India

Muzaffarnagar (UP), Dec 1 (PTI) A special court here awarded a 20-year jail term to a 50-year-old man for raping his minor daughter three years ago.

The court, set up under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, convicted the man on Saturday.

Judge Sanjiv Kumar Tiwari also imposed a fine of Rs 56,000 on him after holding him guilty of raping his 17-year-old daughter in 2016.

New Delhi, Dec 1 (PTI) Nearly 90 per cent women feel unsafe in Bhopal, Gwalior and Jodhpur due to isolated and unsafe areas, according to a study which also found that students and unmarried women were more vulnerable to sexual harassment

The study was conducted by social enterprises Safetipin, government organisation KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) and NGO Asia Foundation.

New Delhi, Dec 1 (PTI) A day after its first defence and foreign ministerial dialogue with India, Japan on Sunday hoped that a peaceful resolution will be found to the Kashmir issue.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said his government looked at the situation in Kashmir very carefully and that it was aware of "longstanding differences" of views on the issue.

Jaipur, Dec 1 (PTI) A six-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Tonk district of Rajasthan, police said on Sunday.

The girl had gone to school on Saturday and did not return till late. Her family members started looking for her and found the body at an isolated place in Kheldi village of Aligarh town, police said.

Prima facie, the girl was raped and strangulated to death. The body has been shifted to the district hospital for postmortem, SHO of Aligarh Police Station, Ram Krishan, said.

He said efforts are on to identify and arrest the accused.

Agra (UP), Dec 1 (PTI) A teenage girl was found dead with a slit throat at a village in Agra district, police said.

Police are looking for the motive and criminal responsible for the crime. No marks of sexual assault have been found on the victim's body, Superintendent of Police (Rural West) Ravi Kumar told PTI on Sunday.

Hyderabad, Dec 1 (PTI) Amid growing public anger over the rape and murder of a woman veterinarian near here, residents of the colony where she stayed, on Sunday turned away political leaders who wanted to call on her family, while the police is set to seek custody of the accused for further probe.

The residents locked the main gate of the colony at Shamshabad on the outskirts of the city and held aloft placards that read 'No Media, No Police, No Outsiders, - No sympathy, only action, justice.'

Mumbai, Dec 1 (PTI) Senior Congress MLA Nana Patole was on Sunday elected Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

Pro tem speaker Dilip Walse Patil made the announcement after BJP candidate Kisan Kathore withdrew his nomination earlier in the day.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and some senior MLAs then escorted Patole to the Speaker's chair.

New Delhi, Nov 29 (PTI) The Supreme Court Friday said it would hear after two weeks a plea challenging the Bombay High Court's April 2017 order granting bail to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, one of the accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case.

Thakur, now a sitting BJP MP, was granted bail on April 25, 2017 by the high court which said "no prima facie" case was made out against her in the case.

Muzaffarnagar, Nov 29 (PTI) A Fast Track court here, holding the trial in a gang rape committed during the 2013 riots in the district, on Friday examined a prosecution witness in the case.

Additional Sessions Judge Ankur Sharma examined witness Naseem who supported the prosecution version in the case.

After examining the witness, the court fixed December 5 for the deposition by two remaining witnesses in the case.

New Delhi, Nov 29 (PTI) India faces competition from countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that enjoy preferential or duty-free access to key markets like the European Union, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said on Friday.

"Apparel exports from competing countries enjoy zero/preferential access to European Union whereas India faces a duty disadvantage. Besides Bangladesh and Vietnam have a large and productive labour force," Irani said.