Panaji, Apr 3 (PTI) An alert Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani today raised an alarm after she spotted a hidden camera at an outlet of a leading garment store that was pointed towards the trial room she used while trying out some clothes after which Goa police registered a case of voyeurism.

Four staff members of the Fabindia showroom at the upmarket boutique chain at Candolim near here were detained for questioning following a complaint by BJP MLA Michael Lobo who was called by Irani after the incident. The Minister along with her businessman husband Zubin Irani are on a private visit to Goa.

Irani came across the camera when she was in the showroom to buy clothes and immediately protested, alerting her husband, said Superintendent of Police (North) Umesh Gaonkar.

She then called Lobo, who lodged an First Information Report (FIR).

Gaonkar said four staff members of the showroom were detained and that objectionable images were seen from the recordings of the hidden camera that was seized by police.

Footage from the camera, installed four months ago according to staff at the store, was being recorded in a computer in the manager’s office, Lobo said, adding that it held many recordings of people changing in the trial room.

“When we went through the hard disk and computer to check the recordings we saw everything. All things were getting recorded over there when anybody was changing clothes. From the level of stomach till above everything was getting recorded,” he said, adding, “This is mischief… Somebody has been watching the recording.”

Police have already sealed the shop and is inspecting the showroom. The CCTV camera was installed on a wall, against a foot-high ventilation gap on the side of the trial room cubicle.

“A case has been filed under section 354 C (voyeurism) and 509 (intrusion into privacy) of Indian Penal Code against employees who were monitoring the cameras. We are analysing the entire data,” Gaonkar said. Goa Chief Minister.

Kabul (AFP) – In a grimy Kabul street, the director gives the order to roll the cameras, and filming starts on a remarkable new TV drama that boldly challenges taboos about women in conservative Afghanistan.

Shereen, the star, enters the scene and buys a few things from street vendors when suddenly her husband, a possessive and brutal man, grabs her.

But tough, no-nonsense Shereen won’t back down and a row ensues.

“Shereen’s Law”, due to be aired on Afghan TV before the end of the year, tells the story of a 36-year-old woman who brings up three children on her own while forging a career as a clerk at a court in Kabul.

Such a character is already shocking in an overwhelmingly patriarchal society where most women are confined to lives of menial domesticity.

But the show deliberately ramps up the impact. Shereen fights corruption, harassment, and rape, and tries to divorce her husband, whom she wed in a forced marriage.

More than 13 years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains deeply wedded to traditional customs and its airwaves have never hosted anything like this before.

“It is the first such drama — that is about women, that is about empowering women, that is about the struggles of women in Afghanistan,” Leena Alam, the Afghan actress who plays Shereen, told AFP.

– Giving women a voice –

Women in Afghanistan still suffer brutal violence on a daily basis. On March 19 a young woman was beaten to death and her body burned in central Kabul for allegedly burning a Koran.

Defying entrenched conventions in such a country comes with a risk, as Alam — who moved to the US as a child with her family before returning in 2007 — admits.

“It’s a bit dangerous, even for myself. Yesterday we were shooting outside. When… I’m waiting for the shot I’m always scared that somebody may throw acid on me or somebody may hit me with a knife,” she said.

Casting the show was not easy — several actors said no to a storyline they found just too challenging. One, who played a lawyer friend of Shereen, was forced to pull out because her husband was unhappy with the show.

As well as portraying a strong female character, the series attacks the Afghan judicial system, where rampant corruption is hidden behind a wall of silence.

“It takes a lot of courage to write something like this and it takes a lot of courage to play something like Shereen,” Alam, a producer who has also appeared in several Afghan films, said.

“But I think it’s time, after more than 30 years, to move on and educate people and give them the information as bluntly as Shereen.”

Apart from the exterior street scenes, the show’s action takes place in a studio with sets decked out to look like a courtroom, Shereen’s house and legal offices.

No detail has been missed, from the portrait of President Ashraf Ghani in the courtroom to the stapler on Shereen’s desk.

Director and writer Max Walker, an Australian who came to work in Afghanistan, says he took advice in advance on how to avoid drawing too much attention from conservative clerics.

“There’s been an enormous consultation, an enormous review of the script and of the whole storytelling process to make sure that it raises these issues, but it doesn’t raise them so bluntly and so offensively that it’s going to make the programme go off air,” Walker said.

Under the Taliban’s hardline 1996-2001 regime, television was banned, but now 58 percent of homes have a set, according to the Asia Foundation development organisation.

“Shereen’s Law” will face tough competition for viewers from popular imported Turkish and Indian soap operas.

Frenchwoman Anne Jasim Falher, the founder and head of consultancy firm ATR in Kabul and a long-term observer of Afghan society, says television has a role to play in changing attitudes.

“Television has allowed people to shake things up on forced marriage, probably also on violence against women and violence within families,” she said.

The 12 45-minute episodes are being made by the Tolo television channel, one of the big successes of Afghanistan’s new media scene, largely funded by foreign donors when it was launched in 2004.

The Moby group, which owns Tolo, claims a pioneering role for itself, notably for being the first Afghan channel to have female and male presenters alongside one another.

“You have to cross the barriers sometimes and you have to do something where you give the voice to the women,” Moby’s director of programming Massoud Sanjer told AFP.

“Afghanistan is a country where if you tell directly people ‘do this’, they won’t do it. But if you just give them a reason, make them think themselves, they will do it.

“So a TV show will definitely help the men who are the dominant power of the society to think that a woman is also part of this country, a woman is part of their lives, and a woman is part of their family.”

MUMBAI: Asserting that it was the state government’s duty to keep a check on illegal constructions in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena today said regularizing these buildings will provide a huge relief to people living in it as they face the danger of being rendered homeless anytime due to demolition orders.

The decision taken by the Sena-BJP government will ensure that thousands of homes that were tagged illegal by their respective municipal corporations, get relief. These homes, built after years of hard work were always in danger of being demolished anytime,” the Sena said in its edit in party mouthpiece ‘Saamana.’

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had last week announced that the state plans to regularise most of the illegal constructions in urban areas of the state after the government had accepted in principle a report submitted by a committee headed by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Sitaram Kunte on encroachments in the state.

The Kunte Committee was formed last December to study issues of unauthorized structures in urban areas of the state. The panel was also asked ..

The panel was also asked to recommend ways and means to prevent unauthorized structures in the future.

“They may have flouted rules while buying these unauthorised homes, but what was the government doing when these buildings were being constructed? The builders made money by selling these houses but it is the people who suffered in the end,” it said.

“The state has policies to provide basic amenities to those living in unauthorized slums. Money is even allocated for the purpose. The panel was also asked to recommend ways and means to prevent unauthorized structures in the future.

The Sena said that in spite of initiatives like booking errant ward officers, holding respective senior police officials responsible; using satellites to keep an eye on unauthorized constructions, they are still burgeoning.

“The government now needs to make sure illegal constructions do not happen in future,” the Sena said.

A city-based foreign languages teacher is making an effort to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by memorising the longest number sequence (binary) and recalling the same.

P Aravind (36) who teaches French, Italian and Spanish to students in his ‘Medusa Academy of Foreign Languages’ recalled 270 digits in 12 minute 24.47 seconds at a programme here today.

One Jayasimha Ravirala of Hyderabad had created a record memorising 264 digits in just one minute and recalling it in 10 minutes.

“My aim is to break that record by memorising and recalling 270 digits in the same time frame of one minute. My attempt has been video recorded and will be sent to the Guinness Book,” he said.

Quoting the rules for the record, he told PTI that the sequence of whole numbers had to be memorised randomly generated by a computer.

Only one attempt has to be made to recall each digit and they must be recalled in the correct order. Any error nullifies the attempt.

Dr N Srinivasan, Psychologist, Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital and Dr Prakasam, Principal, PPG Institute of Technology here were the judges at the programme.

The recorded version will be sent to the Guinness authorities and results would be known in another 10 days, since his application had already been accepted, Aravind said.

The Christian community in Mumbai today observed Good Friday to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Christians spend the day in fasting, prayer, repentance and meditation on the agony and suffering of Christ on the cross.

Churchs across the city held Good Friday sermons which reflected the community’s concerns over the spate of attacks of churchs in the country and the rape of a nun in Kolkata.

Easter will be celebrated on April 5 to mark the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

Recently, Archbishop of Bombay Oswald Cardinal Gracias had expressed concern over the attacks on churchs saying that there was anxiety over the attacks and vandalisation of churchs.

“Discrimination on the basis of religion does not augur well for the country. People of India are our biggest strength and security and we have to work to eradicate discrimination of any sort,” he had said in a statement and appealed for respect and equality to the girl child.

Mulayam Singh to be the chairman of the outfit

The name and symbol of a new party that will be formed through the merger of six Janata Parivar entities will be announced at a meeting of its leaders slated for Sunday at Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh’s residence here, sources said.

The SP leader will be the new party’s chairman and its name will contain the word Samajwadi — either Samajwadi Janata Dal or Samajwadi Janata Party.

Party’s symbol

Its symbol will either be the SP emblem, the cycle, or the wheel that the erstwhile Janata Dal had frozen in 1999 when it split into the Sharad Yadav-led Janata Dal (United) and the H.D. Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular). Both parties were allotted separate symbols.

The SP held a meeting of all its units in Lucknow on Wednesday and passed a resolution agreeing to the merger. A similar resolution will be passed in Patna on Saturday by the Rashtriya Janata Dal under the leadership of Lalu Prasad, while the JD(U) is likely to go through the same procedure on April 8.

The Indian National Lok Dal, the JD(S) and the Samajwadi Janata Party will also pass internal resolutions agreeing to dissolving their separate identities and forming one party: these resolutions are required by the Election Commission before it registers the new party.

Sunday’s meeting is expected to be attended by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, JD-U leaders Sharad Yadav and K.C. Tyagi, Mr. Prasad and representatives from the INLD and the SJP.

Mr. Mulayam Singh is likely to be the leader of the new parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha, while Mr. Yadav could be named its leader in the Rajya Sabha. The new formation will have 15 MPs in the Lower House and 30 in the Upper House.

Sunday’s meeting follows Mr. Kumar’s meetings with Janata Parivar leaders here last week, even visiting INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala in Tihar Jail.

Mr. Kumar, Mr. Yadav and Mr. Tyagi (JD-U) and Mr. Prasad and Prem Chand Gupta (RJD) had also met at the residence of the SP chief, who had been authorised by all these parties to work out the modalities of the merger.

The first impact of the new party will be felt when it launches a united agitation against the Land Acquisition Bill, and then when Parliament meets on April 20 for the second half of the Budget Session. Its first challenge, of course, will be the Bihar Assembly elections later this year.

In small pockets of beef eating areas in Bharatnagar, Bandra East in Mumbai beef is now gradually replaced by buffalo.It has come as alternative to beef. In these beef eating areas a bee line of people were seen buying buffalo yesterday.

People seemed excited of the change however it cannot be the same as beef were comments to be heard.

With the ban of beef mutton as soared up to Rs 440 per kg.

The grudge of the ban can be heard by many people. They still cannot recover of the loss they have to suffer. Butchers have staged protests in Azad Maidan with many political parties supporting it.

In the political campaign for the Bandra East MLA election Congrees leader Sanjay Rane’s son Nitish Rane could be heard sympathizing with the Muslim community against the ban.

As Jayalaxshmi Pillai saw her younger sister Latha Manappan walk in towards the reporting counter, she waved and shouted out her name through the glass facade. A tear dripped down and she said in her local dialect, Tamil, “I am relieved now. She is never going back there.”
The 28-year-old was one amongst the 190 Indian Nationals evacuated from Yemen. As soon as Latha stepped out with just a carton and a small bag with her name written with chalk, she kissed her elder sister

IAF aircraft 370 with 190 Indian nationals from Yemen landed at Mumbai International Airport at 3.30 am Thursday morning. In the multi-agencies coordinated effort, the Indian Air Force deployed two C-17 Globemasters III aircrafts to Djibouti on April 1

Of the 349 people rescued, the remaining were directed towards Kochi. The passengers exited from the G-5 gate at airport’s P-4 level. According to GVK officials, all the passengers were supposed to be dropped at their respective residences by authorities.
The evacuation from Yemen comes after government of India ordered Indian nationals to vacate the conflict zone.

Nitish Gopalan, brother in law of Rajini Hari – a nurse residing in Sana’a – said that she had called on Sunday to inform the family that she has stopped going for work in a government run hospital near her house. “Earlier they were taking patients and treating them. In the last two days the situation became worse and she stopped reporting for work.”
Rajini lived with few other nurses from Kerela. Gopalan, a Panvel resident, said, “She could constantly hear bombing outside her house. Once she made me hear the bombings over the phone,” he said.

Up to 150 killed in Kenyan university massacre following al-Shabaab Easter Week raid: Terrorists ‘behead’ Christian students in worst attack in country in 17 years

Gunmen stormed Kenya’s Garissa University College campus in dawn raid
The death toll has risen to 147, country’s disaster response agency said
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the latest terrorist atrocity in Kenya
Some Christians were beheaded and four terrorists have been killed
Terrorists strapped themselves with explosives and exploded when shot

Up to 150 people have been murdered by masked al-Shabaab terrorists who stormed a Kenyan university and shot and beheaded Christians in the worst attack in the country in 17 years.
The group raided the Garissa University College campus shortly after 5am local time yesterday, overwhelming guards and murdering people they suspected of being a Christian.
The death toll rose to 147 last night and the 13-hour siege ended. A total of 79 were injured and 587 were led to safety.
Most of those killed were students but two police officers, one soldier and two watchmen are among the dead