So an Airborne Express Supe in Philly gets suspicious and…busted.

An Internet pharmacy based in India that sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drugs without prescriptions has been indicted by U.S. authorities, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Brij Bhushan Bansal of Agra (say THAT teen times fast) was “charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, money laundering and misbranding drugs”.

Though Bansal is the alleged mastermind behind a business that provided the pills to practically 200 websites which promoted them, his son, daughter and son-in-law are also defendants, since they helped him purvey Codeine and Viagra.

The market rate for 100 tablets of Codeine is $64; Dr. BBB added a tidy $200 premium to that. Valium was even more expensive– a hefty $198 vs. the $27 your local scam-artist charges. 😉 Authorities were able to seize $7.1 million of the group’s proceeds. Pity. That’s a paltry portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars they probably made.

Prepare for more “P”s:

“There was no physician, no pharmacist and no quality control of these drugs that were sold at above-market rates,” Patrick Meehan, U.S. attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, told a news conference.

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This almost feels like it should be a scene from Kung Fu Hustle except for

1) the unhappy ending and 2) it’s sadly all too true –

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A Pakistani man accused of desecrating the Koran was shot dead Wednesday after being chased by an angry crowd. Ashiq Nabi, in his thirties, was accused of being disrespectful to Islam’s holy book and had been in hiding since Monday, a senior police official said. …Witnesses said the man was chased through fields and climbed a tree to get away from an angry crowd of up to 500 men. When he refused to come down, someone shot him dead, they said.

Although the article doesn’t really tell us how he desecrated the Koran, one of the mob’s motives here was apparently a type of vigilante justice. It appears that relative at least to this little slice of society, Pakistani courts almost come across as bastions of liberal due process. –

Blasphemy, including desecrating the Koran, is a capital offence in deeply Islamic Pakistan and carries the death sentence, but convictions have always been turned down by high courts because of a lack of evidence.

I guess in conjunction with the tragic death in India tab, we’ll start a count of the ones in Pakistan too. Continue reading →

Saurav, who co-writes on the new blog Detained, updates us on the situation of the 16 year-old Bangladeshi and Guinean girls that the FBI recently detained, ostensibly as potential suicide bombers. My original posting about this mentioned that the family was not economically capable of fighting the government and Detained elaborates.

As you may have read recently in the New York Times and a number of other publications, two Muslim teenage girls have been detained. One is from Guinea, and the other is from Bangladesh. The government is using immigration law to jail these 16 year olds without charging them with a crime, holding secret proceedings against them without giving them access to the evidence that is being used against them, and slandering them in the media as “suicide bombers” without providing proof.

In fact, an FBI official told The New York Daily News, “Nobody here believes they are wanna-be suicide bombers.” Another official at the Department of Homeland Security commented, “We’re not spun up about this case.” So why, then, are these young women in jail, cut off from their families? Why are their lives being ruined? This is an insane injustice.

Please open your hearts to both families. The family of A., the young Guinean woman, is in urgent need, and owes money to their lawyer. They have also lost their income, as the father has also been detained on immigration violations. As we learn more details about her situation, we may find they have other needs as well.

The young Bangladeshi woman, T., and her loved ones also face an enormous challenge. Her family needs to raise approximately $10,000 in the next three months just to get by. There are three children. The vast majority of the money would go towards housing, because the family has had to give up their apartment out of fear of surveillance or other threats to their safety. The remainder of expenses are for food, transportation and any legal expenses (although the lawyer is currently doing the case for free). Visits to the lawyer and to the detention center take 3 hours each way and cost money. It may also be necessary to fundraise for airline tickets for some family members in the future. There’s enough money available right now from various sources to cover them for a few days, but their situation could become dire very soon.

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The fundamentalists claiming to preserve their cultures are often the ones responsible for torching them:

Protesters demanding the introduction of Manipur’s ancient Mayek script set fire to the Central Library in Manipur’s capital Imphal on Wednesday. Officials say many of Manipur’s most ancient texts were among the books destroyed by the fire… Analysts say… the library was burnt because almost all Manipuri books preserved in it were written in Bengali script.

The Cauvery riots, the Karnataka cinema shakedowns — language stirs intense passions in India. But wishing that history were different doesn’t make it so. I could close my eyes and wish away the British Raj. Open them, and there lies Victoria Terminus still.

Previous post here.

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Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf is finally getting his birth certificate — from a New Delhi hospital:

Officials are set to present Pervez Musharraf with a certificate showing that he was born on 11 August 1942 at a maternity hospital in the city… “Begum Zarin became very emotional during her visit to the hospital and she could even recall the name of the medical superintendent of the hospital in those days and some of the staff members,” said hospital medical superintendent Indira Yadav. Delhi’s city council confirmed that an entry for the Pakistani leader’s birth had been found in the hospital’s records and a certificate was being drawn up.

August 11, eh? It’s a pity he was born four days early, or no one would’ve ever forgotten his birthday. Besides, his punctuality virtually disqualifies him from being desi 🙂

Like Rushdie’s protagonists, Musharraf also has superpowers. Only his came from sacking the judiciary and rewriting the constitution.

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Sanjay Kumar of UP is feeling very cool and refreshed these days. Grocer by day, this real life Apu has just won a unique prize. Tipster Deepa Menon forwards us this Times of India article:

When Kumar bought a bottle of Coke to quench his thirst he ended up becoming the regional winner for Coca-Cola’s under-the-crown promotion, Thanda Aish-Cash.

As the winner, Kumar takes the prize – a dream date with the beauty queen.

Wait, if Kumar is a grocer, why would he have to “buy” a bottle?

So what might Sanjay expect to do on his date? Well if this dream sequence (.zip file of commercial) is any indication, he is going to be having a memorable time.

The date will be in Mumbai, where he will spend an entire evening with Ash at the premiere of her upcoming movie.

For Kumar, who has idolised Ash for years, reacted in disbelief. “I just could not believe my luck,” he says.

And what’s more, Kumar could well end up travelling with Ash to a foreign location for the international premiere of the movie.

Who knows? This whole affair may end in an altogether unexpected way. The possibility reminds me of this General Electric commercial. If only…

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I know, I know. I too hate it when lame journalists decide to add a “Gate” at the end of a story just to capture attention and show that the story is about scandal. I would not have succumbed to this type of journalistic laziness were it not for the wire tapping. The BBC reports:

A police officer in India’s Gujarat state says the government there authorised the killing of Muslims three years ago. RB Sreekumar made the allegation in notes he kept at the time while serving as Gujarat’s intelligence chief.

The Gujarat government says the charges are baseless and untrue, instigated because Mr Sreekumar was not promoted.

Personally I think it would have been more efficient if Sreekumar had stayed anonymous and led SM bloggers to the truth by arranging a series of meetings in dimly lit parking garages, but I suppose my life was not meant for such excitement.

Mr Sreekumar has submitted his notes to India Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) which investigates complaints by civil servants.

He brought a case against the Gujarat government, saying he was denied a promotion for refusing to act upon the “illegal and unconstitutional directives” of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as well as the state government and senior state police officers.

In the notes, Mr Sreekumar alleges that the chief minister asked him to tap the telephones of Shankersinh Vaghela, who was then president of the Congress party.

He said that he was also asked to tap the telephone of cabinet minister Haren Pandya.

In the notes, Mr Sreekumar also says that senior government officials sent messages asking him to kill Muslim extremists who were involved in rioting.

In other news it is obvious that Mr. Modi is still bitter about last months events. Rediff.com reports:

Law and order situation in Gujarat is far more satisfactory than other states and even some other countries, Chief Minister Narendra Modi said in New Delhi.

He was speaking at the Chief Ministers Conference on Internal Security and Law and Order on Friday.

“The number of murders in Gujarat is 30 per cent lower than the national average and rapes 70 per cent lower. Compared to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the crime rate in the state is negligible,” the CM said.

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