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LIVE! If India retaliates Pakistan cannot fight back: Parrikar

09:00  Update: If India retaliates Pakistan cannot fight back: Parrikar:   Former defence minister Manohar Parrikar has said Pakistan is playing a “dangerous game” in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death in the neignbouring country on charges of spying. 

“Pakistan is playing a dangerous game. Pakistan should understand that if India starts retaliating then it does not have the power to fight back, whatever they may project themselves to be,” the Goa chief minister told Doordarshan in an interview which was aired on Friday evening.  

“But, we want peace. We do not want provocation. So they should send Jadhav back,” he said. 

“First of all, they have abducted him. He was not in Pakistan. He was in Iran. Iran has said that the Taliban kidnapped him and took him to Pakistan. Pakistan has a habit of doing something or other,” Parrikar said. 

“….(External Affairs Minister) Sushma Swaraj has given an apt reply — ‘we will not keep quiet’ (if Pakistan executes Jadhav). The country will do what is required. We can take care of Pakistan if it tries to do anything ill-advised,” he said. 

A military court in Pakistan has sentenced Indian naval staff Jadhav to death for alleged espionage. The Indian government reacted strongly to the development saying if the sentence were to be carried out it would be considered as “pre-meditated murder”. 

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08:58  Bifurcate Valley to house Pandits, nationalist forces: Panun Kashmir:  An organisation of Kashmiri Pandits has demanded the “bifurcation” of Kashmir to carve out a separate homeland for displaced “Pandits and nationalist forces” as it termed the Valley as an “ungoverned region”. 

“Kashmir Valley has virtually become an ungoverned area. The separatists and anti-India forces have become powerful. There is virtually no space left for the nationalist forces,” Ajay Chrungoo, chairman, Panun Kashmir, told reporters.  

Chrungoo said, “The time has come when the government should bifurcate Kashmir and crave out a homeland for Kashmiri Pandits”. “The policies pursued by the Government of India in Jammu and Kashmir have failed because it has relied upon harnessing soft-separatism instead of nourishing nationalism. 

“The prime minister should personally intervene and abandon the Agenda of Alliance, the common minimum programme between PDP and BJP on the basis of which the government was formed in the state,” he said.

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08:54  IAF chopper combats forest fire near Mt Abu:  A major fire broke out in the forest area near Mount Abu in Sirohi district of Rajasthan, prompting the Indian Air Force to deploy an MI-17 chopper to douse the flames.  

The fire broke out in the morning and spread over several kilometres. 

The administration is making use of a modified MI-17V5 helicopter to put out the blaze, district collector Abhimanyu Kumar said.  

The affected area is close to Mount Abu, the sole hill station in the state, where a large number of tourists arrive in the summer season. However, tourist activities remained unaffected in the area, a police official said.  

A defence spokesperson said: “The helicopter unit at Phalodi in Jodhpur swung into action on receiving a call from the state government, seeking help in dousing a massive forest fire in the hills fast progressing towards the inhabited areas assisted by winds.” 

A suitably modified MI-17V5 helicopter reached the site and conducted a quick aerial recce before the operation for which it drew water out of Nakki lake in the middle of Mount Abu.  

The IAF team managed to push in seven sorties dropping close to about 20,000 litres of water over the spread of fire dangerously close to the inhabited areas, the spokesperson said.

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08:49  2nd Romanian held in Kenya for Kerala ATM fraud:  A Romanian national was arrested on Friday in Kenya for his alleged role in a high-tech case of ATM fraud in Kerala last year, the police said.

Ionut Alexandru Marinoiu, the second Romanian involved in the case, was arrested on the basis of a red corner notice issued by the Interpol based on the Kerala police’s recommendation.  

The police said efforts are being made to bring Ionut to Kerala. 

He is the second Romanian to be arrested in the case involving six accused.  

Earlier, on August 10 last year, another Romanian national, suspected to be behind the ATM fraud case along with two other foreigners, was arrested in  Mumbai. 

The police had then said three Romanians were involved in the racket, in which they had allegedly obtained the details of bank customers and withdrawn their money using fake ATM cards. 

The police suspect that the electronic device at the ATM counter had enabled the fraudsters collect the secret PIN and card details.

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08:31  Former J&K governor Gary Saxena is dead:  Former Jammu and Kashmir governor Girish Chandra Saxena, whose tenure saw a significant decline of militancy in the Valley, died in New Delhi on Friday after a brief illness. He was 90. 

Saxena breathed his last after he was rushed to a hospital following breathlessness, his brother and former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra said.  

The funeral pyre of Saxena, who served as the governor of the troubled state twice, was lit by his grandson Varun in the presence of political leaders and senior bureaucrats, including National Security Advisor A K Doval. 

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha and serving and retired officers from RAW and Intelligence Bureau also gathered at the crematorium to pay their last respects to Saxena. 

Born in Agra in 1928, Saxena, an IPS officer of the 1950 batch of Uttar Pradesh cadre, who also headed the country’s external intelligence agency RAW from 1983 to 1986, is survived by his wife and two daughters.  

He first took charge as the Jammu and Kashmir governor on May 26, 1990, barely a few days after the religious head of Muslims in Srinagar Mirwaiz Farooq was gunned down by the Hizbul Mujahideen..  

He was credited with the revival of intelligence gathering mechanism of the state police. His experience at RAW came in handy in discharging his duties from Raj Bhavan.  

After his first stint as governor, Saxena was again brought to the state in 1998. He was lauded for his efforts which turned the state police into an effective counter-insurgency force. 

“No militancy can be fought without the local police,” he had once said during his second stint as governor.  

Former J&K chief ministers, the father-son duo Farooq and Omar Abdullah, while condoling his demise, said a visionary has been lost. 

“I recall my association with Governor Saxena. He was very cool in extreme situations and always had a humane approach to any problem,” Farooq said. 

Omar said, “It’s a sad news for me. He (Saxena) had always guided me during my initial days in politics.”

Image: A file photo from Rediff Archives of J&K governor G C Saxena in 2002.

Source: Rediff