Bus collides with truck in India, killing 11

Police say a bus has collided with a truck in northern India, killing 11 people including seven members of a wedding party.

Police officer S.K. Awasthi says 30 other people were injured in the accident Tuesday and were hospitalized near Kanpur, 220 kilometers (135 miles) south of New Delhi.He said the wedding party was traveling in the truck, but the bride and bridegroom were traveling separately.The cause of the accident was not immediately known.India has the world’s deadliest roads, with more than 110,000 people killed each year. Most accidents are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and aging vehicles. – KhaleejNews

Another scandal in Indian Navy

New Delhi: Barely a month after wife-swapping-nights scandal in the Indian navy, a naval officer’s wife has now accused her husband of forcing her to have sex with his colleagues, Indian media reported on Wednesday.

In the latest case, the wife of a lieutenant commander (equivalent to the rank of an army major) has complained to Indian defence minister AK Antony that her husband forced her to consume alcohol and get “sexually involved” with fellow officers. Antony ordered a probe against the officer posted at the Naval Ship Repair Yard (NSRY) at Karwar in Karnataka.

The latest controversy erupted on a day Antony told top naval commanders to take “sternest possible action” against officers tarnishing the image of the navy.The woman is understood to have alleged that her husband threatened to upload her nude photographs on the internet to ruin her social image if she complained to anyone. The woman has left her husband and moved in with her parents.

However, navy sources said the woman had made no mention of these allegations in a letter, dated April 26, to the naval headquarters. A source said she had only levelled allegations of harassment and sought divorce.”The new allegations appear to be an afterthought to sensationalise a case of marital discord,” he said. There have been a string of such cases in the navy lately.

In early April, the lieutenant’s wife had alleged that wife-swapping was prevalent in the navy and she was molested by her husband’s superiors. Since the changes made by the lady were of a serious nature, Antony immediately ordered the navy to submit a report.The navy had then too claimed that it was a case of marital discord going horribly wrong.Two naval officers were dismissed last month — a commander (lieutenant colonel-equivalent) for sending lewd texts to women and a lieutenant commander (major-rank equivalent) for entering into an illicit relationship with the wife of a superior.

Two years back, Antony had sacked a commodore (brigadier-equivalent) for having sexual relations with a Russian woman in Moscow.Commodore Sukhjinder Singh was posted in Moscow from 2005 to 2007 as the Indian warship production superintendent to oversee aircraft carrier Gorshkov’s refit when he developed the illicit relationship. – OnlineNews

Over 18,000 Indians want to leave Saudi Arabia, seek emergency certificate

HYDERABAD/NEW DELHI: India could witness large-scale reverse migration in the coming months as the three-month grace period given by the Saudi Arabian government for implementation of the Nitaqat law comes to an end soon.

Over 18,000 Indians have already approached the Indian Embassy in Riyadh seeking an Emergency Certificate (EC) to leave Saudi Arabia amid concerns about possible job losses. The Indian workers have applied for issuance of EC to leave the country as they had given their passports to the sponsors, overseas Indian affairs minister Vayalar Ravi told Parliament on Wednesday.

Over two million Indians, including many from Hyderabad’s Old City localities, are currently working in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government was implementing the Nitaqat law to cut unemployment in the country mandating that one Saudi national be employed for every 10 expatriate workers.There has been widespread perception that the new policy will lead to denial of job opportunities for a large number of Indians working there.

Ravi said as per the Indian Mission in Riyadh, the increase in the number of applications seeking the EC was due to Saudi authorities’ campaign against foreign workers staying in the country without fulfilling laid down conditions and not due to Nitaqat. “This drive affects not only illegal workers from India, but also from all countries where immigrant workers have come to Saudi Arabia,” he said.

A delegation led by Ravi had visited the Gulf nation two weeks ago during which it expressed India’s concern about the Nitaqat law. During the talks, both the sides had agreed to set up a joint working group to address “all immediate problems” facing the Indian community including issues related to overstaying Indian workers and the new labour law.Ravi said government has waived the fee of seven Saudi riyals for contribution to the Indian Community Welfare Fund by those who applied for the EC and even asked the Embassy to bear processing cost of 40 Saudi riyals (Rs 600) per application.

He said government has asked the Mission to provide temporary accommodation and food to the needy Indians in Saudi Arabia.More than 200,000 foreigners have been deported from Saudi Arabia over the past few months as part of labour market reforms aimed at putting more Saudi nationals into private sector jobs, where they now make up only a tenth of the workforce.The joint group also discussed re-employment of those overstaying Indian workers in Saudi Arabia by availing the facilities offered by the ministry of labour, including services of the newly set up mega-recruiting companies. – TOI

Air India pilots suspended for leaving cabin crew in charge of plane while they slept in business class

Two Air India pilots have been suspended after reporting to leave a plane on autopilot in the hands of cabin crew while they slept in business class.

The pilots left the cockpit for 40 minutes while they had a nap, leaving two flight attendants in charge of flying the plane who accidentally turned off the autopilot, The Times of India reports.The two pilots are reported to have rushed back from their seats to steer the plane back to safety once they realised the auto-pilot had been turned off.An Air India source said the crew members’ actions “made a mockery of air safety”.

“It is standard procedure to ensure the presence of a second person in the cockpit if the pilot is not able to operate the aircraft. But what actually happened after this made a mockery of air safety,” the source told The Times of India.The four crew members on the Bangkok to Delhi flight have been suspended, and Air India has admitted in a statement today that there was “over stay of the cabin crew in the cockpit”.

However, it claims it was the co-pilot not the cabin crew who switched off the auto-pilot, saying “due to distraction, the co-pilot touched the auto pilot disconnect button momentarily. But the same was connected back.”An inquiry about the incident is now being conducted by India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGVA). Arun Mishra, director general of DGVA, said: “Following a safety violation, the airline has already suspended the people in question. We are conducting an inquiry into the matter.” – TheIndependent

India fumes after farmer jailed for spying dies in Pakistan

India reacted furiously to Thursday’s death in a Pakistani jail of an Indian farmer convicted of spying who was badly beaten last week by fellow inmates, the latest incident to strain relations between the neighbours.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the partition of British-ruled India in 1947, although they began a peace process in 2004. They remain deeply suspicious of each other.Sarabjit Singh was arrested in Pakistan in 1991 and sentenced to death for spying and carrying out four bomb blasts that killed 14 people. His family says he was an innocent farmer who was arrested after drunkenly wandering over the border.

Singh was hospitalized with a head injury on Saturday after two fellow prisoners attacked him in jail in the eastern city of Lahore. India’s government and his family had pleaded with Pakistan to let him return to India for treatment.“The criminals responsible for the barbaric and murderous attack on him must be brought to justice,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement.“It is particularly regrettable that the government of Pakistan did not heed the pleas of the government of India, Sarabjit’s family and of civil society in India and Pakistan to take a humanitarian view of this case.”

Pakistan said it provided the best treatment for Singh, who it said had been comatose and on a ventilator following injuries sustained during a “scuffle” with fellow inmates.“A sustainable and long lasting relationship between two countries has to be between people. That relation has been hurt by what has happened today,” Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told reporters.The latest flare-up follows an outbreak of violence in the disputed territory of Kashmir in January, where two Pakistani and two Indian soldiers were killed. It was the worst clash there since India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire nearly a decade ago, leading to angry reactions from both sides.

Indian opposition parties and Sarabjit Singh’s family came down hard on the government for being too soft with Pakistan. Parliament was adjourned for two hours after MPs shouted anti-Pakistan slogans.“(The) centre is unable to give a strong answer to Pakistan’s inhuman acts. Beheading of our soldiers and now Sarabjit’s death are 2 recent examples,” Narendra Modi, a fiery nationalist opposition leader widely tipped as a prime ministerial candidate, wrote on Twitter.

Despite the recent strains, India and Pakistan’s relations have improved after nose-diving in 2008 when gunmen killed 166 people in Mumbai in a three-day rampage that India blamed on a Pakistani militant group. Last year, India hanged a Pakistani citizen convicted of taking part in that attack. – KahleejNews

‘Critically injured’ Indian spy Sarabjit passes away

LAHORE: Sarabjit Singh, an Indian spy convicted of carrying out multiple bombings in Pakistan, passed away at Jinnah Hospital late on Wednesday night.

Sarabjit was critically injured in a brawl with two fellow inmates at Kot Lakhpat Jail a couple of days ago. He was imprisoned in Pakistan since 1990. The spy breathed his last just as his family returned to India via the Wagah Border earlier in the day after doctors told them that Sarabjit was “brain dead”.A visibly distraught Sarabjit’s sister Dalbir Kaur told reporters at Wagah border that she was returning to India to take care of Sarabjit’s children. She demanded that Pakistan should hold an enquiry as to how Sarabjit’s security was compromised and he was subsequently attacked with bricks and iron rods.

“If the attack was planned by the government itself then there is no need for an enquiry. But if Sarabjit was attacked without the knowledge of the authorities then an enquiry is definitely needed.”In a meeting with the Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary on Wednesday, the Indian High Commissioner had requested that Sarabjit Singh be immediately released on “humanitarian and sympathetic” grounds.

India also proposed that Pakistan could also send Sarabjit to a third country for medical treatment.“We are concerned at the condition of Sarabjit Singh indicated by reports made available by doctors treating him in Jinnah Hospital,” a statement issued by the Indian External Affairs Ministry had said. – PT

Air travel to cost more as airlines freed to charge extra for services

NEW DELHI: Air travel is all set to cost more as Indian carriers — like their foreign counterparts — are now free to charge passengers extra for almost every service.

The aviation ministry on Monday allowed airlines to ‘unbundle’ services —meaning charge extra for blocking seats in advance, check-in baggage, and carrying sports and musical equipment or high value baggage. The list of items allowed for extra charge by aviation minister Ajit Singh will be reviewed in six months.

Fallout of this order could be reduced free check-in weight. Domestic flyers are presently allowed to check-in 20 kg and airlines have been planning to reduce this to 15 kg. Airlines have been planning to hike excess baggage charge too, which means a double whammy for flyers.While almost all low cost carriers (LCC) and some full service ones were in favour of reducing free baggage limit, they were waiting for DGCA to first allow pre-booking of seat charges.

Airlines have now been allowed to allow economy class passengers use their lounges for a fee apart from the common practice of onboard sale of food and beverages, except drinking water in cups (not the bottled variety) which has to be given free. Airlines are going to almost immediately start charging for pre-booking of seats as they had started doing so about three years backed and were stopped by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in early 2012. They had then petitioned the DGCA to be allowed to resume charges for this facility. After keeping the global example in mind, the regulator is learnt to have permitted this charge.

“Our application for resuming pre-booking seat charges was lying with aviation authorities for years. When AirAsia’s application for starting an airline here was cleared, we knew the move will get a push as foreign LCCs are famous for unbundling services and charging extra for everything. AirAsia on its international flights does not allow any free check-in baggage. Now the global LCC model will truly come to India,” said an airline official, emphasizing that all carriers need to boost their ancillary revenues to keep base fares competitive.

An aviation ministry statement said unbundling services and charging for them extra “has become a necessary aspect of exercising more control over operational costs and running a successful airline.”The ministry has asked airlines to have fixed charge for services and not change them like airfares for different flights. The DGCA shall monitor the charges. Airlines will have to file details of services to be unbundled and their charges to the DGCA. – TOI

Indians rank high on stealing from hotel rooms

CHENNAI: The Chinese admit to nicking knick-knacks such as lamps and artwork. The Italians prefer to loot linen, while most Indians make off with magazines.

According to a report by online accommodation booking service Hotels.com, released in April, a third of 8,600 travellers surveyed from 29 countries admit to having taken “a little souvenir” from a hotel room (excluding toiletries, which, from what hotel staff say, is inevitable).The survey results put Danish travellers on top as exceptionally honest, with only 12% admitting to pocketing something from a hotel room. Indian travellers feature at number 27, with 38% admitting to leaving with something, the most preferred item being books and magazines.

Prakash Chandran, GM, Ramada Chennai, who has worked in hotels across the globe, says pilferage from hotels, or ‘hotel kleptomania’ as it is sometimes termed, varies by country. “In Africa, it was the cutlery that usually went missing. When I worked in the Gulf, I found that guests would dismantle lampshades and pack them up. In China and Hong Kong, alarm clocks would go missing,” says Chandran. He’s even had cases of artwork going missing from the corridors and TV sets beings packed up before check-out. “In Chennai, we find mugs usually go missing,” he says.

Hotel staff have found different ways to deal with pilferage. At Raintree Hotel, for instance, the policy is to never question the guest. Rajesh Gopalakrishnan, GM, Raintree Chennai, says pens and hand towels usually disappear but the hotel policy is to not charge the guest for it. “We consider it part of the cost of business,” he says. Ramada has stamped its logo on every item and has begun giving away complimentary mugs with the hotel logo. “We are trying to be proactive. Why wait for the mugs to be taken? We just give it to guests instead,” says Chandran. The Hilton group of hotels allows guests to buy products provided in the rooms, from the trademarked mattresses to toiletries and pillows, from its website.

Hotel kleptomania, say psychologists, comes under the larger spectrum of kleptomania, a medical disorder, which is the irresistible urge to steal things one normally does not need, and which usually has little value. Like millionaire American actor Dustin Hoffman, for instance, who, in a television interview, admitted to stealing towels and bathmats from hotels.

“Kleptomaniacs never need what they have taken but are addicted to the rush that stealing gives them. It is a type of addictive behaviour,” says psychologist Saras Bhaskar. “Someone who takes away little items like toiletries may not be a kleptomaniac. People may justify it by telling themselves that they are paying for it when they rent the room. One needs to see if the urge to steal becomes greater and more frequent in which case counseling may be needed,” she says. – TOI

Thirteen injured in India Bangalore blast

Thirteen people including eight policemen have been injured in an explosion near the office of a political party in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police have said.

Police said the blast could have originated from a motorcycle parked near an office of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP )party.The blast happened in the Malleshwaram area of Bangalore.It took place weeks ahead of key elections in Karnataka state.
The BJP runs the government of the state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital.TV pictures showed a few destroyed vehicles at the site of the explosion.

Eyewitnesses said it was a “big explosion which shook some nearby buildings”.Bangalore police chief Raghavendra Auradkar told reporters that the injured had been taken to a hospital, where two people were in a serious condition.”It was definitely a explosion. What kind of explosion I can’t say at this stage. We initially thought it was a gas cylinder explosion. [Now] we believe it is a motorcycle blast – a motorcycle [has been] destroyed,” he said.A spokesman of the BJP said he heard a “huge sound” when he was working in the party office.

“We found two or three vehicles on fire. Some people were lying on the ground injured. We thought it was a gas cylinder explosion,” S Prakash told the NDTV news channel.Federal junior Home Minister RPN Singh said investigators were “looking at all possibilities” and asked people not to “give credence to rumours”.Seventeen people died and more than 100 people were injured in twin explosions in the Indian city of Hyderabad in February.The bombs had been planted on bicycles 150m (500ft) apart near a crowded fruit market.It was the first major bomb attack in India since a September 2011 blast outside Delhi’s High Court killed 13 people. – BBC

Teenager exposes India’s ‘one month wives’ sex tourism

NEW DELHI: A 17-year-old girl has exposed the scale of Islamic sex tourism in India where Muslim men from the Middle East and Africa are buying ‘one month wives’ for sex.

Campaigners for Muslim women’s rights said while short term ‘contract marriages’ were illegal in India and forbidden in Islam, they were increasing in Hyderabad, in southern India, where wealthy foreigners, local agents and Qazis – government-appointed Muslim priests – are exploiting poverty among the city’s Muslim families.The victim, Nausheen Tobassum, revealed the scale of the problem when she escaped from her home last month after her parents pressurised her to consummate a forced marriage to a middle-aged Sudanese man who had paid around £1,200 for her to be his ‘wife’ for four weeks.

She told police she had been taken by her aunt to a hotel where she and three other teenage girls were introduced to a Sudanese oil company executive. The ‘groom’, Usama Ibrahim Mohammed, 44 and married with two children in Khartoum, later arrived at her home where a Qazi performed a wedding ceremony.According to Inspector Vijay Kumar he had paid 100,000 Rupees (around £1,200) to the girl’s aunt Mumtaz Begum, who in turn paid 70,000 Rupees to her parents, 5,000 Rupees to the Qazi, 5,000 Rupees to an Urdu translator and kept 20,000 Rupees herself. The wedding certificate came with a ‘Talaknama’ which fixed the terms of the divorce at the end of the groom’s holiday.

“The next day he came to the house of the victim girl and asked her to participate in sex but she refused. She is a young girl and the groom is older than her father,” Inspector Kumar told The Telegraph.Her parents reassured him they would persuade their daughter and told her she would be punished if she did not. Instead she ran out of their tiny one room home in Hyderabad’s Moghulpuri neighbourhood and was rescued by a police patrol. The police arrested the groom, the victim’s aunt and the Qazi, and issued a warrant for her parents’ arrest – Nausheen is a minor under Indian law and cannot marry until she reaches 18. Her parents are now in hiding but will be charged with arranging a child marriage, ‘outraging the modesty’ of a woman, and criminal conspiracy.

Inspector Kumar said there are dozens of illegal short term contract marriages in the city, and that the Sudanese man they arrested had come to Hyderabad after a friend in Khartoum told him he had taken a ’40 day wife’ during an earlier visit.”If a Sudanese wants to have sex, he has to pay three times more [in Sudan] because there are far fewer girls there, or he takes a second wife. In India the girls are coming for a cheaper rate and they are beautiful. Even if they are only staying for a few days they are doing this kind of illegal marriages for sex,” he said.

He said the visitors want to marry because they believe prostitution is forbidden under Islam. Poor families agree to contract marriages because they have many daughters and cannot afford to pay for all their weddings.Instead, they have a series of one-month contract ‘marriages’ to fund their own genuine wedding.Shiraz Amina Khan of Hyderabad’s Women and Child Welfare Society, said there were up to 15 ‘contract marriages’ in the city every month and that the number is rising.”They come to Hyderabad because it has maximum downtrodden families. Thirty to forty per cent of families are going for the option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be stopped,” she said.

Nausheen Tobassum, who is now living in a government home for girls said in an interview before she was placed in care, that she had filed a complaint to stop the same thing happening to other girls.”I didn’t know what was happening and I agreed in ignorance. They forced me. They changed my date of birth certificate and made a fake one, where I was shown as 24 years old. They exploit girls and that’s why I went to police. I had to show courage to go to police against my parents. I don’t want to go back to my home, I am scared,” she said. – PT