MISSING BOY FOUND DEAD IN CAR, POLICE BLAME HEAT

A six-year-old boy, who was missing since noon, was found dead in a car on Monday. The boy was found in a car parked outside his house, at around 4 pm.

“Prima facie it appears that it is due to heat as the incident happened around noon. It was very hot. The boy may have suffocated inside the car. The suffocation might have caused the burn injuries. But we are investigating into the matter from all angles,” said Milind Dumbere, DCP (North-West).

Police said the parents of the child, who come from a humble background, noticed that the boy was missing around noon. The boy, Sonu, was later found in a Hyundai Accent car parked outside his house at around 4 pm, and was found to have burn injuries on his body.

Though it hasn’t been determined how Sonu got into the car, primary inquiry suggests that he entered inside the car accidentally and couldn’t come out and died due to suffocation and heat.

The owner of the car alerted the parents, and called the police. Sonu was taken to Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital, and was declared dead.

The sources said they did not expect the spat to last long as such a situation would not benefit Qatar.

“A similar spat in 2014 was settled in nine months but at that time, only diplomats were withdrawn and borders were not sealed. Qatar gets most of its supplies from Saudi Arabia and it wouldn’t make sense to prolong this row,” a source said.

However, other sources acknowledged a prolonged crisis could have an impact as Qatar is completely dependent on Saudi Arabia and the UAE for food and other essential supplies.

In New Delhi, external affairs minister said the government was ascertaining the impact of the spat on Indians.

“There is no challenge arising out of this for us. This is an internal matter of GCC. Our only concern is about Indians there. We are trying to find out if any Indians are stuck there,” she told reporters.

The spat threatens the prestige of Qatar, which hosts a large US military base and is set to host the 2022 World Cup. Several countries gave Qatari diplomats and nationals between 48 hours and two weeks to leave their soil. Qatar’s envoy to Egypt was also told to leave in two days.

Several airlines, including Etihad Airways, Emirates and Flydubai, said they would cancel flights to and from Doha from Tuesday. The Arab states also closed their airspace to Qatar Airways, which suspended all its flights to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels also expelled Qatar.

Qatar’s stock market index sank 7.5% with some its top blue chips hardest hit. Oil prices rose after the moves against Qatar, the largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and a major seller of condensate, a low-density liquid fuel and refining product derived from natural gas.

Reza Nourani, chairman of Iran’s union of exporters of agricultural products, said food can be exported by sea to Qatar, which relies on food trucked in from Saudi Arabia across its sole land border crossing. He said food shipments from Iran could reach Qatar in 12 hours.

The current spat had its genesis in reports by Qatar’s official news agency in late May that purportedly said the Emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, had criticised the US, offered backing for Iran, reaffirmed support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and described Qatar-Israel relations as “good”. Tweets from the news agency’s official handle also said Qatar was withdrawing its ambassadors from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE.

Qatari officials later denied these reports and said the news agency’s website and Twitter account had been hacked.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia said in a statement through its SPA state news agency that Qatar “embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda”.

The statement added, “Qatar has also supported the activities of the Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the Qatif province of Saudi Arabia and in neighboring Kingdom of Bahrain. It has also financed, adopted and is harboring extremists who seek to destabilise unity at home and abroad.”

Iran, long at odds with Saudi Arabia, blamed US President Donald Trump for setting the stage during his recent trip to Riyadh. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif urged Qatar and its neighbours to engage in dialogue to resolve their dispute.

“Neighbours are permanent; geography can’t be changed. Coercion is never the solution. Dialogue is imperative, especially during blessed Ramadan,” Zarif tweeted. He and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, discussed the developments in a phone conversation.

US secretary of state Rex Tillerson told reporters in Sydney that the spat would not affect the fight against Islamist militants and that Washington has encouraged its Gulf allies to resolve their differences.

Turkey called for dialogue and said it was ready to help defuse the row. “There could be problems between the countries but dialogue must prevail in all circumstances,” said Cavusoglu.

The diplomatic rift might cost Qatar and its neighbours billions of dollars by slowing trade and investment and making it more expensive for the region to borrow money as it grapples with low oil prices.

However, with an estimated $335 billion of assets in its sovereign wealth fund, Qatar looks able to avoid an economic crisis over the decision by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to cut air, sea and land transport links.

The tiny state’s newly expanded port facilities mean it can continue LNG exports that earned it a trade surplus of $2.7 billion in April, and import by sea goods that used to come over its land border.

The convicts, all from Delhi, are in jail since April 2015 when the girl accused the three finalyear law students of raping her from the time she joined the university in August 2013.

Hardik had circulated her nude pictures among his friends through the free messaging service. He had stored the pictures in an web storage platform – Apple’s I-cloud -- and threatened to make them public on the university’s website. The judge also found him guilty of circulating obscene material.

The judge said the messages proved the victim was under “stress” and “duress” to keep sharing more nude pictures with Sikri. He also forced her to purchase and use a sex toy so that he could watch her via Skype, an online service for sharing text messages and live videos.

Sikri had forced her to travel with him to Chandigarh for having sex and this was proved by the electronic data, which the court treated as documentary evidence supporting the girl’s statement to police and the judge.

The judge rejected the defence argument that the girl was a consensual partner as she had admitted to have consumed drugs and had volunteered to purchase beer on their Chandigarh trip.

The judge referred to the conversations and said the accused were in a dominating position because they were her seniors and the victim was in a vulnerable state.

Advocate Prashant Mendiratta, the girl’s legal advisor, said the verdict is probably the first of its kind dealing extensively with electronic data.

“The court accepted the evidence because it was original and taken from the girl’s cellphone directly,” he told HT.

The judge also disagreed with the defence advocate’s attempt to tarnish the girl’s reputation, saying a rape victim cannot be viewed as an accomplice.

“While the Editors Guild maintains that no individual or institution is above the law, the Guild condemns any attempt to muzzle the media and calls upon the CBI to follow the due process of law and ensure there is no interference in the free functioning of news operations.”

Other leading journalists were more blunt in their criticism. N Ram, chairman and publisher of The Hindu group of newspapers, described the raids as “anti-democratic action”.

“Freedom of expression, which has come under pressure and numerous attacks in recent months, must be safeguarded at all costs,” he told HT in London.

The Opposition too rallied behind NDTV and condemned the raids.

“Dissent can never be silenced through intimidation. Power to ask questions & demand answers is the greatest gift of Democracy #RightToDissent,” the Congress party tweeted. The Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party also spoke out in support of NDTV.

The CBI registered its FIR on the basis of a letter from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) last year that pointed out alleged irregularities in the loan transaction by the private sector ICICI Bank, sources said. CBI sources cited a 2016 Supreme Court judgment in an unrelated case that said private bank officers were also public servants as they handled public money.

The ED and income tax (I-T) authorities had been investigating NDTV since 2014 in a separate case involving the receiving of funds from a foreign institution and settling of that account at 80% less than the original amount received.

The CBI and ED have also been investigating RRPR for funds it received from foreign entities related to a telecom deal between Aircel and Maxis, as well as a case involving buying planes for the national carrier Air India, two senior officials independently told HT.

The majority shareholdings of the NDTV are with the RRPR, the CBI said in the FIR, adding NDTV came to the notice of Income Tax department earlier when it found the media company floated and operated 33 shell companies with no real business, no employees and no business premises in UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Mauritius and between 2006 and 2012 to raise a fund of Rs 1100 crores.

As per I-T Department, around ₹400 crores of ₹1100 crores was transferred to NDTV in India through a Mauritius-based shell company and ₹700 crore was retained in UK and Netherlands out of which ₹400 crores was returned to unidentified investors. The balance of Rs₹300 crores remains unaccounted as on date, the FIR said.

The premises of NDTV were not raided on Monday. Searches were carried out at four places in Delhi and Dehradun in Uttarakhand, CBI sources said.

They brought the stolen idol to Delhi and were looking for prospective customers in Majnu Ka Tilla.

One of their prospective customers turned out to be a staunch devotee of the saint and he tipped off the police, leading to the arrests and the seizure.