Showing posts with label indian embassy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indian embassy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Indian diplomat accused of spying for Pakistan
An Indian diplomat was arrested by her government on charges of spying for Pakistan, officials said Tuesday, a development that could hurt relations between the wary nuclear neighbors and almost certainly leave New Delhi red-faced.
Madhuri Gupta, 53, a second secretary at the Indian Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, was reportedly lured back to India on the pretext that her help was needed to prepare for an upcoming regional meeting in Bhutan.
She was detained as soon as she landed at the airport several days ago and was found to be in possession of seven sensitive documents, according to Indian news reports.
"We have reason to believe that an official in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad had been passing information to Pakistani intelligence agencies," said Vishnu Prakash, spokesperson for the Indian Foreign Ministry. "The official is cooperating with our investigation and inquiries."
Gupta has worked in the embassy's press and information department for 2 1/2 years as an Urdu translator, Indian news reports said, citing police sources. She had been under suspicion for a few months.
As a second secretary, Gupta probably would not have had much access to sensitive information, said B. Raman, a security analyst and former Pakistan desk head with the Research and Analysis Wing, India's equivalent of the CIA. But she still could have caused significant damage if she planted electronic listening devices, he said.
In the 1970s, he said, India caught a British telephone operator in its Paris Embassy taping conversations and feeding them to British intelligence services. The operator was fired.
Red flags reportedly went up after Gupta, who is unmarried, started asking questions outside her area of responsibility and was found to have funds in a Pakistani account, the Times Now news network reported. She has since confessed that she was lured by the money and motivated by unhappiness over not being promoted, the network said.
Analysts said cellphone intercepts may also have played a role, along with the suspicions raised by embassy colleagues.
A picture of Gupta obtained by news networks showed a round-faced woman with glasses and shoulder-length dark hair.
Although many questions about the alleged intelligence gathering remain unanswered, analysts said, the news will almost certainly lead to soul searching at India's Foreign Ministry and among counter-intelligence officials responsible for screening embassy staff members.
"Any disclosure of intelligence activities involving Indian diplomats is embarrassing," said Raman, now director of the Institute for Topical Studies in the southern Indian city of Chennai.
Some expressed outrage on hearing the news, especially in light of attempts to revive talks between the longtime enemies.
"Even as Pakistan talks about having prime minister-level talks, they go ahead with intelligence activities," said Ajit Doval, former head of the Intelligence Bureau, India's equivalent of the FBI. "It doesn't send the right signal."
Others said there were no angels in this game.
"This is standard practice worldwide," said Imtiaz Gul, executive director of Islamabad's Center for Research and Security Studies. "America, Britain, India or Pakistan — they all do it. It obviously comes to a halt once discovered."
It's not clear that Gupta will face prosecution, analysts said, given the high bar required to prove a legal case and reluctance to disclose secrets in court.
In the 1980s, Pakistani intelligence allegedly recruited a senior Indian military attache using a "honey trap" involving an attractive woman in Karachi who reportedly seduced and blackmailed him. When the government found out, it returned him to India and fired him but never prosecuted him. "It's sometimes very difficult to prove," Raman said. "You need evidence from people in Pakistan, which is difficult to get."
Details of Gupta's career track were not immediately available, but her age and low-level position suggested that she was not a career foreign service officer.
A properly trained Indian civil service official might be less "susceptible to foreign inducements," Kapil Sibal, India's human resources minister, said outside the parliament. "That they were able to penetrate the embassy is shocking."
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Maoist rebels kill 76 soldiers in eastern India
Maoist insurgents claiming to fight for India's rural poor killed at least 76 soldiers Tuesday in a series of carefully planned ambushes in the forests of eastern India, underscoring the rebels' strength despite a government offensive.
The attack by hundreds of Maoists in a rebel stronghold in Chhattisgarh state was the deadliest by the militants against government forces in their 43-year insurgency.
Indian men carry an injured paramilitary soldier for treatment at Jagdalpur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhatisgarh, Tuesday, April 6, 2010. Maoist rebels launched a series of devastating attacks Tuesday on paramilitary forces patrolling the forests of eastern India, killing at least 67 troops in one of the deadliest insurgent strikes on the government.
Men carry an injured paramilitary soldier for treatment at Jagdalpur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhatisgarh, Tuesday, April 6, 2010. Maoist rebels launched a series of devastating attacks Tuesday on paramilitary forces patrolling the forests of eastern India, killing at least 67 troops in one of the deadliest insurgent strikes on the government.
Men carry an injured paramilitary soldier for treatment at Jagdalpur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhatisgarh, Tuesday, April 6, 2010. Maoist rebels launched a series of devastating attacks Tuesday on paramilitary forces patrolling the forests of eastern India, killing at least 67 troops in one of the deadliest insurgent strikes on the government.
The rebels launched the initial attack early in the morning, firing on a group of soldiers as they returned to base from a two-day patrol in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada forests, S.K. Pillai, the federal home secretary, told reporters in New Delhi. More soldiers were killed when they stepped on land mines the Maoists planted throughout the ambush zone, he said.
R.K. Vij, the inspector general of the Chhattisgarh police, said 17 more soldiers who went to recover the bodies were killed in land mine explosions.
More than 500 guerrillas — known as Naxalites — were involved in the attacks, said Vij. He said 76 soldiers were killed and seven wounded, three critically. The government found no rebel bodies.
Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, the nation's top law enforcement official, said the soldiers were part of a joint operation involving state forces and paramilitary fighters.
"But something has gone very wrong. They seemed to have walked into a trap set by the Naxalites. Casualties are quite high and I am deeply shocked," he said.
Few other details were available from the isolated, thickly forested area. The rebels rarely speak to the press.
Inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, the rebels have tapped into the rural poor's growing anger at being left out of the country's economic gains and are now present in 20 of the country's 28 states.
Named after Naxalbari, the village in West Bengal state where their movement was born in 1967, they have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters.
While many are poorly armed — often going into battle with handmade weapons forged from plumbing pipes — they regularly launch bloody attacks on government forces. In February, they killed at least 24 police officers in West Bengal state in an attack on their camp.
The government dismisses Naxalite claims to speak for the country's poor, arguing they do little but wreak havoc in some of India's most impoverished regions.
"The Maoist ideology is a dead-end ideology. The killing of innocent people as well as destruction of public property, including schools, bridges, roads and culverts has really nothing to offer to people whom they claim to represent," Pillai said.
The soldiers attacked Tuesday were part of the government's "Operation Green Hunt" offensive, which is aimed at flushing the militants out of their forest hide-outs.
Several experts questioned the government offensive, saying inadequately trained and poorly equipped soldiers were often sitting ducks for Maoists much more familiar with the terrain.
"It's a flawed operation," said K.P.S. Gill, a retired senior police officer involved in operations in several insurgency-hit areas. The heat alone, he said, would weaken soldiers on long patrols.
April temperatures in the area often hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).
In the past few months that the Indian government has cracked down on the rebels it has also said it was ready to discuss all their demands, but only if they gave up violence. About 2,000 people — including police, militants and civilians — have been killed over the past few years.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
US condemns bombing outside Indian embassy in Kabul
Afghan investigators inspect the site of a suicide car bomb near the Indian Embassy in Kabul
The United States condemned Thursday a massive suicide car bombing outside the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul by Taliban militants.
The fifth bold attack on Kabul in two months comes as President Barack Obama's administration reviews strategy for Afghanistan amid calls for more US troops and warnings that the Taliban insurgency is gaining momentum.
"The United States condemns the bombing today near the Indian embassy and Ministry of Interior in Kabul that has killed several people and wounded many more," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
"There's no justification for this kind of senseless violence. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the families of those who lost their lives in the attack," he added.
The US embassy in Kabul issued an identical statement condemning the attacks.
It was the fifth audacious assault on the Afghan capital in two months, as the Taliban brings its intensifying anti-government insurgency to the most heavily fortified part of the country.
The car bomb struck outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday, killing 17 people and injuring 63 more, most of them civilians, in an attack claimed by Taliban militants.
In a statement on their website, the Islamist insurgent group said that one of their "martyrs" had carried out the attack in a heavily fortified diplomatic area, and said the Indian embassy "was the main target".
India is Pakistan’s archrival, and militant groups once nurtured by Pakistan’s intelligence service have struck at Indian targets, most recently last year in Mumbai.
But it was too early to tell who was behind Thursday’s bombing, which served as a reminder of the reach of Afghanistan’s insurgency. The heavily guarded area was reopened to traffic only recently, having being closed for months after the previous bombing, which killed 54.
Indian authorities said no embassy staff members were hurt, but three guards outside had been wounded.
Thursday’s bombing occurred around 8:30 a.m., when a man driving a sport utility vehicle slowed down near a side wall of the embassy, said Sayed Abdul Ghafar, a senior police official in Kabul. Soon after, the driver detonated his explosives, partly destroying a guard tower and an outer protective wall.
The American Embassy condemned the attack. “There is no justification for this kind of senseless violence,” it said in a statement.
In a grimly familiar pattern, most of the dead were ordinary Afghans, many of them merchants at a market that had been refurbished in recent months. Shop owners swept broken glass and crushed geraniums into small piles on the sidewalk.
---
---
--
RELATED POSTS :-
- Aid pours into quake-hit Indonesia-
- Sumatra earthquake rescue operation scaled back .
- Toll from Typhoon Ketsana climbs- More than 100 000 are misplaced may reach to 300 000 peoples.
- Another powerful quake hits Indonesia's Sumatra
- Scores Killed As Tsunami Sweeps Across Samoan Islands
- Devastation as tsunami wipes out Samoan villages -Tsunami hits Pacific nations -Tsunami advisory issued for California
- Philippine storm leaves 106 dead and missing
- PM Isreal condemn UN allow PM iran to give speech. Ahmednijah denies Holocaust occur.
- UN accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza
- Pakistan Taliban claim UN attack
- Georgia’s ‘Historic’ Rain Kills 7 as Emergency Issued =Severe U.S. flooding kills 7 in Georgia
- "Worst of the Worst murder case" said Police- Mum, 5 kids killed in US
- Dozens missing from sunken ferry - Latests now only 3 dead and 80 missings.
- Filipina Ferry Sinks 60 still missing , 5 dead. Carrying 1000 people and unlisted dangerous cargo
- Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Reddy died in tragic helicopter crash while touring poor villages. Sudden surge in suicides cases.
- Indonesia cannot relax militant fight: Australia PM
- Jakarta hotel blasts kill 8, wound 50
- Not yet time to leave Afganisthan.Still got limited time to change approach and victory is achievebale.
- British PM repulsed by the Hero welcome of Lockiber Convict at Libya.
- Lockerbie minister facing critics
Taliban attack Indian Embassy with Car bomb
Rescuers carry an wounded at the blast site in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Oct. 8, 2009.
A soldier walks past a damaged car at the blast site in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Oct. 8, 2009. A powerful suicide blast targeting Indian embassy in Kabul left at least seven people dead and 67 others wounded Thursday morning.
A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Indian Embassy in the busy center of Afghanistan's capital early Thursday, killing at least 12 people, destroying vehicles and blowing off the walls of shops, officials said.
Eleven of the dead were civilians and one was an Afghan police officer, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
At least 84 people, including members of Afghan security forces, were wounded in the attack, which struck a shop-lined road between the Indian Embassy and the Interior Ministry, said Health Ministry spokesman Ahmad Farid Raaid.
The blast hit shortly after 8:30 a.m., just as residents were arriving for work. It shattered glass and rattled buildings more than a mile (kilometer) away. A huge brown plume of smoke was visible in the air as ambulances raced to the scene and carried away the wounded.
One 21-year-old man named Najibullah said he had just opened his shop when the explosion went off, knocking him unconscious.
When he awoke, he said, he couldn't see anything.
"Dust was everywhere. People were shouting," said Najibullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name. "You couldn't see their faces because there was so much dust."
His white clothes were covered in blood after helping load four injured onto ambulances.
In New Delhi, India's Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said the Indian Embassy was the target.
"I believe the suicide bomb was directed at the embassy since the suicide bomber came up to the outer perimeter wall of the embassy in a car loaded with explosives," Rao told reporters.
Three Indian paramilitary soldiers on guard duty at the embassy's watchtower were wounded by shrapnel, Rao said.
She said the intensity of the blast was similar to the one that occurred outside the building on July 7, 2008, that killed dozens of civilians. The road in front of the embassy has been barricaded since then. The Afghan Interior Ministry is just across the street Indian Embassy.
The explosion hit a day after the Afghanistan war reached its eighth anniversary and as President Barack Obama considered a request for between 10,000 and 40,000 additional troops prepared by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
The Afghan capital has been hit numerous times by suicide bombers and roadside bombs, several since the run-up to the country's disputed Aug. 20 election. The attacks usually target international military forces or government installations, but Afghan businesses and civilians are also often killed or injured.
In the most recent attack in mid-September, a suicide car bomber rammed into an Italian military convoy on a road leading to the airport. That blast killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said Thursday's explosion was also a suicide car bomb, but he had no details and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The Indian news channel CNN-IBN cited Jayant Prasad, Indian ambassador in Kabul, as saying there has been "extensive damage to the chancery." He said that the vehicle-borne bomb was so powerful that it blew off the some the embassy's doors and windows.
President Hamid Karzai's office condemned the attack.
AP Television News footage from Kabul on Thursday showed local residents and soldiers pulling a charred, severed leg out of a destroyed vehicle. Others carried an apparently lifeless body on a stretcher to an ambulance.
On another stretcher, a man lay face down, one arm hanging downward, his back left leg covered in blood.
Two sport utility vehicles nearby were badly damaged, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. One of them had U.N. markings on its side.
U.N. spokesman Dan McNorton confirmed two of the world body's vehicles were near the blast and one was damaged. Both vehicles had only a driver inside, and neither was wounded. The United Nations typically uses armored vehicles in Kabul that are designed to withstand such attacks.
The blast could be heard miles (kilometers) away. Windows in dozens of surrounding shops at the scene of the blast were shattered, and walls of buildings were badly damaged in the blast, though none of the multistory buildings along the commercial thoroughfare had collapsed.
One injured man said the force of the explosion threw him into the air. Mohammad Arif said he was leaving the Indian Embassy when the blast tossed him against a concrete barrier. The left side of his head was bleeding as he spoke.
----
----
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
