29 MARCH 2016

Ø  A CBI court in Ahmedabad on Monday rejected IPS officer Satish Verma’s application for a copy of the CBI’s supplementary charge sheet against officials of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the Ishrat Jahan case. Mr. Verma was the chief investigator in the case, first as part of the Gujarat High Court-appointed Special Investigation team (SIT) and subsequently as part of the CBI team when the court transferred the case to the agency.  Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate D.R. Vyas held that the applicant (Verma) had no “locus standi” in the case now and that he had not specified in his application why he needed to see the charge sheet. The supplementary charge sheet naming the IB’s top official Rajinder Kumar and others had not been taken on record as the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) refused to grant sanction to prosecute IB officials in the encounter case. The CBI insisted that the encounter was staged and that it was a joint operation involving Gujarat police and officials of the IB, who allegedly had custody of the deceased and also supplied the weapons that were planted on the bodies following the “staged” gun battle. Mr. Verma, currently posted as Chief vigilance Officer (CVO) of North Eastern Electric Power Corporation at Shillong, contended in his application that he needed to study the charge sheet to pursue legal action against those named in the document.

Ø  When the PSLV C34 rocket blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Srikarikota in May this year, it will signal another giant leap for India’s space mission. The trusted launch vehicle will inject 22 satellites into the orbit, a first in the history of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Apart from the Indian remote sensing satellite, Cartosat 2C, which constitutes the primary payload, the rocket will carry on board four micro-satellites weighing 85 to 130 kg each and 17 nano-satellites weighing 4 to 30 kg. As many as 18 satellites are being launched for foreign agencies, including those from the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Indonesia. Two of the nano-satellites have been developed by the Pune Engineering College and Sathyabhama University. “The PSLV rocket, in its XL version, will be used for the mission,” VSSC Director K. Sivan said here on Monday. “The injection of so many satellites into orbit increases the complexity of the mission many fold,” he told reporters.

Ø  The Defence Ministry on Monday unveiled the new Defence Procurement Policy, intended primarily to improve indigenous procurement, but left out the most significant reform it had been promising. The DPP-2016, made public to coincide with the latest edition of DefExpo in Goa, was expected to herald a new era in the way India’s private sector participates in defence procurement, but that is not to be. Speaking at the inauguration of DefExpo, an exhibition of land and naval systems, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the new policy would give top priority to speedy procurement, focus on indigenous design and development and lay emphasis on Make in India. The expo, being held in Goa for the first time, has the participation of 1,055 companies from 47 countries and 224 delegations from 48 countries.

Ø  The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has told the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan that it should refrain from asking questions about the operations against terrorists who stormed the Pathankot airbase on January 2. Instead, the team members should focus on NIA’s investigations into the attack, allegedly by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, and evidence gathered until now.

Ø  The U.S cannot ignore the threat of Islamic State (IS) terrorists laying their hands on nuclear material, a senior official said ahead of the fourth Nuclear Security Summit that will bring together leaders from 51 nations on March 31 and April 1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending the summit. Initiated by President Barack Obama in 2010 to raise the discussions on securing nuclear material to the highest level in the wake of the increasing threat of terrorism, the summit, in its fourth edition, takes place in the shadow of the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation Thomas Countryman said he would not label a nuclear threat from the IS “remote” or “imminent”, but the U.S could not “ignore or take it for granted”.

Ø  The second tranche of 50 declassified files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will be released by Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma on Tuesday. They will be available online at www.netajipapers.gov.in. Among the 50 are 10 files each from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs and 30 files from the Ministry of External Affairs . They cover the time period from 1956 to 2009.

Ø  Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday said the government would provide all support to the former Naval officer arrested on the charge of spying in Pakistan.

Ø  Even as India mulls over which fighter aircraft to invest in following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to purchase 36 French Rafale jets, a U.S. expert has said that the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) “falling end strength and problematic force structure, combined with its troubled acquisition and development program[me]s, threaten India’s air superiority over its rapidly modernising rivals, China and Pakistan”.