Boy who egged Australian Senator for blaming Muslims for attack against NZ mosques released after arrest

New Delhi, Mar 13: Delhi's Tis Hazari Court on Friday sentenced expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar and six others to 10 years imprisonment for the death of Unnao rape survivor's father. Sengar is already serving life imprisonment for raping the minor.

While sentencing them, District Judge Dharmesh Sharma said, "There can be no denying that rule of law was broken. Sengar was a public functionary and had to maintain the rule of law. The way the crime has been committed, it does not call for leniency."

Sengar and his brother Atul has been directed to give 10 lakh compensation to family of the victim for loss of their father. "There are four minor children involved, three girls and one boy. They have also been uprooted from native place," the judge said.

Seven people, including Sengar, his brother and two police personnel, were held guilty for culpable homicide and criminal conspiracy, earlier this month.

The case pertains to the death of rape survivor's father in custody on April 9, 2018. It was alleged that he was assaulted following a quarrel with some of the accused in the case.

He was taken to the police station and then framed for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm. Pursuant to this, he was sent to custodial remand, during which he died.

The case was transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the Supreme Court's directions in August last year. Both the death and illegal firearm case was later clubbed by the court.

During the arguments on sentencing on March 12, Sengar had told the court that he should be "hanged and acid poured into his eyes if he has done anything wrong".

The former MLA had also raped the daughter of the deceased in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district and was sent to jail for "remainder of his natural biological life", last year.

Dubai, Jan 8: A Ukrainian airliner crashed soon after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport on Wednesday, killing all 176 people aboard, Iran's state television and Ukraine's leaders said.

The Boeing 737 belonging to Ukraine International Airlines crashed near the airport and burst into flames. Ukraine's embassy in Iran, citing preliminary information, said the plane had suffered engine failure and the crash was not caused by "terrorism".

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said there were no survivors.

"My sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of all passengers and crew," Zelenskiy said in a statement, adding that Ukraine was seeking to establish the circumstances of the crash and the death toll.

Iranian TV said the crash was due to technical problems but did not elaborate. State broadcaster IRIB said on its website that one of the plane's two black boxes - the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder - had been found.

Iranian media quoted an Iranian aviation official as saying the pilot of the airliner did not declare an emergency.

There was no official word from Ukraine International Airlines. It was the Kiev-based airline's first fatal crash.

"The fire is so heavy that we cannot (do) any rescue... we have 22 ambulances, four bus ambulances and a helicopter at the site," Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran's emergency services, told Iranian state television.

Ukraine's prime minister and Iranian state TV said 167 passengers and 9 crew were on board. Iranian TV said 32 of those on board were foreigners.

Television footage showed debris and smouldering engine parts strewn across a field, and rescue workers with face masks retrieving bodies of the victims.

According to air tracking service FlightRadar24, the plane that crashed was Flight PS 752 and was flying to Kiev. The plane was three years old and was a Boeing 737-800NG, it said.

The model's twin engines are made by CFM International, a U.S.-French venture co-owned by General Electric and France's Safran.

Modern aircraft are designed and certified to cope with an engine failure shortly after take-off and to fly for extended periods on one engine. However, an uncontained engine failure releasing shrapnel can cause damage to other aircraft systems.

A spokesman for Boeing said the company was aware of media reports of a plane crash in Iran and was gathering more information. The plane manufacturer grounded its 737 MAX fleet in March after two crashes that killed 346 people.

The 737-800 is one of the world's most-flown models with a good safety record and which does not have the software feature implicated in crashes of the 737 MAX.

Under international rules overseen by the United Nations, Iran is responsible for leading the crash investigation.

Ukraine would be involved and the United States would usually be accredited as the country where the Boeing jet was designed and built. France, where the engine maker CFM has half its activities, may also be involved.

There was no immediate word on whether the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board would be involved in the probe amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The NTSB usually invites Boeing to give technical advice in such investigations.

Global health experts on Wednesday said novel coronavirus is here to stay for more than a year and called for aggressive testing to prevent its spread.

In an interaction with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, health experts Professor Ashish Jha and Professor Johan Giesecke talked about the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the series being aired on Congress social media channels.

While Jha exuded confidence that a vaccine will be available in a year's time, Prof Giesecke said India should practice a lockdown that is as 'soft' as possible, as a severe lockdown will ruin its economy very quickly.

"When the economy is opened up after lockdown, you have to create confidence among people," Harvard health expert Ashish Jha told Gandhi.

Jha is a professor of Global Health at TH Chan School of Public Health and Director, Harvard Global Health institute.

He said coronavirus is a '12-18 months' problem and the world is not going to be free of this till 2021.

The expert also called for the need for aggressive testing strategy for high-risk areas.

Gandhi, while interacting with the experts, said life is going to change post COVID-19.

"If 9/11 was a new chapter, this will be a new book," he remarked.

Professor Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said India should have a 'soft lockdown'.

"The situation that India is in, I think, you should have a soft lockdown, as soft as possible," he said.

"I think for India, you will ruin your economy very quickly if you have a severe lockdown. It is better, skip the lockdown, take care of the old and the frail...," he noted.