The Evening Wrap: Pompeo slams China

The Hindu Newsletter - Here are the biggest news stories of the day [The Hindu Logo]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Youtube]( [Linkedin]( [Instagram]( Saturday 10, October 2020 [alt_text]( The Evening Wrap [Here are the biggest news stories of the day]( [alt_text]( Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying safe. China has deployed 60,000 soldiers on Indian border: Mike Pompeo China has amassed more than 60,000 troops on India’s northern border, [U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said as he hit out at Beijing]( for its “bad behaviour” and the threats it poses to the Quad countries. “The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border, Pompeo told The Guy Benson Show in an interview on Friday after his return from Tokyo, where he attended the second Quad ministerial with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia. He again repeated the assertion on Fox News. “They’ve stacked 60,000 soldiers against the Indians in the north. When the Australians had the temerity to ask for an investigation of the Wuhan virus and where it began, something that we know a lot about, the Chinese Communist Party threatened them. They bullied them,” he said. The Foreign Ministers from the US, Japan, India and Australia had met in Tokyo on Tuesday in what was their first in-person talks since the coronavirus pandemic began. Hathras victim’s family to appear in court on October 12 amid tight security Family members of the 19-year-old Dalit woman who died after allegedly being raped by four men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district will [appear before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court]( amid tight security on October 12. Hathras Superintendent of Police Vineet Jaiswal on Saturday said that the district judge of Hathras has been appointed as the nodal officer for the appearance of the Hathras victim’s family member before the high court. The police and district administration are working on an elaborate plan in this regard as to how many family members will go and when they will depart from Hathras. “The Hathras police will be responsible for their security and a detailed plan is being made,” Jaiswal said. Sixty security personnel have been deployed and eight close circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at the house of the alleged gangrape victim in her village in Bulgarhi area here to ensure the safety of her family members, according to police. The Hathras SP said a register of visitors was being maintained by policemen at the entry of the house. [ Policemen, political leaders and relatives of the gang rape victim crowd outside her house in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh on September 30, 2020. ] Policemen, political leaders and relatives of the gang rape victim crowd outside her house in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh on September 30, 2020. “Shocked” by the alleged gang-rape and murder, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had on October 1 summoned top government officials to the court. A division Bench of Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Jaspreet Singh had ordered the Uttar Pradesh Additional Chief Secretary, State police chief and an Additional Director General of Police to appear before it on October 12 to explain the incident. “The incidents which took place after the death of the victim on September 29, 2020 leading up to her cremation, as alleged, have shocked our conscience. Therefore, we are taking suo moto cognisance of the same,” the Bench had said in its order. The Bench had also asked the late woman’s parents to come to the court to apprise it of their version of the incident and ordered the Hathras district administration to arrange for their travel to the court and facilitate their appearance before it. FIR must on complaints relating to sexual offences against women, Centre tells States The Centre has directed all States and Union Territories to compulsorily register cases on complaints relating to sexual offences against women. [If a crime is committed outside the jurisdiction of a police station, “Zero FIR” (First Information Report) should be booked]( on information of such cognisable offence. In a circular to Chief Secretaries issued on Friday, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said even with stringent provisions in law and several capacity-building measures undertaken, any failure of the police to adhere to these mandatory requirements may not augur well for the delivery of criminal justice in the country, especially in the context of women safety. “Such lapses, if noticed, need to be investigated into and stringent action taken immediately against the concerned officers responsible for the same,” it said. The MHA called for issuing instructions to all concerned to ensure strict compliance with provisions in the law and also monitor progress in the Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences (ITSSO) to make sure that suitable follow-up action is taken for charge-sheet of the guilty in a timely manner. Rahul targets Modi again on VIP aircraft with tweet on non-bullet-proof trucks for jawans Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday [targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi again on the purchase of a VIP aircraft]( by tweeting a two-minute video clip. In the video clip, jawans in a truck were complaining how their lives were being put at risk by ferrying them in a non-bullet-proof vehicle. “Our jawans are being sent in non-bullet-proof trucks to become martyrs, while a ₹8,400 crore plane for the Prime Minister. Is this justice?” asked Gandhi on Twitter, tagging the two-minute video clip. Neither the date of the video nor its location is known but jawans were complaining that “they were being sent in a non-bullet-proof vehicle when even a bullet-proof vehicle in their area was also not sufficient to protect them”. Gandhi has targeted Modi for the second time in two days over the purchase of the VIP aircraft. On Thursday, the Congress leader tweeted to show the number of essential items the government could have purchased for soldiers posted in Siachen-Ladakh with the amount spent on the aircraft. His tweet was in response to a news report in a Hindi newspaper that claimed the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament had sought permission from the Lok Sabha Speaker to visit Ladakh for an assessment on the ground after a Comptroller and Auditor General report flagged delays in the procurement of essential items for soldiers. “The Prime Minister spent ₹ 8,400 crore to acquire an air plane. For our soldiers posted in Siachen-Ladakh, this amount could have bought: Warm Clothing: 30,00,000, Jackets and gloves: 60,00,000, Shoes: 67,20,000, Oxygen Cylinders: 16,80,000. PM is only concerned about his image and not soldiers,” Gandhi had tweeted. Pakistan Opposition parties accuse Army of rigging 2018 elections For the first time, [Pakistan’s two major Opposition parties have come out openly against the country’s powerful military](, accusing it of rigging the 2018 elections that brought Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party to power. In the past, political leaders have only indirectly pointed to the involvement of the military establishment in the country’s political affairs but this is the first time that the leaders of the two main Opposition parties — the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) -- have openly criticised the military. Former prime minister and PML-N supremo Sharif, who is in London since November last year and is facing a number of corruption cases, fired the first salvo at the inaugural meeting of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, an alliance formed by Opposition parties last month to oust Prime Minister Khan. [Pakistan news channels telecast former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s address to an Opposition meeting in Islamabad on September 21, 2020.]Pakistan news channels telecast former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s address to an Opposition meeting in Islamabad on September 21, 2020. Sharif alleged that the military rigged the 2018 elections to bring Prime Minister Khan to power. His allegation sparked an angry response from Khan, who said Sharif was playing a very dangerous game by humiliating the military and intelligence services. He dismissed the allegations of rigged elections as baseless. After Sharif, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday accused the military of rigging the 2018 elections. Bilawal warned that any interference in the coming legislative assembly elections in Gilgit-Baltistan would lead to a strong reaction from his party, including a siege of Islamabad and a sit-in in the city. Pakistan has announced that the once-postponed election for the legislative assembly of Gilgit-Baltistan will be held on November 15, amidst India’s strong objection to Islamabad’s move to alter the status of the militarily-occupied region. On September 20, the leaders of 11 major Opposition parties formed the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) to launch a three-phased anti-government movement under an action plan starting with countrywide public meetings, protest demonstrations, and rallies before a decisive long march towards Islamabad in January 2021. The Opposition parties will hold their first combined rally against the Imran Khan-led government on October 16 in Gujranwala city in Punjab province. T.N. rebuts allegations against Mullaperiyar dam panel in Supreme Court The [Tamil Nadu government has rebutted allegations made in the Supreme Court]( that the Supervisory Committee for Mullaperiyar Dam “abdicated its duties” to evaluate the safety of the structure and water levels. The State countered allegations that the Supervisory Committee constituted by the top court in 2014 has “delegated” its duties to a sub-committee. The court had in September sought a reply from the State on a petition filed by Joe Joseph and office-bearers of the Kothamangalam block panchayat in Kerala expressing their apprehensions about the lack of proper supervision of water levels in the over-a-century-old dam located along the Periyar Tiger Reserve. The State explained that the sub-committee is chaired by the Executive Engineer, Central Water Commission (CWC), with headquarters in Kochi. It has members from both Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The sub-committee periodically inspects the dam, collects data on seepage, collects water samples from the lake and seepage water, conducts water quality tests on them and reports the details to the Supervisory Committee. The sub-committee is only assisting the Supervisory Committee. This cannot be called the delegation of the authority of the Supervisory Committee, the affidavit argued. Covid watch: Numbers and Developments The number of reported [coronavirus cases from India]( stood at 70,41,131 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 1,08,355. In Brief: Eminent Indian-origin academician [Srikant Datar]( has been named as Dean of Harvard Business School, succeeding Nitin Nohria and becoming the second consecutive dean hailing from India to lead the prestigious 112-year-old institution. Datar, an alumnus of University of Bombay and IIM, Ahmedabad, is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration and the senior associate dean for University Affairs at Harvard Business School (HBS). Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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