Pak min denies envoy’s daughter was captured

Pakistan’s interior minister Sheikh Rashid on Tuesday reiterated the police’s claim that the daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador was not kidnapped even as he urged her to come forward and join a probe, in a case that has further soured relations between the two neighbouring countries.

Rashid’s unexpected statement came a day after the police in Islamabad said they have found no evidence that Silsila Alikhil, the 26-year-old daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan Najibullah Alikhil, was abducted from the capital city of Islamabad.

The Pakistani minister told the media that she used four different taxis to commute to different locations in Islamabad and neighbouring Rawalpindi, and that police have all the details of

ISLAMABAD:

her movement.

“There is no case of kidnapping,” interior minister Rashid told reporters at a press conference, adding that investigators had studied 700 hours of CCTV footage and searched at least 200 taxis to pick up clues.

The Pakistani minister went on to say that the incident was being used as a way to “defame our country”.

The Afghan foreign ministry said on Saturday that Silsila was riding in a taxi in Islamabad on Friday when she was kidnapped and held for several hours, during which she was “severely tortured by unknown persons”.

vWATCH: Pak makes baseless claims about Silsila’s abduction 40 crore people have no antibodies. We would like them to gain protection through vaccination and not an infection. Because such a large pool of vulnerable population is still among us -one out of three -- the pandemic is in no way over. Second wave is still persisting,” said VK Paul, Niti Aayog member (Health).

Experts said that the findings should be seen cautiously and warned against making assumptions about so-called herd or population immunity. “The aggregated data at the national level is a piece of good news but not a reason to celebrate or have unreasonable optimism. We should be very careful and not jump the gun in declaring that we are nearer the threshold of population immunity. We can still have major outbreaks, as we see in the UK, Israel, and others,” said Dr Giridhara R Babu, head, epidemiology, Indian Institute of Public Health.

Herd immunity or population immunity refers to a level of protection in a community where there are too few people left for an infectious pathogen to spread. For Sars-cov-2, this level was initially thought to be around 66% for the virus that was first seen in Wuhan. For the Delta variant, the threshold is believed to have risen to 80-87.5%, since the mutations make it spread faster.

But the concept has also been tricky in the case of Covid-19 for other reasons. Herd immunity is a concept accounted for in the case of vaccination-induced immunity. Additionally, antibodies from a natural infection can vary between people and tend to wane after a particular amount of time.

Dr Babu said these were among several caveats to keep in mind. “One, even if this is truly representative, there is a high proportion of uninfected and unvaccinated persons in India. Two, there can be a disproportionately higher susceptible pool of uninfected persons in certain regions and some age groups. We should ramp up the vaccination coverage and widen it to ensure susceptibility levels should decrease. Finally, we do not know much about the proportion of reinfections in the community and antibody waning in the general population,” he added.

Protection from Covid-19 also depends on a second line of defence of the immune system, which involves T cells and B cells. At the same time, new variants of the coronavirus can help the virus evade immunity from a past infection as well as vaccination -- although people are still expected to be somewhat protected from disease and death.

gress welcomed the verdict at the time, and said it will help deal with the criminalisation of politics.

The order was passed in response to contempt petitions, which, pointed out that despite directions given by court in an order on September 25, 2018, for decriminalisation of politics, the government and the Election Commission of India (EC) failed to take concrete steps.

The Supreme Court, in its 2018 judgment, asked for an enactment of a law to decriminalise politics, instructed candidates to fill in details of pending criminal cases against them in the form provided by EC, and ordered the disclosure by parties of the background of the candidates on public platforms.

Senior advocate Vikas Singh, who represented the Election Commission of India, apprised the bench that there were 427 candidates with criminal antecedents who contested the state polls in Bihar in 2020. The Rashtriya Janata Dal topped the list with 104 tainted candidates, followed by the BJP, which fielded 77 such candidates.

Singh pointed out that after the apex court’s judgment in February, the Election Commission (EC) on March 6 wrote to all recognised political parties, making it clear that a failure to abide by the court orders will be treated as a breach under Paragraph 16A of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, under which the election symbol of a party can be suspended or withdrawn.

However, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for the Nationalist Congress Party, submitted there were myriad issues in suspending an election symbol in a polity such as India, where even panchayat polls are conducted on the party’s election symbol. “Should the symbol of a national party be cancelled because directions haven’t been followed in a state or at a panchayat level? These are issues to be pondered over,” he said.

The bench asked Sibal: “Are we then expected to put our hands up in the air? If we don’t go through route of Paragraph 16A, how do we go about it?”

Sibal replied that the SC should authorise EC under Article 324 (power of superintendence, direction and control of elections) to debar any candidate against whom charges under offences entailing over seven years in jail have been framed.

But the bench retorted that a five-judge bench in 2018 clarified that a constitutional court could not issue such directions since there was no provision in the Constitution or any statute to back such a sanction. “But we will definitely think over your suggestion. You give us a note, and we will see what we can do within the parameters of the 2018 judgment,” it said.

The bench added: “What we are sure about is that the legislative branch will never do this. I am sure about this that not in the near future but in any future, they won’t do it.”

Under the Representation of People Act, an MP or an MLA convicted by court and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of more than two years is disqualified from contesting elections for the imprisoned period and a further period of years from his release. There is no provision for disqualifying any candidate prior to conviction. The Act disqualifies a candidate for use of corrupt practice in the elections, which needs to be proven by another candidate in opposition before a court.

In a separate case, where the Supreme Court is monitoring the constitution of special courts for expediting the trial of sitting MPS and MLAS, statistics have revealed that a total of 4,442 cases were pending against MPS and MLAS in special courts across the country as on September 1, 2020. Out of this, sitting legislators are accused persons in 2,556 cases.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who also appeared for EC, told the bench that the suspension of an election symbol should be the last resort in instances of “most egregious defaults” by the political parties because too many political parties will be thrown out of the electoral arena if every default will lead to taking away the election symbol.

“...the court may censure all the parties in default and issue a warning that if they don’t follow the court orders, 16A (suspension of symbol) will be the final route,” Salve added.

The court also heard counsel for various parties, as it reserved its order on issuing further directions in the matter. bers were hacked.

Opposition leaders from the Congress and the TMC had given notice under Rule 267— to suspend other business and take up debate on the Pegasus controversy. YSR Congress also gave a similar notice to demand a special package for Andhra Pradesh. In the Lok Sabha, MPS rushed down to the Well of the House over the Pegasus row, oil price hike and farm laws.

As soon as the Lok Sabha assembled at 11am, Opposition members started shouting slogans and showing placards against the government. The House was adjourned within five minutes.

When it reassembled at 2pm, the protests resumed. One of the placards in Hindi said that while people are unemployed, the government was busy with “jasoosi” (spying).

Some Congress members held placards about Gandhi’s name appearing in the list of potential targets. TMC members shouted slogans against Banerjee’s phone number being in the list. Other parties such as Shiromani Akali Dal, YSR Congress and Aam Aadmi Party also protested over separate issues.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla urged the members to restore normalcy. “You are all senior leaders. Don’t try to create a wrong precedent in the House,” Birla said.

The House was finally adjourned for the day at 3pm.

The Rajya Sabha was also disrupted in the morning but assembled for the Covid debate in the afternoon.

Amid the protests, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu said that members had the right to raise important issues but “if 15 people today, 17 people yesterday, give notice under Rule 267 on a variety of issues, what is the way for the chairman to admit notices and then take the House forward?”

The TMC said it will continue to disrupt Parliament till the government comes clean on the issue.

“This is a serious issue and the TMC will not compromise on it. We will not let either House run till this government comes clean on the charges of snooping and surveillance. The government has spent millions to hack into phones at a time when the country is dealing with a pandemic,” TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’brien said.

Earlier in the day, some Opposition leaders in the Rajya Sabha held an informal meeting — the first such effort towards floor coordination — on how to balance between the two key issues: Pegasus controversy and Covid-19. The leaders decided that the Upper House won’t be allowed to run for anything else except the Covid-19 debate.

A highly invasive malware, Pegasus can switch on a target’s phone camera and microphone, as well as access data on the device, effectively turning a phone into a pocket spy. In some cases, it can be installed without the need to trick a user into initiating a download.

In 2019, Whatsapp disclosed that 121 users from India were among those globally spied upon by unnamed entities using Pegasus.

The investigation is based on a data leak of around 50,000 numbers obtained by Amnesty International and Paris-based Forbidden Stories, a non-profit organisation. Amnesty International subsequently forensically investigated 67 of these phones, and found 23 hacked and 14 showing signs of attempted penetration. The Wire reported that 10 of the phones forensically examined in India showed they had either been hacked or signs of an attempted hacking.

Pegasus’s manufacturer, Israel-based NSO group, called the investigation “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories”, and said it sold its software “solely to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of vetted governments”.

The consortium – which comprises 17 media organisations, including The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde and Indian news website The Wire – published on Sunday that 38 Indian journalists, including three current Hindustan Times staffers and one from sister publication Mint, were among 180 journalists potentially targeted worldwide, including Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf, and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, and Le Monde.

On Monday, it reported that Gandhi, Lavasa, information and technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, jal shakti minister of state Prahlad Singh Patel, public health experts Gagandeep Kang and M Hari Menon, and the woman who accused then chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment in 2019, were potentially targeted.

The government denied any involvement.

“Aap Chronology Samajhiye! [Understand the chronology] This is a report by the disrupters for the obstructers. Disrupters are global organisations which do not like India to progress. Obstructers are political players in India who do not want India to progress,” Union home minister Amit Shah said in a statement on Monday.

Vaishnaw, in his first speech as IT minister in the Lok Sabha said, “Time tested processes in our country are well-established to ensure that unauthorised surveillance does not occur.”