Castration case: CBI court summons Sirsa dera chief on Feb 28

PANCHKULA: A special CBI court has summoned rape convict Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim and two others on February 28 for a hearing on framing of charges against them for castration of devotees. Judicial magistrate Kapil Rathi has directed Sunaria jail superintendent in Rohtak, where Gurmeet is lodged, to produce him through videoconferencing. The CBI challan also names Dr Pankaj Garg and Dr MP Singh, who were employed in a hospital inside the dera, as co-accused. SRINAGAR/NEWDELHI: Security forces and militants continued to exchange fire in the heart of Srinagar till late on Monday night after a foiled attack on a CRPF camp left a trooper dead and a policeman critically injured.

CRPF trooper Mujahid Khan, a resident of Bihar and part of the 49 Battalion, was killed in the firing. The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-taiba (LET) claimed responsibility for the attack.

As darkness enveloped the Karan Nagar area, loud explosions and the rattle of automatic gunfire could be heard intermittently, officials and residents said.

The site of the ongoing encounter is barely 300 metres from the SMHS Hospital from where Pakistani LET militant Naveed Jhatt alias Abu Hunzullah escaped on February 6 after two policemen were killed.

Meanwhile, the LET in a statement to a local agency on Monday lauded Jaish-e-mohammad (JEM) militants for the attack on the Sunjuwan military station in Jammu on Saturday in which nine people were killed, including three militants.

Earlier in the day, local news agencies whom the militants generally send their statements to had mis-interpreted the LET statement as a claim that Lashkar militants were involved in both attacks.

The militants, whom security forces claimed to be from the JEM, had launched a pre-dawn