Category: Indo-Pak Relations

A devoted American social worker has been stabbed to death by her Indian husband of five months – who then returned to their home and blew himself up.

Erin Willinger, 35, a yoga teacher and psychologist from New York, was found dumped in a bush with multiple stab wounds to her face and body in the city of Agra on Thursday night, according to Indian news reports.

Her husband, 32-year-old Bunty Sharma, returned to their home, where he is believed to have ignited cooking gas, causing a massive explosion that killed him.

The tragedy comes just months after the couple met and married – but accused each other of lying about previous marriages, while Willinger also accused her new husband of infidelity.

Willinger had visited Agra – which is about 120 miles south of New Delhi – with a group of Americans in July and chose to stay after telling the Indo-Asian News Service she wanted to help make the city worthy of ‘such a beautiful monument as the Taj Mahal’.

But within weeks, their marriage began to crumble and by December, they started living separately.

Both accused the other of hiding previous marriages and Willinger, who went by the alias Kiran Sharma and also uses the name Erin White, accused her new husband of greed, infidelity and cruelty, the Hindustan Times reported.

White approached the Agra Police’s Mediation Cell for Family Matters in January, asking for help and the couple was put in touch with a counselor, who encouraged them to start living together again.

But the arguments continued and on Thursday evening, Bunty reportedly drove Willinger to a quieter section of the city and stabbed her to death in his taxi cab.

He then shoved her body in bushes along the road, the Hindustan Times reported.

He then returned home and locked himself in his room on the second floor.

Local residents then said they heard a loud explosion and saw flames erupting from the room. When they rushed inside to rescue him, they found his charred body on the floor.

Authorities believe Bunty sparked the blast by igniting gas he had released from a cooking gas cylinder in the apartment.

The union home ministry and the American embassy in New Delhi have been informed.

A State Department official confirmed Willinger’s death.

‘We offer our condolences to her family and loved ones on their loss,’ the official told MailOnline.

‘We are in contact with her family and are providing all appropriate consular assistance. Out of respect for the privacy of those affected, we decline further comment.’

Before her death, Willinger had revealed that she was deeply in love with Indian culture and wanted to improve civic conditions in Agra.

On the day she was killed, she addressed a press conference to promote her campaign ‘Agra Sunder Hai’, and several local NGOs pledged support to her.

She had said she hoped to help Agra with improving its water, plastic waste and garbage disposal.

She said that she wanted to stay in Agra until ’60 or maybe more – as long as the body permits’.

‘This city needs a push,’ she said. ‘The city is dirty and no one wants to stay back here for a night. You have to teach people to be conscious of hygiene, health and sensibilities of others. You have to build trust and reach out.’

She spoke of taking money from the rich to give resources to the poor, and said she hoped to get actors and other celebrities on board to help make programs more attractive.

And she was confident that her idea was going to be a success.

‘I am talking with so many [students, businessmen and professionals] and they all agree that the time for change has indeed come,’ she said.

‘You need role models. A democratic society needs inspiring heroes to move ahead. You need success stories to diffuse the clouds of negativity all around.

LONDON, Sept 27 — The leaders of Pakistan and India held their first official meeting in New York on Sunday, leaving with renewed promises of mutual restraint in Kashmir but little real hope for a fresh start in relations.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan shook hands for the cameras at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan before their long-anticipated meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. But despite the smiles, violence back home formed the backdrop to the encounter.

A series of cross-border artillery exchanges in the disputed territory of Kashmir over the past two months has led to the death of at least eight soldiers on both sides, and plunged diplomatic relations to their lowest ebb in years. In the latest episode, on Thursday, a militant raid on an Indian Army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people, causing an outcry in India.

India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, said that Mr. Singh and Mr. Sharif agreed during their meeting on Sunday to dial back tensions in Kashmir, the disputed territory that has triggered three wars between Pakistan and India since 1947.

The leaders pledged to push senior military officers to find “effective means” of restoring a 2003 cease-fire in Kashmir, Mr. Menon said.

Both Mr. Singh and Mr. Sharif personally favor normalizing relations, but both are hamstrung by domestic considerations — especially hard-line elements in their respective military and political establishments — that drastically limit their room to maneuver.

Mr. Singh’s party faces an electoral challenge early next year against Hindu parties that have called for a tougher stance against Pakistan. Under fire at home for meeting with Mr. Sharif, he established a tough tone in an address to the United Nations on Saturday in which he called Pakistan the “epicenter of terrorism” in South Asia.

For any progress to occur, he said, Pakistan has to first ensure that the “terrorist machine” operating from its soil is shut down. That was a reference to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group that was responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, in which 166 people were killed, and whose leadership still enjoys free movement within Pakistan.

Mr. Sharif, 63, was more optimistic, telling the United Nations on Friday that he wanted “a new beginning” with India, and deploring the resources both countries have spent on their nuclear-arms race — a pointed statement given that it was Mr. Sharif who ordered Pakistan’s first nuclear test during his last stint in power in the late 1990s.

Mr. Sharif’s push for a new peace initiative can be seen in part as an attempt to continue the business of that previous term, in which he staked much on reaching out to India in a process that was derailed by a nuclear crisis and a military coup in 1999. Now, as then, he has framed better relations with India as an economic necessity for both countries.

“We stand ready to re-engage with India in a substantive and purposeful dialogue,” he said during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.

For Mr. Singh, 81, whose lack of personal political power has made him a deeply cautious prime minister, meeting with Mr. Sharif was a bold move.

On Sunday at a large rally in New Delhi, Narendra Modi, who is the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, questioned Mr. Singh’s ability to undertake the meeting effectively.

“I wonder if he will meet the Pakistan P.M. confidently today?” Mr. Modi asked. “Will he be able to ask him when Pakistan will stop aiding terrorism? Will he be able to question Nawaz Sharif on the Indian soldiers who were brutally killed?”

Analysts said Sunday’s meeting met its low expectations, and could at best stabilize relations until the political climate in both countries improved.

“This can help border incidents from escalating until India’s election season is over and more serious business can be transacted between the two countries,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.

Stephen P. Cohen, an American academic who recently published a book on the India-Pakistan conflict, said the leaders appeared as “two men with tired ideas and constraints that they cannot overcome, afraid to take the bold measures that could liberate them.”

But even with the best intentions, Pakistani and Indian leaders have frequently found their efforts at diplomacy undone by the spoiling tactics of hard-liners.

In 1999, Mr. Sharif made impressive strides toward peace with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India’s prime minister. Months later, the Pakistani military carried out a covert operation in the disputed territory of Kashmir that spectacularly upended the peace drive and, for a brief period, edged the two countries toward a nuclear conflict. A coup deposed Mr. Sharif soon afterward.

In November 2008, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, told an Indian conference that Pakistan was ready for a more moderate nuclear weapons policy, and called for closer economic ties between the countries. Days later came the militants’ coordinated attacks in Mumbai.

The long conflict between India and Pakistan has become a major preoccupation of the security establishment in both countries, and has found expression through proxy forces in third countries like Afghanistan.

Indian officials have for years demanded that Pakistan take action against Lashkar-e-Taiba and its founder, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who lives openly in Lahore. Mr. Menon, the Indian security adviser, said in New York that Mr. Sharif had promised to take action against those responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Mr. Menon said the tone of the talks was friendly, but added: “As for how useful and productive the meeting was, I think the only proof will be in the months to come.”

Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Somini Sengupta from New York.

Bangalore, Aug 14: The separate states of India and Pakistan were created at midnight on August 15, 1947. Yet while India celebrates that day as its independence day, Pakistan celebrates its independence day a day before. Why it is so?Reason 1:Pakistan’s first independence day was also celebrated on August 15 but later on it was advanced to August 14. One of the reasons is that British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, who had chosen August 15 to commemorate the surrender of Japan to the Allies Power marking the end of World War II in 1945, sought to transfer power to Pakistan on August 14 so that he could be present in New Delhi to observe India’s maiden independence day celebrations.

Reason 2:Also in 1948, Pakistan decided to celebrate its Independence Day on August 14 because 27 Ramadan, an auspicious date of the Islamic lunar calendar, coincided with it. Hence the Pakistanis decided to celebrate their Independence Day a day before the actual date. But otherwise, August 15 is the actual Independence Day for both India and Pakistan (Even South Korea observes its Liberation Day on August 15). The Indian Independence Act of 1947 clearly said: “As from the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan.

“Even Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah had declared August 15 as the birthday of the independent and sovereign state of Pakistan. The first commemorative postage stamps of Pakistan which were released in July 1948 also mentioned 15 August 1947 as its Independence Day.OneIndia News

Read more at: http://news.oneindia.in/2013/08/14/why-pakistan-celebrates-its-independence-day-on-aug-14-1283017.html

ISLAMABAD: Deadly violence over the last week along the disputed Kashmir border between Pakistan and India threatens to sabotage recent efforts by the nuclear-armed rivals to improve ties, illustrating how vulnerable the normalization process is to spoilers from both sides.

The most dangerous of these potential spoilers are Islamic militants who have historically been nurtured by the Pakistani military to fight a covert war over Kashmir and may feel threatened by any indication the government is cozying up to India.

The Pakistani army and its militant proxies have a history of using violence to sabotage outreach to India by civilian leaders, and suspicion about the generals’ intentions still runs high in New Delhi.

But many Pakistani analysts believe the army’s leaders have little interest in rocking the boat now, raising the worrying possibility that the recent violence was sparked by militants who have gone rogue or are operating in cooperation with lower level military officials sympathetic to their cause.

”This has really pulled the rug from under the feet of Nawaz Sharif and Manmohan Singh,” the prime ministers of Pakistan and India, said Moeed Yusuf, a Pakistan expert at the United States Institute of Peace. Both leaders have expressed a desire to improve ties, especially to increase cross-border trade.

The US is likely watching the current tension closely, both because of the nuclear arms on both sides and the spillover effect that conflict between the two countries has in neighboring Afghanistan.

The US has long suspected Pakistan of supporting Taliban militants in Afghanistan to counter Indian influence.

Majority Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India have fought three major wars since they both gained independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir. The disputed territory is divided between the two countries but claimed in its entirety by both.

A 2003 cease-fire agreement has largely calmed the disputed border between the countries, although they occasionally accuse each other of violating it by firing mortars or gunshots, and several soldiers were killed on each side in January in cross-border attacks.

The latest round of violence began last Tuesday when, according to the Indian military, 20 heavily-armed militants and Pakistani soldiers crossed the Kashmir border and killed five Indian troops.

The Pakistani military has denied that its soldiers killed any Indian troops and accused Indian soldiers of killing a pair of civilians and wounding two others along the border over the last week.

The latest accusation came Wednesday when a Pakistani military official said Indian troops shelled the Battal sector of Pakistan-held Kashmir on Tuesday night, killing one civilian and seriously wounding another.

An Indian army officer denied the allegation, saying there was no shelling or exchange of gunfire in the sector. Both the Pakistani and Indian officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military policy.

Pakistan’s new prime minister, Sharif, took office in June with a pledge to improve relations with India to help turn around his country’s stuttering economy.

Trade between the two countries is around $2 billion per year and could go as high as $11 billion once trade is normalized, according to some estimates.

Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar indicated earlier this week that the government was backing off granting most favored nation trading status to India in the wake of the violence on the Kashmir border.

But Sharif has expressed hope that the normalization process would continue and said he looks forward to meeting with his Indian counterpart on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in September.

”Pakistan will continue to respond to the situation with restraint and responsibility in the hope that steps would be taken by India to help reduce tensions,” Sharif said Wednesday. ”Our objective is peace. For that, what we need is more diplomacy.”

Sharif, who has served as prime minister twice before, has experience being undermined in his efforts to reach out to India.

He signed a landmark agreement with the country in February 1999 that sought to avoid nuclear conflict, but the goodwill didn’t last long.

In May 1999, the Pakistani army chief at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, quietly sent soldiers into an area of Indian-held Kashmir called Kargil, sparking a conflict that cost hundreds of lives and could have led to nuclear war.

Sharif said the army acted without his knowledge. Five months later, Musharraf toppled Sharif in a coup and sent him into exile in Saudi Arabia, not allowing him to return until 2007.

Yusuf, the Pakistani expert, said he believes the army’s leaders are now on the same page as Sharif in terms of gradually improving ties with India because the military has its hands full fighting a deadly Taliban insurgency.

NEW DELHI, Aug 15 — More than 250 Pakistani Hindus have arrived in India over the past two weeks bearing tales of religious persecution, according to Indian border officials, fueling perceptions of growing discrimination against minorities in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Hindus, who came by road and rail with valid pilgrimage visas from Sindh, Baluchistan and Punjab provinces, have reported incidents of kidnapping, looting and forced religious conversion, the officials said.

Pakistan has 2.7 million Hindus in a majority-Muslim population of 180 million. They represent those who chose to stay after the sectarian blood bath that accompanied the 1947 partition of the subcontinent at the end of British rule.

The Pakistani Hindus’ allegations of persecution and expressed desire to stay in India pose a diplomatic quandary for the New Delhi government: Should India welcome them and open the floodgates? Or should it stay aloof, treating this as an internal Pakistani matter — and shielding itself from allegations of Muslim mistreatment in India.

“As far as we know, the families have come on a pilgrimage. So far, no family that is based in Pakistan has approached us for asylum,” Preneet Kaur, India’s deputy foreign minister, told the Headlines Today news channel in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Kaur noted that India and Pakistan had agreed in 1972 not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. But she added, “However, we do request Pakistan, on humanitarian grounds, to look after the interests of minorities.”

India does not have a national refugee law; it deals with arrivals from neighboring countries on an ad hoc basis. Thousands of Pakistani Hindus who have come here in the past two decades have still not received Indian citizenship.

But the country may be unable to maintain that detachment for long, in view of the steady stream of Pakistani Hindus who say they are being harassed by new Muslim fundamentalist groups in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

“They barge into our homes in broad daylight, snatch jewelry from the women, money from our shops, and kidnap Hindu girls and convert them to Islam,” Mukesh Kumar Ahuja, a young Hindu from Pakistan, told Indian reporters in the northern state of Punjab. “We want India to let us stay and ease visa rules for our relatives who are still in Pakistan.”

Tejinder Goggi, a hotel owner and peace activist in Punjab, said he saw at least 100 Pakistani Hindus arrive last week with bedding, pots and pans stuffed into jute sacks and cardboard cartons.

“They are worried about their daughters because 20 girls were kidnapped and married to Muslim boys in the past year,” Goggi said.

An immigration officer said that only half of those who have come to India in the past year have returned to Pakistan.

“They come for pilgrimage on a 30-day visa, and they keep extending it,” the officer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically sensitive issue. “They produce medical certificates to say they are ill, or report a marriage or death in the family.”

On Monday, several Indian lawmakers raised the issue in Parliament and urged the government to take it up with Pakistan.

“If persecuted Hindus don’t come to India, where will they go?” asked Prakash Javadekar, spokesman for the Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

Hindu protests have been growing in Pakistan. Last week, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari set up a three-member panel to address the Hindus’ grievances, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik has promised to examine the situation. “The government will first look into the matter and then allow them to leave Pakistan,” Malik said of those seeking visas. He did, however, question why India had given such a large number of visas to the Hindus.

Not all Pakistani Hindus want to leave. “I was born in Pakistan,” Kanhaiya Nagpal, a retired professor, said in a telephone interview from Karachi. “I like to live here. This is my country.”

Nagpal said he had participated in a demonstration organized by several Hindu groups Monday to protest harassment. But he added: “The solution is not to run away. If the rule of law is followed in Pakistan, then everything will be all right.”

Nisar Mehdi in Karachi contributed to this report.

“The government of India has reviewed the policy… and decided to permit a citizen of Pakistan or an entity incorporated in Pakistan to make investments in India,” said a statement from the Indian commerce ministry.

India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence, are channeling their peace efforts into “trade diplomacy”.

The aim is to build enough trust to tackle the more troublesome issues that divide them, such as the disputed territory of Kashmir.

“We welcome this decision,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Khan told AFP.

“It will definitely benefit Pakistani investors and industrialists. We hope this decision will be fruitful for the people of both countries.” Pakistani businessmen also welcomed the move.

“We do appreciate this action by the government of India, but what will be more interesting for me is when the Indian authorities lift its ban on Indian investors investing in Pakistan,” said Majyd Aziz, involved in the import and export of minerals and in shipping.

“For a better economic future in South Asia, it will be a huge step when businessmen from both the countries can freely invest in each other’s country.” Zubair Motiwala, chairman of the board of investment in Sindh province, said it was the “right decision taken at the right time”.

“Allowing our country to invest in India is a great confidence booster and will pave the way for more cordial bilateral relations,” he said.

The warming commercial ties underline the new relevance of the private sector in the peace process, analysts said.

Pakistani citizens and companies will be allowed to invest in all sectors apart from defence, space and atomic energy, a government statement said. All propositions must be notified to the Indian government, it added.

The decision to accept foreign direct investment from Pakistan was taken in April when the trade ministers of the South Asian rivals met in New Delhi.

They also discussed ways to ease visa curbs on business travel and the possibility of allowing banks from both countries to open cross-border branches.

The improved relations between the rivals stem from Pakistan’s decision to grant India “Most Favoured Nation (MFN)” status by year end, meaning Indian exports will be treated the same as those from other nations.

MFN status will mean India can export 6,800 items to Pakistan, up from around 2,000 at present, and the countries aim to lift bilateral trade to $6 billion within three years, officials have said.

Official bilateral trade is just $2.7 billion and heavily tilted in New Delhi’s favour, according to most recent figures, but unofficial trade routed through third countries is estimated at up to $10 billion.

In further progress, the neighbours opened a second trading gate in April along their heavily militarised border, increasing the number of trucks able to cross daily to 600 from 150.

Pakistan has called for a “new era” in economic collaboration with India to build “a legacy of peace and prosperity for our future generations”.

The two countries have said there are many sectors with huge trade potential, from information technology to engineering, education and health.

The two nations have voiced hopes that boosting trade can help peace talks which India warily resumed last year after suspending them after the 2008 attack by Islamist gunmen on Mumbai that killed 166 people.

“Commerce is an excellent way to bring countries together,” Indian strategic analyst Uday Bhaskar told AFP recently.

“Once you institutionalise trade, it becomes hard to slow the momentum for cross-border exchanges.”