Sri Lankan intelligence receives inputs of attacks on Buddhist temples by female bombers

Agencies
April 29, 2019

Colombo, Apr 29: Female bombers posing as devotees may have been planning to attack Sri Lanka's Buddhist temples after authorities seized white clothes from a house that was raided following Easter Sunday blasts, a media report said on Monday.

The Sri Lankan intelligence agency has received inputs of possible attacks on Buddhist temples by female bombers of the banned local terror outfit National Thawheeth Jamath (NTJ) after police found white pairs of skirts and blouses from the house which was raided after the explosion in Sainthamuruthu area in the Eastern province, raising suspicion that the attackers might pose as Buddhist devotees, the Daily Mirror reported.

On March 29, Muslim women had spent 29,000 Sri Lankan rupees (USD 166) to purchase nine sets of such clothes from a textile shop in Giriulla, the report said. The CCTV footage of the shop shows the visuals of these women who purchased clothes from the shop.

So far, five sets of white clothes have been found from this house and intelligence services are trying to find the remaining clothes.

Sri Lankan authorities say that there was one woman among the nine bombers who carried out the country's worst terror attack, killing 253 people and injuring over 500 others.

Six children and three women were among 15 people killed on Saturday when militants linked to the Easter Sunday bombings opened fire and blew themselves up during a fierce gun battle with security forces in the Sri Lanka's Eastern province.

The shootout occurred as the security forces continued their hunt for members of the NTJ.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government has banned Muslim women from wearing any form of face veils in public from Monday.

President Maithripala Sirisena, who used emergency powers in the wake of the Easter Sunday bombings, prohibited the use of face coverings of all sorts which is an obstacle to ensure the identity of the people and a threat to national and public security.

The order clarifies that the key criterion for establishing the identity of a person is the need to clearly expose the face.

A total of 106 suspects, including a Tamil medium teacher and a school principal, have been arrested in connection with the Easter Sunday blasts.

According to Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry, the number of foreign nationals who have been identified as killed remained at 40, including 11 from India.

Sri Lanka has a population of 21 million which is a patchwork of ethnicities and religions, dominated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

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News Network
November 14,2024

srirang.jpg

Bengaluru: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi led union government has requested the Karnataka High Court to direct the Mandya district administration and the state government to clear a madrasa operating within the premises of the historic Jama Masjid in Srirangapatna.

The Waqf Board, opposing this move, has claimed the mosque as its property and defended the right to conduct madrasa activities there.

The matter was brought before a division bench headed by Chief Justice N V Anjaria following a public interest litigation filed by a person named Abhishek Gowda from Kabbalu village in Kanakapura taluk. The petition alleged “unauthorised madrasa activities” within the mosque.

Representing the Central government, Additional Solicitor General of India for High Court of Karnataka, K Arvind Kamath argued that the Jama Masjid was designated as a protected monument in 1951, yet unauthorised madrasa operations continue there.

He noted that concerns over potential law and order issues have so far prevented any intervention. Kamath urged the court to direct the Mandya district administration to take action and vacate the madrasa from the mosque.

In defence, lawyers for the state government and the Waqf Board contested this request, stating that the Waqf Board had been recognised as the owner of the property since 1963 and, thus, conducting madrasa activities there is lawful.

After hearing both sides, the bench adjourned the case for further arguments, scheduling the next hearing for November 20.

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News Network
November 7,2024

Udupi, Nov 7: In a tragic turn of events, a young woman, Prasanna, aged 29, allegedly died by suicide on Wednesday, struggling to cope with the demands of work and motherhood after the birth of her daughter, according to police reports.

Prasanna had married on December 2, 2022, and was the mother of a 10-month-old baby girl. Her husband works in Bengaluru, while she lived with her in-laws, who, according to her family, treated her kindly.

In a complaint, Prasanna's mother revealed that her daughter often called her, expressing deep concerns over her readiness for motherhood. Despite receiving supportive care from her family, Prasanna felt unprepared and overwhelmed by the balance of work and home life that early motherhood required.

Her family shared that she had been undergoing treatment, but between 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, she allegedly took her own life at her husband’s residence. The Karkala Rural Police Station has registered a case and is conducting further investigations.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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