It is only a matter of time until Hardik Pandya hits form in the IPL, warned Kieron Pollard, saying he was "sick and fed up" of the flak levelled at the all-rounder. Pandya has been booed incessantly since replacing veteran Rohit Sharma as captain of five-time champions the Mumbai Indians for the current edition of the Twenty20 tournament. With the 30-year-old Pandya again failing to fire with bat and ball, Mumbai slumped to their fourth loss in six games this term when they faced Chennai Super Kings on Sunday. Mumbai batting coach Pollard gave his full support afterwards to Pandya, who captained Gujarat to the IPL title in 2022 and is expected to be a key player for India at the T20 World Cup in June. "I am sick and fed up of (people) looking to pinpoint individuals," Pollard said after Mumbai's 20-run loss at their Wankhede Stadium. "Cricket is a team game at the end of the day. "This is an individual that is going to represent the country in less than six weeks' time, and all are going to cheer him and want him to do well." Pandya leaked 26 runs in the final over of Chennai's innings including three straight sixes by M.S. Dhoni. The all-rounder then scored just two with the bat in the hosts' unsuccessful chase of 207. Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar was scathing. "Absolutely ordinary bowling, ordinary captaincy," he told Star Sports. Pandya has been under the cosh ever since returning to Mumbai from Gujarat and taking over the captaincy from the much-loved Rohit. Rohit, 36, who leads India in all formats, is an icon in Mumbai after leading them to five IPL titles.   Source: BSS 

    On Tuesday, India at the UN said that the crime syndicate responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts was not just given state protection and facilities but it also enjoyed a five-star hospitality, in a veiled reference to the D-company head Dawood Ibrahim believed to be hiding in Pakistan. India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti told the International Counter Terrorism Conference 2022 organised by the Global Counter Terrorism Council that linkages between terrorism and transnational organised crime must be fully recognised and addressed vigorously. “We have seen the crime syndicate responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts not just given state protection but enjoying 5-star hospitality,” he said.   Tirumurti’s remarks were a thinly-veiled reference to D-Company and its head Ibrahim, believed to be hiding in Pakistan. In August 2020, Pakistan had for the first time acknowledged the presence of Ibrahim on its soil after the government imposed sweeping sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders which also included the name of the underworld don wanted by India. Tirumurti said that the UN sanctions regimes, including the 1267 Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, are pivotal to the international efforts in preventing terror-financing, terrorist-travel and access to arms by the terrorist organisations. He, however, voiced concern that the implementation of these measures remains challenging. “It is critical that all sanctions regimes established by the Council ensure due process in their working procedures and decision-making. The decision-making process and listing/delisting measures should be objective, swift, credible, evidence based and transparent, and not for political and religious considerations,” the Indian Ambassador said.   He said that a recent report of the Monitoring Team (MT) on the asset freeze exemption procedures pursuant to resolution 2560 (2020) points to the lacunae of asset freeze measures by member states, partly due to deficiencies in the existing guidelines of the Committee.  Source: Hindustan Times

On the night of 26 November 2008, ten Kalashnikov-wielding militants attacked Mumbai. They struck simultaneously at five locations, shooting dead 140 Indians and 25 foreign tourists. The attack was unique as it targeted Western nationals apart from Indian civilians to ensure greater global interest and attention. A Pakistani-American jihadist named David Headley (original name: Dawood Gilani) had been tasked as a reconnaissance agent for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). He undertook several trips to Mumbai over the course of three years, beginning in 2006 and continuing until after the 26/11 attack. It was due to his reconnaissance videos and photographs that LeT was able to plan and rehearse for a precision strike. 1. According to Headley’s testimony in a US court, he had been trained by the ISI in intelligence collection techniques. Of the $29,500 he received from Pakistani sponsors, $28,500 came from a serving ISI officer. This officer, identified as ‘Major Iqbal’ in American court documents, became the first Pakistani intelligence operative to ever be indicted by the US government for militancy. The remainder of the money came to Headley from a LeT operative called Sajid Majeed (often referred to in international media reports as ‘Sajid Mir’). Majeed was deputy head of LeT’s external operations department and handled jihadists worldwide. Headley stated that the Mumbai operation had been coordinated by Majeed. He also claimed that the ten gunmen who attacked Mumbai had been trained by former members of the Pakistani army special forces, thus corroborating what Pakistani journalistic research had uncovered that LeT was being advised by professional soldiers. 2. During his interrogation by Indian investigators, Headley claimed that in 2007-2008, LeT was facing internal rifts as younger cadres wanted to break away from the group due to its subservience to the ISI. To keep LeT united under a pliant leadership, some ‘S’ Wing operatives seemed to have arranged for an offensive against India which would earn LeT respect within the Pakistani jihadist community and prevent further defections. All that was necessary to de-link Islamabad from the attack was to ensure that the attackers would fight to the death. Controlling the gunmen via telephone was possibly intended to bolster their morale in this regard. The unexpected capture of Ajmal Kasab by the Mumbai police during the night of 26 November 2008 robbed the plan of its key asset – deniability. Zabiuddin Ansari who was extradited from Saudi Arabia in 2012 further revealed that the weapons and ammunition used in Mumbai had been provided by the ISI. Indeed, he went on to state that ISI officials had been present in the LeT control room in Karachi during the attack. One ISI officer identified by Ansari in this regard was Major Sameer Ali, whom Headley had also named as the ISI official who first referred him to LeT. 3. On 3 August 2015, former FIA chief Tariq Khosa, who supervised the Pakistani side of the Mumbai investigation, published an op-ed in Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English newspaper in which he stated that in unambiguous terms that the ten gunmen had been members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, that forensic evidence of their training had been obtained from a camp in Sindh province, that their control room in Karachi had been located and that the ship which had transported them to Indian waters had been seized by the FIA. He further observed that Pakistan has to deal with the Mumbai mayhem, planned and launched from its soil. This requires facing the truth and admitting mistakes. The entire state security apparatus must ensure that the perpetrators and masterminds of the ghastly militant attacks are brought to justice. 4. Yet, as on date none of the perpetrators have been either charge sheeted or convicted for the 26/11 attacks. Lives were lost because a particular nation only thinks of making a mark by unleashing violence and terror. (Written by Shri Ajit Kamath for Samrudh Bharat Social Welfare Foundation. The views expressed in the above advertorial are personal, BCCL and its group publications disassociate from the views expressed above) Disclaimer: Content Produced by Samrudh Bharat Social Welfare Foundation Source: Times of India

India’s most coronavirus-hit state Maharashtra went into a weekend lockdown on Saturday as the country battled exploding infection numbers and vaccine shortages. Having let its guard down with mass religious festivals, political rallies and spectators at cricket matches, the world’s second most populous nation has added more than a million new infections since late March. After a lockdown a year ago caused widespread misery and hit the economy for six, the central government is desperate to avoid a hugely unpopular second shutdown. But many states are tightening the screw, in particular the epicentre Maharashtra and its capital Mumbai, where restaurants are shut and public gatherings of more than five people are banned. Every weekend from Saturday until the end of April the state’s 125 million people are confined to their homes unless shopping for food, medicine or travelling. “I’m not for the lockdown at all but I don’t think the government has any other choice,” media professional Neha Tyagi, 27, told AFP in Mumbai. “This lockdown could have been totally avoided if people would take the virus seriously.” Cricket is now played behind closed doors — including the big-bucks Indian Premier League, which began Friday — and in many states including in the capital New Delhi a night curfew is in force. All eight teams in the IPL, which includes the sport’s top international stars, are in strict bio-bubbles and four players have so far tested positive. Raipur district, home to the capital of Chhattisgarh state, is under a 10-day lockdown with no one allowed to enter the area unless performing essential services. – Short on stocks – India’s drive to vaccinate its 1.3 billion people also looks to be hitting problems, with just 94 million shots provided so far and stocks running low. In megacity Mumbai, 25 out of 71 private hospitals administering jabs ran out of supplies Thursday, city authorities said. The situation at government-run inoculation centres was not much better, with a giant 1,000-bed field hospital turning away people arriving for their first dose on Friday morning. City authorities tweeted that the shortage was “due to non-receipt of stocks” from the national government. The Times of India reported Friday that states on average had just over five days of stock left, according to health ministry data, with some regions already grappling with severe shortages. But the central government has accused some states — run by opposition parties — of “distract(ing) attention from their failures” and playing politics. “It is not right to say that there is a vaccine shortage. Vaccines have been made available to all states according to their needs,” Home Minister Amit Shah said on Friday. The CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker by volume, has warned that production capacity is “very stressed”. Poorer countries, as well as some rich nations, have relied heavily on Serum for supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but last month New Delhi put the brakes on exports to prioritise domestic needs. Source: AFP/BSS AH