No plea with MEA for extradition of Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed: RTI
The ministry of external affairs has said that it has not received any request so far to extradite 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and 1993 Mumbai bombings accused Dawood Ibrahim from the agencies probing them.
The ministry was responding to an RTI query seeking to know the action taken by the government to bring back fugitive gangster Ibrahim and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Saeed.
“The ministry of external affairs has not received any request for extradition/deportation/return in respect of Hafiz Sayeed and Dawood Ibrahim from the investigating agency concerned in India,” it said.
Ibrahim is the main accused in the 1993 serial bomb blasts case in Mumbai in which around 260 people were killed, and more than 700 suffered injuries. He fled the country post the bombings and is understood to be hiding in Pakistan at present.
Saeed, also the co-founder of Pakistan-based Lashkar-eTaiba (LeT) terrorist organisation , is accused of plotting the militant attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, in which 166 people were killed by a group of armed terrorists who had entered the city through a sea route. PTI
Want to speak out against sexual harassment? Help is now just a text away.
Programmer Sagar Sodah, 26, recently created a chatbot for women to anonymously report incidents of sexual harassment.
“I want to use technology to create a social impact,” says the visually impaired Mumbai resident, whose profile on the ‘Safe City’ website reads ‘Tech for Good’.
What is a chatbot? A chatbot is a program that simulates structured conversations with humans over the messenger platform.
The bot is easy to use and will help women to anonymously report any kind of verbal, non-verbal or physical abuse that they have been subjected to.
“Safe City, a non-government organisation, has a website where women can write about such instances — http://safecity.in/. However, a bot makes the process easier as you can access it from your phone,” said Sodah whose 10% vision has not deterred him from working for the past five years. “You should know how to adapt to circumstances and eventually figure out ways to keep the work going,” he says, speaking about his impairment.
Once women report an incident, it will be recorded on a crowd-sourced map, which is available on the Safe City website, he adds.
“This data will also be shared with authorities who can use it to strengthen safety measures,” Sodah says.
“Most women do not talk about sexual violence as it is considered to be shameful. In such a scenario, official statistics alone will not help people understand the gravity of the issue. The bot is a medium that will encourage women to break their silence,” says Elsa Marie D’Silva, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Safe City.
D’Silva says that since the bot was launched in February, about 100 women from Maharashtra have used it to report sexual abuse.
Sodah is now working on assembling a group of programmers to discuss how technology can be used to bring about social change.
The ruling BJP plans to reach out directly to farmers across 43,000 villages across Maharashtra to counter the Opposition’s as well as its ally Shiv Sena’s consistent attacks on the poor handling of the agrarian crisis in the state.
The Shivar Samvad (farm dialogue) campaign, planned by the party from May 25 to May 28 will see party leaders holding meetings in every village to discuss efforts taken by the government so far to alleviate the crisis. The campaign is BJP’s answer to the Opposition’s Sangharsh Yatra, which demanded a farm loan waiver and the Sena’s more recent Shiv Sampark Abhiyan, a farmer outreach programme.
The campaign will aim at direct talks between BJP functionaries and farmers to highlight all government policies, from crop insurance schemes to agriculture subsidies being offered in the state.
Nearly 4,000 elected party representatives, including chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, state president Raosaheb Danve, all elected legislators, members of parliament and corporators, will take part in the campaign. On the first day of the programme, the BJP will hold meetings across 16,000 villages with Fadnavis attending the ones in villages of Latur of Marathwada and Danve in tribal Nandurbar.
“We have nearly 4,000 elected representatives who will actively take part in this programme. The idea is to sit with villagers and talk to them. Besides policies for farmers, we will also compare our government’s three-year regime to the 15-year regime of the CongressNCP alliance. This will highlight the differences,’’ said labour minister Sambhaji Nilangekar Patil, a BJP leader.
He added that the party had assigned specific regions to senior leaders for this campaign. For instance, revenue minister Chandrakant Patil would be in charge of Kolhapur, finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar will look after Vidarbha and education minister Vinod Tawde would handle Konkan.