New iPad cover opens to instant gratification

New York:  In technology, fast is never fast enough.

When Apple begins selling its iPad 2 on Friday evening, many of the new device's features may be upstaged by a lowly accessory, the "smart cover," a protective case designed by Apple that snaps onto the iPad through magnets and doubles as a stand.

The cover's "smarts," though, come in part from being able to turn the iPad 2 on when you open it and off when you close it. The click and finger swipe -- three to four seconds, in an unscientific test -- that stood between you and the digital world in the original iPad? Gone.

The cover turns on the iPad 2 faster than you can wake up your PC or Mac and faster than you can turn on your car or television. It is a bit like the refrigerator door. You open it, and the light goes on, revealing all there is to eat.

The smart cover underscores Apple's knack for design, not to mention the legendary marketing chops of its chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. But more than that, it taps into our apparently insatiable hunger for instant gratification and desire to be one with our favorite gadgets.

"We are in an environment where there is no downtime anymore," said Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We have become impatient."

Three seconds may not be much, but it suggests to us that we may be able to send one more message or read one more tweet, he said. "Where does it end?"

The marriage of speed and technology did not start yesterday and it will not end tomorrow. When AT&T unveiled the first commercial push button phone in 1963, part of its pitch was simple: calling someone would be faster than it was on rotary phones. For years, makers of computers and Web browsers have competed on the speed of their products.

More recently, computer makers have been hard at work trying to cut the boot-up time of PCs -- minutes of idle time that have become increasingly infuriating. Most hand-held devices turn on much faster. And with its smart cover, the new iPad 2 goes one step further.

"This is the story of our lives," said James Gleick, the author of "Faster," "The Information" and other books on the cultural ramifications of technology. "These little technologies that save us a fraction of a second or a gesture, they're a form of crack."

Paul Saffo, a veteran technology forecaster in Silicon Valley, likened it to another vital need. "Connectivity has become like oxygen," he said. "If you don't have it, you notice its absence at about two seconds."

Apple has said little about the smart cover since Mr. Jobs showcased it before a rapt audience in San Francisco last week. He said the cover was not an afterthought, but was designed simultaneously with the iPad 2. To highlight its importance, Mr. Jobs gave the smart cover a starring role in its own movie -- a playful 32-second clip that, he said, reminded him of a Pixar short.

Tech bloggers are reacting with effusive praise for the cover, with comments ranging from "magical" to "mind blowing." John Gruber, an influential blogger, said the smart cover may be the main reason some owners of the original iPad want to upgrade to the new version.

How well the cover works in real life remains to be seen. Will it slip off when the iPad 2 is pulled out of a bag? Will it work as well for left-handed users and right-handed users? Will it slide easily into a larger case?

Regardless of the answers, the smart cover appears to have carved its spot in tech history, if only for the praise it has earned for its stylish marriage of form and function. "It is well on its way to becoming a design icon," Mr. Saffo said.

Maybe you can judge a tablet by its cover.

Japan's industrial heart escapes heaviest blows

New Delhi:  As bad as the toll might eventually be in lives and property from Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the fact that the disaster hit far from Japan's industrial heartland will at least soften the economic blow, both at home and abroad.

The epicentre was in and around the coastal city of Sendai, nearly 200 miles northeast of Tokyo, the nation's population centre, and well north of Japan's primary manufacturing region running from Nagoya to Osaka and farther south and west.

If this had been a couple hundred miles to the south, the economic and human toll would have been almost incomprehensible," said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "In that respect, Japan dodged an enormous bullet here."

The disaster could prompt the Japanese government to pump more money into the economy, analysts say, and is very likely to result in increased public spending on buildings and roads.

And it could propel Japan's already strong currency, the yen, even higher against the dollar and other global currencies, as Japanese money invested abroad returns to help in the rebuilding. In global currency trading on Friday, after the earthquake, the yen did edge higher.

Japan is a major exporter of cars, consumer electronics goods, and parts and sophisticated industrial machinery. In the wake of the disaster, some factories were shut down temporarily. Japanese ports were closed, and so were several airports, including Narita International Airport, which serves Tokyo.

The ripple effects, analysts say, are likely to be some delays in shipping goods, and possibly higher prices in certain products and components. But the impact is expected to be relatively modest and short-lived.


Japan, for example, produces 40 percent of lightweight memory chips most commonly used for storage in digital music players, smart phones and tablet computers, estimated Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, a research firm. But most of the plants that make such chips, and other electronics components, are south and west of Tokyo.

Still, a high-tech factory does not have to topple to halt production. A strong shaking, like that generated by the magnitude-8.9 earthquake -- the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, and felt across much of the nation -- can upset the delicate machinery used in production.

Recalibrating the machines, analyst say, can take a week or two, crimping supplies.

"We do expect some upward price pressure because of this," said Dale Ford, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a technology market research firm. But it is too soon, Mr Ford noted, to predict how much prices might rise, though it should not have a long-term impact.

Because Japan occupies an unstable slice of the earth's crust and tremors are a routine part of life, Japan's government, scientists and industry are almost continually engaged in moderating the impact of earthquakes through innovative building designs, strict construction codes and advance planning.

Japan's major automakers, for example, have long had contingency plans in place to keep supplies moving. Car companies on Friday did report damage to some factories and offices, and Honda said one employee was killed at a research centre in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, when a cafeteria wall collapsed.

Toyota, Japan's largest automaker, reported that its car assembly plants had resumed production after a brief stoppage -- though four factories operated by Toyota subsidiaries remained closed while workers were evacuated to safer areas.

But most of Toyota's Japanese production is done south of Tokyo, especially around Nagoya, including the Prius hybrid, which is built only in Japan.

And over the past two decades, the Japanese automakers have shifted a large portion of production of cars sold for the United States to American plants, while Japanese parts suppliers have set up shop in North America as well.

"Given their contingency plans for earthquakes, and all the production done abroad these days, I'd be amazed if this had a real impact on Toyota or other leading Japanese car companies," said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., a Japan expert and the president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group in Washington.

In 1995, after the devastating earthquake centred in Kobe, a port and industrial city, which killed more than 6,000 people and caused more than $100 billion in damage, the yen rose in value against the dollar 20 percent in the following two months. Some analysts predict that the yen will strengthen in the wake of this earthquake, too.

Why would a disaster cause a nation's currency to gain in value? In Japan's case, the answer lies partly in the country's high savings rate and sizable investments abroad. "As households see their physical assets destroyed, need funds for reconstruction and become more risk averse," Michael Hart, an analyst for Roubini Global Economics, wrote on Friday, "they are likely to repatriate their savings."

In doing so, they would convert their foreign holdings back into yen, increasing the demand for the Japanese currency, thus driving up its value. Still, a strong yen could pose problems for Japanese exporters, by making their products relatively more expensive on the global market.

For Japanese consumers, spending to increase household inventories of food and other daily necessities will probably increase, but outlays for luxury goods and services, notably tourism, will fall sharply, Masaaki Kanno, a Tokyo-based economist for JPMorgan Securities, predicted in a note to clients.

Japan's central bank announced on Friday that it would speed up its monetary policy meeting, to conclude on Monday instead of Tuesday. The bank, analysts say, is expected to add to the money supply, probably by expanding a program to buy government bonds and thus inject more funds into the economy.

The disaster, economists say, may well prod Japanese policy makers to increase government spending to stimulate the economy, despite adding to the nation's sizable debt burden in the near term. And private investment on construction should increase as well.

"There should be some positive impact because of the rush to rebuild," said Edward J. Lincoln, a Japan expert at New York University's Stern School of Business. "Perversely, you may have an economic benefit from this over the next year or two."

Befriend the pope? John Paul II gets Facebook page

Vatican City:  The Vatican will unveil the latest installment in its social media transformation next week - a Facebook page dedicated to the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II, officials said.

The site, which will link to video highlights of John Paul's 27-year papacy, is designed to promote the May 1 beatification. But it may well continue beyond given the global and enduring interest in the late pontiff, Vatican officials told The Associated Press.

The Vatican's first attempt at an event-themed Facebook page - to promote Pope Benedict XVI's September trip to the United Kingdom - is still active six months later and updated near-daily with 10,000-15,000 regular fans checking in, said Monsignor Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican's social communications office.

"What we found is that Facebook doesn't just share information, it creates community," Tighe said in an interview Friday. "People begin talking to each other and sharing ideas."

That interactivity - and the potential it brings to the church's evangelization mission - is behind the Vatican's new social media push, the culmination of which will be launched at Easter with a new Vatican information web portal whose contents are specifically designed to be tweeted, posted and blogged.

The portal will serve as a one-stop-shop aggregator of news from the Vatican's various information sources: Vatican Radio, Vatican Television, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See's press office and Fides, the Vatican's missionary news agency, Tighe said.

The Vatican's current website - www.vatican.va - will remain since that's more of a stable site with basic information about the Holy See, key Vatican documents and offices, and papal activities.

The new site, rolled out first in English and Italian and then other languages, will be more news-based, bringing together onto one page the current disorganized web presence of Vatican media.

Designed thematically, with each format's take on, say, the Japan earthquake or the Libyan uprising posted together, it will be multimedia focused but specifically designed for social media use, so people can tweet, post and blog its contents onto their own friends and fans, Tighe said.

"For us it will be a beginning of drawing on the riches of what we have, of our existing communications apparatus, and integrating that to ensure that its formally working with new media," he said.

The Vatican's communications and public relations woes are well known: muddled papal messages, flat-footed responses to crises like the sex abuse scandal and a certain lack of Internet savvy that allowed, to cite one egregious case, for the pope to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. (Benedict now says he never would have rehabilitated the bishop had he known his views about Jews, which were widely available with a Google search.)

That said, the Holy See has improved getting its message out online, with a dedicated YouTube channel and Twitter accounts, and its increasing presence on Facebook. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out recently about how the church's message can get out effectively and in entirely new ways using the interactivity of social media.

"A lot of our communications in the past was: I have a message. I broadcast it. TV takes it, radio takes it, newspaper takes it, and people passively receive it," Tighe said. "With the Internet you have this possibility of getting people's comments, getting their responses, and also of hearing their questions."
Benedict himself will take a step in that direction on April 22, Good Friday, when he responds to questions posed by the faithful that were submitted online. His prerecorded responses will air on Italian state television, and presumably then find their way onto YouTube.

"This is a beginning, in a simple way, of allowing the pope to interact with the questions of people and allowing people a direct form of access to the pope," Tighe said. "With time we'll see how different initiatives can develop, but the commitment there is to interactivity, to engagement."

Fresh tremors jolt Tokyo

Tokyo:  Huge earthquakes rocked northeastern Japan on Saturday, a day after a giant temblor set off a powerful tsunami that killed hundreds of people, turned the coast into a swampy wasteland and left two nuclear reactors dangerously close to meltdown.

The United States Geological Survey said a strong earthquake struck just before noon in the sea in virtually the same place where the magnitude 8.9 quake on Friday unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed -- a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields and smashed towns.

Saturday's magnitude 6.8 quake was followed by a series of temblors originating from the same area, the USGS said. It was not immediately known whether the new quakes caused any more damage. All were part of the more than 125 aftershocks since Friday's massive quake, the strongest to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s.

It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area of the quake's epicenter. An untold number of bodies were also believed to be lying in the rubble and debris. Rescue workers had yet to reach the hardest-hit areas.

"The flood came in from behind the store and swept around both sides. Cars were flowing right by," said Wakio Fushima, who owns a convenience store in this northern coastal city of 1.02 million people, 80 miles (125 kilometers) from the quake's epicenter.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled up against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers) from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers coasted on boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of detritus.
"The tsunami was unbelievably fast. Smaller cars were being swept around me and all I could do was sit in my truck," said truck driver Koichi Takairin, 34, who was pinned in his four-ton vehicle and later escaped to a community center.

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of mud-spattered survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into city. Smoke from at least one large fire could be seen in the distance.

But basic commodities were at a premium. Hundreds lined up outside of supermarkets, and gas stations were swamped with cars. The situation was similar in scores of other towns and cities along the 1,300-mile-long (2,100-kilometer-long) eastern coastline hit by the tsunami.

Japan also declared its first-ever states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of the earthquake, and workers struggled to prevent meltdowns.

Two of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Futaba town were in danger and could face a meltdown if all possible safety procedures fail.

Authorities said the breakdown happened after the quake knocked out power, turning off the water supply needed to cool the system. Although a backup cooling system was being used, Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor had risen to 1 1/2 times the level considered normal.
Authorities said radiation levels had jumped 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1 and were measured at eight times normal outside the plant.

They expanded an earlier evacuation zone more than threefold, from 3 kilometers to 10 kilometers (2 miles to 6.2 miles). About 3,000 people were urged to leave their homes in the first announcement.
Japan gets about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Authorities warned citizens to be prepared for severe power cuts. More than 1 million households across Japan, mostly in the northeast, still didn't have access to water.

In Sendai, as in many areas of the northeast, cell phone service was down, making it difficult for people to communicate with loved ones.

"I'm waiting for my son to come here. But I cannot tell him he should come over here because mobile phones aren't working," a woman in her 70s at a shelter told Japanese TV in the town of Rikuzentakada, which appeared to be largely destroyed by the tsunami.

"My husband is missing," she said. "Tsunami water was rising to my knees, and I told him I would go first. He is not here yet."

The tsunami swept inland about 6 miles (10 kilometers), and beyond that most buildings appeared undamaged from the outside.

TV footage showed several people standing on the roof of a three-story building in Miyagi prefecture (state), surrounded by mud. A man waved a big white flag, and a woman was lifting two pink umbrellas, signaling for help.

Elsewhere, aerial footage showed military helicopters lifting people on rescue tethers from rooftops and partially submerged buildings surrounded by water and debris. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.

"The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month's worth of energy consumption" in the United States, USGS scientist Brian Atwater told The Associated Press.

The entire Pacific had been put on alert -- including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska -- but waves were not as bad as expected.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier is already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he said.

Most trains in Tokyo started running again Saturday after the city had been brought to a near standstill the day before. Tens of thousands of people had been stranded with the rail network down, jamming the streets with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city.

The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many spent Friday night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and offices.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

Boy's tale of heaven is publishing phenomenon

New York:  Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.

He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that "were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle," Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton's father, Todd, has turned the boy's experience into a 163-page book, "Heaven Is for Real," which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Thomas Nelson, the book's publisher, said it had broken company sales records. The publisher, based in Nashville, began with an initial print run of 40,000 copies. Since the book came out in November, it has gone back to press 22 times, with more than 1.5 million copies in print. On the New York Times best-seller list for paperback nonfiction last Sunday, "Heaven Is for Real" was No. 1. The book remains in the top spot this coming Sunday.

Much of the book's success has been fueled by word of mouth, since it did not begin with the usual best-seller channels: there has been no elaborate book tour, big-name publisher or brand-name author. But it has gained traction with a few well-placed appearances on the morning show "Fox & Friends," "The 700 Club" and CNN.

The book has sold just as strongly in national chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble as it has in Christian specialty shops, said Matt Baugher, the vice president and publisher of Thomas Nelson. Mass merchants like Wal-Mart have pushed the book heavily in their stores, and large orders from churches and ministry groups are growing steadily.

"We all are perhaps desperate to know what is on the other side of the veil after we die," Mr. Baugher said, adding that his initial skepticism about the Burpo family's story was short-lived. "This was a very down-to-earth, conservative, quote-unquote normal Midwestern family. We became fully convinced that this story was valid. And also that it was a great story that would just take off."

The book was an instant hit in Barnes & Noble outlets and was near the top of the best-seller list on its bn.com. The chain's religion buyer was an early advocate for the book, ordering copies for every store, said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble.

"When you buy the religion subject, you are presented with many stories about heaven, personal experiences about near-death and the afterlife," Ms. Bostelman said, noting that several other books with "heaven" in the title have sold well recently. "But what was unusual about this book was that it was the story of a little boy. It deactivated some of the cynicism that can go along with adults capitalizing on their experiences."

Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on "Going Rogue." Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.

"People say we just did this to make money, and it's not the truth," Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. "We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even." (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)

At first, he and his wife, Sonja, were not sure if they could believe their son's story, which came out slowly, months and years after his sudden illness and operation in 2003. The details persuaded them, Mr. Burpo said. Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie. When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, "You had a baby die in your tummy, didn't you?" While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it. "There's just no way he could have known," Mr. Burpo said.

And the Burpos said that Colton painstakingly described images that he said he saw in heaven -- like the bloody wounds on Jesus' palms -- that he had not been shown before.

Eventually the Burpos decided to tell their story beyond their town. Mr. Burpo, in his Sunday sermons, had already introduced some anecdotes to his congregation. Through a pastor friend, they met Joel Kneedler, an agent with Alive Communications, a Christian literary agency in Colorado Springs. Mr. Kneedler sold the book to Thomas Nelson, a publisher known for Christian titles like "40 Days With Jesus" by Sarah Young. The advance was in the low five figures.

The book's list price is $16.99, but that is discounted to $9.34 on amazon.com.

At the outlets of Barbara's Bookstore, an independent chain mostly in the Chicago area, the book is No. 1 on the store's nonfiction best-seller list. Interest in it began to perk up around mid-February, said Greg Sato, a store manager.

"Of the nonfiction books lately that seems to be the one that people are asking about the most," Mr. Sato said. "I have pegged it in the same vein as 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' or 'The Shack.' Like an Oprah book, but a little more religious or spiritual."

Colton, who appears as a blond, round-faced little boy on the cover of the book, now plays the piano and trumpet, is fascinated by Greek mythology, listens to Christian rock and loves Nebraska football.

Telling his story matter-of-factly, Colton said he was pleased that people were finding the story inspirational.

"People are getting blessed, and they're going to have healing from their hurts," he said. "I'm happy for that."

Radhika Tanwar's killer is a man named Vijay

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New Delhi:  Delhi Police have identified the man they accuse of murdering 20-year-old Radhika Tanwar as Vijay alias Ram Singh, a "mentally unstable" man who might have been involved in such an incident before.

Radhika Tanwar was shot on Tuesday morning as she was crossing a pedestrian bridge outside Ram Lal Anand College in South Delhi's Dhaula Kuan. For 10 minutes, not one passerby volunteered to take her to hospital. The man who fired at her managed to run away. He is still absconding.

The police said they believe this man is Vijay, who changed his name after coming to Delhi. They said he is 25 or 26-years-old, has four brothers, could have been involved in another such violent incident in his family and that he does not go back home often.

Radhika's family had earlier identified a police sketch as that of a man who stalked her for three years.    

This morning, the police detained two men - Ashraf and Tabrez - who they said had confessed to helping Vijay escape two days after he allegedly killed Radhika. The men have reportedly told the police that Radhika had slapped Vijay a few weeks ago and he wanted to take revenge for his public humiliation. The police say the version of these men corroborates with their investigations so far.

The family had not filed a complaint against the stalker, but had informally warned him to stay away from Radhika, say sources.

Dara Singh encounter: 4 Rajasthan cops arrested by CBI

Jaipur:  The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested four officials of the Rajasthan police in the much talked-about Dara Singh encounter case.

The encounter happened in October 2006, when Dara Singh, a criminal from Churu district, was gunned down by a team of the Special Operations - of the Rajasthan Police on the outskirts of Jaipur.

Later, a petition was filed by Dara Singh's family who called it a fake encounter.

The Supreme Court had handed over this case to the CBI.

Two senior IPS officers of Rajasthan and a Minister of the former Vasundhara Raje government were also allegedly involved in this case.

Those arrested are Inspectors Nisar Khan and Naresh Sharma, ASI Surendra Singh, all posted in Jaipur, and SI Satyanarayan Godara, posted in Bikaner.

Fake woman pilot is now 'zero-risk': Court

New Delhi:  Indigo Airline's woman pilot Parminder Kaur Gulati, arrested for securing commercial flying licence on the basis of forged mark sheets, was granted bail today by a Delhi court.
   
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit granted bail to Gulati saying there is "zero possibility" now of risking the lives of innocent passengers as she cannot fly an aircraft again.
    
"The nature of the offence is such that even if the accused desires, she cannot repeat it. As she cannot be permitted to fly the aircraft again without having license and due to that reason, there is zero possibility of risking the lives of innocent passengers," the court said, granting her bail on a personal bond of Rs. 50,000 with one surety of the same amount.
    
Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, appearing for Gualti, told the court that her client had already suffered the consequences of the alleged crime and she is entitled to bail as she is an estranged woman having a 7-year-old child.

    
The bail plea was opposed by the Additional Public Prosecutor on the ground that she had tried to obtain the license from Directorate General of Civil Aviation on fake documents.
    
The court, however, took into account the fact that Gulati had already suffered the "social consequence" and had to look after her minor child. 

Who is Shrikant Purohit?

New Delhi:  His arrest two-and-a-half years ago shook the foundation of what has been one of India's most secular institutions. The Indian Army. Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit was accused of conspiracy for terror and murder, the first time that an Armyman had been booked for a terror act.

An aberration, said Armymen. Others shook their heads in disbelief.

Neighbours said they knew Prasad Purohit as a soft-spoken man and superiors in the Army remembered a bright, hard-working recruit. In all conversations with people who knew or had interacted with Purohit, a common picture drawn was of a zealous young man with a marked patriotic fervor.

Purohit belongs to a cultured, middle-class Maharashtrian Brahmin family. The son of a bank officer, he was born in Pune and got his education from the Abhinav Vidyalaya and Garware College there.

In 1994, Purohit was commissioned into the Maratha Light Infantry after passing out of the Officers' Training Academy at Chennai. He was serving in Jammu and Kashmir when he fell ill and was medically downgraded. At that time he was shifted to Military Intelligence.

Between 2002 and early 2005, Purohit was part of very important counter-terrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir as part of MI-25 or the Intelligence Field Security Unit. The MI-25 is tasked with looking at the enemy along the border.

It was when Purohit was posted at Deolali near Nashik in Maharashtra as a liaison unit officer when he allegedly came in contact with Ramesh Upadhyay, a retired Major. Upadhyay allegedly set up Abhinav Bharat, an extreme Hindutva group, that Purohit reportedly became a part of. Upadhyay too is in jail in the Malegaon case.

Purohit was later accused of having stolen 60 kg of RDX from the Army - some of which was allegedly used in the Malegaon blast. He was also charged with funding and training Hindu extremist groups like Abhinav Bharat, which was believed to have planned and executed the Malegaon blast.

The Lt Col was stationed at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre at Panchmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, where he was learning Arabic, when the police allegedly found and decoded some SMSes that he sent out to Upadyay after the Malegaon blasts. He was interrogated, arrested in the Malegaon blast case in late 2008 and has been in jail since.

Six people died and many were injured in the September 29, 2008 in the communally-sensitive textile town of Malegaon. A bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded after Friday prayers had ended at a mosque.

Soon after Purohit's arrest, the Army ordered a Court of Inquiry that later recommended Purohit's dismissal from service. Last year, Purohit filed an appeal in the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) seeking that the Court of Inquiry proceedings be quashed as the Army Act 180 had been violated. Purohit contended that some key witnesses had been examined without him being present or being given the chance of cross-examining them.

He says he has been victimized by military intelligence officials. In a statutory complaint sent to the then Army chief in 2009, Purohit had claimed that he was never involved with Hindu extremists and that he was falsely implicated by a fellow officer, illegally detained and tortured.

Purohit has drawn the AFT's attention to the fact that almost a fortnight before his arrest, he had alerted Military Intelligence about the activities of Hindu radicals in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, on the basis of information he had gathered during his tenure Deolali.

Malegaon blasts: Army to reconvene Court of Inquiry against Lt Col Purohit

New Delhi:  The investigations into some of India's biggest terror attacks hinge upon what happens next to Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikanth Purohit.
The intelligence officer, who is 39 years old, was arrested in November 2008 for murder and conspiracy in the terror attack that saw six people die in September that year in the communally-sensitive town of Malegaon. A bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded after Friday prayers had ended at a mosque.

As Maharashtra's Anti-Terror Squad began investigating Purohit's links to Hindu radical groups, the Army convened a Court of Inquiry. It was the first time that a serving officer had been arrested for a terror attack. However, the Court of Inquiry was incomplete since. Lt Col Purohit had not been given the mandatory opportunity to cross-examination of the witnesses.

When the Army denied him the chance to cross question, Purohit moved the Principal bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), which is now deemed equivalent to a High Court, seeking redressal.

In his application to the AFT, Purohit listed out the bias, illegal detention, torture and physical abuse by a fellow military intelligence official bent on implicating him in the saffron terror cases.

Purohit also drew the AFT's attention to the fact that almost a fortnight before his arrest, he had alerted Military Intelligence about the activities of Hindu radicals in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, on the basis of information he had gathered during his tenure as an intelligence officer posted in Deolali near Malegaon and Nasik

Now, the Armed Forces Tribunal has ruled that the Court of Inquiry has to be reconvened because it did not allow Purohit the opportunity to cross-question some witnesses.

Purohit had petitioned the Tribunal in August 2009, alleging that he was not being given a fair trial by the Army. He said that he had been denied basic rights - like cross-examination - and that he was being victimised.

When Purohit was arrested, he was accused of having stolen 60 kg of RDX from the Army - some of which was used in the Malegaon blast. He was also charged with funding and training Hindu extremist groups like Abhinav Bharat, which was believed to have planned and executed the Malegaon blasts.

Purohit's version of events is very different. He has told the Army that 15 days before he was arrested, while he was based at Panchmarhi Madhya Pradesh, he had written to another intelligence official named Major B Dey, who was stationed nearby in Jabalpur. In that letter, he drew Major Dey's attention to the activities of RSS leader Indresh Kumar and Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur, who led a right-wing organization named Jai Vandeu Mataram. The Sadhvi would end up being arrested a few days before Purohit for her alleged involvement in the Malegaon blast. Purohit provided the Army Tribunal with a copy of this letter.

Purohit has claimed all along that at postings in Nashik in Maharashtra and later at Panchmarhi, he mingled with radical outfits because that was his job - to collect intelligence.

Four days before he was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad, Purohit claims a fellow officer, Colonel RK Shrivastav, conned him into travelling to Mumbai with him. Purohit claims he was illegally detained there by Shrivastav, Intelligence Bureau officers, and the Anti-Terror Squad, who tortured him. Purohit believes Shrivastav hoped to earn recognition and promotion for handing over a prized suspect to the police.

The evidence by then had begun piling up against him. The Anti-Terror Squad said that others who had been arrested had implicated Purohit, and that there was evidence that he had supplied the RDX for the Malegaon attack. It also claimed to have recovered incriminating SMSes sent by Purohit immediately after the blast.

Purohit's version has been reinforced partly by the arrest of Swami Aseemanand in November last year for his alleged involvement in a blast at Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid in 2007 in which nine people were killed.

In December last year, Aseemanand told a Delhi court that Hindu radical groups that he worked with were also responsible for other terror attacks in 2007 like a blast at the Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan and the Samjhauta Express explosion where 68 people were killed on a train headed from Delhi to Lahore. 

Aseemanand said Malegaon had been targeted twice by his associates and him - once in 2008 and before that in 2006, when 31 people had died. And like Purohit, Aseemanand implicated RSS leader Indresh Kumar.

Given the fact that the Army is now re-evaluating Purohit's innocence, the investigations into the series of attacks associated with "saffron terror" may have to be reconfigured. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been asking that it be placed in charge of all the inquiries - currently being coordinated by the CBI, the police in the states where the attacks took place, and in the case of the Samjhauta Express, the NIA.

Japan official: Meltdown at nuclear plant possible

Sendai, Japan:  A nuclear power plant affected by a massive earthquake is facing a possible meltdown, an official with Japan's nuclear safety commission said Saturday.

Ryohei Shiomi said that officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's Unit 1, which had lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake.

Shiomi said that even if there was a meltdown, it wouldn't affect humans beyond a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius.

Most of the 51,000 residents living within that radius have been evacuated, he said.

Earlier Saturday, Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability.

Operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's Unit 1 scrambled to tamp down heat and pressure inside the reactor after the 8.9-magnitude quake and the tsunami that followed cut off electricity to the site and disabled emergency generators, knocking out the main cooling system.

Some 3,000 people within two miles (three kilometers) of the plant were urged to leave their homes, but the evacuation zone was more than tripled to 6 miles (10 kilometers) after authorities detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.

The government declared a state of emergency at the Daiichi unit -- the first at a nuclear plant in Japan's history. But hours later, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the six-reactor Daiichi site in northeastern Japan, announced that it had lost cooling ability at a second reactor there and three units at its nearby Fukushima Daini site.

The government quickly declared states of emergency for those units, too.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the situation was most dire at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1, where pressure had risen to twice what is consider the normal level. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that diesel generators that normally would have kept cooling systems running at Fukushima Daiichi had been disabled by tsunami flooding.