Bank shares and index heavyweight Reliance Industries led a intraday rebound in afternoon trade. The recovery materialised soon after the key benchmark indices tumbled to fresh intraday lows. The BSE 30-share Sensex was down 147.58 points or 0.84%, up close to 167 points from the day's low and off close to 141 points from the day's high. All the sectoral indices on the BSE were still in the red. The market breadth was weak.

The market slumped in early trade on news the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had filed civil-fraud charges against US investment bank Goldman Sachs. The market pared losses later. The intraday recovery proved short-lived. The market slumped to a fresh intraday low in mid-morning trade. The market extended losses in early afternoon trade. The market staged a strong rebound after hitting a fresh intraday low.

European shares fell in early trade on Monday, with banks extending Friday's declines when the US Securities and Exchange Commission said it was charging Goldman Sachs with fraud. Key benchmark indices in UK, France and Germany declined by 0.06% to 1.59%.

Asian stocks fell on Monday dragging the MSCI Asia Pacific index down by the most in two months on concern a US suit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. signals increasing regulatory scrutiny on financial companies. The key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan fell by between 1.68% to 3.17%.

Property and banking stocks led losses in Chinese equities on reports the government has asked banks to stop loans for third-home purchases in its latest measure to cool property prices. The Shanghai Composite slumped 4.79%, its biggest percentage fall in a single trading session in 2010.

Trading in US index futures indicated that the Dow could fall 28 points at the opening bell on Monday, 19 April 2010. US index futures were off lows.

US stocks snapped six-day winning streak with a sell-off on Friday 16 April 2010 after Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud by US regulators and corporate earnings fell short of heightened expectations. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 125.91 points, or 1.13%, at 11,018.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 19.54 points, or 1.61%, at 1,192.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 34.43 points, or 1.37%, at 2,481.26.

Goldman Sachs stock fell nearly 13% on Friday after the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged it committed fraud in the structuring and marketing of a debt product tied to subprime mortgages, which cost investors more than $1 billion. However, the financial services giant said the charges were completely unfounded in law and fact.

Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Sunday expressed confidence that lawmakers will pass a financial reform overhaul plan.

Closer home,the Reserve Bank of India is seen raising key short term interest rates at a policy review due tomorrow.

The S&P CNX Nifty was down 49.75 points or 0.95% to 5212.85.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 2056 shares declined as compared with 726 that advanced. A total of 136 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Mid-Cap index fell 1.10% and the BSE Small-Cap index fell 1.52%. Both these indices underperformed the Sensex.

All the 30 shares from the Sensex pack declined.

Tata Steel (down 4.20%), Sterlite Industries (down 3.49%), DLF (down 3.18%), ONGC (down 2.65%), Wipro (down 2.55%), Reliance Infrastructure (down 2.36%) and ITC (down 2.34%), were the leading Sensex losers.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) was down 1.3% to Rs 1068.30, with the scrip sliding for the third straight day. Nevertheless, the stock came off the day's low of Rs 1052.20. RIL on Friday 16 April 2010 said it will provide growth capital to logistics firm Deccan 360. The investment would be done through a wholly owned subsidiary. Deccan 360 is a cargo service headed by Captain Gopinath.

RIL on 9 April 2010 said the company will pay $1.7 billion to form a joint venture at one of the most promising natural gas deposit regions in the US with Atlas Energy, becoming the latest foreign company to invest in shale plays that are expected to be very lucrative. The firm will pick up a 40% stake in Atlas's operations in the booming Marcellus Shale, a gas project that spans parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York in the United States and which, according to some geologists, could hold enough natural gas to satisfy US demand for a decade.

Banks recovered after an early decline. The BSE Bankex was down by 0.19% at 10,533.83, recovering from the day's low of 10,388.98. Index pivotal ICICI Bank was down 0.12% to Rs 920.55, recovering from the day's low of Rs 903.90. India's largest commercial bank State Bank of India was down 0.65% to Rs 2,033.50, recovering from the day's low of Rs 2015. Private sector lender HDFC Bank was down 0.92% to 1,939, recovering from the day's low of Rs 1,930.

Top losers from the BSE's 'A' group were, Jet Airways (India) (down 5.80%), Aditya Birla Nuvo (down 4.16%), JSW Steel (down 4.08%), Shree Renuka Sugars (down 4.06%) and GMR Infrastructure (down 4.04%).

Major losers from the BSE Mid-Cap index were, Phoenix Mills (down 6.06%), Amtek Auto (down 5.87%), Usha Martin (down 5.82%), Brigade Enterprises (down 5.58%) and Triveni Engineering & Industries (down 5.21%).

Leading losers from BSE Small-Cap index were, Take Solutions (down 7.30%), Sanwaria Agro Oils (down 6.28%), Best & Crompton Engineering (down 5.98%), Shree Digvijay Cement Company (down 5.96%), Heritage Foods (India) (down 5.89%) and Ganesh Housing Corporation .
 

(malathi)

When President Barack Obama took the stage in Cairo last June, promising a new relationship with the Islamic world, Muslims in America wondered only half-jokingly whether the overture included them. After all, Obama had kept his distance during the campaign, never visiting an American mosque and describing the false claim that he was Muslim as a "smear" on his Web site.

Nearly a year later, Obama has yet to set foot in an American mosque. And he still has not met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders. But less publicly, his administration has reached out to this politically isolated constituency in a sustained and widening effort that has left even skeptics surprised.

Muslim and Arab-American advocates have participated in policy discussions and received briefings from top White House aides and other officials on health care legislation, foreign policy, the economy, immigration and national security. They have met privately with a senior White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to discuss civil liberties concerns and counterterrorism strategy.

The impact of this continuing dialogue is difficult to measure, but White House officials cited several recent government actions that were influenced, in part, by the discussions. The meeting with Napolitano was among many factors that contributed to the government's decision this month to end a policy subjecting passengers from 14 countries, most of them Muslim, to additional scrutiny at airports, the officials said.

That emergency directive, enacted after a failed Dec. 25 bombing plot, has been replaced with a new set of intelligence-based protocols that law enforcement officials consider more effective.

Also this month, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim academic, visited the United States for the first time in six years after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed a decision by the Bush administration, which had barred Ramadan from entering the country, initially citing the USA Patriot Act. Clinton also cleared the way for another well-known Muslim professor, Adam Habib, who had been denied entry under similar circumstances.

Arab-American and Muslim leaders said they had yet to see substantive changes on a variety of issues, including what they describe as excessive airport screening, policies that have chilled Muslim charitable giving and invasive FBI surveillance guidelines. But they are encouraged by the extent of their consultation by the White House and governmental agencies.

"For the first time in eight years, we have the opportunity to meet, engage, discuss, disagree, but have an impact on policy," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "We're being made to feel a part of that process and that there is somebody listening."

In the post-9/11 era, Muslims and Arab-Americans have posed something of a conundrum for the government: they are seen as a political liability but also, increasingly, as an important partner in countering the threat of homegrown terrorism. Under President George W. Bush, leaders of these groups met with government representatives from time to time, but said they had limited interaction with senior officials. While Obama has yet to hold the kind of high-profile meeting that Muslims and Arab-Americans seek, there is a consensus among his policymakers that engagement is no longer optional.

The administration's approach has been understated. Many meetings have been private; others were publicized only after the fact. A visit to New York University in February by John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, drew little news coverage, but caused a stir among Muslims around the country. Speaking to Muslim students, activists and others, Brennan acknowledged many of their grievances, including "surveillance that has been excessive," "over inclusive no-fly lists" and "an unhelpful atmosphere around many Muslim charities."

"These are challenges we face together as Americans," said Brennan, who momentarily showed off his Arabic to hearty applause. He and other officials have made a point of disassociating Islam from terrorism in public comments, using the phrase "violent extremism" in place of words like "jihad" and "Islamic terrorism."

While the administration's solicitation of Muslims and Arab-Americans has drawn little fanfare, it has not escaped criticism. A small but vocal group of research analysts, bloggers and others complain that the government is reaching out to Muslim leaders and organizations with an Islamist agenda or ties to extremist groups abroad.

They point out that Jarrett gave the keynote address at the annual convention for the Islamic Society of North America. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity whose leaders were convicted in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas. The society denies any links to terrorism.

"I think dialogue is good, but it has to be with genuine moderates," said Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst who advises government officials. "These are the wrong groups to legitimize." Emerson and others have also objected to the political appointments of several American Muslims, including Rashad Hussain.

In February, the president chose Hussain, a 31-year-old White House lawyer, to become the United States' special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The position, a kind of ambassador at large to Muslim countries, was created by Bush. In a video address, Obama highlighted Hussain's status as a "close and trusted member of my White House staff" and "a hafiz," a person who has memorized the Quran.

Within days of the announcement, news reports surfaced about comments Hussain had made on a panel in 2004, while he was a student at Yale Law School, in which he referred to several domestic terrorism prosecutions as "politically motivated." Among the cases he criticized was that of Sami Al-Arian, a former computer-science professor in Florida who pleaded guilty to aiding members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

At first, the White House said Hussain did not recall making the comments, which had been removed from the Web version of a 2004 article published by a small Washington magazine. When Politico obtained a recording of the panel, Hussain acknowledged criticizing the prosecutions but said he believed the magazine quoted him inaccurately, prompting him to ask its editor to remove the comments. On Feb. 22, The Washington Examiner ran an editorial with the headline "Obama Selects a Voice of Radical Islam."

Muslim leaders watched carefully as the story migrated to Fox News. They had grown accustomed to close scrutiny, many said in interviews, but were nonetheless surprised. In 2008, Hussain had co-authored a paper for the Brookings Institution arguing that the government should use the peaceful teachings of Islam to fight terrorism.

"Rashad Hussain is about as squeaky clean as you get," said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is Muslim. Ellison and others wondered whether the administration would buckle under the pressure and were relieved when the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, defended Hussain.

"The fact that the president and the administration have appointed Muslims to positions and have stood by them when they've been attacked is the best we can hope for," said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

It was notably different during Obama's run for office. In June 2008, volunteers of his campaign barred two Muslim women in headscarves from appearing behind Obama at a rally in Detroit, eliciting widespread criticism. The campaign promptly recruited Mazen Asbahi, a 36-year-old corporate lawyer and popular Muslim activist from Chicago, to become its liaison to Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Bloggers began researching Asbahi's background. For a brief time in 2000, he had sat on the board of an Islamic investment fund, along with Sheikh Jamal Said, a Chicago imam who was later named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Asbahi said in an interview that he had left the board after three weeks because he wanted no association with the imam.
 
Shortly after his appointment to the Obama campaign, Asbahi said, a Wall Street Journal reporter began asking questions about his connection to the imam. Campaign officials became concerned that news coverage would give critics ammunition to try to link the imam to Obama, Asbahi recalled. On their recommendation, Asbahi agreed to resign from the campaign, he said.

He is still unsettled by the power of his detractors. "To be in the midst of this campaign of change and hope and to have it stripped away over nothing," he said. "It hurts."

From the moment Obama took office, he seemed eager to change the tenor of America's relationship with Muslims worldwide. He gave his first interview to Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language television station based in Dubai. Muslims cautiously welcomed his ban on torture and his pledge to close Guantanamo within a year.

In his Cairo address, he laid out his vision for "a new beginning" with Muslims: while America would continue to fight terrorism, he said, terrorism would no longer define America's approach to Muslims.

Back at home, Muslim and Arab-American leaders remained skeptical. But they took note when, a few weeks later, Mohamed Magid, a prominent imam from Sterling, Va., and Rami Nashashibi, a Muslim activist from Chicago, joined the president at a White-House meeting about fatherhood. Also that month, Dr. Faisal Qazi, a board member of American Muslim Health Professionals, began meeting with administration officials to discuss health care reform.

The invitations were aimed at expanding the government's relationship with Muslims and Arab-Americans to areas beyond security, said Hussain, the White House's special envoy. Hussain began advising the president on issues related to Islam after joining the White House counsel's office in January 2009. He helped draft Obama's Cairo speech and accompanied him on the trip. "The president realizes that you cannot engage one-fourth of the world's population based on the erroneous beliefs of a fringe few," Hussain said.

Other government offices followed the lead of the White House. In October, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with Arab-Americans and Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., to discuss challenges facing small-business owners. Also last fall, Farah Pandith was sworn in as the State Department's first special representative to Muslim communities. While Pandith works mostly with Muslims abroad, she said she had also consulted with American Muslims because Clinton believes "they can add value overseas."

Despite this, American actions abroad - including civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and the failure to close Guantanamo - have drawn the anger of Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Even though their involvement with the administration has broadened, they leaders remain most concerned about security-related policies. In January, when the Department of Homeland Security hosted a two-day meeting with Muslim, Arab-American, South Asian and Sikh leaders, the group expressed concern about the emergency directive subjecting passengers from a group of Muslim countries to additional screening.

Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, pointed out that the policy would never have caught the attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is British. "It almost sends the signal that the government is going to treat nationals of powerless countries differently from countries that are powerful," Khera recalled saying as community leaders around the table nodded their heads.

Napolitano, who sat with the group for more than an hour, committed to meeting with them more frequently. Khera said she left feeling somewhat hopeful.

"I think our message is finally starting to get through," she said.

(malathi)

When President Barack Obama took the stage in Cairo last June, promising a new relationship with the Islamic world, Muslims in America wondered only half-jokingly whether the overture included them. After all, Obama had kept his distance during the campaign, never visiting an American mosque and describing the false claim that he was Muslim as a "smear" on his Web site.

Nearly a year later, Obama has yet to set foot in an American mosque. And he still has not met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders. But less publicly, his administration has reached out to this politically isolated constituency in a sustained and widening effort that has left even skeptics surprised.

Muslim and Arab-American advocates have participated in policy discussions and received briefings from top White House aides and other officials on health care legislation, foreign policy, the economy, immigration and national security. They have met privately with a senior White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to discuss civil liberties concerns and counterterrorism strategy.

The impact of this continuing dialogue is difficult to measure, but White House officials cited several recent government actions that were influenced, in part, by the discussions. The meeting with Napolitano was among many factors that contributed to the government's decision this month to end a policy subjecting passengers from 14 countries, most of them Muslim, to additional scrutiny at airports, the officials said.

That emergency directive, enacted after a failed Dec. 25 bombing plot, has been replaced with a new set of intelligence-based protocols that law enforcement officials consider more effective.

Also this month, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim academic, visited the United States for the first time in six years after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed a decision by the Bush administration, which had barred Ramadan from entering the country, initially citing the USA Patriot Act. Clinton also cleared the way for another well-known Muslim professor, Adam Habib, who had been denied entry under similar circumstances.

Arab-American and Muslim leaders said they had yet to see substantive changes on a variety of issues, including what they describe as excessive airport screening, policies that have chilled Muslim charitable giving and invasive FBI surveillance guidelines. But they are encouraged by the extent of their consultation by the White House and governmental agencies.

"For the first time in eight years, we have the opportunity to meet, engage, discuss, disagree, but have an impact on policy," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "We're being made to feel a part of that process and that there is somebody listening."

In the post-9/11 era, Muslims and Arab-Americans have posed something of a conundrum for the government: they are seen as a political liability but also, increasingly, as an important partner in countering the threat of homegrown terrorism. Under President George W. Bush, leaders of these groups met with government representatives from time to time, but said they had limited interaction with senior officials. While Obama has yet to hold the kind of high-profile meeting that Muslims and Arab-Americans seek, there is a consensus among his policymakers that engagement is no longer optional.

The administration's approach has been understated. Many meetings have been private; others were publicized only after the fact. A visit to New York University in February by John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, drew little news coverage, but caused a stir among Muslims around the country. Speaking to Muslim students, activists and others, Brennan acknowledged many of their grievances, including "surveillance that has been excessive," "over inclusive no-fly lists" and "an unhelpful atmosphere around many Muslim charities."

"These are challenges we face together as Americans," said Brennan, who momentarily showed off his Arabic to hearty applause. He and other officials have made a point of disassociating Islam from terrorism in public comments, using the phrase "violent extremism" in place of words like "jihad" and "Islamic terrorism."

While the administration's solicitation of Muslims and Arab-Americans has drawn little fanfare, it has not escaped criticism. A small but vocal group of research analysts, bloggers and others complain that the government is reaching out to Muslim leaders and organizations with an Islamist agenda or ties to extremist groups abroad.

They point out that Jarrett gave the keynote address at the annual convention for the Islamic Society of North America. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity whose leaders were convicted in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas. The society denies any links to terrorism.

"I think dialogue is good, but it has to be with genuine moderates," said Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst who advises government officials. "These are the wrong groups to legitimize." Emerson and others have also objected to the political appointments of several American Muslims, including Rashad Hussain.

In February, the president chose Hussain, a 31-year-old White House lawyer, to become the United States' special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The position, a kind of ambassador at large to Muslim countries, was created by Bush. In a video address, Obama highlighted Hussain's status as a "close and trusted member of my White House staff" and "a hafiz," a person who has memorized the Quran.

Within days of the announcement, news reports surfaced about comments Hussain had made on a panel in 2004, while he was a student at Yale Law School, in which he referred to several domestic terrorism prosecutions as "politically motivated." Among the cases he criticized was that of Sami Al-Arian, a former computer-science professor in Florida who pleaded guilty to aiding members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

At first, the White House said Hussain did not recall making the comments, which had been removed from the Web version of a 2004 article published by a small Washington magazine. When Politico obtained a recording of the panel, Hussain acknowledged criticizing the prosecutions but said he believed the magazine quoted him inaccurately, prompting him to ask its editor to remove the comments. On Feb. 22, The Washington Examiner ran an editorial with the headline "Obama Selects a Voice of Radical Islam."

Muslim leaders watched carefully as the story migrated to Fox News. They had grown accustomed to close scrutiny, many said in interviews, but were nonetheless surprised. In 2008, Hussain had co-authored a paper for the Brookings Institution arguing that the government should use the peaceful teachings of Islam to fight terrorism.

"Rashad Hussain is about as squeaky clean as you get," said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is Muslim. Ellison and others wondered whether the administration would buckle under the pressure and were relieved when the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, defended Hussain.

"The fact that the president and the administration have appointed Muslims to positions and have stood by them when they've been attacked is the best we can hope for," said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

It was notably different during Obama's run for office. In June 2008, volunteers of his campaign barred two Muslim women in headscarves from appearing behind Obama at a rally in Detroit, eliciting widespread criticism. The campaign promptly recruited Mazen Asbahi, a 36-year-old corporate lawyer and popular Muslim activist from Chicago, to become its liaison to Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Bloggers began researching Asbahi's background. For a brief time in 2000, he had sat on the board of an Islamic investment fund, along with Sheikh Jamal Said, a Chicago imam who was later named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Asbahi said in an interview that he had left the board after three weeks because he wanted no association with the imam.
 
Shortly after his appointment to the Obama campaign, Asbahi said, a Wall Street Journal reporter began asking questions about his connection to the imam. Campaign officials became concerned that news coverage would give critics ammunition to try to link the imam to Obama, Asbahi recalled. On their recommendation, Asbahi agreed to resign from the campaign, he said.

He is still unsettled by the power of his detractors. "To be in the midst of this campaign of change and hope and to have it stripped away over nothing," he said. "It hurts."

From the moment Obama took office, he seemed eager to change the tenor of America's relationship with Muslims worldwide. He gave his first interview to Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language television station based in Dubai. Muslims cautiously welcomed his ban on torture and his pledge to close Guantanamo within a year.

In his Cairo address, he laid out his vision for "a new beginning" with Muslims: while America would continue to fight terrorism, he said, terrorism would no longer define America's approach to Muslims.

Back at home, Muslim and Arab-American leaders remained skeptical. But they took note when, a few weeks later, Mohamed Magid, a prominent imam from Sterling, Va., and Rami Nashashibi, a Muslim activist from Chicago, joined the president at a White-House meeting about fatherhood. Also that month, Dr. Faisal Qazi, a board member of American Muslim Health Professionals, began meeting with administration officials to discuss health care reform.

The invitations were aimed at expanding the government's relationship with Muslims and Arab-Americans to areas beyond security, said Hussain, the White House's special envoy. Hussain began advising the president on issues related to Islam after joining the White House counsel's office in January 2009. He helped draft Obama's Cairo speech and accompanied him on the trip. "The president realizes that you cannot engage one-fourth of the world's population based on the erroneous beliefs of a fringe few," Hussain said.

Other government offices followed the lead of the White House. In October, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with Arab-Americans and Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., to discuss challenges facing small-business owners. Also last fall, Farah Pandith was sworn in as the State Department's first special representative to Muslim communities. While Pandith works mostly with Muslims abroad, she said she had also consulted with American Muslims because Clinton believes "they can add value overseas."

Despite this, American actions abroad - including civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and the failure to close Guantanamo - have drawn the anger of Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Even though their involvement with the administration has broadened, they leaders remain most concerned about security-related policies. In January, when the Department of Homeland Security hosted a two-day meeting with Muslim, Arab-American, South Asian and Sikh leaders, the group expressed concern about the emergency directive subjecting passengers from a group of Muslim countries to additional screening.

Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, pointed out that the policy would never have caught the attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is British. "It almost sends the signal that the government is going to treat nationals of powerless countries differently from countries that are powerful," Khera recalled saying as community leaders around the table nodded their heads.

Napolitano, who sat with the group for more than an hour, committed to meeting with them more frequently. Khera said she left feeling somewhat hopeful.

"I think our message is finally starting to get through," she said.

(malathi)

It's Modi's tweets that unleashed the drama that took Tharoor, a minister, hostage for a week, before he resigned under considerable pressure from his own party on Sunday night.
 

But the battle begun by Modi has hardly left him unscathed.  For busting open the cupboard where apparently many powerful and rich players have stored skeletons for several years, the Commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL) could pay with an income tax inquiry that focuses largely on him.

Sources in the Finance Ministry say the Income Tax department is now probing Modi; assets, including his offshore money.  Modi's family members and close friends are co-owners of three different IPL teams, and the inquiry will now try to uncover if they are fronts for Modi.  Sources say 4500 of his transactions are being checked out by tax officials.

Last week, income tax officials visited the Mumbai offices of the IPL and Modi in Mumbai.  The visit was described as a "survey."  But since then, sources have confirmed to NDTV that the tax inquiry is aimed at determining the source of funding for the IPL. 

Modi tweeted last Monday that the ownership of the Kochi franchise was murky; he outed Sunanda Pushkar, Tharoor's girlfriend, as a part of the consortium who had been gifted equity worth 70 crores.  Tharoor was charged by the Opposition with misusing his office to lobby for the Kochi team-owners, and of using Pushkar as a 70-crore front.  Although he told NDTV he would not resign, Tharoor was forced to quit after his party made it clear that his link to the Kochi franchise had been inappropriate. 

The issue has led to the government seriously ordering a complete investigation of all franchises in the IPL team, including the two auctioned last month to Pune and Kochi.  Officials handling the inquiry tell NFTv that they expect, by Friday, to get the details from IPL franchisees on their bids.  The Kochi IPL team's documents have already been handed over.  Officials will look at the source of funding of the investors in the franchisees, and whether the franchisees in turn paid their taxes.

The allegations shot off by him, and the attention that Modi has drawn to the issue of ownership has not gone down well with his colleagues at the IPL, which is a sub-committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). 

Sources say Modi may be asked to quit as IPL Commissioner. The IPL's governing council, which is reportedly against Modi, is meeting later this month.  It will be followed by a meeting of the BCCI  Working Committee, where a final call is likely to be made.

Within the IPL's governing council, Modi's three biggest detractors are IPL vice-president Niranjan Shah, BCCI chief Shashank Manohar and N Srinivasan, BCCI secretary.

Those still rooting for Modi are former cricketers Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri.

Taking the middle path, for now, are Rajiv Shukla, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah.
 

(malathi)

The Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence given to Manu Sharma for the murder of model Jessica Lall.

On April 29, 1999, Jessica was bartending at a Delhi restaurant owned by designer Bina Ramani, who was hosting a private party that night. Sharma asked Jessica for a drink. When she refused, he shot her. Jessica was rushed to a hospital by Ramani, where she was declared dead.

Two days later, Sharma's abandoned Tata Safari car was found in Noida, near Delhi. Sharma himself surrendered a few days after that. He has, since then, denied that he killed Jessica.

But the Supreme Court, in its judgment, has said, "The prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt the presence of Manu Sharma at the site of the offence."

"My family is happy. It has given us a lot of satisfaction," said Sabrina Lall, Jessica's sister, who has been leading the campaign for justice for her sister's death. (Watch: My family is happy, says Sabrina Lall)

A trial court in Delhi first acquitted Sharma in February 2006. The Delhi High Court then reversed that decision in December 2006. Sharma appealed to the Supreme Court against the High Court's verdict that found him guilty. 

"I am happy that my judgment has found favour with the Supreme Court", said retired judge RS Sodhi who had delivered the High Court verdict. "It was the media that brought it to our attention that this case had been lingering on for such a long time," said Sodhi.

The Jessica Lall case struck a chord with middle-class India which saw it as a classic example of an average family taking on rich and powerful opponents. The trial also exposed the weaknesses of the legal system. The case stretched for years without any major development, and one after another, key witnesses turned hostile.

They included Shyan Munshi, who was a model and a friend of Jessica's. He first said he had seen the murder happen and that Manu Sharma had fired the gun twice; but in 2001, he failed to identify Sharma in court, dealing a huge blow to the prosecution. He also said his earlier statement against Sharma should be disregarded because it was written in Hindi, a language he was not familiar with. By this time, Munshi had acted in a Bollywood movie where he delivered entire dialogues in Hindi.

The two witnesses who are credited with helping to convict Sharma are Ramani, and her daughter, Malini, who was also present when Jessica was killed. Bina Ramani identified Manu Sharma, Amardeep Singh Gil, Alok Khanna and Vikas Yadav as present at the restaurant. Malini Ramani said she had overheard the conversation when Jessica refused Manu Sharma a drink which led him to pull out his gun and both said they saw Sharma shoot Jessica. The testimony was corroborated by Bina's husband George Mailhot.

The Ramanis have repeatedly said that they received death threats asking them to turn hostile in the case.

(malathi)
 

In a terrible accident in South Delhi, four people travelling in a car were pierced with iron rods after they tried to overtake a truck carrying the rods.

All four people, belonging to Nigeria and said to be management students, have been taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre.

A crane was used to carry the car straight to the hospital, without disturbing the injured men.  
 

(malathi)

The woman caught on camera leaving IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi's office in a plush Mumbai hotel, minutes before the Income Tax authorities reached there for inspection on Thursday has been identified as Laila Mahmood, step daughter of liquor baron and 'Royal Challengers Bangalore' owner Vijay Mallya.

She is believed to have been questioned by I-T authorities who visited the offices of BCCI and IPL Commissioner in the wake of controversy surrounding the Kochi IPL team franchise involving Union Minister Shashi Tharoor.

The I-T authorities probing various aspects of the Indian Premier League controversy have been able to ascertain the identity of the 'mystery' woman as Laila, a source in the department said.

Mallya also said in a statement that "my step daughter Laila Mahmood works for Lalit Modi. I know nothing about this. I called Lalit Modi and he confirmed that she has given a statement to Income Tax."

Income Tax officials inspecting documents related to the IPL and its franchises over the last two days had come across CCTV footage of a woman exiting Modi's office just before the arrival of its sleuths on Thursday.

Suspecting that the woman, who was seen carrying what appeared like a laptop and some documents, might have carried away some important documents, the IT authorities got into action and identified her.
 

(malathi)

Facebook has said it had disabled an account on the social networking site under the name of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, which posted extremist Islamic content and had garnered over 1,000 "fans."

"People often attempt to register fake accounts under the name of famous or infamous people and we have a number of technical measures designed to prevent this behaviour," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told AFP on Sunday in an email.

"Sometimes these fakes do get through but there is no evidence to suggest that the account in question or the other dozens of people who have tried to present themselves as Osama Bin Laden have any relation to the terrorist," he said.

The account, which was disabled on Friday, had posted speeches and audio recordings of Islamic extremists, which were produced by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Sahab Media Group, ABC News reported.

The page referred to Bin Laden as the "Prince of Mujahideen" and put in his location as the "mountains of the world," ABC said, quoting Arabic language news site Elaph.

I-T officials probe 'match-fixing in IPL'NEW DELHI: ‘Mr Lalit Modi has had a trail of failed ventures and defaults till four years back but has a lifestyle now that includes a private jet, a luxury yacht and a fleet of Mercedes S class and BMW cars all acquired in the last three years.’

Thus opens a highly confidential and explosive report by the income-tax department that has been in the possession of the government for six months now but formed the basis of any action only on Thursday evening after a raging controversy over secret ownerships and sweetheart deals in the Indian Premier League, or IPL, stalled both houses of Parliament.

Highly-placed sources in the I-T department and the Congress party told ET that Mr Modi has been on the government radar for quite sometime. The alleged opaqueness with which he conducted the multi-billion dollar cricket tournament and the manner in which he took on home minister P Chidambaram in 2009 seem to have resulted in a detailed enquiry into his activities by the I-T department.

The report, whose contents were described to ET reporters, paints a startling picture of the alleged activities of the controversial IPL commissioner, ranging from his manipulation of land deals in Rajasthan and the existence of a maze of shell companies and offshore entities used to route payments and equity stakes worth hundreds of crores of rupees. The report also makes the startling allegation that Mr Modi—through his associates—was ‘involved’ in ‘betting’, while “insider information and outcome fixing of IPL matches were hinted at”. The six-month-old report, which I-T sleuths maintain is the basis of current investigations, is obviously referring to betting and insider information in the first two IPL tournaments, not the current one.

In preparing the report, investigators seem to have accessed his email account, confidential conversations on a UK-registered cell phone number and regulatory filings from across the globe, from Mauritius to Ireland to the US. Some other Indian cell phone numbers have also been unearthed which the I-T sleuths claim Mr Modi “keeps changing”. The report alleges that Mr Modi is “apparently deeply embroiled in both generation of black money, money laundering, betting in cricket (match fixing of certain IPL matches)”.

An email sent to Lalit Modi remained unanswered on Sunday evening. His lawyer was also sent the same email. A number of his associates named in the report might come under the scanner as the investigation, which started with visits to Mr Modi’s offices on Thursday evening, progresses through the coming weeks. Even though the report detailed the premises the tax department wanted to raid and sought permission to go ahead, political clearance was not granted until junior minister for external affairs Shashi Tharoor stepped into IPL’s murky quicksand and with him dragged the government and the Congress party into one of the biggest scandals in recent times.

“This is not just a Pandora’s box but a Pandora’s chest that has been opened,” said a senior Congress leader who has knowledge of the report. “This will indict everyone,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When contacted about the contents of this report, the official spokesperson of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Shishir Jha, SMSed a terse ‘no comment’ to the ET reporter.

The report refers to one Deepa Raizada as a close associate of Mr Modi “who handles his cross-border transactions and offshore companies”. Ms Raizada is CEO of Modi Entertainment Networks and has worked at the firm for nearly 10 years, according to two persons who work at the company. The I-T report says she has previously worked with Equity Associates, a boutique investment firm based out of Ontario, Canada. Ms Raizada did not take calls made on her mobile number and did not respond to a text message from the ET reporter. Her home phone remained unreachable through Sunday and an email sent to an id listed under her name on the Modi Group’s website bounced.

A league of extraordinary betting?

What will come as most disturbing to cricket fans is that the report suggests pervasive betting and outcome fixing in the IPL. According to the report, Modi himself is involved through Samir Thukral, a Delhi-based “page 3 personality” with an “opulent lifestyle despite having no apparent source of income”.

Mr Thukral is a permanent fixture at all IPL matches with VIP access, the report says, adding that he “carries out the betting on behalf of Lalit Modi”. I-T sleuths are investigating “a lot of matches of IPL, especially involving the three teams in which Modi has an interest”. The mobile number listed in the report against Thukral actually belongs to Samir Thukral, a co-founder of Shree Capital Advisors, a Delhi-based private equity advisory firm.

His bio-data says he has interests in online lottery business and real estate. “I have known Lalit for 30 years and he is a good friend. And yes, of course, I went to South Africa for IPL matches, but these are wild and baseless allegations,” Mr Thukral told ET. On Sunday afternoon, Rahul Nayar, founder of Shree Capital Advisors, told ET that Mr Thukral doesn’t work for him anymore. He refused to answer other queries and hung up on ET reporters. Mr Thukral, however, maintained that he is the co-promoter of Shree Capital Advisors.

Ownership issues

The report alleges that Modi has silent ownership in three IPL teams—Rajasthan Royals, Kolkata Knight Riders and Kings XI Punjab. According to the report, Rajasthan Royals’ owner Emerging Media is controlled by Manoj Badale, Mumbai Education Trust and Ranjit Thakre, a former employee of ITC Ltd. It says a 25% stake in the team is with “hidden owner” Suresh Chellaram, a Nigeria-based co-brother-in-law of Mr Modi. Manoj Badale did not respond to an email seeking comment from ET.

Incidentally, Rajasthan Royals won the first IPL tournament in 2008. The report also says Kolkata Knight Rider’s co-owner Jay Mehta, who is married to actor Juhi Chawla, is “partly fronting” for Lalit Modi. Industrialist Jay Mehta denies these allegations. According to an official response from KKR, the team is wholly-owned by actor Shah Rukh Khan and Mr Mehta and there are no other shareholders. “Kolkata Knight Riders is owned by Mr Shah Rukh Khan and The Sea Islands Ltd (a company incorporated in Mauritius), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mehta International Ltd—the holding company of the Mehta Group. The shareholding pattern is as follows: Mr Shah Rukh Khan-55%; Sea Islands Ltd-45%. There are no other investors in Knight Riders Sports Private Limited,” said a spokesperson of KKR.

The report claims that Modi owns a stake in Kings XI Punjab through Akash Arora, owner of Delhi-based BPO Netlink Blue. Arora is a part-owner of the team along with Ness Wadia and Mohit Burman, according to the report. “Akash does not and has never owned a stake in our team,” said Mohit Burman. He, however, declined to categorically state that 100% of the team’s ownership rests solely with himself, Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia and Karan Paul.

Mohit’s younger brother, Gaurav Burman, who is married to Lalit Modi’s stepdaughter, told ET that he also owns a stake in the Mohali team. He volunteered this information while responding to allegations in the report that he is linked to Betfair, a UK firm that runs one of the world’s largest betting syndicates on the Internet. As readers of ET would know, betting is a legal activity in the UK. The report says that according to information contained in Modi’s email account, the IPL chairman is helping Betfair, which is seeking to enter the casino and hospitality business in India.

“Gaurav Burman is to receive equity on behalf of Lalit Modi,” the report says. “This is completely baseless, I have no links whatsoever with Betfair,” Gaurav Burman told ET. From Modi’s emails, the tax department also accessed details of a transaction relating to the purchase of a luxury yacht in Malta that is to be delivered in Mumbai or Dubai.

Conflicts of interest

WSG and IMG, two companies that received BCCI contracts, are both old business partners in Modi’s own businesses. Modi Entertainment Networks runs Fashion TV in India. IMG did business with Fashion TV for years before it won the contract for managing IPL. IMG, a powerful global firm with interests in sports, media and entertainment, was to get 10% of IPL’s revenues as management fee. In July 2008, following murmurs that this was too sweet a deal, BCCI terminated the contract.

The two parties later renegotiated and IMG was back in the game with a substantially reduced fee.According to the report, WSG, which owns IPL’s overseas rights, was owed $2.5 million by Modi Entertainment Network from an earlier transaction over which Modi had lost litigation both in India and the UK. The report alleges that by awarding WSG rights at favourable terms, Modi was settling the old dues from his private business. Netlink Blue, whose owner Akash Arora is a part-owner of Kings XI Punjab, according to the report, is another firm that has received favourable BCCI contracts.

“The close links of Modi with Netlink are established through a series of emails wherein Lalit has illegally given Netlink live feeds of Australia-India series before BCCI president intervened and stopped this illegal sale of rights,” the report says. Sure enough, the favour is not without a quid pro quo. “From Netlink, a part of payoff is by way of a commitment to bail out Mr Modi’s sick venture Voyages TV through cash injection of Rs 8 crore in the form of equity,” the report says, citing emails that were available to I-T sleuths.

As he arrived late at night to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his home, the writing was on the wall: Shashi Tharoor was on his way out.

A sign of the new times for the Minister of State for External Affairs - he didn't use his official car with the traditional "lal batti" or red beacon, but his private Maruti 1000 for his second meeting with the PM on Sunday which lasted nearly 45 minutes.

And then came the resignation. Tharoor told the PM and Congress President Sonia Gandhi that he didn't want to embarrass the government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has forwarded Tharoor's resignation to President Pratibha Patil with a recommendation that it may be accepted, a PMO spokesman said. (Read: Shashi Tharoor, the controversy kid)

A little before midnight, came the announcement that the President of India had accepted Tharoor's resignation from the Council of Ministers with immediate effect. The resignation of Tharoor was sent to the President in Pune where she is on an official visit.

The minister has been accused, by the Opposition, of misusing his position as he lobbied for an IPL franchise for Kochi, one eventually won by a consortium that included as an employee Tharoor's girlfriend, Sunanda Pushkar, who was gifted equity worth 70 crores. The controversy began exactly a week ago, ironically with a tweet on Twitter sent not by Tharoor but by IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi.

After fast-paced events through the week that were embarrassing for the party, the Congress made up its mind at a core committee meeting, earlier on Sunday, that Tharoor had to go. The PM met with Sonia Gandhi, his senior-most ministers Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and AK Antony and senior leader Ahmad Patel; the Congress core committee reportedly told the PM that it was untenable for Tharoor to continue.

What cinched the deal against Tharoor is, more than anything else, the timing of the controversy. With Parliament in session, the party didn't want the PM to have to defend Tharoor. With crucial legislation pending, the Congress also didn't want to stall Parliament proceedings with the sort of drama witnessed on Friday when Tharoor tried to defend himself and was shouted down by the Opposition. (Read - IPL tangle: Tharoor's statement in Parliament)

Tharoor, now internally acknowledged as an embarrassment, had annoyed many in the Congress by stoutly refusing to resign. In an interview to NDTV earlier this week, Tharoor had said there was no question of him resigning because he hadn't done "anything wrong". (Read & watch: Won't resign over IPL controversy: Tharoor to NDTV | Full transcript of Tharoor's interview)

Earlier on Sunday, Tharoor's close friend, Sunanda Pushkar, as reported first by NDTV, decided to surrender the 70-crore stake she was gifted by the consortium that bought the Kochi IPL team for Rs 1,530 crores last month. (Watch: Sunanda surrenders sweat equity)

Pushkar's offer was seen by some as an attempt to win the Minister of State for External Affairs a reprieve from his party. Her decision, according to the BJP, only proves Tharoor's misconduct as a public servant.

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "The stain of corruption is not washed by return of bribe money." (Watch: Fraud done under minister's patronage, says BJP) After his resignation the opposition party said: "It's a victory of truth." (Watch: Fraud done under minister's patronage, says BJP)

But speaking to NDTV, Pushkar's lawyer, Ashish Mehta, said her decision had nothing to do with Tharoor. Mehta said she has informed Rendezvous Sports World of the Kochi consortium of her decision. Sharing a statement issued by her, Mehta quoted, "I am a professional with 20 years of experience. Given the deeply unpleasant publicity, I can no longer find the enthusiasm required to associate myself with any IPL activity in the future," Mehta said that Pushkar has returned her sweat equity voluntarily and seeks no compensation for services rendered so far.

On Friday, the Opposition made it impossible for Tharoor to present his defense in Parliament. He was forced to table his statement after his speech was drowned out. The Congress is worried that the PM could be put through similar scenes. (Read - IPL tangle: Tharoor's statement in Parliament | IPL row: Shashi Tharoor defends allegations in Parliament)

Tharoor, a writer and a former Under Secretary General in the United Nations, earns the dubious distinction of becoming the first minister in the UPA-II to go under the cloud of corruption charges. (With PTI inputs)