• A designated Pota court sentences to death the three accused — Mohammed Afzal, Shaukat Hussain Guru and Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani—in the 2001 December 13 Parliament attack. Special judge S.N. Dhingra imposes the sentence under Pota as well as under Section 302 of the IPC for the murder of nine security personnel. The fourth accused and Shaukat Guru’s wife Navjot Sandhu alias Afsan Guru is sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment. Defence counsel says the accused will appeal against the order before the high court. • Landslide victory for the BJP as it wins 126 out of the 181 seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections, restricting Congress to a paltry 51. Narendra Modi, elected the Parliamentary party leader of BJP, denies the Congress allegation that the BJP swept the polls as a result of its ‘‘aggressive communal politics’’. • Two Punjab and Haryana High Court justices are asked to go on leave, while a third one is exonerated as a judicial committee indicts them in the PPSC scandal. As criticism erupts that the ‘tainted’ judges were let away with virtually no punishment, Chief Justice of India, G.B. Pattanaik, who retired this week, says though the panel had found them guilty of misconduct, it did not warrant their removal. Starting Monday • The two-day BJP National Executive meeting to chalk out strategies for the ensuing state assembly polls begins on Dec 23 • India will take on New Zealand in the first one-day match of the series on Dec 26 in Auckland • Gloom descends on the Home Ministry corridors as news reaches that gangster Anees Ibrahim has been ‘‘whisked away’’ to Pakistan from Dubai, where he was being held. To compound the blues, a Malaysian court dismisses a CBI appeal for extradition of Italian businessman Ottavio Quatrocchi.• Pride and precaution are the prevalent moods in corporate India as ex-IITian Arun Sarin is chosen as the CEO of Vodafone Plc, Europe’s biggest telecom service provider, even as Chennai software biggie Polaris’s CEO Arun Jain is detained in Jakarta. Jain, arrested by the Indonesian police over a commercial dispute with one of its Jakarta clients, is later released after hectic lobbying by the PMO. Meanwhile, in a landmark verdict for the pharma industry, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories wins a US court ruling against Pfizer Inc that could allow it to sell a version of Pfizer’s hypertension drug, Norvasc, in the United States.• A big bang ends in a whimper as a Joint Parliamentary Committee report on the 2001 stock market crash and subsequent freezing of the UTI’s flagship US-64 scheme blames the finance ministry for inaction but gives a clean chit to the then finance minister Yashwant Sinha. The only officer with any bearing indicted in the report is the then Finance Secretary Ajit Kumar.• US Secretary of State Colin Powell terms Iraq’s 12,200-page report on its weapons programs as a catalog of ‘‘recycled information and flagrant omissions,’’ violating UN resolutions in ways that could provoke war. But Powell pushes back the prospect of conflict for at least several weeks by calling for stepped-up inspections inside Iraq.• Pope John Paul II officially sanctions the miracle needed to beatify Mother Teresa, a major step to her being declared a saint. A second miracle will then be needed to declare Mother Teresa a saint. • The BCCI seems to be heading for a showdown as the ICC serves them an ultimatum on the World Cup contract issue. Meanwhile, a list of 30 probables for the World Cup announced includes old warhorses Srinath and Kumble. The National Games in Hyderabad creates controversy over ‘poaching’ of athletes from other states by hosts AP.
