A US combat brigade comprising 4,000 men is already deployed around Kandahar to secure the lines of communications to the city as thousands fresh troops and tanks pour in to flush out the key strategic town of Taliban insurgence, NBC reported.
The actor is essaying the popular character of Major Mahadevan in Major Ravi's next Malayalam film based on a plane hijacking.
Springtime always brings in an influx of Taliban fighters to the district of Zhari, in Kandahar province of Afghanistan, where the thick cover provided by the grapevines and the orchards prevent North Atlantic Treaty Organisations's hi-tech thermal imaging cameras to see the insurgents hiding within, a report in the Guardian states.
The hijackers had demanded release of Azhar Masood in order to release the passengers of the plane.
Under persistent attack on the Kandahar hostage issue, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh on Wednesday sought to make the Congress an equal partner for the blame, saying the decision to release three terrorists was taken at an all-party meeting in which Manmohan Singh had participated as the Leader of Opposition.
'The work of a film-maker is going out and making films.' 'And if you are in prison for 15 years, you can't make films.'
Former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra said on Thursday that senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Union Home Minister L K Advani was aware of all the key decisions taken with regard to the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The red corner notice was issued on the request of the CBI against seven accused in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan on December 24, 1999 -- Yousuf Azhar, Ibrahim Athar, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhter, Sayed Shakir and Abdul Rauf, they said.
They try to hide behind the smokescreen that these are works of fiction inspired by real events. So, you can pick and choose from facts and fictionalise to push the right triggers with your audience or appease the powers that be, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh on Friday refused to speak on dvani''s role in the Kandahar hijack. " I refuse to say anything on the Advani issue," said Singh.
The government of the day found itself in a bind as a huge amount of coverage given to the hijackers on the one hand and the plight of the passengers and their relatives on the other, he explained.
The government also wanted to defame Pakistan, a key accused said.
Ganesh Venkataraman on Major Ravi's Kandahar and how it feels to share screen space with the legend.
The government on Thursday reappointed former IPS officer Ajit Doval as the National Security Adviser (NSA), according to an official order.
A decade after the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane, the chief Indian negotiator who engaged the hijackers blamed the then government for its 'diplomatic failure' in their inability to make the United States and the United Arab Emirates use their influence to help secure a quick release of the passengers.
A suicide bomber was on Thursday gunned down close to the Indian Consulate complex in Afghanistan's Kandahar province before he could detonate explosives.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday came out in defence of its senior leader L K Advani, who has been facing attacks from party rebels on the Kandahar issue, saying this was 'wrong and uncalled for' as the hijack crisis was resolved after consulting all parties and experts. "People accusing Advani on Kandahar is wrong and uncalled for. The issue is already resolved and it is an 11-year old story," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.
The three conspirators Abdul Latif, Dalip Kumar and Yusuf Nepali have been lodged in the high security Patiala Central Jail since their arrest about eight years ago. The three were accused of helping the hijackers in procuring fake passports and other papers and also helping them take weapons aboard the aircraft that was hijacked.
Giving details about the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in his book, the former deputy prime minister wrote: 'I was sitting in my office on a cold Friday afternoon on December 24,1999, when Shyamal Dutta, former director of Intelligence Bureau called me to convey the bad news. 'Sir, an Indian Airlines plane coming from Nepal has been hijacked'. I was stunned by what I heard.'
"The plane could have been stopped by placing a bench before it or by puncturing its tyres," said Jethmalani.
Police said the grenade was thrown from a speeding vehicle, and no one was injured.
Contradicting L K Advani, former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh has said the then home minister was aware of the controversial decision about his travelling to Kandahar along with three terrorists released in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999.
The times could not have been any worse for Bharatiya Janata Party.
The National Democratic Alliance government's decision to release dreaded terrorists in exchange for hostages in the Kandahar hijack 10 years ago had come under attack from several quarters.But at a function in New Delhi on Wednesday, Home Minister P Chidambaram refused to criticise the NDA government for the decision, terming it 'a very difficult decision'.He was asked about some governments in the world having taken a pledge not to ever negotiate with terrorists.
Speaking to reporters in Nagpur, Jawadekar said the government, then led by Atal Behari Vajpayee, had convened an all-party meeting to discuss the crisis and ways to resolve it. "All the parties present, including the Congress, insisted that the government do whatever was necessary to secure the release of the passengers on board the aircraft and save the country's prestige," he added.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday defended the National Democratic Alliance government's decision to free three terrorists to end the Kandahar hijacking crisis with its Prime Ministerial face L K Advani saying the "first priority" was to save the hostages. Addressing the India Today Conclave in New Delhi, he said the government took such a decision as all the parties were at that time demanding that passengers on board the hijacked plane be safely freed.
The tri-lingual film (Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil) directed by Major Ravi is based on the infamous Indian Airlines IC 814 hijacking.
A Pakistan International Airlines aircraft was on the runway at Afghanistan's Kandahar airport when it was attacked with rockets on Tuesday though there were no casualties or damage to property, officials said.
Mehrajuddin alias Javed, a close associate of United Jihad Council (UJC) chief Syed Salahuddin and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested during an operation in Kishtwar forest belt, a senior police officer told PTI on Thursday.
Brushing aside BJP's dictat to its leaders not to go public on goings-on in the party, its senior leader Arun Shourie has sought to reopen the old wounds about the Kandahar hijack episode involving L K Advani.
Nearly 40 people were killed and over 80 injured when a truck bomb exploded near a Japanese construction company in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, in Afghanistan on Tuesday night.The blast was caused by a truck which had been packed with explosives, and the powerful blast managed to shatter windows of buildings located over a mile away. Several nearby houses collapsed due to the impact of the blast, and officials fear that the death toll might go up.
Officials said the militants targeted residential areas and held hostages.
Two Pakistanis, who served eight years in prison for aiding a bank robbery to fund the 1999 Kandahar hijack of an Indian Airlines flight, will finally be deported to Pakistan, two-and-a-half-years after being set free.
Breaking his decade-long silence, former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh on Friday sought to embarrass L K Advani by saying that he "covered" up for him when he said that the former Home Minister was not aware that he was going to Kandahar with three terrorists during the 1999 hijack episode.
Despite international condemnation, the Taliban has resumed the flogging and the public execution of criminals following a decree by the hard-liners' supreme leader.
The 'Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, Ayodhyadham' has become the 68th civil airport terminal in the country to come under the umbrella of the specialised aviation security group of the central force.
Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Shahid Latif, the mastermind of the 2016 attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, and his brother were gunned down by unidentified assailants outside a mosque in Pakistan's Sialkot district on Wednesday, officials said.
Sukanya Verma covers the whole spectrum for you.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which trained a batch of Assam's United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants in 1991-92, considered the rebel group's chief Paresh Baruah a prize catch and did not want to offend him even after he was unwilling to take the agency's commands on conducting operations in the northeastern state, claims a new book.
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