Salon.com > Tim Sullivan

Lawyer: Police beat New Delhi gang rape suspects

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:03:00 +0000

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police badly beat the five suspects arrested in the brutal gang rape and killing of a young woman on a New Delhi bus, the lawyer for one of the men said Thursday, accusing authorities of tampering with evidence in the case that has transfixed India.

"They are innocent," Manohar Lal Sharma said of the five suspects ahead of a court hearing, which ended quickly after it turned out some of the official court paperwork listing the charges was illegible. He said police have beaten the men and placed other prisoners into the suspects' cells to threaten them with knives, adding, "You can't believe the reality of Indian prisons."

Five men have been charged with attacking the 23-year-old woman and a male friend on a bus as it was driven through the streets of India's capital. The woman was raped and assaulted with a metal bar on Dec. 16 and eventually died of her injuries. Rape victims are not identified in India, even if they die, and rape trials are closed to the media.

Sharma, who has made a series of inflammatory and often-contradictory statements over the past two days, at one point Thursday said the dead woman's male companion, who boarded the bus with her after the pair saw a movie together, was "responsible for the whole thing." He gave no details, though, and a few hours later said the man's responsibility "was only my opinion."

Dalai Lama steps down as Tibetan political leader

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:52:00 +0000

The Dalai Lama said Thursday that he will give up his political role in the Tibetan government-in-exile and shift that power to an elected representative, as the 76-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader struggles with growing worries about who will succeed him when he dies.

Speaking on the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in his Himalayan homeland that sent him into exile, the Dalai Lama said the time had come "to devolve my formal authority to the elected leader."

While he has long said that he wants the exile government to take on some of his powers, Thursday's announcement appeared to mark the beginning of a countdown. The Dalai Lama said he would propose amendments to the exile constitution during the parliament's next session, which begins March 14 in this Indian hill town where the exiles are based.

A new prime minister will be elected a few days later, and the timing indicates the Dalai Lama may want that premier to take up his political duties. Any Tibetan who has registered with the government-in-exile is allowed to cast a ballot; most of the electorate is made up of exiles.

Pakistani flood victims return home to destruction

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:39:00 +0000

This is what Anar Gul found when he came home: Eight thin mattresses covered with polyester swirls; a dozen blankets; a broken tape player; and a large metal box buried deep in the mud. The clothes inside had begun to rot after more than two weeks in the ground.

After more than 30 years of carving out the semblance of a working-class life, this junk spread out to dry on the wreckage of his house was now all Gul had.

"This is everything," he said, waving his hands at the muck and the garbage.

Nearly a month after floods first began battering Pakistan, and as waters still sweep through the south, the first victims are coming home. Millions of people may soon find that, like Gul, their old lives have disappeared -- and that the receding water is only the start.

"There are so many houses to be rebuilt. It's not only here, it's everywhere," said Gul, a gentle man with a gray beard turning yellow with age, who thinks he's about 70 years old. He supported his sprawling family as a middleman, arranging deals between farmers and wholesalers in the local fruit market. It was a good life, and the former wood cutter had built a mud-walled house with three bedrooms, a guest room, a bathroom and a courtyard. They had ceiling fans and a sewing machine.