India is currently the most dangerous country for forest rangers: Study

On February 20, 2017, Range Forest Officer (RFO) Daulat Ram Lader was having his ritual after-dinner tea with wife Pushpa when there was a knock at the door. Lader was posted at Lailunga, Dharamjaigarh forest division, in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district. Lader opened the door and stepped out to speak with the visitors. 

An hour later, he was found hacked to death near his home, just across the local police thana (outpost). A month earlier, Lader had seized a tractor carrying illegally mined stones from the Kelo river, a tributary of Mahanadi and flows through the Lailunga reserve forest. It belonged to one Dilo Kumar. “Kumar had repeatedly threatened Lader over the past month,” said Sub-Divisional Officer Chakrapani Sharma. “(But) Lader dabang type ka tha (he was fearless).” Lader’s murder was not an isolated incident. India is currently the most dangerous country for forest rangers. In 2017, 29 rangers were killed on duty in India; the Democratic Republic of Congo (17) and Thailand (8) made for a distant second and third, according to a report of the International Ranger Federation.

Pakistan police arrests suspect in student's slaying over blasphemy rumors

Pakistani police say they have arrested a key suspect sought for inciting the lynching of a university student who was falsely accused of blasphemy in the country's northwest.

District police chief Saeed Khan said today that the man, identified as Arif Khan, had been in hiding since April 2016, after a mob killed 23-year-old Mohammad Mashal Khan at his university campus in the town of Mardan over unfounded rumors that he shared blasphemous content on social media.

The arrest came after an appellate court suspended three-year prison terms handed down last month to 25 suspects over the student's slaying.

In February, an anti-terrorism court sentenced one man to death and five others to life imprisonment. Those sentences are still unchanged.
Blasphemy against Islam is punishable by death in Pakistan..

Pak govt made enormous sacrifices for counter terrorism: China

China today said global community should shed bias and take an "objective" look at Pakistan's efforts on counter terrorism, days after it backed out from supporting its all weather ally at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting which placed Islamabad on terrorist financing watch list.
The 37-nation FATF at its plenary meeting in Paris last week placed Pakistan on a watch list of the countries where terrorist outfits are still allowed to raise funds.
Though Pakistan has not been named, it has to submit the action plan to implement UN Security Council resolutions on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism by April, failing which it would figure in the list.
"Pakistan government and people have made enormous sacrifices for counter terrorism," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a media briefing here today.
China which earlier opposed the move along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey later backed out after Riyadh under pressure from the US withdrew its opposition in view of the rule that at least support of three members was required to stall the resolution against Pakistan.

Chief Justice of Pakistan takes suo motu notice of teenage girl's rape

Pakistan Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar today took suo motu notice of the rape of a teenage girl in front of her family on the orders of the village council as a punishment, even as police arrested 25 people in the case.

The 16-year-old girl was raped by a man as a punishment on July 18 after her brother was accused of raping the man's sister in Rajpur village in Muzaffarabad in Punjab province.

Chief Justice Nisar ordered the inspector general of Punjab police to submit a report.

Meanwhile, police have arrested 25 members of the village council, including its chief. The panchayat comprising 20 members, including four women, had ordered Ashfaq to rape the girl in revenge for the earlier rape of his sister.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, younger brother of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, visited Rajpur village and met both the victims and assured that they would get justice.

He sacked all police officials of the Muzaffarabad police station for their 'criminal role' in the incident.
READ MORE