Muslim Mp Owaisi threatens Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police A.K. Mohanty

MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2009

Owaisi threatens Andhra top cop
Hyderabad, April 18, 2009

Asad Owaisi, sitting MP from Hyderabad and president of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), is courting controversy once again. This time he has threatened Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police A.K. Mohanty.

Owaisi has asked Mohanty to face him in the older parts of Hyderabad. “Shed your police uniform and face me in the old city,” he said. “Shame on Mohanty. He bypassed the police commissioner to personally monitor polling in old city.”

Owaisi had beaten up a polling agent in front of TV cameras on Thursday. An FIR is already registered against him.

Owaisi has accused Mohanty of being partisan in the Lok Sabha polls.

The state’s Chief Electoral Officer I.V. Subba Rao has taken suo motu notice of Owaisi’s allegation that Mohanty had colluded with the rival Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the poll from Hyderabad constituency on Thursday.

Sources said the MIM chief is likely to be issued a show cause notice by the poll panel, which had appointed Mohanty as Director General of Police (DGP) last month.

Owaisi is seeking re-election from Hyderabad, which along with 21 other Lok Sabha constituencies and 154 assembly segments went to polls on Thursday.

Owaisi on Saturday alleged: “Mohanty has a perverted mind. He is trying to be brave in uniform. Let him shed his uniform, come in open and face us in a democratic manner.”

Owaisi also found fault with the chief electoral officer for not taking note of his party’s petition urging it not to appoint Mohanty to the top post.

“Despite all this, we are confident that we will win Hyderabad Lok Sabha and eight assembly seats,” said Owaisi, whose party has been winning the Hyderabad seat since 1984.

During polling, Owaisi had thrashed a polling agent of the TDP for allegedly distributing money among voters. Police had booked a case against him.

The MIM accuses Mohanty of being anti-Muslim.

The poll panel, however, preferred Mohanty over other officers whose names were submitted by the state government after S.S.P. Yadav was removed as police chief for publicly praising the chief minister.

Mohanty, a 1975 batch IPS officer, earlier served as the police commissioner of Hyderabad in 2005. He was transferred by the Congress government allegedly under pressure from MIM.

—with inputs from IANS

More than 6,000 Pakistani Hindus migrated to India in recent months

Insecure in Pakistan
15 Mar 2009, 0230 hrs IST, Divya A, TNN

It is not quite the Partition and the Great Migration. But the steady trickle of Hindus crossing into India from Pakistan, and pleading for  permission to stay here, underlines how little has changed in 61 years. The immediate provocation was the alleged persecution of Hindus at the hands of the Taliban. But social alienation too has taken its toll. More than 6,000 Pakistani Hindus migrated to India in recent months. They live on the edge – many sans valid documents, an official identity and hope – in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Lashkar Das, who left Pakistan’s Punjab province to settle in Haryana’s Rohtak district in 2005, claims he was constantly under pressure to convert to Islam. “Some families budged under pressure, but those who didn’t, became targets. We had no option but to come here.”

Shankar Lal, now in Fatehabad, Haryana, knows all about becoming a target. He claims he fled Punjab and perennial harassment in 2000. “Local residents used to call us Hindus kafirs. No one allowed us to even sit with them. Our children were discriminated in schools and forced to read namaz,” he says. When his grandfather, Dharuram from Rohtak, visited Lal some years ago, he suggested they move to India. He did.

Today, he can proudly produce a valid Indian ration card and admit to being a registered voter. “Despite scarce resources, we managed to make do as daily-wagers and send our children to schools here.” Eventually, he married a girl from Karnal. Ever since, life has settled in a peaceful groove.

He isn’t the only one. The year Lal crossed over, six Hindu families left Pakistan for Fatehabad and Rohtak in Haryana. Since then, 56 members from these families have become bonafide residents with valid documents.

Nearer the Pakistan border, Rajasthan too has a population of Hindu migrants. More than 50 families have made Jodhpur their home. They claim they were discriminated against, not least the trouble with getting a loan to start a business. They say they often had no option but to borrow from moneylenders, but their terms were so harsh, the creditor could abandon all hope of ever being free of debt. Prem, who once owned two “fancy stores” in Sindh, now lives in Jodhpur with his family of nine. He’s a scrap collector and admits “we work as daily wage-earners” but hopes “life will be a bit better in India”.

But, once here, India may not always be quite the promised land they imagined. Lakshman, a 40-year-old labourer left Punjab eight years ago to protect the women in his family, after his cousin was kidnapped, never to return. But he admits to facing suspicion here too. “There, we were considered Mujahirs and here, people think we are Pakistanis. The only respite is we aren’t living in constant fear about our life.”

Fear is the constant refrain in the migrants’ stories. In October, four Peshawar families claimed Muslim radicals terrorized them into leaving home. Crossing through Wagah, they arrived in Delhi to register with the Home Ministry’s Pakistani refugee cell. They sought Indian citizenship, received a year’s visa and are settled in a village near Amritsar.

But these are the legal and identifiable ones. Police say most Pakistani refugees lack valid documents. “Off and on, Hindus from Pakistan have been trickling to India through our porous borders. Some stay here even after their visas expire. But we haven’t initiated any legal action as they don’t pose a security threat,” says an officer with the Amritsar border range. “Between 2003-04, when each Indian state had the power to decide on such cases, close to 13,000 people got citizenship. But the revised immigration fee, between Rs 3,000 to Rs 20,000, is beyond the reach of many, forcing them to live in hiding.”

Such families are helped by organizations such as the All India Hindu Shiv Sena, whose president, Surinder Kumar Billa, admits “collecting funds for them and arranging Hindi and Punjabi language classes for the Urdu-speaking children so they can join school soon.”

Chetan Das of Seemant Lok Sangathan, which helps with rehabilitation work, puts the Hindu refugee story in context – the poor, he says, can afford to migrate to India as they have no stake in society, but the better off simply pay ‘protection money’ to the Pakistani authorities.

(With reports from Deepender Deswal in Karnal and Ajay Parmar in Jodhpur)

Terrorist Pakistan stripped of 2011 World Cup matches by the International Cricket Council

ICC dump Pakistan venues from World Cup
Greg Buckle, April 19, 2009

PAKISTAN were stripped of their 2011 World Cup matches by the International Cricket Council on Friday as growing security concerns cast the Asian giants firmly into the sporting wilderness.

The decision came at an ICC executive board meeting in Dubai with the international body saying it had acted after noting the “uncertain political situation” in Pakistan.

Ijaz Butt, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, expressed his regret at the decision.

“It’s a disappointing decision but it can’t be helped – nobody wants to play in Pakistan following the attacks in Lahore,” he said, referring to the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan squad in the city which killed eight Pakistanis and wounded seven Sri Lankan players and their assistant coach.

The 2011 tournament was to be held jointly by India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as well as Pakistan, and was to have involved a total of 16 matches.

Ricky Ponting, captain of defending World Cup champions Australia, said his players simply had to accept the decision and move on.

“There’s a lot of thought that has gone into the ICC making the decision,” Ponting told a press conference in Johannesburg on Friday after Australia’s 3-2 defeat in their one-day series against South Africa. “I can’t say that I’m overly surprised.

“There have been a number of events that have happened in Pakistan over the last couple of years that have led to this decision being made. It’s out of our hands as players and as captain of your country.”