Four killed as terrorists attack NC leader’s house Top KLO leader held in WB
Two policemen and two terrorists were killed on Sunday after suspected Kashmiri militants attacked the house of a National Conference leader at Bapora in Khrew, about 25-km south of Srinagar.
Officials said that the militants, after being stopped for frisking at the main gate of NC youth wing leader Yawar Masudi’s house, fired indiscriminately at police guards.
Two policemen — head constable Abdul Hameed and constable Vinod Kumar — were fatally injured and declared brought dead at a local hospital.
After killing the police- Within two weeks of giving the police a miss, elusive Kamtapur Liberation Organisation boss Malkhan Singh, alias Madhab Mondal, was arrested early on Sunday in Malda ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The wanted leader was caught from Jamalpur forest men, the gunmen took their service rifles and tried to flee but were stopped by police reinforcements which were joined by the Army’s 50 Rashtriya Rifles, the CRPF and J&K police’s counterinsurgency SOG near Habibpur village in a joint raid by the district police and the state armed police Straco team.
Acting on a tipoff, the joint police team surrounded the forest from all sides at around 2 am. The revelation of Malkhan’s mobile number by a KLO member held recently, helped the police track him down. troops in agriculture fields in nearby Gotran village.
“Both of them were killed and two AK 47 rifles along with the snatched SLR rifles were recovered,” a police spokesperson said. In a fresh attack on Prime Minister’s former media adviser Sanjay Baru, the PMO said that his claims are a smack of “fiction”.
It also rubbished the claim as “baseless and mischievous” that Congress president Sonia Gandhi vetted PMO’s files.
A statement issued by the PMO spokesman Pankaj Pachauri said, “The claims made by a former media adviser to the Prime Minister that PMO files were seen by the Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi are completely baseless and mischievous. It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Mrs Gandhi.”
In his book Accidental Prime Minister - The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, Dr Baru has written that the Prime Minister’s principal secretary Pulok Chatterjee used to seek “instructions” from Mrs Gandhi on important PMO decisions.
Accusing Dr Baru of misusing his “privileged position”, the PMO said, “The book written by the former media adviser is an attempt to gain credibility on the basis of access to high office and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.”
The PMO statement came amidst strong attack by the opposition on Mrs Gandhi and the Prime Minister, over the claims made by Dr Baru.
However, Dr Baru in his interaction with media on Sunday claimed that the book is “very balanced” and also highlighted the achievements of UPA. New Delhi, April 12: The Prime Minister’s Office will take the nod of Gujarat government and Chief Minister Narendra Modi for releasing the correspondence exchanged with the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the postGodhra riots in 2002.
The information was earlier denied by the Central public information officer of the PMO S.E. Rizwi citing section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act, without giving any reasons, which exempts information that would impede the process of investigation or appre- hension or prosecution of offenders.
The decision was overturned during the appeal before his senior Krishan Kumar, director PMO, where the applicant had objected to the response of the CPIO saying he failed to give germane reasons behind denial of information.
The applicant had also underlined that the correspondence was 11 years old and was not likely to have an impact on the investigation, apprehension and prosecution of offenders.
—PTI