They had been married for eight months and wanted a life a little more comfortable than what they were used to. So Sonia and Jasvir, both in their early 20s, decided to kidnap a 16-year-old from Hoshiarpur.

In 2005, they picked up the son of a local businessman outside his school. They asked for 50 lakhs in ransom, when the teenager's family didn't pay up, he was given sedatives that led to his death.

A court gave Sonia a life sentence, and the death penalty to Jasvir. Husband and wife are currently in the Patiala Jail.

Now, they're making headlines again. "Both have asked court that they be allowed to have conjugal rights in the jail itself. It has been allowed in many developed countries and is successful,'' says their lawyer, Gursharan Kaur.

Sonia says she wants to conceive before Jasvir is hanged.

''We have no example or no instruction on this. This has never happened before. They are in separate cells,'' says Jeevan Garg, the Superintendent of Patiala Central Jail.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court will hear the case on May 24.

If the court agrees to their request, and Sonia gets pregnant, it may also be up to the court to indicate what should happen to the couple's child. Available options include the child being raised in special prison facilities, in a government home, or by either set of grandparents.
 

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The Supreme Court has slammed the union government for treating army personnel like "beggars" in respect of emoluments and pension and asked the authorities to adopt a more "humane approach" towards those bravely defending the country's borders.

"If a person goes to any part of Delhi and sits for begging, he will earn Rs 1000 every day and you are offering a pittance of Rs 1000 per month for a man who fought for the country in the high altitudes and whose arm was amputated?

"Is this the way you treat those brave army officers? It is unfortunate that you are treating them like beggars," a bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and A K Patnaik said in verbal comments while passing the order.

The apex court passed the order dismissing the Centre's appeal challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court direction to pay higher pension to C S Siddu, a Short Commissioned Officer whose right arm had to be amputated due to an accident while on duty at the high altitudes on November November 21, 1970.

"The army personnel are bravely defending the country even at the cost of their lives and we feel they should be treated in a better and more humane manner by government authorities, particularly, in respect of their emoluments, pension and other benefits," the bench said in an order.

There was an element of drama in the court when Additional Solicitor General Parag Tripathi pleaded with the court not to use "strong words" in the order like "beggars," "niggardly" "miserly", following which the bench dropped them from the written order.

"We regret to say that the army officers and army men in our country are being treated in a shabby manner by the government. In this case, the respondent (Sidhu), who was posted at a high altitude field area and met with an accident during discharge of his duties, was granted a meagre pension. This is a pittance (about Rs 1000) per month plus DA. If this is the manner in which the army personnel are treated, it can only be said that it is extremely unfortunate," the bench however, noted in its written order 
 

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RJD chief Lalu Prasad has flayed yoga guru Ramdev, who has decided to float a political party, for criticising every politician in the country and said it was nothing but madness.

"It is not good that Ramdev is criticising every politician in the country to prove himself good," Prasad told a function here yesterday.

"In fact, Ramdevji bauwra gaye hai (Ramdev has gone mad)," he said, adding that he had already told the yoga teacher not to launch any political outfit.

Prasad also criticised Ramdev for claiming to cure cancer. "In this research age, it is nothing but cheating and befooling people," he said.

Interestingly, Prasad had earlier defended Ramdev when CPM leader Brinda Karat had alleged that animal bones were mixed with ayurvedic medicines produced by Patanjali Yogapeeth, an institution established by Ramdev at Hardwar. 
 

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Fatima Bhutto, the outspoken niece of former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto, is in India to release her book 'Songs of Blood and Sword' on the tale of one of Pakistan's most powerful family.

Speaking to NDTV in an exclusive interview, she said President Asif Ali Zardari was behind her father Murtaza's death and the moral responsibility laid with her aunt Benazir Bhutto.

"Before Zardari ascended to the presidency, he was facing four murder cases in the courts of Pakistan that were quickly wiped clean. He was acquitted in the middle of four ongoing trials involving the killing of 11 men. My father was one of them," she said.

"It's more important to speak about justice when you see that there's one law for the powerful and one law for the average citizen. I don't think it's for the first time that criminals have ascended to the highest posts in power. Certainly in Pakistan it's a new precedent for us. We need to be more aware as to who's leading this country at the moment," she added.

"There is certainly a moral responsibility for my father's murder. And that lays squarely with his sister, my aunt Benazir's government. Benazir was the PM at the time and she presided over a state where security officials killed with impunity. Extra-judicial killings were the norm. Some 3000 men were killed in the two years of operation clean up which was led by the Karachi police. So moral responsibility absolutely rests with the government," she further said.

Fatima also said her aunt was two different people for her - one who used to bring her books to read, and the other who was the Prime Minister and was cruel.
 

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Hyderabad, March 29 (IANS) Indian tennis star Sania Mirza's family Monday confirmed that she was all set to marry Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

An Indian news channel quoted Sania's father Imran Mirza as saying that the reports of her proposed marriage with Malik were true. According to the channel, he said that the marriage would take place in a month and that the couple would settle down in Dubai after tying the knot.

Imran said that both Sania and Malik would continue to represent their countries in their respective games.

However, Sania's father or any family member did not come out of the house to speak to mediapersons waiting outside to get a confirmation of the news first aired on a Pakistani television channel.

According to Geo News, Shoaib Malik's mother met the family of Sania, and sought Sania for her son. The channel claimed that Sania's family has accepted the proposal and the two families are all set to conduct the engagement of the two.

The channel even claimed that the engagement ceremony was expected to take place next month.

The news of Sania's proposed marriage with Malik came two months after she called off her engagement to childhood friend Sohrab Mirza, citing 'incompatibility'.

Six months after the engagement took place here amid much fanfare, Sania decided to part ways with Sohrab.

Interestingly, Shoaib Malik was also engaged to a girl from this southern Indian city a few years ago but he later called it off. The family of the girl had even claimed that he had married her but the Pakistani star denied this.

Malik had said in January 2008 that his marriage plans with Ayesha Siddiqui ended because both families could not reach an understanding on certain issues.

However, the girl's family claimed that the they entered the wedlock through 'nikah' over telephone in 2002. Ayesha's father M.A. Siddiqui had even threatened to sue Malik for cheating and demanded him to give a formal divorce.

Malik was also quoted by Pakistani media as saying that Ayesha was not the girl he met in Dubai and that her family cheated him by sending a photograph of another girl.

Malik had reportedly met Ayesha in Dubai and they decided to marry. The Pakistani cricket team was given a grand reception by Ayesha's parents at their residence here when the team toured India in 2005.

Interestingly, Ayesha had not come out at the reception and did not even meet Shoaib, saying she was down with some allergic problem.
 

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will launch a new bilateral economic dialogue with India with a focus on macroeconomic stability, financial markets and infrastructure financing, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Wednesday.

The official, who will join Geithner in a delegation to India next week that will also include Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, said rebalancing the global economy will be a part of the discussions. He declined to comment when asked if the United States was trying to recruit India as an ally in its push for more global currency flexibility.

"We don't have a specific wish list, we certainly have views," the official told a news briefing. "We are eager to see India continuing along its path of reform, continuing on a path of contributing to global macro stability, continuing to open its markets. These are all areas where continued success would bring great dividends, not just to the people of India, but the people of the United States."

Geithner will launch the bilateral talks during an April 6-7 visit to Delhi and Mumbai, where he will meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Deputy Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The talks which include a main session including Geithner and Mukherjee and smaller meetings among other officials, were first announced during Prime Minister Singh's visit to Washington last November.

The discussions complement a strategic dialogue program that the United States shares with China, but will be more limited in scope.

The Treasury official said the discussions will not tackle specific trade barriers and trade policy between the two countries and will not contain a strategic diplomatic component, as the U.S.-China strategic and economic dialogue gained last year.

For example, there are no discussions planned on the issue of a bilateral civilian nuclear energy pact, the official said.

There will be significant focus on identifying opportunities for U.S. firms to export to India and participating in India's infrastructure development, the official said.

The two sides will also discuss infrastructure financing, with the Treasury offering expertise in helping India develop a municipal bond market, and India sharing experience in private-sector infrastructure development.

The discussions also will cover progress made by each country towards achieving economic recovery and financial stability including rebalancing the global economy.

"India's part of the G20 group of countries engaged in important discussions on rebalancing the global economy. and certainly we will be discussing some of the issues in that context," he said.

The chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, Kaushik Basu, told Reuters earlier this month that India was unlikely to follow the U.S. lead in putting pressure on China to revalue its yuan, which critics say is undervalued and gives China an unfair export advantage.
 

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U.S. envoy Susan Rice was confirming what diplomats had told Reuters -- that senior foreign ministry officials from Britain, the United States, France, Russia and Germany had reached agreement with China during a conference call.

"China has agreed to sit down and begin serious negotiations here in New York with the others in the (group of six) ... as a first step towards getting the entire Security Council on board with a tough sanctions regime against Iran," Rice said in an interview on CNN television.

"This is progress, but the negotiations have yet to begin in earnest," she said. "We have shared our thoughts on what elements should be in a tough U.N. Security Council resolution. We're gratified that ... now we're going to get down to the nuts and bolts of negotiations. That's what's necessary."

Rice said Washington and its allies will work "intensively in the coming weeks to build the strongest possible agreement to a set of sanctions that will put real pressure on Iran."

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he wants a new Iran sanctions resolution adopted within weeks, not months.

China's agreement is important because it has veto power on the Security Council, as do the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

The Western powers in the group hope to organize a meeting of the six powers at the ambassadorial level in New York in the coming days to get the process of drafting a sanctions resolution going, several diplomats told Reuters.

The basis for negotiations, diplomats said, will be a U.S. sanctions proposal that Washington agreed with its European allies and passed on to Russia and China around a month ago.

Moscow, like Beijing, reluctantly backed three previous rounds of U.N. sanctions against Tehran for refusing to halt enrichment as demanded by five Security Council resolutions. Iran rejects Western charges that its atomic program is aimed at developing bombs and says enrichment is a sovereign right.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended only to peacefully generate electricity.

Diplomats say China has been slowly and reluctantly falling in line with the other powers involved in the negotiations on Iran by backing the idea of new U.N. sanctions against Tehran, though Beijing, like Moscow, wants any new steps to be weak.

Although the four Western powers would like a resolution to be adopted next month, before a month-long U.N. conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May, diplomats say the negotiation process could drag on at least until June as China and Russia work hard to dilute any proposed punitive steps.

But Moscow, Western diplomats say, has become increasingly impatient with Iran's rejection of a U.N.-backed nuclear fuel offer that would have moved Tehran's low-enriched uranium stocks to Russia and France to process it into fuel for an aging research reactor that produces medical isotopes.

Both Russia and China have privately urged Iran to accept the offer as a goodwill gesture, but Western diplomats said Beijing and Moscow did not receive any clear responses from Tehran. That, diplomats say, is one of the reasons China agreed to join negotiations on a new U.N. sanctions resolution.

"China said it was on the same page as Russia," a diplomat said, referring to Wednesday's conference call.

The U.S.-drafted sanctions proposal would expand an existing U.N. blacklist, with a new focus on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members and firms it controls.
 

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Islamabad, Apr.1 (ANI): The Pakistan Army has denounced reports that David Coleman Headley, a Lashkar operative who has been charged with scouting targets for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, had named three Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials for their direct involvement in the 26/11 attacks.

A statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) termed the report as false and fabricated, and said that they were aimed at maligning the image of the Pakistan Army and the ISI.

"There is absolutely no link or connection between the army, ISI and David Headley," The Daily Times quoted the statement, as saying.

The report appears to be part of an overall design with a malicious intent to bring disrepute to Pakistan's national security organisations, the statement added.

Headley had pleaded guilty to all the 12 charges of conspiracy involving bombing public places in India and providing material support to foreign terrorist plots and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), besides aiding and abetting the murder of six US citizens in the Mumbai attacks.

Headley, 49, has been cooperating with U.S. investigators since his arrest in October and faces up to life imprisonment.

Headley had promised to cooperate and provide testimony in exchange for a pledge that he would not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark.
 

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said the government was committed to ensuring that all children irrespective of gender and social category have access to education and fund constraints would not be allowed to hamper implementation of the the Right to Education Act. 
    
Addressing the nation as the Right to Education Act went into force today, he said "the government is committed to ensuring that all children irrespective of gender and social category, have access to education." 

    
"Our government, in partnership with state governments, will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act" he said.
    
Adding a personal touch to the importance of education, the Prime Minister recalled his own childhood days as someone born in a family of modest means who had to walk a long distance to go to school. "I read under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I am what I am today because of education," he said.
   
"I want every Indian child, girl and boy, to be so touched by the light of education. I want every Indian to dream of a better future and live that dream", Singh said.
    
Recalling the desire of Gopal Krishna Gokhale about 100 years ago when he had urged the Imperial Assembly to confer on the Indian people the Right to Education, Singh said about 90 years later the Constitution was amended to enshrine the Right to Education as a fundamental right.
      
"Today, our government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving all our children the right to elementary education," Singh said adding "this demonstrates our national commitment to the education of our children and to the future of India ".
     
Pointing out that India is a country of young people, he said "it is the belief of our government that if we nurture our children and young people with the right education, India's future as a strong and prosperous country is secure."  
 

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Hyderabad's usually crowded Old City wears a haunted look. With curfew continuing in 25 police station areas, the calm is uneasy in this riot-hit part of the Andhra Pradesh Capital. The toll in the violence since Saturday rose to two when a youth was stabbed to death in the Karwan area on Tuesday. The communal clashes, which broke out Saturday following a dispute over religious flags, have also left over 150 people injured.

Police Commissioner A.K. Khan has said any decision on relaxing the curfew will be taken after a review of the situation later on Wednesday.

Incidents of violence continued till late on Tuesday even after eight more police station areas were brought under curfew following clashes in new city localities. Apart from the youth killed, dozens, including three police officers, were injured in clashes and stone pelting since Tuesday evening. Among them, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Ravi Verma, who was injured on Tuesday night in stone pelting by miscreants at Seetarambagh in Asifnagar.

There was also large-scale violence during a Hanuman Jayanti processions in Musheerabad, Bholakpur, Mangal Hat and other areas. Rioters attacked houses and set afire dozens of vehicles.

The police decision to allow the processions in several areas despite prohibitory orders in the city on Tuesday has come under criticism from various sections of people.

About 5000 security personnel are posted in the Old City alone to prevent miscreants from creating trouble. Getting about this part of town is extremely difficult, with some people who live here having been stranded in the new city for as long three days. 

There are tight barricades and only people who have been issued passes by the police can move in the curfew-bound areas. Police and paramilitary forces are keeping a tight vigil in all curfew-bound areas and strictly enforcing restrictions to avert any untoward incident.

With more areas coming under curfew, authorities have postponed Class 10 examinations for Wednesday and Thursday at 410 centres in curfew-bound areas. The Osmania University has also postponed its degree examinations.

As Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station, the biggest bus station in the city, has also come under curfew, the state-owned Road Transport Corporation (RTC) has shifted bus operations to other areas.  

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