PREVENTED: New Delhi has denied entry into India to Prof Richard Shapiro, an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. He is husband of Angana Chatterji, who is the Co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir. Ms Chatterji, however, reached Srinagar and read an appeal to visiting US president to intervene to get Kashmir solved.
APPOINTED: United Nations appointed US lawyer Stephen Myron Schwebel to head the 3-member International Court of Arbitration to settle the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kishenganga power project. Now Rector, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and Lord Justice of England will appoint two other neutral umpires. While one umpire will be an expert in engineering, the other will be a legal luminary. Water sharing Indus Water Treaty provides this dispute resolution mechanism. India and Pakistan have already nominated two legal experts (arbitrators) each to contest their case.
ASSAULTED: Police detained five BJP and Bajrang Dal activists in Jammu for assaulting separatist Shabir Shah and disrupting his news conference. This was Shah’s first public appearance after being set free unconditionally. Shah had earlier refused to come out on parole. Nayeem Ahmad Khan was also released.
REVEALED: A Jammu newspaper has revealed that 332 inmates ended their lives in police lockups and 111 others managed to escape in last two decades in J&K. Most of the fleeing inmates had been escorted to toilets outside their lock-ups that helped them to escape.
TORTURED: Kolkata prison department has started probing the allegation that a Kashmiri under-trial Sheikh Farhat Mehmood was kept naked in his cell for a night in Presidency Jail. Hailing from Bemina, Mehmood had objected to the sub-standard food and was on hunger strike for two days when he was punished during Durga Puja festival.
CANCELLED: State government has deferred Panchayat and urban local bodies elections. Now they are likely to be held in 2011 summer. The last elected Panchayats concluded their term early 2006 and the urban local bodies concluded their term in 2009. There has been only one panchayat election in the state in last 34 years.
STAYED: The High Court has stayed the government order closing down 51 banquet halls in Jammu. The halls were closed for a number of reasons but their closure, reportedly, created severe inconvenience to the people at the peak of marriage season.
RESTRAINED: High Court has restrained authorities from deporting Hashmat Ali, 83 years old Pakistan administered Kashmir resident from his native Pekhri tehsil in Samba. He was stuck on the other side of the LoC in 1947 while his father, wife and children live in Samba.
VISITED: Home Minister P Chidambaram had a two-day visit to J&K during which he visited Leh, Kargil, Baramulla and Srinagar. He also presided over a meeting of the Unified Headquarters besides meeting people at different places.
PROMOTED: The army promoted 52-year old officer S K Razdan to the rank of Major General. He was left paralysed below his waist after a spinal injury in 1995 during a gunfight in Kashmir, an effort which had won him a Kirti Chakra. The Army has in the past promoted amputee officers to General-officer rank, but this would be the first time a wheelchair-bound officer has become a Major General, the officers added.
RETURNED: Police finally detained the individuals running Youth Movement for Peace in Jammu and returned all the 28 children to their families in Leh. The children had allegedly been adopted by the NGO after the recent destructive floods in Ladakh. But police said the kids were rescued. NGO was targeted earlier by Shiv Sena and later by police amid allegations that they were converting the kids to a different faith.
BARRED: Home minister has barred the three interlocutors from offering a “ball-by-ball commentary” about the progress they make in Kashmir. This, he said, is interlocution and not a cricket match.
VISITED: A central team visited trans-LoC trade centre at Chakkan-Da-Bagh and Uri in J&K to assess the requirement for infrastructure upgrade. The team comprising the officers from home, external affairs and revenue ministry interacted with the state government officials and the traders.
