Indian Sub-continent

Muzaffarnagar, Oct 20 (PTI) A court here has acquitted twenty more accused in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riot case due to lack of evidence against them.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Kamla Pati has acquitted them Tuesday saying the prosecution has failed to prove charges against them.

The acquitted accused were identified as Kapil, Dushyant, Ajay, Ravinder, Vikas, Rahul, Sachin, Amit, Rajiv, Jaipal, Anuj, Sudhir, Kuldeep, Mohit, Baru and five others, all of Lank village in the district.

Ghaziabad (UP), Oct 20 (PTI) A 48-year-old man was injured after being shot at in his face on Wednesday near a railway track in Masuri police station area here, police said.

Praveen, a contractor, was shot in his cheek by unknown assailants on Wednesday morning when he was walking near the tracks to attend to nature's call, they said.

The victim was rushed to the district government hospital from where he was referred to GTB hospital in Delhi for treatment.

Kochi, Oct 20 (PTI): A 32-year-old priest has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a minor girl, police said on Wednesday.

Sibi Varghese, a native of Varapuzha, was arrested by the Ernakulam Rural police.

Varghese, a co-vicar at a church here, had been hiding in various States after the parents of the girl approached the rural police in July this year seeking action against the priest.

Agra, Oct 20 (PTI) Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's regime, the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh has deteriorated to a new low.

The Yogi regime has the policy of killing and granting compensation as seen in Gorakhpur and Lakhimpur Kheri, he told reporters after meeting the family members of the man who died in police custody.

New Delhi, Oct 20 (PTI) A Nepalese national has allegedly been raped by a man in southeast Delhi's Amar Colony area, police said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Greater Kailash police station received information regarding sexual assault of a woman by a person known to her, they said.

During inquiry, the place of incident was found to be within the jurisdiction of the Amar Colony police station, police said.

Srinagar, Oct 21 (PTI) PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday alleged that the BJP government's policies on Jammu and Kashmir have taken the union territory "back by decades".

The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister made the remarks in response to photographs and videos on social media in which security forces are seen frisking women and minors during surprise checking in Lal Chowk and other commercial areas of the city.

Kanpur: A 23-year-old youth has been arrested by UP ATS on charges of a gun running racket from Babupurwa here. 

As many as six semi-automatic .32 bore pistols, 12 magazines and 20 cartridges have been recovered from the accused, Abhishek Pal, said ATS sleuths.

Detailing about the strategy, GK Goswami, Inspector General ATS said, "Abhishek's aide Anil Kumar Maurya managed to escape. The two belonged to Amethi and had come to Kanpur to hand over the consignment of arms and ammunition to a gang when they were caught."

ISLAMABAD, Oct 20 (NNN-APP) – The U.S. lies about China’s Wuhan lab are motivated not by science but geopolitics, with a clear purpose to demonise China and the Chinese people, said Pakistan’s English-language daily, The Express Tribune.

The U.S. lies have a clear motive to scapegoat the Chinese people for the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper quoted an article, published by the World Socialist Web Site.

NEW DELHI, Oct 20 (NNN-PTI) – India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, today inaugurated a new international airport in north India, aiming to boost tourism in the country.

The newly-built Kushinagar International Airport is located in the Kushinagar district of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

It is the ninth airport in Uttar Pradesh and 128th airport in India. Now, there are three international airports in Uttar Pradesh alone, and 29 across India.

KABUL, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Former Taliban fighter Mohammad Ishaq, who spent years battling Western troops and local forces in Afghanistan, lost his leg in combat and is now learning to walk with a new limb. Standing near him at a Kabul clinic is one of the soldiers he defeated.

In the Red Cross Hospital in Kabul, Ishaq spoke simply of the eight years he spent in Helmand, the southern province where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place and where thousands of civilians and combatants were killed and maimed.