawahiri was engaged on a humanitarian mission and had not been involved in violent acts.They also claimed that he had,in fact,proposed a local truce to enable aid to get through.
However the Syrian regime is likely to try to capitalize on Zawahiris presence in the country if indeed they have him under arrest as proof of their repeated charge that the revolution has been taken over by terrorists.Ayman al-Zawahiri,who took over as al-Qaida leader following the killing of Osama bin Laden,has declared that it is the duty of Muslims to take part in a jihad against the pernicious,cancerous regime of Bashar al-Assad and warned the opposition against depending on the West for help.
Jabhat al-Nusra,an Islamist rebel group with links to al-Qaida,has become increasingly powerful in the conflict,overshadowing the more moderate fighters,and its leader,Abu Muhammad al-Julani,is said to be in personal contact with Ayman al-Zawahiri.
There is also evidence of groups of foreign volunteers,albeit not in large numbers,joining the uprising.Mohamed al-Zawahiri has,however,denied in the past that he wanted to get involved in the Syrian struggle.Speaking in Cairo recently,he stated that he had no plans to join the rebellion.
Zawahiri spent 14 years in an Egyptian prison on charges of being involved in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and taking part in terrorist acts.But he has protested his innocence and insisted that he now devotes his time to attempt reconciliation between jihadists and mainstream Islam.
Mohamed al-Zawahari is a former military commander of the Islamic Jihad movement,but has,he has stressed,turned away from violence.He claims to have been a conduit for talks between hardline Salafist groups in the Sinai and the Egypts Muslim Brotherhood government.Last year Zawahiri offered to help in negotiations between the US and Islamists and maintained that his attempts at reconciliation had made him a target for hardline Islamists who have accused him of betraying the cause.
There is no evidence that his offer was taken seriously by the US administration.
The reports of his presence in Syria have come from rebel factions but remain unconfirmed.Deraa,near the Jordanian border,has,however,become a stronghold for Jabhat al-Nusra where its emir,the organization has announced,is Abu Julaybib,a brother-in-law of the the former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq,who was killed in a US air strike in 2006.Jabhat al-Nusra denied reports on Al Jazeera that Abu Julaybib and Julani,who has been described as an emissary of the Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawhari,were killed in fighting in Deraa.THE INDEPENDENT

DREAMS GONE SOUR 
No.of suicides among Indians in Gulf rises 

Daniel P George TNN 

Chennai/Dubai: There are thousands of Indian workers in the Gulf but precious little is being done to address their various problems,including cheating by touts and travel agents and low or unpaid salaries,social workers say.More then 125 Indians,including 75 in the UAE alone,killed themselves in the Gulf countries last year,they add and call upon authorities to rescue hundreds of women from all over India who are locked up in brothels in the gulf.
These facts provide an unpleasant backdrop to the 11Pravasi Bharatiya Divas,the annual jamboree of NRIs,which began in Kochi on Monday.Dubai police figures show that more 70% of all suicides in the UAE in 2011 were committed by Indians.However,the number of suicides among Indians in Dubai and the northern emirates fell from 147 in 2008 to 114 in 2009,110 in 2010,76 in 2011 and 75 in 2012.
C P Mathew of Dubaibased Valley of Love said steps were being taken to help those in trouble but the numbers continued to rise.Many here are without their families.They have none to talk to about their problems and financial pressure from back home adds to their woes, he said.
Mathew added that credit card trap was the biggest killer.
Dr S Irudya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram said,Kerala has the highest suicide rate in the country and this is being carried to the gulf by those going there.According to my study the economic situation,not being paid the promised salary,shattered dreams,failure to cope with stress and lonelinnes are the biggest contributors to suicides.

In Maldives,girl raped by stepdad faces flogging 

Male: A 15-year-old in the Maldives whose stepfather is accused of repeatedly raping her and killing the resulting baby risks being flogged for fornication with another man under the nations strict Islamic law,a police source said on Monday.
In the course of inquiries into the rape case,investigators say they unearthed evidence of the girl having had consensual sex with another man,which is an offence in the Indian Ocean holiday destination,the source said.
Women,including minors,having consensual sex outside marriage can be charged in the Maldives,where convicts can be publicly flogged.Minors receive the punishment when they reach 18,the age of majority.
The childs stepfather is accused by police of repeatedly raping the girl and fathering a child by her which he subsequently murdered.The girls mother has been charged with helping dispose of the infants body,police said.
We completed the investigation (into the murder of the infant) and gave a report to the prosecutor generals office, Maldivian police spokesman Hassan Haneef said.He declined to give details saying that Maldivian common law did not allow the discussion of any case involving a minor.
The local Haveeru newspaper quoted an unnamed official from the prosecutors office saying that the fornication charge was unrelated to the rape which had been separately dealt with.AFP

Malaysia Bar pushes for chemical castration 

Kuala Lumpur: After a South Korean court punished a pedophile with Asias first chemical castration,Malaysias Bar Council has suggested similar treatment should be considered for repeat sex offenders as an alternative form of sentencing.
But,Bar Council president Lim Chee Wee said the available medical studies on the treatment suggested there were serious side effects involved in its use.
Womens Aid Organization executive director Ivy Josiah felt the procedure could be seen as a form of medical treatment,and should only be considered in cases where the offender had no control over his sexual urges.
The vast majority of rapists rape knowingly... and they should be punished as per the existing laws.Only a very,very tiny number of rapists do so because of a condition such as mental illness, Ivy said.PTI

HEINOUS CRIME 
Indian mom in UK gets life for killing son over Quran 

London: An Indian-origin mother,who beat her 7-yearold son to death like a dog for failing to memorize the Quran,was on Monday sentenced to life for killing him and setting his body afire to hide evidence after applying barbeque gel.
A sobbing Sara Ege,33,collapsed and had to be helped from the dock after being told that she would serve 17 years before she could be considered for parole.
Cardiff crown court heard that Sara,a mathematics graduate from India,treated her son Yaseen like a dog when he struggled to memorize passages of the holy book of Islam.
She beat him on the hands and his body until he collapsed on the floor of his bedroom and died in July 2010,the Guardian reported.
She was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice and given a four-year sentence for that crime,the BBC reported.
Her husband Yousuf Ege,a taxi driver,was cleared of allowing the death of a child by failing to protect him.
Sara had pleaded not guilty to murder and claimed her husband was responsible for Yaseens death.While sentencing her,justice Wyn Williams said,I am satisfied that it was his failure to learn the Quran that day that resulted in the beating that caused his death.
On the day of Yaseens death you had kept him home from school so he could devote himself to his study of the Quran.He was memorizing passages but on that day Yaseen must have failed in some way and it was that which was a trigger for the beating. PTI

NGO sends disabled girls to boys hostel as punishment 

Almost All Girls Too Terrorised To Talk,Says Child Rights Panel 

Rageshri Ganguly TNN 

Bhopal: Like lambs sent to the wolves,an NGO entrusted with the welfare of minor girls many of them disabled and mentally weak had been sending them for months to the boys hostel next door in the name of punishment.
The shocking fact,which has just come to light,has both startled and enraged people across Madhya Pradesh where the Sehore-based NGO,Bright Star Social Society,had been running the two hostels for boys and girls.
In raids carried out on Tuesday at the Mandi area of Sehore,which neighbours Bhopal,a team from the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) found that the girls,almost all of whom were too terrorized to talk,would be forced into the boys rooms whenever they made a mistake or complained to officials about the poor facilities they had to live with.
Senior madam would send us to the boys whenever she thought we should be punished for we had done something wrong, one of the girls told the SCPCR officials.We were then made to do dirty things.Often we were thrashed. Another disabled girl was so terrified on being asked by the team what exactly went on there that she broke down and wouldnt utter a word.
More worryingly,SCPCR chairperson Usha Chaturvedi told TOI that apart from gross irregularities in both the hostels,while records showed a total of 48 girls only 30 were present on Tuesday.The rest,18 of them,we were told by secretary (of the NGO) Avanish Jaffery,hadnt turned up since the Diwali vacation, she said.Also,we found that all the 30 girls were stacked up in one room of 11 feet by 11 feet dimension. 
The Sehore district administration has cancelled the licence of the NGO to run the hostels but little action has been taken against the two who were heading operations,Sangeeta and Irshad Jaffery.Questioned about it,district collector Kavindra Kiyawat said directives had been issued to the NGO to vacate the hostel within three days.Kiyawat has for now ruled out sexual abuse of the girls though there is no information on whether they had already been sent for medical examination.SCPCR has asked for a report now and ordered the district project coordinator to trace the missing girls.Meanwhile,during initial interrogation Avanish confessed before the SCPCR team that though he had 15 days ago taken one of the girls to the boys hostel on account of bed wetting,he had not left her with them.I kept the girl with me and my wife, he said.Rajya Shiksha Kendra commissioner Rashmi Arun Shami,along with social justice commissioner B K Batham,also inspected the hostels and spoke to the girls.But calling the incident very sensitive,both refused to divulge any further details about the alarming case.

JJ Act: HC asks govt to respond on lacunae 

New Delhi: Taking a grim view of allegations that lacunae in the Juvenile Justice Act allow hardened criminals to get away,the Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Centre to respond.The HC acted on a PIL seeking annulment of certain provisions in the juvenile law,including those that spare minor convicts from life imprisonment and death penalty.A bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and V K Jain gave time till February 14 to the respondents,the Union ministries of Parliamentary Affairs and Law and Justice.The petitioner lawyer,Shweta Kapoor,told court that various provisions of the Act,including Section 16,require to be held as ultra vires as it prohibits a juvenile above the age of 16 years from being awarded life imprisonment and death penalty.The PIL also highlights the alleged contradiction in various provisions of the Act which allows a juvenile convict to go out of a special home after attaining majority.TNN

Pakistans commando unit behind attack  Brutality Similar To 2000 Strike By Ilyas Kashmiri  Josy Joseph TNN  New Delhi: Nobody wants to be on record,but many seasoned Pakistani watchers within the security establishment are beginning to suspect that Tuesdays attack on Indian soldiers may have been executed by the Special Services Group (SSG),the Pakistan Armys commando unit.Reasons for this presumption are many most important being that the one operation that has most parallels with the attack was a strike of February 2000,which was suspected to be an action by the SSG. I dont have any credible evidence to say for sure,but the way the operation was carried out,the beheading etc point fingers at the SSG, said a senior official in the security establishment.He said it had an uncanny resemblance to the February 27,2000,operation,which was led by Ilyas Kashmiri,the dreaded terrorist commander who was killed in a US drone attack. Though some dispute it,many in the Indian establishment believe Kashmiri was actually a member of the SSG when he carried out the raid.A second group has said that Kashmiri was working in tandem with SSG and not really a member of the commando unit.But all of them agree on Kashmiris SSG training for his Afghan missions and later operations in Kashmir. According to the Army,the Pakistani attackers were wearing black uniforms,which is a standard SSG outfit.Started in 1950s,SSG has had active role in most of the wars with India,and it has also played a key role in the mujahideen war against Russians in Afghanistan through the 1980s. The 2000 raid was on Ashok Listening Post,a remote advance post that had already been identified vulnerable by the commanding officer of 17 Maratha Light Infantry. Seven Indian soldiers were killed,and sepoy Bhausaheb Maruti Talekar (24) was beheaded and his severed head taken back to PoK.Pakistani media has reported that Kashmiri paraded the head before Gen Pervez Musharraf and in the local town. This time the attack came when three soldiers were part of a patrol party,close to LOC,and ahead of the fence.It is possible that the attackers lay in waiting through the night.It is almost a repeat of what happened in 2000, a second Kashmir hand said.He said the attackers were either SSG members or terrorists. However,there are two other probabilities.One,the attack was carried out by regular Pakistani soldiers.Second,it was an action by terrorists with the blessings of the Pakistani Army. Implement plebiscite promise: Omar uncle  J& K chief minister Omar Abdullahs uncle Sheikh Nazir Ahmad has accused the Indian establishment of repeatedly stabbing the Kashmiri leadership in the back while seeking implementation of Jawaharlal Nehrus 1947 plebiscite promise.Ahmad,who is also ruling National Conferences general secretary,said New Delhi had always deceived and backstabbed Kashmiris while addressing his party workers in Srinagar.TNN   Pakistan high commissioner Salman Bashir at external affairs ministry office on Wednesday  GRIM MOMENT: Army personnel carry the coffin of Lance Naik Hemraj at Rajouri on Wednesday

India debunks Pak denials after attack 

Rajat Pandit TNN 

New Delhi: The government may have asked the security forces manning the borders with Pakistan not to further escalate the situation as of now but it has also been made clear that a repeat of such barbaric cross-border action will not be tolerated again militarily as well as diplomatically.
Furious with the Pakistani Army for blatantly flouting norms followed by all civilized and professional armies,the Indian security establishment debunked all denials emanating from Islamabad on Wednesday.
Officials said there was no doubt Pakistan Army regulars wearing black uniforms similar to the commandoes of its elite Special Services Group (SSG) had intruded well into the Mendhar sector of J&K on Tuesday to brutally behead an Indian soldier and try the same with another.
Even as the Indian directorgeneral of military operations (DGMO) Lt-General Vinod Bhatia talked tough to his Pakistani counterpart Major-General Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed on Wednesday morning,defence minister A K Antony said there was clear evidence that regular Pakistani troops had conducted the highly provocative action after sneaking across the Line of Control (LoC).
That it happened there is a reality.The way they treated the dead bodies of the Indian soldiers is inhuman... We are closely following the situation, said Antony,after being briefed by Army chief General Bikram Singh.Lt-Gen Bhatia also lodged a strong protest with his Pakistani counterpart at about 10 am.He told Maj-Gen Ahmed the action conducted by regular troops of the Pakistani Army,during which the bodies of the two Indian soldiers were badly mutilated,was a grave violation of the rules of engagement followed by civilized and professional armies.
Gen Bikram Singh has also briefed national security advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon about the manner in which the Pakistani Army was regularly violating the ceasefire agreement that came into force in November,2003,along the 198-km International Border in J&K,the 778-km LoC and the 150-km Actual Ground Position Line in Siachen to give covering fire to terrorists.

Pak attackers took soldiers head as trophy 

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

New Delhi: The fog of war is a reality even during peace time along the troubled Indo-Pak border.So it is not surprising that Tuesdays gruesome attack on Indian soldiers has slightly different narratives,according to who you speak to.
What is clear is that three soldiers of 13 Rajputana Rifles,the Barasingha battalion,deployed with two others in the Mendhar sector,were together when they were attacked by the Pakistani intruders.The soldiers were close to the LoC,ahead of Indian fencing built several meters inside the LOC.
The Intelligence establishment says the three were returning after manning through the night to an advance post,ahead of the fence,when they were ambushed.They were on their way to the company headquarters around 10.45am when the attack took place.
But Army officials said the three were acting as scouts ahead of the sevenmember area domination patrol when they were ambushed.
All,however,agreethe two Lance Naiks Hemraj and Sudhakar Singhwere killed immediately.The Pakistanis beheaded Hemraj and carried his head back across the border as a trophy and were then were trying to severe Singhs head but failed.
Probably,it was then that the other Indian troops opened fire.
The gun-battle lasted for over 30 minutes.The third soldier,who was injured but escaped a brutal death,is being treated at the military hospital in Udhampur.
The Pakistani attackers took away the personal weapons of both Hemraj and Singh.Some sources indicate there was even hand-to-hand engagement between the two sides,knife injuries on the dead are indicative of that.

Militants in Pak abduct Sikh man,behead him 

Islamabad: A militant group in Pakistans lawless tribal belt beheaded a Sikh man kidnapped over a month ago after accusing him of acting as a spy for a rival outfit,media reports said on Wednesday.
Mohinder Singh,40,was kidnapped from his shop in Tabbai village of Khyber Agency by unidentified armed men on November 20.Singh was a seller of herbal medicines,a trade that is common among Sikhs in northwest Pakistan.
Singh was beheaded on Tuesday and his body was mutilated before it was packed in a sack and dumped at Zakhakhel Bazaar in Khyber Agency,unnamed officials were quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.They said Tawheedul Islam,a militant group,had claimed responsibility for killing Singh.
A note left with the body said Singh had been killed for spying for a rival militant group,the Lashkar-e-Islam.The body was identified by the slain mans brother Daswant Singh.
He said his brothers killing was a cruel act against members of the minority Sikh community.We have no enmity with anyone and have lived peacefully in Khyber Agency for more than six decades, he said.
Daswant said his family had earlier approached the Tauheedul Islam,a pro-government militia of Zakhakhel tribesmen,but it had claimed it did not know the whereabouts of Singh.PTI

 
NO RESPITE: The Pakistani army continued shelling on Indian posts on Sunday as well