News meeows - 13

Ex-armyman held in Pune for ISI links

The Pune police on Friday arrested ex-armyman Shailesh Anantrao Jadhav (29), a native of Satara district, for his alleged links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

“Jadhav was carrying classified documents related to the Indian Army. He was planning to give these documents to another ISI agent, Mohammed Syed Desai, who fled from police surveillance in Pune on January 23,’’ ACP (Crime) Rajendra Singh said on Saturday.

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Fantastic! Catch the small fry, talk about “alleged links with ISI” and we begin to look so good. Why has the report not quoted the designation of this ex-armyman, Jadhav? He is only 29; he either quit or was thrown out of his job. How did he have access to classified documents related to the Indian Army?

Who is this Mohammed Syed Desai, purportedly an ISI agent? Why don’t the police publish his photograph and the armyman’s? Let us see what these agents look like. Maybe the public might help in capturing the bloke. I like the way the ACP announces with a straight face that he fled from police surveillance. How? Did someone help him? How?

Tell us.

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SC acquits ‘killer’ after 15 yrs in jail

Indraj, a cobbler, carried the murder charge on his head for 15 years, most of them behind bars. He was convicted by a Ferozepur court and the Punjab and Haryana HC did not find anything amiss in his conviction and screntence. Both the trial court and the HC believed the police’s story to be true.

But the truth unfolded in the SC, which suspected that the prosecution story was cooked up as the police had not explained the injury marks on Indraj and his wife Maya. The SC examined the evidence on record and questioned the prosecution, which led to the unfolding of the true story. A man, after an altercation with Indraj, assaulted him with a sharp weapon. Maya intervened to save her husband and was injured. Cornered, Indraj delivered a blow to the assaulter with a sharp tool to save himself and his wife. The blow proved fatal.

An SC bench concluded that the blow delivered by Indraj was more in self-defence than with the intention of causing the assaulter’s death.

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How many such cases are there? We have lost count. We don’t care. We are more interested in whether Maanyata is a resident of Goa and entitled to be married to Sanjay Dutt. Yes, even I know about it, but I did not know about Indraj. I don’t have great interest in cobblers beyond the point that they occasionally eye my shoes with a little more than added interest.

Why does it take ‘truth’ to be out after 15 years? What prompted the SC to suddenly wake up? On the one hand we have fast-track justice for the pampered sons and daughters of the soirees, and then we have this. The evidence was already on record, so why did it examine it now?

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Comedienne Manorama dies at 80

Yesteryear actor Manorama died at a local hospital on Friday. She was known for her comic and vampish roles in superhits like Seeta Aur Geeta, Mere Mehboob, Bachpan, Laawaris, Kundan, Main Awara Hoon, Raj Kumar, Jaanwar, Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, Post Box 999 and Half Ticket. She was 80.

Manorama acted in over 145 films and her last film was Deepa Mehta’s Water. “She did not even have a house to stay and Mehta got her a house in Charkop where she stayed till the end. She has one daughter but one does not know where she is now.’’

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To be honest, I might never have written about her. It was only that when I saw the film Water and spotted a familiar face that memories came back. Manorama was a terrible actress, over-the-top, but then that was the style of acting that probably made villainy seem truly demonic.

She was gross, made funny faces and rolled her eyes grotesquely and had a grating voice. She really did not seem as evil as Lalita Pawar, but I liked her in Water, as the exploitative old widow supplying young girls to the zamindars and subsisting on hash. She was truly good. I am glad that was her last film and one got to see a more subtle aspect.

And then there is the tragedy of her being alone; even her daughter is untraceable. Life isn’t much different from celluloid.

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I like the caption!

...AND THE MEN ARE DUMMIES: A woman soldier displays a multi-purpose aiming reflex sight (MARS) rifle during the inauguration of the International DefExpo 2008 in New Delhi on Saturday. About 450 weapons companies from 30 countries are offering their latest hardware at the four-day show.

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End Uh-huh:

British men spend a year ogling women

An average Brit bloke spends a year of his life glancing at women, says a new research. The research stated that the guy ogles at eleven girls every day for a full two minutes each first looking at her breasts, then bum and legs. This adds up to 134 hours a year, amounting to 350 days over a lifetime, reports The Sun. A third of the total men admitted that sneaking a peek at another woman had landed them in trouble with their wife or girlfriend. However, girls are a bit behind in this scenario. They check out a couple of blokes every day, sizing them up in just 90 seconds. Almost half said they were first attracted to a man’s eyes, followed by a glance at his bum and then a whiff of his aftershave.

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This is hilarious. How can it be guaranteed that the woman who is the centre of attention will be around for those two minutes? And if the guys look at breasts first and then the bum, how do they go round? What if she is standing against a wall? And her legs – what if they are covered?

Now come the girls, and I shall include women here. We take half a minute less, though how we manage it by looking at the eyes, then the butt and then “a whiff of his aftershave”? What does this mean? Where has the guy applied the aftershave?

Anyway, this probably applies to British women. I think this guy’s bum thing is over-rated. Unless it is a bit too sumptuous, no woman cares. Okay, a good cologne is nice, especially if you want to filch it. I think eyes are by far the most important and the voice. And do glance at the crotch, ladies. No, not for it, but because that particular area tells you a lot about the kind of trousers the man wears and how he sits and stands. It shows whether he is a class act or a slob.

Really!