Uncle gets life for sexually assaulting 1-year-old in 2012

Aamir.Khan2@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:18.11.2019

In a rare conviction in the rape of a survivor who was just one year old when she was attacked in 2012, the accused, her uncle, has been awarded a life term behind bars. The court held that he did not deserve any leniency for he not only “betrayed the family’s trust” but also displayed “extreme perversity and monstrosity”.

Given the nature of the social setting and the relationship of the survivor and the accused, special judge Dr Saurabh Kulshreshtha called it an “abhorrent act” on the child. “The accused not only betrayed the trust of the child’s family but also displayed extreme perversity and monstrosity,” said the court, which deals with cases of sexual assaults against children.

The accused and the child’s family hailed from the same village and the accused was regarded as the child’s paternal uncle according to village tradition. On December 1, 2012, the child’s father had returned home after drinking with the accused. The child’s mother claimed that the accused took her daughter out for a stroll but when her daughter did not return, she became suspicious.

The child was crying inconsolably when the mother found her with the man. On checking her body, the mother found injuries on her private parts. On hearing the mother’s cries for help, locals thrashed the accused and handed him over to the police.

In court, counsel for the survivor advocate Chandra Suman pointed out that the survivor’s medico-legal report suggested five signs of injuries indicating sexual assault. Besides, the forensic reports showed the presence of the DNA of the accused on the child’s clothes, he submitted. The accused was also found to have161mg/100 ml alcohol in his blood stream at the time of incident.

The advocate relied on Section 106 of the Evidence Act to argue that the burden of proving the fact that the accused was not guilty or had not committed rape was upon him. Judge Kulshreshtha observed that medical evidence clearly pointed towards rape.

The age of the survivor was crucial in determining a compensation of ₹4 lakh.

Nirbhaya gang rape: Court admits plea seeking transfer of case to another judge

A Delhi court has admitted a plea filed by the parents of 2012-gangrape victim, seeking transfer of the case to another judge.

The victim’s parents have sought court’s direction to Tihar Jail authorities to expedite the execution of the rape convicts. The court will hear the matter on November 25. They moved the application since the earlier two judges hearing the matter got transferred and the matter is getting adjourned continuously, the plea said.

The special fast track court, set up to hear cases of sexual harassment cases exclusively, of Patiala House Court is currently vacant and no judge has been appointed till now. PTI

UAE citizens can now get visa on arrival

New Delhi:18.11.2019

India has granted visa-on-arrival facility to the citizens of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with an aim to enhance people-to-people contacts and trade relations, officials said on Sunday.

The visa-on-arrival facility for the nationals of the UAE came into effect from Saturday. It will be available for a period of up to 60 days with double entry for business, tourism, conference and medical purposes, a government official said.

This facility is aimed at further strengthening people to people contacts and trade relations as well as strategic ties between the two countries. The international airports where the facility will be available are in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

The visa-on-arrival will be available only to those UAE nationals who have earlier obtained an e-visa or a normal paper visa for India, irrespective of whether the person actually visited India or not. PTI

IndiGo to operate London direct on wide-body aircraft: CEO
Saurabh.Sinha@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:18.11.2019

IndiGo will not have one-stop flights to Europe and will operate those routes as direct services using the recently ordered Airbus A321 XLR (extra-long range) and wide-body aircraft. The low-cost carrier (LCC), which last month ordered 300 A320 Neo family single aisles worth about $33 billion (₹2.34 lakh crore), says ordering widebody aircraft is on the cards to operate routes like Mumbai/ Bengaluru-London, which the A321 XLR cannot fly.

While the wide-body product would have a business class, IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta said single-aisle aircraft, including the XLRs, would not offer inflight entertainment (IFE) and hot food. Instead, the airline was looking at minor changes for the narrow bodies in terms of slightly better cushioned seats and a wider food variety.

“Deliveries of the A321 XLRs begin from 2023-24. This aircraft can fly nonstop to western Europe but can’t do London (or other destinations in UK) nonstop, apart from maybe Delhi. When we launch London, we will look at places like Mumbai and Bengaluru also. For that, we will need wide-body aircraft, which are certainly not ruled out by the recent 300-aircraft order,” Dutta, or Rono as he is known in the industry, said.

Full report on www.toi.in

WhatsApp identifies new hole, Cert-in advises update

Anam.Ajmal@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:18.11.2019

WhatsApp has identified a vulnerability that could have been exploited though a malicious MP4 file. India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-in) described the vulnerability’s severity rating as “high” and advised users to update to the latest version of WhatsApp.

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-11931, affected both Android and iOs systems but it is unclear if any users were impacted. The company has rolled out a security update.

“WhatsApp is constantly working to improve the security of our service. We make public reports on potential issues we have fixed, consistent with industry best practices. In this instance, there is no reason to believe users were impacted,” WhatsApp said in a statement on Sunday.

With 400 million users, India is WhatsApp’s biggest market. The development comes just weeks after WhatsApp sued the Israeli company, NSO group, over the alleged misuse of their spyware Pegasus, which was installed in the phones of 1,400 users, including at least 120 Indians. Many of those who were spied on were journalists, rights activists and lawyers.

In a post on it’s securities and advisory page, WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook confirmed the vulnerability on November 14. The post describes the vulnerability as “A stack-based buffer overflow could be triggered in WhatsApp by sending a specially crafted MP4 file to a WhatsApp user.”

Although this description is vague, Cert-in website gives more details. It states that the vulnerability can be “exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target system.”

“A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted MP4 file to the target system. This could trigger a butter overflow leading to the execution of arbitrary code by the attacker. The exploitation does not require any form of authentication from the victim end...,” the cert-in website elaborates.

According to the emergency team, the successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to cause “Remote Code Execution (RCE) or Denial of Service (DoS) condition, which could further compromise the system.

The development comes just weeks after WhatsApp sued Israeli company, NSO group, over the alleged misuse of their spyware Pegasus

‘Need better outreach to attract foreign students’

While 96% of educational institutes use their websites to reach out to potential foreign students, only 47% also use social media

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

18.11.2019

To attract more foreign students to pursue higher education in India, better outreach programmes by the universities are required, according to the 'Study in India' survey. The survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in partnership with EdCIL India Limited was conducted to gauge the preparedness of Indian institutions on standard operating processes followed for attracting and on-boarding international student.

According to AISHE 2018-2019 report, there are about 47,000 international students pursuing education in India. The country is targeting to boost this number to around 1.5 – 2.5 lakh international students by 2022. However, the survey reveals that technology is yet to make inroads in handling overseas traffic and meet the targets. While 96% institutions depend on their websites for promotion and reaching out to potential foreign students, only 47% also use social media, mainly Facebook. The survey reveals that Indian institutes handle queries from prospective students from overseas through email. 95% institutions said they get international students through government agencies such as EdCIL and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).

A total of 77 higher education institutions that are part of the 'Study in India' programme participated in the survey. Among others, there are 5 IIITs, 11 IITs, 5 NITs, 2 IISERs, 2 IIMs, 4 Central universities and 4 state universities which completed the survey.

The total number of students pursuing studies abroad at a global scale has grown from 2.7 million in 2004 to 4.3 million in 2014, representing 1.8% all tertiary enrolments globally. Since 2004, the education export sector has been growing at 5% per annum. However, India is yet to harness the full potential of its wide education network.

Govt general hospital completes 355 years

Aditi.R@timesgroup.com

Chennai:18.11.2019

The Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital completed 355 years on November 16. Apart from its rich history, the hospital was also the first medical institution in the world to admit women.

“In the British era, women from European countries came here to study medicine since they were prohibited from studying in their own countries,” said Venkatesh Ramakrishnan, novelist and historian.

The hospital was opened on November 16, 1664 by Sir Edward Winter to treat soldiers of the East India Company. It was initially housed at Fort St George but was later moved out after the Anglo-French War to its present place. By 1772, the hospital had begun training Europeans, Eurasians and Indians in allopathic methods of diagnosis, treatment and methods of preparing medicines and assist qualified doctors. A private medical hall run by Dr Mortimar was regularised as a medical school and was opened on February 2, 1835 by then governor Sir Fredrick Adams.

In 1842, the institution began allowing Indian students. The teaching staff increased, senior courses spanning five years was started and from October 1, 1850, it was christened as Madras Medical College. The first batch of students graduated from the college in 1852 with a diploma of graduate.

Mary Scharlieb, the first woman physician and gynaecologist in the world, also graduated from the institution in 1878.

The institution is only four days younger than the Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, established on January 28, 1835, the oldest in Asia.

“Both institutions would have been inaugurated the same day, but it is said that the plaque meant for MMC was not delivered on time, hence the delay,” said Ramakrishnan.

Dr. Sudha Seshayyan, vice-chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University who graduated from MMC in 1977, said it was the institution’s history and service that amazed her. “All boys and girls were treated equally. This helped us develop team spirit, we spent more time together, learned life lessons. It’s hard to put my experience in a sentence. I’m sure other alumni would agree.”

NOSTALGIA: A photograph of the hospital in the 1930s

Noida-shocker: Strangers save woman from getting raped, then rape her 

India

Written by

Shalini Ojha

A distressing incident has been reported from Noida, one which will make you sick.

In one of the parks of the city, a 21-year-old woman was on Wednesday allegedly raped by five men, who had earlier "saved" her from being raped by her acquaintance.

While four men have been arrested, two are still at large.

Details of this case will trouble you.

What happened 

Under pretext of job, man tried to rape victim

The illiterate, unemployed survivor had gone to a park in Sector-63 to meet one Ravi, who worked as a peon at an export company.

Ravi was known to her brother and assured her a job, said senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna.

At the park, he tried to rape her, and the woman's screams alerted nearby strangers. They thrashed Ravi and he fled.

Details 

After thrashing Ravi, "saviors" raped her

After Ravi ran, two men identified as Guddu and Shamu raped the victim. They also called three men, Brijkishore, Pitambar, and Umesh, who took turns to violate her.

The men also beat her. The entire episode played out merely 500 meter away from a police post.

Somehow she approached the police and was taken to a hospital for treatment. She is now out of danger.