Nagpur: A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrived in Nagpur on Tuesday to conduct a probe into threatening phone calls made to Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, a police official said.
The calls were allegedly made by a murder convict, Jayesh Pujari alias Kantha, who was arrested from a jail in Belagavi, Karnataka, and booked under the anti-terror law UAPA.
A senior official of the Nagpur police said the NIA had registered a case at Bengaluru and the Mumbai unit of the central agency was directed to conduct an investigation.
A team of the NIA arrived in Nagpur from Mumbai and started collecting documents and crucial leads regarding the case, he said.
Exploring the suspected role of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terror outfit, and the underworld in the episode are the main focus of the investigation, said the official.
On January 14, Pujari made a threatening call to Gadkari’s public relations office in Nagpur, demanding Rs 100 crore and claiming to be a member of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, according to the police.
At that time, he was lodged in a jail in neighbouring Karnataka.
He made another call on March 21, threatening to harm the BJP Lok Sabha MP from Nagpur if Rs 10 crore was not paid to him, the police said.
Pujari was arrested and brought to Nagpur on March 28 from a jail in Belagavi city of Karnataka, and the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act was invoked against him.
After receiving the green signal from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, NIA officials launched an investigation on terror angle as Pujari had relations with terrorists, including Lashkar-e-Taiba’s South Division chief Captain Naseer, said the official.
The murder convict had also taken arms training in the North-East, he added.
Srinagar: A 50-year-old man who allegedly consumed poison on being called by police for questioning in connection with last week’s terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch died on Thursday. Mukhtar Hussain Shah, a farmer from Poonch’s Nar village, died by suicide days after being summoned by security agencies for questioning in the Bhata Durian terror attack case, as per his family. While the inquiry order says that the victim consumed poison at his home on Tuesday, April 25, the family dismissed the claim as a “white lie.” Quoting Rafaqat, Mukhtar’s brother, The Wire reported, “We took him to a hospital in Mendhar, and doctors referred us to the Rajouri district hospital on the same day where he passed away on Thursday, April 27 at 12:20 am. I don’t know why they have written these lies.”
Mukhtar left behind a video on his phone where he can be seen speaking incoherently and breaking down multiple times. In the video, Mukhtar alleged that he, his family, and the neighbours were subjected to torture in the aftermath of the Poonch attack. Mukhtar held a small polythene bag containing a bottle of insecticide and claimed that he was taking his life due to the torture faced by his family and neighbours. He also stated that no one was listening to him even though he was telling the truth.
Mukhtar expressed regret over the death of five army soldiers and rejected having any links with militants. He claimed to have worked with the police and the army last year during an encounter in Poonch before he allegedly took his life.
Quoting sources at Rajouri district hospital, where Mukhtar passed away on April 27, The Wire reported that he allegedly consumed some poisonous substance, which is suspected to have caused his death. ‘The exact cause of his death will be known once the post-mortem proceedings are completed,’ the source added. Rafaqat alleged that Mukhtar had ‘bruises’ and ‘black marks’ on his back and thighs’, suggesting that he was tortured in custody. ‘If he has committed any wrong, let the investigators reveal the facts publicly. Why are they trying to hide the truth?’ he said.
The J&K administration has appointed Tahir Mustafa Malik, Additional Deputy Commissioner, Poonch, to conduct an ‘in-depth magisterial inquiry into the incident and circumstances (that) led to the death’ of Mukhtar.”
As news of Mukhtar’s death spread, a pall of gloom descended on the village. Accompanied by neighbours and relatives, Mukhtar’s family, which comprises elderly parents, five brothers, their wives, and children, blocked the Jammu-Poonch national highway between Bhimber Gali and Bhata Durian. The protesters demanded an impartial inquiry into the circumstances that led to Mukhtar’s death, following which the magisterial probe was ordered. During the protest, they were shouting anti-police, anti-administration, pro-army, and pro-India slogans, The Wire reported.
A 2018 Senate investigation that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault against the US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh contained serious omissions, according to new information obtained by the Guardian.
The 28-page report was released by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the then chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. It prominently included an unfounded and unverified claim that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers – a fellow Yale graduate named Deborah Ramirez – was “likely” mistaken when she alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dormitory party because another Yale student was allegedly known for such acts.
The suggestion that Kavanaugh was the victim of mistaken identity was sent to the judiciary committee by a Colorado-based attorney named Joseph C Smith Jr, according to a non-redacted copy of a 2018 email obtained by the Guardian. Smith was a friend and former colleague of the judiciary committee’s then lead counsel, Mike Davis.
Smith was also a member of the Federalist Society, which strongly supported Kavanaugh’s supreme court nomination, and appears to have a professional relationship with the Federalist Society’s co-founder, Leonard Leo, whom he thanked in the acknowledgments of his book Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State.
Smith wrote to Davis in the 29 September 2018 email that he was in a class behind Kavanaugh and Ramirez (who graduated in the class of 1987) and believed Ramirez was likely mistaken in identifying Kavanaugh.
Instead, Smith said it was a fellow classmate named Jack Maxey, who was a member of Kavanaugh’s fraternity, who allegedly had a “reputation” for exposing himself, and had once done so at a party. To back his claim, Smith also attached a photograph of Maxey exposing himself in his fraternity’s 1988 yearbook picture.
The allegation that Ramirez was likely mistaken was included in the Senate committee’s final report even though Maxey – who was described but not named – was not attending Yale at the time of the alleged incident.
In an interview with the Guardian, Maxey confirmed that he was still a senior in high school at the time of the alleged incident, and said he had never been contacted by any of the Republican staffers who were conducting the investigation.
“I was not at Yale,” he said. “I was a senior in high school at the time. I was not in New Haven.” He added: “These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences, ever.”
The revelation raises new questions about apparent efforts to downplay and discredit accusations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh and exclude evidence that supported an alleged victim’s claims.
A new documentary – an early version of which premiered at Sundance in January, but is being updated before its release – contains a never-before-heard recording of another Yale graduate, Max Stier, describing a separate alleged incident in which he said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party at Yale.
It has previously been reported that Stier wanted to tell the FBI anonymously during the confirmation process that he had allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh’s friends push the future judge’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party. While Republicans on the Senate committee were reportedly made aware of his desire to submit information to the FBI, he was not interviewed by the committee’s Republican investigators.
The committee’s final report claimed there was “no verifiable evidence to support” Ramirez’s claim.
It is not clear how the film’s director, Doug Liman, obtained the recording, or whom Stier was speaking to when it was recorded.
Stier, the chief executive of a Washington nonprofit who formerly served in the Clinton administration, declined to comment to the Guardian.
He is married to Florence Pan, a prominent judge on the US court of appeals in Washington. Pan sits in the seat that was vacated by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the US supreme court justice, and is seen as a possible future candidate for the US high court.
Maxey adamantly denied any allegation that he exposed himself to Ramirez at any time. Asked if he had ever visited Yale at the time of the alleged incident, Maxey said he had visited his older brother, Christopher, who was an older student at Yale, on a limited number of occasions when he was a senior in high school, but that they had not attended any freshmen parties.
Maxey, a Republican activist, has gained prominence in conservative circles for his role in sharing a portable hard drive of data from Hunter Biden’s laptop with members of the media, including the Washington Post. When he was reached by the Guardian, Maxey said he was in Europe and claimed he had “just” given the hard drive to Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary.
Maxey has said he obtained the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani. He previously worked as a researcher for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast but the two have since had a falling out.
While Maxey seemed in his interview with the Guardian to have been annoyed that Smith – whom he said he didn’t know or recall interacting with – named him in an accusatory email, he also separately defended Kavanaugh, who he said had behaved like a “choir boy” while attending Yale.
Smith’s email arrived in Davis’s inbox six days after the New Yorker first published details of Ramirez’s accusation. In the article, Ramirez described how Kavanaugh had allegedly exposed himself drunkenly at a dormitory party, thrusting his penis in her face in a way that caused her to touch it without her consent in order to push him away. Ramirez, who was raised as a devout Catholic, described feeling ashamed, humiliated and embarrassed after the alleged assault, and recalled how Kavanaugh had allegedly laughed as he pulled his pants up.
Kavanaugh has denied the incident took place.
Ramirez, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
Smith did not respond to several requests for comment.
It is not clear whether Smith, a Denver-based partner at Bartlit Beck, knew or had a relationship with Kavanaugh while or after both attended Yale as undergraduate students, or what prompted him to send Davis the email, which was an apparent attempt to clear Kavanaugh of suspicion.
According to his online biography, Smith attended the University of Chicago’s law school after graduating from Yale and – like Kavanaugh – was part of the legal team that represented George W Bush in the 2000 presidential recount in Florida.
Redacted emails show that Smith also appears to have shared his accusation about Maxey with federal investigators. While the name of the accuser and the accused were redacted, records released by the FBI show that an individual made the exact same claim as Smith made to Davis to the FBI shortly after the email was sent to Davis. In it, the individual wrote: “I submitted this same information to a staff member of the Senate judiciary committee, Mike Davis, because I know him, and he suggested I also submit it to you.”
Davis declined to comment. The Republican staff on the Senate judiciary committee declined to respond to a request for comment.
The FBI was at the time involved in its own review of sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. The investigation, conducted under FBI director Christopher Wray, another Yale graduate, has widely been derided as a “sham” by Democrats led by the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate judiciary committee.
Whitehouse’s office is expected to release a report into the FBI’s handling of the Kavanaugh investigation by the end of this year.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
It should have been Humza Yousaf’s political honeymoon as first minister. The new leader of the Scottish National party has barely been leading Scotland for a month yet any plans to focus on policy agenda have been thrown into chaos as he firefights questions over a police investigation that has led to the party’s former chief executive Peter Murrell and its ex-treasurer Colin Beattie to be arrested.
As part of the fraud investigation into more than £600,000 donated to the party to help them run an independence campaign, an incident tent was set up in the home Nicola Sturgeon shares with her husband, Murrell, and a motor home seized from outside her mother in law’s house.
With reports that the police are investigating whether the money was spent on items including a motor home – and even a fridge freezer – onlookers have been left wondering how a party that so recently looked all-conquering is unravelling so fast.
The Guardian’s Scotland correspondent, Libby Brooks, explains what the investigation is really about, and tells Hannah Moore, how SNP members feel now. She looks at whether the party’s rapid growth in membership has affected its financial management – and how Yousaf is reacting.
• This article was amended on 27 April 2023 to correct the spelling of Humza Yousaf’s first name.
Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The death toll at a ranch in Kenya owned by a pastor who is accused of leading a religious cult and ordering his followers to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus” has reached 90, as the country’s interior minister announced an expanded operation at the site.
The new figure came after police exhumed 17 more bodies. The total number of those rescued while starving at the ranch now stands at 34. The Kenya Red Cross Society’s latest figure on the number of missing is 213.
Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who heads the Good News International church, is accused of luring his followers to the ranch near the coastal town of Malindi. He allegedly told them to fast until death in order to meet Jesus before burying them in shallow graves spread across his land. He was arrested after police raided the property earlier this month, and he remains in police custody pending a court appearance.
Interior minister Kithure Kindiki said the security team will “upscale search and rescue missions to save as many lives as possible”. “The entire 800-acre (320-hectare) parcel of land that is part of the Shakahola ranch is hereby declared a disturbed area and an operation zone,” Kindiki said while visiting the area.
The minister said there would be a turning point on how the country handles threats caused by religious extremism and was looking into another suspected cult in the same county.
“We have cast the net wider to another religious organisation here in Kilifi. We have opened a formal inquiry on this religious group and we are getting crucial leads that perhaps [this] is a tip of the iceberg,” Kindiki said.
The teams digging at the site have found decomposed bodies buried in mass and single graves marked with a cross.
Some living in mudwalled houses inside the ranch have fled ahead of rescue teams, and it is mostly those who cannot walk or talk who have been rescued so far.
A rescued follower (R) from the forest is supported by a volunteer Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
The Mombasa-based Muslims for Human Rights Group called on the government “to consider the option of using aerial surveillance by use of helicopters to rescue more people and make the process quicker”.
The autopsies on the bodies are set to begin on Thursday with local media reporting that government morgues in Kilifi are filled to capacity.
It is Kenya’s worst recorded case of alleged “cult” deaths.
The pastor had been arrested twice before – in 2019 and March this year – in relation to the deaths of children. Each time, he was released on bond, and both cases are still proceeding through the court system.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Chief Farooq Abdullah.
Srinagar: National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Saturday said security forces should not harass innocent people during their operation against the perpetrators of the Poonch terror attack that killed five Indian Army soldiers.
“They have started operation in Pooch. They should not arrest innocent people. It was their mistake, they should not harass innocent people. It is wrong and it should be avoided, ” Abdullah told reporters after offering Eid prayers at the Hazratbal shrine here.
Five Army personnel were killed and another was seriously injured after their vehicle was attacked by terrorists in Poonch district Thursday. The soldiers were from a Rashtriya Rifles unit deployed for counter-terror operations.
Abdullah also expressed surprise that Eid prayers were not allowed at the Jamia Masjid.
“It is unfortunate that Eid prayers were not allowed at Jamia Masjid. I thought they were allowing the prayers there. The government is saying that situation is peaceful. Then why are they not allowing the prayers,” he said.
The former chief minister said Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who is the chief priest of Kashmir, should have been allowed to take part in the prayers.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of UP police recreated the murder scene in Colvin Hospital, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.
Gangster-turned-politician Atiq and his brother were shot dead amid heavy police security and press persons by three people on April 15 while they were being taken for a medical checkup.
Lovelesh Tiwari, Arun Maurya and Sunny Singh shot the brothers at point-blank range leading to their instant deaths. Their murder was captured on LIVE TV spurring widespread condemnation by opposition parties and raising law and order questions by the Yogi Adityanath-led state government.
The murder led to the suspension of five police officers, including Shahganj police station in-charge Ashwani Kumar Singh, a sub-inspector and three constables.
The state government formed a three-member judicial commission to investigate the killings. The commission, headed by retired Justice Arvind Kumar Tripathi of Allahabad High Court, retired district judge Brijesh Kumar Soni, and retired IPC officer Subesh Kumar Singh, has been asked to submit a report in two months.
On Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh police officials recreated the scene where two men in white kurta-pyjama and a headscarf surrounded by police personnel are being taken to the Colvin Hospital. Just like the day of the murder, they are surrounded by media personnel.
The interaction with the media continues for a few minutes when two men (who were standing nearby) came up to them and opened fire. The two men pretend to lie dead. The whole scene was videographed.
Additional Director General of Police (ADG) Bhanu Bhaskar, Police Commissioner Ramit Sharma and Joint Commissioner of Police Akash Kulhari were present when the scene was being recreated. Police said recreating the crime scene is likely to provide clues in the investigation and on the basis of them the accused can be interrogated.
“It is unfathomable how Ms. Debrow can offer competent and adequate counsel to her client who has been accused of further crimes,” Willis argues in the filing.
It’s the first whisper from Willis about the probe since January, when she described charging decisions in the investigation as “imminent.” Her comments at the time followed the conclusion of a special grand jury’s investigation into Trump and his bid to reverse the election results. While the special grand jury recommended criminal charges against an untold number of people whose identities remain secret, the panel had no power to issue the charges itself. Instead, Willis must present evidence to a traditional grand jury in order to issue formal charges, which may or may not align with the special grand jury’s recommendations.
Willis’ special grand jury probe stretched for nearly a year as she hauled in a slew of figures in Trump’s inner circle, suggesting that her probe went beyond the immediate allegations of potential Georgia election law violations that Trump may have committed. She fought some of those witnesses — from Sen. Lindsey Graham to former chief of staff Mark Meadows to former national security adviser Mike Flynn to Rudy Giuliani — in state and federal courts to secure their testimony. Willis is particularly interested in Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call in which he urged Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to reverse the outcome of the election.
Willis’ concerns about the legal representation of the false electors is not new. She raised an alarm in November that some of them might have different degrees of legal exposure and could be called on to testify against each other or otherwise have interests that would require separate representation. At the time, the judge overseeing the matter, Robert McBurney, permitted 10 of the electors to remain represented by a single attorney. But he agreed to require another, Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer, to get separate representation because his degree of criminal exposure appeared to be greater than the others.
The false electors were a key aspect of Trump’s bid to remain in power, despite losing the 2020 election. By convening a set of pro-Trump electors in several states Trump lost, his allies pointed to the “competing“ slates of electors to argue that Congress or then-Vice President Mike Pence should pick between them on January 6, 2021, when lawmakers met to count electoral votes and finalize the results of the election. The challenges lodged by Trump’s congressional allies failed, and Pence ultimately rejected Trump’s repeated insistence that he had the single-handed authority to halt the certification himself, ending Trump’s last-ditch bid to stay in power.
Many of the false Republican electors were party activists or chairs in those states, and they helped convene the Republican electors in December, when Biden’s certified electors also met to formalize his victory in those states. The false electors in at least five of the Biden-won states — including Georgia — signed certificates claiming that they were the legitimate presidential electors from those states. While many of the false electors have claimed they weren’t told that they were going to become components in Trump’s Jan. 6 plans — only that their actions were necessary to preserve legal challenges — others were more intimately involved with figures in Trump’s inner circle.
Many of them have already been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors probing Trump’s election gambit as well, and dozens of them were subpoenaed by and testified to the Jan. 6 select committee.
Trump has already been indicted in New York for alleged crimes related to hush money payments and covering up an affair just before the 2016 election. But the Fulton County and federal probe may present more acute legal threats in the long run as prosecutors edge closer to final charging decisions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
London: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is being investigated by UK Parliament’s commissioner for standards over a potential breach of rules relating to the declaration of interests, understood to be related to his links to a childcare firm in which his wife is an investor, media reports said on Monday.
The Commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, opened an investigation into the Prime Minister on Thursday last week, an update on the Commissioner’s website said, The Guardian reported.
The entry says only that it relates to paragraph six of the updated code of conduct for MPs, which states they “must always be open and frank in declaring any relevant interest in any proceeding of the house or its committees”.
Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, is listed as a shareholder in Koru Kids, which is among six private childcare providers likely to benefit from a pilot scheme proposed in last month’s budget to incentivise people to become childminders, with 1,200 pounds offered to those who train through the agency, The Guardian reported.
On 28 March, Sunak did not mention his wife’s interest when speaking about the childcare changes before the liaison committee. He was asked by Labour MP Catherine McKinnell whether he had anything to declare. “No, all my disclosures are declared in the normal way,” he told McKinnell.
It later emerged that bosses from the company attended a Downing Street reception hours after Sunak’s committee appearance, The Guardian reported.
It is understood that McKinnell raised the issue with the commissioner.
Sunak does not list his wife’s shareholding on his register of interests as an MP, which MPs are required to update promptly.
Downing Street has argued that this is not necessary, because Sunak cited it on a separate register of ministerial interests. This, however, has not yet been published, as it is still being compiled by the new adviser on ministerial interests, Laurie Magnus, The Guardian reported.
SRINAGAR: The University of Kashmir said on Friday that its Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) investigated the complaint filed by a PhD scholar against her then Supervisor promptly and as per the law, refuting that any “obstruction” was created in the matter.
Referring to a news report on some social media platforms which came into the notice of the University about the instant matter, a KU spokesperson said the University took all steps necessary to address the alleged complaint with promptness and to facilitate the complainant in completion of her PhD degree.
“Upon receiving the alleged complaint from the National Commission for Women, New Delhi, the University referred the matter to its Women’s Empowerment and Grievance Committee without delay. Since the complaint involved allegations of sexual harassment, as well as a complaint about the delay in the complainant’s PhD thesis submission, the matter was also referred to the University’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC),” the spokesperson said in a statement to GNS, adding that the ICC provided the complainant with a fair opportunity to record her statement freely and without fear, and the faculty member against whom the complaint was made was also provided with the same opportunity.
To arrive at a just conclusion, the Committee also contacted the teaching and non-teaching staff at CCAS to record their observations. According to the complainant’s recorded statement before the ICC, she alleged that she was harassed in 2016 while she was preparing her synopsis and had not yet registered for her PhD,” the spokesperson said.
“However, she did not file a complaint with the authorities until December 2019 i.e. a gap of almost three years. As per the provisions of UGC (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment of Women Employees and Students in HEIs) Regulations, 2015, an aggrieved person/complainant can file a written complaint within three months of the incident. However despite this time lapse, the ICC went ahead with the investigating the complaint and subsequently submitted its report to the competent authority,” the spokesperson said, adding that the ICC’s report concluded, among other things, that the complaint was a result of “animosity resulting from non-compatibility between the scholar and the supervisor.”
“In view of the non-compatibility, a Co-Supervisor was nominated by the University to Co-supervise the complainant’s PhD and undertake all the process including evaluation/examination, academic clearance, formulation of panel of examiners, supervisor’s report, viva-voce, and any other necessary formalities. The co-supervisor, from the Department of Sociology, was also authorised to assess and examine the thesis of the complainant and undertake all other formalities leading to the award of the PhD degree.”
The PhD degree was subsequently awarded to the complainant on 12.12.2022.
The University strongly denies any obstruction of action in the matter at hand. The University reiterates that it is fully committed to address any complaints related to sexual harassment and it recognises the importance of handling such complaints with utmost sensitivity. We are deeply committed to creating a fully secure academic institution/workplace for our students and women employees in all our campuses, and we will continue to ensure that complaints related to sexual harassment are handled in a timely, just and fair manner,” the spokesperson said.
The allegation that the University delayed action in the matter is far from the truth and is strongly refuted. “The University reserves the right to take appropriate legal action in case of furnishing wrong information since it involves the prestige and reputation of the institution,” the spokesperson said. (GNS)
