In a horrifying court case being tried across the pond, three men, Kenneth Regan, William Horncy and Peter Rees are accused of murdering an entire family because they wanted to steal their Southall-based freight business, to use for smuggling narcotics.

Describing the deaths of Amarjit Chohan, 45, Nancy Chohan, 24, Devinder, 18 months, Ravinder, eight weeks old and Charanjit Kaur, 51, Richard Horwell, prosecuting, said: “Some crimes are beyond belief and on any view these horrific murders fall into that category.”

He said: “Three generations of a family were executed, deliberately killed, because of the greed of these three defendants.” He told the court that Regan lured Chohan to a meeting in Stonehenge on February 13, 2003, ostensibly to meet a potential buyer for his fruit freight business, CIBA Freight.

“Mr Chohan walked into a trap. Thereafter he was used and controlled by the defendants and held against his will for several days before being murdered. To make his disappearance appear genuine it was, or became, necessary for his family also to be murdered.

…The bodies were initially buried on farmland near Tiverton, Devon…When (Regan) realised police were closing in to exhume them he and Horncy bought a boat which was used to dump the family in the sea on Easter Sunday last year.

Two days later, Chohan’s body was found near Bournemouth pier. In July, Mrs Chohan was found in a fisherman’s net between Dorset and the Isle of Wight. In November, Mrs Kaur’s remains were washed up on the Isle of Wight. The boys have never been found.

Businessman Chohan had previously served time in prison for tax evasion, and this allowed his alleged murderer to craft a suitable lie in an attempt to cover his tracks; he tried to make it seem as if Chohan wanted to avoid his business partners and the government by taking his family to hide abroad. If it weren’t for Nancy Chohan’s skeptical brother, Regan and his accomplices might have gotten away with murder.

The transport minister of India’s northern state of Bihar has been fined for travelling on an express train without a ticket. Awadh Bihari Choudhry and his security guard were both fined 250 rupees ($5.50) after being caught on Monday. Mr Choudhry is a member of the political party led by the federal railways minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav. Director of public relations for the federal railways, MY Siddiqui, told the BBC: “Ticketless travelling and paying less are two areas our minister is very keen to focus on. And the results are already showing.” “The increase in fines from 50 rupees to 250 rupees this July is proving to be a deterrent,” he said. India’s railway network is among the world’s largest, carrying more than 13m passengers a day. [source: BBC]

For some reason, I found this hillarious. Hoist on his own master’s petard, eh? If I was drinking lassi, it would have come out of my nose! [Insert gratuitous train pun here]

Aljazeerah has an article on Jindal being elected to Congress, that is just like every other article written about him in the past week except for two things that caught my eye:

Born, raised and schooled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a young Piyush adopted the name “Bobby” at the age of four, after a likeable character from the TV serial “The Brady Brunch.”

Is this true? I find that very amusing. The other assertion Aljazeerah makes is the following:

Political supporters say he is the Republican PartyÂ’s equal to Barack Obama, the newly elected Democratic African-American senator (of Kenyan origin) from Illinois who is the toast of the AmericaÂ’s center-left political junkies.

If that were true I would be hearing calls for Jindal to run for President. Never going to happen since he is so right wing. Oh wait…nevermind.

Ramachandran Guha, a historian from Bangalore, was denied entry into the U.S. on a lecture trip to Oberlin and UC Berkeley. He says he had a valid visa and supporting letters. The reason? Immigration officials disbelieved his sizeable speaking fee (via Amardeep Singh):

Why was I stopped? One reason might have been my jhola, a patch of mirrorwork on red… Another, certainly, was the letter of invitation from Oberlin, which specified a fee for my lectures which greatly angered [immigration officer] McCullough. “How can they pay you so much,” he said more than once, adding, “And for teaching history.”…

Berkeley and Oberlin are now planning a joint letter of protest. Meanwhile, they’ve written me handsome letters of apology, expressing shock at “such discriminatory and unjustified exclusion”, and anger at the “terrible injustice you had to endure… [from] these cretins”.

The Washington Post features the plight of a Pakistani American family today. The tale is a real downer so for all of you who like depressing books by South Asian authors (oh wait, thats all of them) read on:

On Wednesday morning, as most of the country was either reeling from the election or celebrating it, a slim, long-faced youth named Syed Shah sat in his family’s darkened living room in front of a blue hard-shell American Tourister suitcase and contemplated what it means to be a man.

The suitcase was brimming with papers. “Work Permit,” said one manila folder, in handwritten English and Urdu script. Beside it, photocopies of expired diplomatic visas were strewn across the pistachio-green carpet. He must figure out what to do with these documents so his family can keep working legally in the United States.

Why the great burden on this teenager? His father, according to the article, was shot in a robbery while delivering Pizzas. That was one of three jobs his father held. This is sad of course but you have probably heard stories like this before. Here is what is different though about his father’s story though:

He spoke four languages and had been a diplomat with the Pakistani government, living with his family in Iran and Syria before coming here to take a post with the Pakistan Embassy. When the posting ended unexpectedly and the government wanted to move him to another country, he said no.

“He said, ‘My kids are now in school here, and we don’t need to disturb their education,’ ” said Jafar Hussein, a longtime family friend who has been helping sort their affairs. Instead, Musharaf left his job at the embassy and found other work — delivering The Washington Post and the Washington Times in the early morning, working at 7-Eleven, Kmart and later Pizza Hut in the daytime and evenings. He was always scanning the classifieds for better jobs, and he joked about attending college with his kids.

Continue reading →

Nepalese authorities have thwarted serial killer Charles Sobhraj’s plan to escape from jail. Sobhraj, who had already spent two decades in Indian prisons, was sentenced to life after being convicted of the murder of a female tourist from the US.

Officials say they seized several phones and other electronic devices from his cell …details of the plan are yet to emerge because experts are examining the electronic devices and phone sets that Sobhraj was found to be using.

Sobhraj escaped from a maximum-security prison in the Indian capital Delhi in 1986 but was recaptured soon after.

I love how he’s in jail with a bunch of phones and helpful equipment.

Sobhraj, a.k.a “The Serpent” (because he’s great at disguises…wait, wouldn’t “The Chameleon” be more appropriate then?…Ah, forget it.) or “The Bikini Killer” (because he killed “western” women at a Thai beach resort) was never convicted of any of the 20 murders that he was linked to in the 1970s. “The Serpent” is half-Indian and half-Vietnamese, for those of you who are keen to know such things.

via the beeb

A few days ago I blogged about the Indian government possibly having spotted Bin Laden. Soon after, some FBI agents were dispactched to India but nobody was sure why. Now several newsites, such as the dailytimes.com, are reporting the following:

A senior FBI official visited India last week to alert intelligence agencies of the possibility of Osama Bin Laden sneaking into India, official sources said on Monday.

The Pakistan-based official sought Indian assistance for joint operations by Indian and US forces to nab Bin Laden if he crossed over to India from northeastern Pakistan.

The officialÂ’s visit followed IndiaÂ’s reportsÂ’ of spotting Bin Laden in northeastern Pakistan, close to the Pakistan-China-India border, sources added.

They said the FBI official met senior officials of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB), Border Security Force (BSF) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).

If this is true it lends more credence to my previous entry. Hey, sneaking over to India worked for the Dalai Lama.