‘On humanitarian grounds’: SC urges India to free Pakistani fishermen

CJ says issue may be raised with Indian team due in Pakistan next week. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

ISLAMABAD: 

The Supreme Court on Friday urged Indian authorities to release on humanitarian grounds dozens of Pakistani fishermen languishing in Indian jails. The court also referred to the Indian Supreme Court’s 2010 judgment, in which Pakistani authorities were urged to release Indian fishermen on humanitarian grounds.

A three-judge bench – headed by Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussian Jillani – was hearing a joint petition, filed by the Pakistan Fisher-folk Forum (PFF) and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), through Raheel Kamran Sheikh advocate.

The chief justice observed the issue of release of Pakistani fisherman might be taken up with the members of an Indian delegation which is likely to visit Pakistan next week to attend the International Judicial Conference.

Earlier, the petitioners drew the court’s attention to the imprisonment of Pakistani fishermen in Indian jails for allegedly breaching the international maritime border and entering Indian waters.

“[We] crave gracious indulgence of this august court for redress against the blatant negligence and inaction on the part of the respondents to seek the release and repatriation of the Pakistani citizens languishing in Indian jails since as far back as 1993,” the petitioners said.

They contended that pollution was gradually lowering the water levels while with the entry of big companies and foreign fishing vessels into common waters, the traditional fisher people had to venture out into deeper waters for a better catch.

“However, due to limitations in navigational technology and difficulty in discerning the maritime border, many fisher people often accidentally venture out into Indian waters and are arrested and detained by the Indian Coast Guards,” they added.

According to a data chart prepared by the federal government and information provided by the Pakistani fishermen released from Indian jails, 226 Pakistani fishermen are currently detained in Indian jails, some of them since 1993, and with most having completed their sentences, the petitioners stated.

“Furthermore, the whereabouts of 66 fishermen, which include minors, are as yet unknown and no efforts have been made by the respondents (government) to obtain information for clarification or confirmation of whether the missing fishermen are in the custody of Indian authorities.”

During the hearing, one law officer submitted a report on behalf of the interior ministry, saying that Pakistan had released 471 Indian prisoners but in return New Delhi had freed only 66 Pakistanis.

The hearing of the case is adjourned till first week of May.

An Indian Supreme Court bench – comprising Justice Markandey Katju and Justice R M Lodha – on March 8, 2010 had also urged the Pakistani authorities to release Indian fishermen

MH370 co-pilot made mid-flight phone call: report

A worker walks in front of check-in time screens at the new low-cost airport at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) during the Operational Readiness and Transfer (ORAT) exercise in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur on April 12, 2014. PHOTO: AFP

KUALA LAMPUR: The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 attempted to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, a report said Saturday citing unnamed investigators.

The call ended abruptly possibly “because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower”; The New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

But the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid’s “line was reattached”, there was no certainty that a call was made from the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8.

The report, titled a “desperate call for help” did not say who he was trying to contact.

Fariq and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Investigators last month indicated that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a criminal investigation by police that has revealed little so far.

The fate of flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery, with a number of theories put forward including a hijacking or terrorist attack and a pilot gone rogue.

There have been unconfirmed previous reports in the Malaysian media of calls by the captain before or during the flight but no details have been released.

The NST report said that Flight 370 flew low enough near Penang Island on Malaysia’s west coast, after turning off course for a telecommunications tower to pick up the co-pilot’s phone signal.

The phone line was “reattached” between the time the plane veered off course and blipped off the radar; the government-controlled paper quoted the second source as saying.

“A ‘reattachment’ does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again.”

Malaysia’s transport ministry told AFP that it was examining the NST report and will issue a response.

The Malaysian government and media have repeatedly contradicted each other and themselves over details of the search and criminal investigation.

PTV, CCTV sign MoU to enable Chinese television to get landing rights in Pakistan

MD PTC Muhammad Malick and Vice President of CCTV Zhu Tong signing an MoU that will allow CCTV landing rights in Pakistan. PHOTO: PID

The Chinese Central Television (CCTV) and Pakistan Television Corporation Ltd., signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on mutual cooperation in the field of Broadcasting in Islamabad on Saturday that would enable China Central Television (CCTV) News and the CCTV 9 documentary channel landing rights in Pakistan.

The MoU was inked by Vice President of CCTV Zhu Tong and Managing Director of Pakistan Television Muhammad Malick. Ambassador Masood Khalid also witnessed the signing ceremony held at the CCTV headquarters.

Malick in his remarks following the signing ceremony said that the premier had taken special interest in fostering institutional media cooperation, had directed Pakistan media authorities to facilitate CCTV to commence its transmission into Pakistan at the earliest by enabling it to secure landing rights in Pakistan.

Both television networks will also be sharing programming content including that on dubbed entertainment as well as Chinese language learning on a regular and reciprocal basis. Malick explained that a formal agreement will soon follow the MoU.

Zhu Tong said that he was excited seeing media and broadcasting cooperation moving from strength to strength and he looked forward to seeing mutual exchange of programs increasing rapidly in the near future.

China Central Television or Chinese Central Television, commonly  abbreviated as  CCTV, is the predominant state television broadcaster in mainland China. CCTV has a network of 45 channels broadcasting different programmes and is accessible to more than one billion viewers.

Analysis: The controversial stock-broker Amit Shah

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s most trusted aide and former stock-broker Amit Shah. PHOTO: REUTERS

DELHI: 

When it comes to making speeches during the election campaign, Indian politicians never miss the chance to make them inflammatory and incite hate and anger, sometimes on the basis of caste but mostly on religion.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s most trusted aide and former stock-broker Amit Shah has done it this time: Shah has been issued a notice from the Election Commission over his recent hate speech in the town of Bijnore in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

While addressing a gathering, Shah asked the Jat community to avenge ‘insult’, referring to the previous year’s communal riots in Muzaffarnagar.

Shah, the lieutenant of Narendra Modi, has always been a controversial figure; his name first figured in 2005 for his role in hatching a conspiracy to kill alleged terrorist Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi. He was charged with what federal agencies claim was a staged encounter to eliminate Sohrabuddin.

In 2010, CBI charged Shah with murder, extortion, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy in the ‘fake’ Sohrabuddin encounter. Shah pleaded innocence and resigned from his post of Gujarat home minister.

In September 2013, a former top Gujarat policeman, DG Vanzara, released an explosive letter from prison accusing Shah of using dirty tactics in Gujarat.

In November 2013, Shah was also implicated in a scandal dubbed ‘stalkergate’, in which he purportedly ordered police officers to trail a woman, ordering them to report her every move.

Currently on bail, Shah is said to be a close confidant of Narendra Modi.

Amidst all these controversies surrounding Shah, last year he was appointed as chief strategist for Uttar Pradesh.

The Muzzafarnagar communal riots in September last year saw many parties jumping into the fray and attempting to polarise the votes. Shah was on this bandwagon, where BJP fielded two candidates linked to the Muzaffarnagar riots.

Once again BJP threw the dice back to the old policies of religion-based politics and that too just before when BJP released its manifesto talking of bringing back the issue of Ram Mandir, which was largely missing in the election campaigns.

Syrian regime, rebels trade blame over 'poison' attack on town

Regime planes bombed Kafr Zita with explosive barrels that produced thick smoke and odours and led to cases of suffocation and poisoning. PHOTO: AFP

BEIRUT: Syrian state television and medical sources in central Hama province swapped accusations on Saturday over an attack that reportedly caused “suffocation and poisoning” of residents.

Medics quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO said people choking from poisoning had been hospitalised after air raids with barrel bombs on Friday on the town of Kafr Zita.

“Regime planes bombed Kafr Zita with explosive barrels that produced thick smoke and odours and led to cases of suffocation and poisoning,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

But state television reported that al Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front had released chlorine gas in a deadly attack on the town.

“There is information that the terrorist Al-Nusra Front released toxic chorine… leading to the death of two people and causing more than 100 people to suffer from suffocation,” it said.

“There is information that Al-Nusra Front is preparing to hit Wadi Deif in Idlib province and Morek in Hama province with toxic chorine or sarin,” the state broadcaster added.

There was no independent verification of either of the claims, which come after a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus last year.

The opposition and much of the international community blamed that attack, which reportedly killed as many as 1,400 people, on the Syrian regime.

The regime denied responsibility, in turn blaming rebels, but agreed under threat of US military action to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile for destruction.

Most stylish politician in history was Jinnah: Ayushmann

As kids, we often wrote imaginative pieces on what would we do if we became the prime minister, in order to encourage debates and explore innovative ideas. Taking a cue from that practice and in the wake of the Lok Sabha elections, when asked Ayushmann Khurrana, “Which politician is most well-dressed?

In the history, the most stylish politician has been Muhammad Ali Jinnah whose westerns always stood out. And of course, the Nehru jackets worn by Jawaharlal Nehru. They have been style icons. In today’s era, Shashi Tharoor is well-dressed.

Economy watch: Govt reluctant to release below-expectations growth

Economists fear that the government may force the PBS to manipulate the figures to get the desired results. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: 

The pace of economic growth, which the government claimed had picked in the first quarter of the current fiscal, has slipped below 4% in the second quarter, leaving the federal authorities wondering whether or not to officially release synopsis of the economy.

Sources in the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) – the official body responsible to collect data – revealed that the rate of economic growth in October-December was below 4%. Due to these unexpected results the federal government is reluctant to release the data in violation of a decision of the PBS’s Governing Council, they added.

The PBS Governing Council, headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, had decided that the quarterly GDP figures would be released within three months of the quarter. Thus, the PBS was bound to release the figure of the second quarter by March 31.

The delay in releasing the data also puts a question mark over the official claims of giving administrative autonomy to the PBS. While announcing the results of the first quarter in December last year, the finance minister had stated that the decision to release the quarterly GDP growth figures within three months would ensure independence of the PBS.

Sources said one of the reasons behind delaying the announcement was that the government wanted to avoid adverse impact of slowing economy in its bid to sell Eurobonds to international investors. The timing of releasing the growth figures was coinciding with the road shows held to auction the Eurobonds.

The government has completed the auction this week but paid a very high price for raising $2 billion from international markets.

“The growth number has not yet been finalised and it will be premature to speculate,” said PBS’s Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa. He did not give any reason for the delay but said it was always complicated to work out quarterly GDP growth figures, particularly at a time when the authorities were doing it for the first time.

Sources said according to provisional results complied by the PBS, the slowdown was across all sectors. They said the overall growth figure was coming in the range of 3.6% to 3.7%. In the first quarter the government had claimed that the economy grew at a rate of 5% and declared an early victory.

Economists fear that the government may force the PBS to manipulate the figures to get the desired results.

“Without manipulation the growth rate should be in the range of 3.5% to 4% and with manipulation it could be 4% to 4.5%,” said Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, a former economic adviser to the ministry of finance.

In the first quarter, the agriculture sector grew 2.5% against the target of 3.8%. The industrial sector grew 5.2% against the target of 4.5% and services sector grew 5.7% against target of 4.5%

According to a report of the Institute for Policy Reforms – an independent think tank – with corrections in the second quarter of the current fiscal, the growth in the first six months was expected around 4%. The report is prepared by former finance minister Dr Hafiz Pasha.

For the current financial year, the government’s growth target is 4.4% while international financial institutions, excluding World Bank, are projecting the growth in the range of 3.1% to 3.4%.

Probably knowing the outcomes, Dar in a recent statement said: “This year growth is expected to be 4%”. He gave this statement during his ongoing visit to Washington. His latest statement was in contradiction to his earlier statements.