Healing touch and all, death continues to reap a black harvest in the valley, with a spate of separatist killings involving even children. Just two days after killing three women at Hasiyot in Rajouri, militants gun down three sons of a carpenter — the oldest 10, the youngest, seven — at Samote in Poonch. Another massacre follows, and this time a school teacher and his two sons who had nothing to do with J-K’s violent politics. But Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed puts a brave face insisting that this won’t derail his ‘‘healing touch’’ policy. • Narendra Modi is sworn in as Chief Minister, second time in two years, at a function devoid of speeches and rhetoric. But his decision to appoint Ashok Bhatt as the new Gujarat Law Minister raises controversy as the man, along with nine others — including Union Minister of State for Defence Production, Harin Pathak — is pending trial for the alleged murder of a police constable and a home guard during the 1985 anti-reservation riots.• A New Delhi court acquits former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar of the charge of leading a mob that killed Sikhs in 1984 during the infamous riots. This is the sixth trial involving the alleged complicity of Congress leaders in the 1984 carnage which has ended in an acquittal. While three of those cases were against Sajjan Kumar, the other three were against his senior party colleague H K L Bhagat. Besides, the police had registered two carnage-related cases against another Congress leader, Jagdish Tytler, but those were dropped even before they reached the stage of trial. • Despite being given a clean chit by the highest authority in military intelligence, Kashmiri journalist Iftikar Geelani continues to be in prison. In the latest, a government counsel informs the court that he is ‘‘unaware’’ of any MI statement that the documents seized from Geelani were not classified in nature.• WITHSTANDING public criticism, Vijay Kelkar, advisor to Finance Minister, sticks to his guns regarding the tax proposals made in his consultation paper. The only dilution Kelkar makes is allowing senior citizens to have income tax exemptions up to an annual income of Rs 1.5 lakh.• Decks cleared for athlete Sunita Rani to win back her Asian Games medals with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) dismissing the Busan dope test that had stripped her of gold and bronze medals in the 1500 m and 5000 m events respectively. • By outrightly rejecting the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) ‘final offer’ on the World Cup contract issue, Jagmohan Dalmiya, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), sends out two signals — the BCCI’s pro-player stance apart, it makes clear that their marathon bout with ICC is far from over. And caught in this ICC-BCCI feud are the companies sponsoring World Cup in South Africa, who get a serious threat from Dalmiya. The corporates get back asking Dalmia to take it up with the players who have signed contracts with companies. ICC, on its part, threatens BCCI with compensation charges.• In a retaliatory snub to the United Arab Emirates for allowing most wanted Anees Ibrahim to get away, New Delhi cancels permission to Emirates Airlines for 16 special flights during the holiday season. The airlines had earlier been allowed special flights to clear the heavy rush during Christmas and New Year under the Civil Aviation Ministry’s experimental Open Sky Policy between Dec and March 2003.
