Traced to Goa, Nazi war criminal tried to enter Karnataka, arrested on way and flown to Berlin

An 88-year-old Nazi war criminal identified as Johann Bach was airlifted to Berlin yesterday after he was tracked down to the Goa-Karnataka border by German and Indian intelligence agencies on the basis of information provided by an Israeli group involved in the search for war criminals and investigations in Goa.

Though local police and intelligence agencies in Karnataka said they were “unaware” of the operation, Karnataka Additional DGP for Intelligence, Shankar Bidari, said his office had received information of the arrest on Saturday morning. He also said the alleged war criminal had been moved to Germany.

Officials at the German embassy, when contacted, said they had received no information of the arrest in Goa. The German consulate in Mumbai had also not received any information, embassy officials said.

Reports from Hubli and Goa quoting a press release issued by Perus Narkp, said to be the intelligence wing of the Berlin-based German Chancellor’s Core, said Bach had been involved in the killing of nearly 12,000 Jews at the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp in East Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Bach has been identified as an absconding Waffen SS (Schutzstaffel) Colonel. He has also been identified as a senior adjutant at the East Berlin concentration camp.

Bach had been on the run over the last 50 years, hopping across countries like Argentina, Bulgaria, Yemen and Canada before arriving in Goa around five months ago. He had been under surveillance after people involved in the search for listed Nazi war criminals traced his location to Bardez in Goa, the Karnataka intelligence official said.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

State Bank of India hikes lending rates 0.5%, others waiting to follow

Banks have started hiking lending rates following the Reserve Bank move to raise the cash reserve ratio (CRR) and repo rate by 0.50 per cent each in a bid to rein in inflation. State Bank of India, India’s largest commercial bank, announced a hike in its benchmark prime lending rate by 0.50 per cent to 12.75 per cent with effect from Friday.

Union Bank of India (UBI) has raised its benchmark prime lending rate by 50 basis points to 13.25 per cent. The new rate will be effective from July 1. Other banks have already indicated that they would be raising the rates in the next few days.

According to SBI, the revision will be applicable to all PLR-related lendings and the bank was only restoring its benchmark rates. This means loans (including home, auto and personal) which are linked to PLR would move up. Usually, floating rates on home loans are linked to the benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR). ICICI Bank and HDFC — two leading players in the home loan segment — are expected to take a decision within one or two days.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Malaysia probes charge its players tanked India match

Unnamed Malaysian hockey players have been accused by their own governing body of fixing a match against India in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup at Ipoh last month.

The Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) has lodged a police complaint after Malay Mail published a report that several players had placed online bets on Malaysia losing the last round-robin game against India on May 17. India won the match 2-1 on their way to the final of the tournament where they lost to Argentina. Since October 2003, India have played Malaysia ten times, winning seven matches and drawing one.

The Malay Mail report has also been taken note of by the International Hockey Federation (FIH).

The Indians have strongly denied any involvement of their players in the alleged match fixing episode. Mohammad Aslam, convenor of the Indian Olympic Association ad-hoc committee running Indian hockey, said it was Malaysia’s internal matter.

“As far as we are concerned, neither our players nor our officials are involved. Our boys won the game playing good hockey. The allegations are against the Malaysian players and their federation has ordered a probe,” Aslam told The Indian Express from Hyderabad where India is preparing for the Asia Cup junior hockey tournament.

Indian coach A K Bansal said he felt the Malaysians had “played their hearts out” in the match. “From what I recall, the body language of the Malaysian players didn’t indicate that they were playing to lose the match. We dominated the proceedings and were leading 2-0 before conceding a late penalty-corner goal when the match was almost over,” Bansal said.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Wake up to Equated Monthly Installment nightmare

The stage is now set for an across-the-board rise in interest rates with the Reserve Bank of India hiking both the cash reserve ratio (CRR) and repo rate by a steep 50 basis points to rein in prices and keep inflationary expectations at bay.

While new borrowers — be it for car, home or personal loans — will find it more expensive, existing borrowers of home loans at floating rates will have to live with extended tenures or higher monthly installments.

Commercial banks are expected to hike interest rates in the coming days to adjust the RBI move that has come four days after inflation hit double digits and touched 11.05 per cent last Friday, most of the rise coming due to higher fuel prices.

Repo rate — the rate at which the RBI lends funds to banks — has gone up from 8 per cent to 8.50 per cent, the highest in six years. CRR — the portion of deposits to be maintained by banks with the RBI — is being increased from 8.25 per cent to 8.75 per cent in two stages, sucking out another Rs 20,000 crore from the banking system.

The RBI steps are aimed at bringing down inflationary expectations by cutting down liquidity and increasing the cost of funds to all — banks and borrowers. The objective clearly is to curb credit and stem money supply that have grown more than the central bank’s indicative projections.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Kanpur Bhartiya Janata Party edit: Atal out of Advani rally posters, then back in

Atal Bihari Vajpayee has just been sighted in and around Kanpur.

After the Uttar Pradesh BJP gave the former Prime Minister a complete go-by in the run-up to prime ministerial candidate L K Advani’s June 27 rally, the local leadership, in a belated move, has started erecting hoardings with Atal’s pictures.

“This (hoardings without Atal’s pictures) is just not acceptable. It was the responsibility of the state BJP unit. They will have to include Ataljee’s pictures,” said a leader, close to Advani, when asked. Last week, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Ramapati Ram Tripathi had an ingenuous explanation to offer: “Ataljee hamare hriday mein baste hain” (Atal resides in our hearts). On Saturday, he told this paper that the hoardings did carry Atal pictures.

The new cutouts, with Atal inscriptions, are embellished with a catchy slogan: “Ataljee ka yeh sandesh, Advani ko saupon desh (Atal’s message — give the reins of the country to Advani)”.

For a party that has turned sloganeering into an art, the message may just be apt. When Vajpayee became Bharatiya Jana Sangh president upon the death of Deendayal Upadhyaya, writes Advani in his memoirs, one slogan that fired the imagination of the party workers was “andhere mein ek chingari, atal bihari atal bihari (Atal is the only ray of hope in this darkness).

To read the full article, click here....
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Northernmost settlement to get a new resident - India

Three decades after it set up base in Antarctica, India will have a home on the other extreme of the globe when a permanent research station is inaugurated in the Arctic later this month.

This research station is being set up tantalisingly close to the North Pole, at Ny-Alesund, on the west coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. Just 1,200 km from the North Pole, Ny-Alesund is the northernmost permanent human settlement on the globe, comprising scientists carrying out research in one of the most pristine environments on earth.

The research base, which will be inaugurated by Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal during an international symposium being organised in Ny-Alesund from June 30 to July 2, is being set up by the Goa-based National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCOAR).

India’s research team will carry out a number of experiments in the region, most notably on issues related to climate change.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Research and Analysis Wing ‘censures’ Jt Secy for letting wife work with World Bank ‘without approval’

The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, has “censured” a senior official for alleged “breach of discipline” after he let his wife continue working for World Bank despite being asked not to do so.

The censure came after an inquiry by RAW alleged that Jayadev Ranade, a joint secretary in the organization, was guilty of breach of discipline while holding a sensitive position. Following the censure, Ranade has applied for voluntary retirement from RAW. His case is being processed.

As per the inquiry, sources said, Jayadev was posted in Washington on a three-year tenure beginning 2001. His wife Vinita was employed with the World Bank on a short-term contract in Washington. RAW rules require its officials to take the consent of the organization before allowing their spouses to take any employment outside the country. While RAW permitted Vinita to work till June 2004, it refused permission for further extension of contract on the grounds that since Jayadev’s tenure was ending later that year and he was coming back to India, his wife could not be allowed to stay back in Washington.

Sources said that according to the inquiry, despite this refusal, Vinita renewed her contract. While she did come back to India with her husband in November 2004, she sought permission in the first quarter of 2005 to travel to the US to complete some unfinished work in Washington. That permission was turned down.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Is it end-deal?

What the Congress kept delaying finally happened today: its moment of reckoning has come, after the Left made it clear it would not let the Government go to Vienna to confirm the safeguards agreement, the key first piece in the operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The party’s top brass went into a huddle at 10, Janpath faced with perhaps the toughest choice since they took charge four years ago: give in to the Left and freeze the Indo-US nuclear deal to keep the government alive and a line with the Left open in an election year or seize the historic opportunity and stamp the party’s commitment to the “national interest.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who spoke to Congress President Sonia Gandhi on the phone, was learnt to have argued in favour of going ahead with the deal after the Left issued a statement that it was of the “firm opinion” that “the government should not proceed to seek approval of the text of the India-specific safeguards agreement from the Board of Directors of the IAEA.”

This Left statement came a few hours after the government deferred today’s UPA-Left meeting to June 25 as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s discussions with CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Monday and Tuesday failed to make any headway. The Left also said it did not get the full text of the agreement.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Rajasthan agrees to 4% special Gurjjar quota

The standoff between Gurjjars agitating for Scheduled Tribe status and the Rajasthan government ended today after the state agreed to provide 4 per cent reservation to the Gurjjar community under a special category. The state also agreed not to raise any objection to the mention of the Gurjjar tribe in the list of 23 caste/tribes sent by the Centre in December 1999, asking Rajasthan if it had any objection to the list under consideration for SC/ST reservation.

The Rajasthan government, sources said, has not agreed to make any specific recommendation of ST status for the Gurjjars but will not stand in the way of a list compiled by the Centre. Incidentally, the list is a compilation of castes and tribes recommended or forwarded by the state from time to time until 1999 for consideration of reservation.

The final announcement of the agreement will be made by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje tomorrow morning. She will make the “solution publicly known”. A senior Rajasthan BJP leader, part of the group representing the state government in talks, said that “the OBC and ST quotas might not be touched at all”.

Gurjjar leader K S Bainsla told The Indian Express: “The talks have been successful and a formal announcement will be made tomorrow morning. All I can say is that the Gurjjars have succeeded in getting a historical breakthrough.”

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Rajdhanis, Shatabdis ‘popular’ trains, so fare cut is cut

Of the 830 pairs of trains being operated on the Railways network, 544 pairs have now been classified as “popular trains” by the Railways Ministry.

While it may not mean much to unsuspecting passengers, this move by Rail Bhavan has ensured that fare reductions on AC-I and AC-II tier classes of travel, as mentioned in this year’s Rail Budget, are available on just 286 pairs of Mail and Express trains and have been halved on 65 per cent of total trains running.

Ministry officials said that trains having an occupancy level of 60 per cent and above were classified as “popular”.

This latest revision of the list of popular trains has meant an addition of 111 pairs of trains to the category as compared to last year, effectively reducing the number of trains which will actually offer the reduced AC-I and AC-II fares in their totality.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Rupees 450 per day, 4 to a room, players cook to cut hotel bill: National Football in Indian Premier League season

Even as the country struggles to recover from the Indian Premier League hangover, and before players begin to wonder if they are eligible for a share of Texan billionaire Allen Stanford’s English pie, here’s a slice of reality from Indian sports.

The Santosh Trophy, the country’s premier national-level football tournament which ended in Srinagar today with Punjab beating Services 1-0 in the final, was replete with battles of the football kind but it was not just the final score that had players worried.

The daily allowance handed out by the All India Football Federation was Rs 450 a day per player, including boarding and lodging. And teams, obviously, had to do things the hard way.

The Karnataka team checked into the Saleem Guest House on Dal Gate where each room is priced Rs 1,000 per day. “We had to take five rooms for the whole squad, four players to one room,” said Karnataka manager Aslam Khan. “If the boys want to get their laundry done in the hotel, they have to pay for it themselves. Even then the costs go over and above what we are given by the AIFF.” The state association provided each player an additional Rs 100 a day as pocket money.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Some infiltrators from across border, no one is complaining

These are cross-border infiltrators the country shouldn’t mind having. Haldwani in Uttarakhand and the Terai belt in Uttar Pradesh have been receiving guests from neighbouring Nepal—the critically endangered Indian one-horned Rhinoceros.

Even as the Kaziranga National park reels under a spate of rhino poaching, the Indo-Nepal border has proved itself to be a valuable corridor for the Indian one-horned rhinoceros. Rhinos have been crossing over from Nepal’s Bardia and Shukla Phanta Wildlife reserve park towards the Lagga Bagga forests and the Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh.

And last month, a rhino from Nepal was found in Haldwani. It’s almost like a trip down history: it was rhinos from Nepal which formed part of the parent stock for the first-ever rhino trans location done in Duhwad National Park in Uttar Pradesh in 1984. Wildlife experts say that this is just the right time for allowing co-mingling of the Indian and Nepali rhinos to augment population of this rare animal.

To read the full article , click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Rising on a Tawang peak overlooking Tibet: 80-feet statue of the female Buddha

At the centre of a boundary dispute between India and China, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh is now gearing for the installation of a 80-feet high statue of Tara — the female Buddha, typically associated with Buddhist tantra practice as preserved in Tibetan Buddhism, is also the “mother of liberation” — a top a strategically located peak which is 11,000 feet high and overlooks Tibet and Bhutan.

With infrastructure upgrade in Tawang already high on the government’s agenda several projects, including an airstrip on a hilltop, are being expedited this move to install a statue is being viewed as another assertion of Indian control over the area. The Centre has already released seed-money for the project, estimated to cost US $2.33 million.

Officially christened as the White Tara Project (WTP), the project envisages developing the Lumla peak into a Buddhist tourist destination, complete with prayer halls, meditation centres, museum and a library. The giant statue of Tara Devi is intended to give the spot a distinct tourist identity in addition to attracting Tibetan Buddhists among whom the deity enjoys a special place.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Gold deal gone wrong, Indian peace keepers hit back: United Nations

To recover $480 they had paid as part of a gold deal, Indian peace keepers in Congo illegally detained, physically assaulted and “sexually propositioned” a local gold trader who had sold them counterfeit gold dust, a UN investigation on charges of misconduct in the country’s North Kivu province has revealed.

The report prepared by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), however, says it failed to find evidence against the Indian contingent on allegations ranging from gun smuggling to selling rations and fuel to rebel militia.

On one of the charges, the report says there is evidence to prove that three members of an Indian unit based at Nyabiondo purchased “counterfeit gold and unlawfully detained a local resident”. It recommends India take appropriate action against the peace keepers.

The three Army personnel have been identified in the UN report as “JCO Deepak Singh Nayal, Sergeant Suresh Pandurang Bodhak and Lt Col Talum Duby”. The Army has also initiated a court of inquiry against the personnel who have since returned home.

To read the full article, click here....
To reed the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Alleging rape by cops who held husband for theft, woman ends life at police headquarters

After two months of struggle for justice, a 25-year-old woman who was allegedly raped by two policemen committed suicide at the Haryana police headquarters in Panchkula today.

Sarita, 25, came from Rohtak with her daughters, five-year-old Muskan and three-year-old Heena, submitted a written complaint to the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) V B Singh and committed suicide in his office.

She was allegedly raped by head constable Balraj Singh and constable Silk Ram of Rohtak crime branch on April 10. She had complained that the police refused to register a case and harassed her instead.

“It was around 12.10 pm that Sarita came to the Police headquarters along with her two daughters. She was the third one in the queue to meet me in my office. The moment her turn came, she gave a written application alleging that she was raped by head constable Balraj Singh and constable Silk Ram on April 10.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

In Parched Bundelhand boy help for stealig water

Bundelkhand last made news over Rahul Gandhi’s midnight visit to Dalit Home, provoking Chief Minister Mayawati and the BJP to question his motives. But as Lucknow and Delhi debate Dalit politics, Bundelhand is seeing clashes and thefts over some thing far more basic water.

On Saturaday morning, 15 year old Daya Shankar and there fellow villagers were arrested for allegedly trying to capture a tanker to their village Mudhari in Mahoba district. Besides other charges, all four were booked under section 353 of the IPC for obstructing government work. Three armed policemen are since on duty to ensure that tanker water is distributed fairly in Mudhari.

However, as villagers say, a tanker is a drop in the drought for their cattle and them. Where Mudhari has 14 hand pumps, only 10 are functional. Each time they are used for more than half an hour, the supply dries up as the water level falls to low.

To read the full article, click here...
T0 read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Distillery to sugar mill: Shivraj Patil's son pulls strings from father's official residence

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s record in office may not be much to write home about a string of terrorist attacks across the country since he took charge and no sign of break through in any case. On one front, at least, the minister has delivered by providing the clout of his official address to help his son’s business, from a distillery in Harayana to a sugar mill in Maharashtra.

As investigation by the Indian Express in New Delhi, Ambala and Latur has found that the Home Minister’s son Shailesh Patil and daughter–in-law Archana Patil have cited the Home Minister’s official residence, 4, Janpath, as their address when they became part of a Rs 149 crore distillery project sprawled across 52 acres in Ambala.

Records obtained from Registrar of Companies and pollution board authorities show Shailesh and Archana Patil joined as directors of N V Distilleries Ltd on May 9, 2005. The plant started bottling operations for Major brands, including Seagram’s , three month ago.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Two Bengal bandh stories: students fight back, German Nano engineer grounded

What do a bunch of students of the Indira Gandhi Open University have in common with Ritter Wolfgang Schulder, a german engineer, working on Tata’s Nano Car.?

They were both caught in 12 hours bandh called by the Left Front government in West Bengal today against fuel price hike. But while the students, through sheer grit, got around the strike. Schuler and another Austrian engineer were stranded in the city trying to figure out why state that says it will roll out the world’s cheapest car shutsdown protesting the “global oil shock”.

A batch of over 100 IGNOU students defined the bandh and appeared for their examination today by arriving at their centres in the early hours of dawn, well before the bandh began at 6 a.m. Mithu Chattapdhyay from Hooghly, who had to take her Master’s in Library and Information Science, did not want the effort she had put in for months to go in Vain. So she boarded a train at 3:40 a.m. along with her husband. Tumpa Chowdhury, a teacher of English at a school in Burdwan, three hours away, set off from home late last night itself.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Yves Saint Laurent's Delhi connection remembers from Paris

Legendary French designer Yves Saint Laurent , who passed away on last Sunday in Paris after a prolonged illness, had a great friend in Delhi girl Kirat Young, nee Kirat Bhinder.

Young, born in the capital and raised in Dehradun, went to London to do her ‘A’ levels. On a holiday in Paris in 1976, Young, a statuesque’s 5’ 11’’, met Saint Laurent ” by chance” and began modeling for his run way. “This was his Ballets Russes line, is very important collection for him”, she says over the phone from Paris.

It was very different from the androgynous look he known for. He immediately took me on as the face of the collection", she recounts. French and US Vogue photo shoots, with famous lens – men like Helmut Newton, followed soon after.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper , visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Pakistan bomber targets Danish embassy, kills at least eight

At least eight persons were killed and 24 injured when a suicide bomber today blew up his explosive-laden car outside the embassy of denmark,near the indian high Commisioner's residence in the Pakistani residence in the Pakistani capital. No group claimed responsibility for the blast but security officals said the attack could be linked to the row over caricatures of the Propher published in Danish newspapers.

Witness said the car drove up and stopped outside the embassy in the upmarket sector F-6/2, where several diplomatic missions are located, shortly before the blast occured at about 1 pm.

"It was most likely a suicide blast, said islamabad SSP Ahmed Latif, Other officials said evidence collected from the site included body parts and ball bearings, Over 30 kg of explosives were packed in the car, they said.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Saved from rot, 150-year-old Dabhol dhow will sail to America 1

A 150 year old Indian dhow, rescued by an American from the shores of Dabhol in Ratnagiri (Maharashtra) where it had been left to rot, will soon set out on an astounding voyage.

Malgawan the sail boat will journey from India to the US, covering a distance of 7,318 nautical miles or 13,553 km. A similar voyage from the opposite direction by the Indian Navy, which brought the USS 77enton (now lNS Jalashwa) from the US to India in 2007, took 35 days, 18 knots being the average speed.

Manpawan, a cargo sail boat dating back to 1861, has been restored and conserved by 76 year old Neil Bruder of Michigan. He chanced upon Manpawan in the mid-1990s when he came to Dabhol to work as a bulldozer operator, employed by Bechtel Corporation for the Enron power project.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com