Dawood's brother Iqbal Kaskar shot at, escapes unhurt

Mumbai: In a sudden attack near Mumbai's famous JJ Hospital on Tuesday night, underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's brother, Iqbal Kaskar, was targeted. While Kaskar escaped, his bodyguard Arif Abu Bakar was killed. Two people have been arrested. "Two men came on a bike and fled after opening fire. A bullet hit Iqbal Kaskar's bodyguard, Arif bhai," said an eyewitness. "The public caught them because their bike slipped. The public then surrounded them," said another eyewitness. Sources have told NDTV that preliminary investigations suggest Chhota Rajan gang is behind the attack. The two men arrested by the Mumbai police have told investigators that they were hired as shooters by a Chhota Rajan gang member in Mumbai. Kaskar is said to have a limited role in the Dawood gang but the police suspect gang rivalry is behind the attack. This is the second attempt on Kaskar's life. He was attacked by a rival gang way back in 1986. Though Kaskar downplayed his Dawood connection, he was earlier linked to a murder case, and then charged in the infamous Sara-Sahara case under MCOCA. He was accused of grabbing land for an illegal shopping mall allegedly owned by Dawood. Kaskar was acquitted in 2007 for lack of evidence - the only member of the Dawood family to be tried in an Indian court. "We have recovered three weapons, some live ammunition and cartridges. We have apprehended two people," said Anil Kumbhare, DCP. Dawood may have fled India before the Mumbai serial blasts, but is said to own substantial property in Central Mumbai. And the shooting is a reminder of his family connections in the city. Besides Kaskar, Dawood's sister Haseena Parkar and her family continue to live here.

Farmers' protests: Rahul's evidence vs ground reality

Bhatta, Parsaul: Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi generated much political heat with his claims about the Uttar Pradesh government's alleged atrocities in the villages that were at the centre of Noida land wars. "74 stacks of hay were set on fire. There were bones in them. Women too were raped," Mr Gandhi had said. These startling claims were backed up with pictures which he claims were taken by farmers and journalists in Bhatta and Parsaul villages in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida. But the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) questioned the authenticity of the photographs released by Rahul Gandhi to back his charge; the villagers stopped short of saying there were rapes and killings. "There was no rape in our village. Four innocent were, however, badly beaten," said one of the villagers. The forensic probe results are still awaited. But a stung Chief Minister Mayawati has ruled out killing of agitators as a theory most preposterous. Her denial was reflected in the police action. "We wanted to ascertain if explosive were stored in the village. We took the sample and will seek the permission of the court and send it to the CFSL," said Rajnikant Mishra, Inspector General, Meerut Zone. But senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh backs Mr Gandhi's claims about the alleged torture. "That is why we are demanding a judicial enquiry from day one," he said. But for villagers, these are tense moments. Babita has not heard from her husband and children in 10 days. Struggling alone, her fears seem to have acquired some kind of a conviction in Rahul Gandhi's claim, though hers is a lone voice. "The police shot a man. He was dying. There were no men around. The women tried to help him. But the police took him away and threw him in a fire. I saw this," she said. Even almost 10 days later, most of the men of the village have not returned as most fear of being arrested. In light of that and the many missing, an analysis of these burnt hay stacks may now offer some clue if any of them were victims of police action.

The men who went to Osama's bedroom, shot him

Islamabad:  There were 79 people on the assault team that killed Osama bin Laden, but in the end, the success of the mission turned on some two dozen men who landed inside the Qaeda leader's compound, made their way to his bedroom and shot him at close range -- all while knowing that the president of the United States was keeping watch from Washington.
The men, hailed as heroes across the country, will march in no parades. They serve in what is unofficially called SEAL Team 6, a unit so secretive that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence. Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot three Somali pirates dead on a bobbing lifeboat during the rescue of an American hostage in 2009.

The raid early Monday in Pakistan has nonetheless put a spotlight on a unit that has been involved in some of the American military's most dangerous missions of recent decades.

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the SEAL commandos went into the mission with only a 60 percent to 80 percent certainty that Bin Laden was in the compound. Mr. Panetta said the commandos made the "split-second decision" to shoot him -- the unarmed Qaeda founder had a rifle within reach, an American official said Wednesday -- when they found him in his third-floor bedroom.

There was no debate among former SEAL members that whoever had shot Bin Laden had done the right thing.

"It's dark; there's been a lot of bullets flying around, a lot of bodies dropping; your mission is to capture or kill Bin Laden; who knows what he's got tucked in his shirt?" said Don Shipley, 49, a former SEAL member who runs Extreme SEAL Experience, a private training school in Chesapeake, Va. Mr. Shipley was reacting to earlier Obama administration accounts of an extended firefight at the compound, but on Wednesday, administration officials revised the narrative, saying that the only shots fired came at the beginning of the raid, from a courier.

"It happens in an absolute blink of an eye for these guys," Mr. Shipley said. "And there's that target in front of you. Second chances cost lives."

Lalo Roberti, 27, a former SEAL member who teaches at Mr. Shipley's school and took part in a gruesome rescue mission in Afghanistan in 2005, concurred. "For us to take a shot, it has to be bad," Mr. Roberti said. "Especially for the '6' guys."

Inside the Navy, there are regular unclassified SEAL members, organized into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is SEAL Team 6, the elite of the elite, or, as Mr. Roberti put it, "the all-star team."

Former SEAL members said this week that the unit -- officially renamed the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru -- was chosen for the bloody Bin Laden raid, the most high-profile operation in the history of the SEALs, because of the group's skills in using lethal force intelligently in complex, ambiguous conditions.

All SEAL members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training in Coronado, Calif. During "hell week," recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during five and a half days of nonstop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 percent of the candidates do not make it; at least one has died.

For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow. After several years on regular SEAL teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 30,000 feet with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those SEAL members, about half make it.

Ryan Zinke, 49, a former member of SEAL Team 6 who is now a Republican state legislator in Montana, said members of Team 6 had a certain personality: "I would say cocky, arrogant."

SEALs -- the term stands for Sea-Air-Land teams -- were created by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 as a way to expand unconventional warfare.

SEAL Team 6 came later as a reaction to the botched mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, when the Pentagon saw the need for what became today's Special Operations Command, with a special Navy unit focused on counterterrorism.

SEAL Team 6 has historically specialized in war on the seas, but in the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it has increasingly fought on land in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its size is classified, but Team 6 is thought to have doubled to nearly 300 since then. Over all, there are now about 3,000 active-duty SEAL members, split between odd-numbered teams in Coronado and even-numbered teams in Virginia Beach.

Team 6, which is based in an area separate from all the others, at the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, has many members in their mid-30s, a decade or more older than the 20-year-olds who populate the military.

"I used to call it the old man's club," Mr. Zinke said.

Reflecting the growing importance of special operations and guerrilla-type warfare, SEAL members have risen since the Sept. 11 attacks to higher levels of prominence within the military.

The officer who designed and oversaw the Bin Laden raid, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, is a SEAL member who is soon to take over leadership of the military's Special Operations Command from Adm. Eric T. Olson, also a SEAL member. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward Jr., another SEAL member, would become deputy commander of United States Central Command, making him the second-highest-ranking American officer for the Middle East.

Eric Greitens, a former SEAL member who has written a book about his experiences, "The Heart and the Fist," said that SEAL members were misunderstood as the nation's deadliest commandos.

Although the gruesome descriptions of the pictures of Bin Laden with a bullet in his head would appear to underscore that reputation -- and help to explain why President Obama decided Wednesday not to release them -- Mr. Greitens called SEAL members "creative" commandos who knew "to bring back as much intelligence as they possibly could."

The cache the SEAL team recovered from the Bin Laden compound included more than 100 storage devices -- DVDs, thumb drives and computer discs -- as well as 5 computers and 10 computer hard drives.

Despite the mission's success, former SEAL members acknowledged the precariousness of the raid and the degree of luck involved. "If that thing had gone bad, the conversation you and I would be having would be completely different," Mr. Shipley said. "There's only two ways to go in these operations -- zero or hero."

Osama buried at sea: US Official

Washington:  After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.

30 cases against cops for graft

     CHANDIGARH: Two allegedly tipsy cops, head constable Surinder Singh and constable Rajesh, who had reportedly misbehaved with relatives of local MP Pawan Kumar Bansal, were given a clean chit in the court. Departmental probe against them is still pending.

      A total of six cases under Excise Act for doing duty in inebriated condition have been registered against six cops in 2011. The detailed list reveals 30 cases out of 120 were registered for allegedly demanding and accepting the bribe and in 20 cases cops of different ranks have been convicted.

      Three custodial death cases were also in the list of criminal offences against cops, but two of them were ''settled'' after a written compromise between cops and victim's families. In one custodial death case, sub-inspector Narinder Singh was held guilty on November 7, 2009. An arrested youth Anil Kumar had died in police custody inside Manimajra police station in July 2007.

65-yr-old woman robbed, killed on train to Mumbai

MUMBAI: A senior citizen was found brutally murdered and robbed aboard the Kamayani Express late on Saturday. Nandki Siddiqui (65), the victim, was travelling from Allahabad to Mumbai with her teenaged grandson, Mohammad Imran. The murder took place between Thane and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) stations after other passengers had disembarked at Thane around 11.30 pm.

GRP officials said they suspect the involvement of a man who boarded the train at Thane claiming to be a ticket checker. The man told Imran that the compartment was reserved for ladies and he should move to a general compartment, leaving his grandmother alone. At LTT, the train's last stop, Imran returned to pick up Nandki but saw his grandmother lying in a pool of blood. Her throat was slit and Rs 2,500 was missing from her belongings.

"From the manner in which he attacked the senior citizen, the accused seems likely to be a habitual offender. Nandki was quite frail and was in no position to put up a struggle. If the accused intended to rob her, he could have merely threatened her. Killing her was unnecessary," said assistant police commissioner Bapu Thombre. Imran has described the assailant to the police. As the compartment was located next to the guard's cabin, the guard too had a good look at the suspect and will aid the police in preparing his identity-sketch.

Nandki and Imran (19), the son of her younger son, were travelling to Mumbai for a wedding in the family of Nandki's older son who is based in Nala Sopara. On Friday, the duo boarded the Kamayani Express from Allahabad around 7 pm. On Saturday, around 11.30 pm, the train reached Thane and most passengers got off. A man dressed in a black T-shirt and blue jeans then got into the compartment in which Nandki and Imran were seated. He asked to see their tickets and fished out a receipt book from his pocket, introducing himself as a ticket checker.

"The man told Imran that he was travelling illegally in the ladies compartment and would have to pay a fine of Rs 500. He also asked Imran to move into the general compartment if he wanted to avoid paying the fine. An unsuspecting Imran did as he was told," senior inspector Dilip Gore said. "We suspect the accused murdered Nandki, robbed her and then got off the running train. The entire incident took less than ten minutes."

After conducting an autopsy at the Rajawadi post-mortem centre, Nandki's body was handed over to her family. "We are scanning our files for habitual offenders. The accused must have carried a knife on him and had planned the robbery in advance. He also struck Nandki on her arm, leaving a deep gash," Gore said. "The compartment was splattered with blood. We suspect the accused is well-aware of how a ticket checker works as he was armed with a receipt book."

Lufthansa staff commits suicide in Bangalore hotel

Bangalore: A German national employed with Lufthansa Airlines allegedly committed suicide in his room in a five-star hotel here, police said today. Alexander Kourik (35), a flight purser with Lufthansa Airlines, ended his life by slashing his wrist, elbow and leg with a broken liquor glass and a bottle opener, they told PTI. Kourik had checked into the Oberoi Hotel at 2 am on Saturday after his flight landed here. He then hung the "Do Not Disturb" tag on the door knob and locked the door. As Kourik, who was supposed to check out at 11.30 pm, did not report for duty, the airline officials got suspicious and rushed to the hotel and opened the room with a duplicate key. They found him dead with his left wrist, elbow and right leg slashed with a broken liquor glass and a liquor bottle opener, police said, adding no suicide note was found. The airline officials have informed Kourik's family in Germany. The case is being investigated by Ulsoor police.