What drives a terrorist to indulge in mindless massacre of innocent people without batting an eyelid? This question still haunts the mind of 16-year-old Arshiya Mittal, a survivor of 26/11 terror attacks.

“A person has to believe there is no goodness left in him or in the world for him to go on a killing spree. I believe
every person is born good and so the terrorist in a person has to be killed rather than killing the person,” Arshiya, who was at the Hotel Taj on the fateful night, said.

The 26/11 attacks that left behind a trail of death and destruction has changed Arshiya’s perception about the metropolis. “Before 26/11, Mumbai was just one of my favourite cities in the world, but after the attack it became my dear home.”

Arshiya, along with her mother and cousin, was dining at the Wasabi restaurant in Taj on the night of November 26 when a group of backpack-toting terrorists struck at the iconic building in South Mumbai.

“Every Mumbaikar changed from being just another inhabitant to being a part of a joint family during and after the attack,” she said.

Arshiya and her family was rescued from the hotel within six hours of the attack, but she feels sad about those who perished in the mayhem unleashed by the terrorists.

Daaod Gilani, suspected of involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai carnage and one of the two Pakistani expats charged with transcontinental terror plots, is a convicted felon who served 15-month prison sentence in US in 1999 before he changed his name to David Coleman Headley, a camouflage that may have helped him get a long-term Indian visa.

The discovery of the felony conviction becomes important in the context of the growing controversy over how he got a long-term Indian visa from the Indian consulate in Chicago, where the consul-general Ashok Kumar Attri is under fire for lax oversight. Some Indian community activists who have been campaigning against Attri for long have sought his recall.

The External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi and the Indian Embassy in Washington have said Attri acted within the purview of current rules and did not break any law, but intelligence officials are bristling at the loopholes that enabled Gilani/Headley to mask a conviction that should have raised a red flag.

According to US court records, Gilani, who took his mother’s last name Headley in 2006, was involved in a drug trafficking case in Philadelphia in 1997. He appears to have pled guilty and helped authorities in the case to earn a reduced sentence, because accounts of the episode, which give his full name as Sayyid Daood Saleem Gilani, say he aided Drug Enforcement Agency agents monitor an operation involving smuggling of a huge consignment of heroin and cocaine.

The fact that Headley-Gilani’s birthplace on his American passport is listed as Washington DC, effectively masking his Pakistani pedigree, appears to have fooled Indian authorities in Chicago. But information being pieced together now shows that he was the son of a Pakistani diplomat Saleem Gilani, who was posted in the U.S in the late sixties, and Serrill Headley, a Pennsylvania native who lived in the capital region those days.

The couple moved back to Pakistan after Daaod was born in the US but they split up soon after in the early 1970s when Serrill returned to US to eventually start a bar and restaurant called Khyber Pass in Philadelphia. In 1977, after at least two attempts, she got custody of the young Daood Gilani, who was at the Hasan Abdal Cadet College in Pakistan at that time.

Transported to Philadelphia, Daood apparently suffered from culture shock. Raised a Muslim, he had trouble adjusting to the idea that his mother ran a bar, according to a report that that time in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which traced his background in a story on Thursday. “He has never been alone with, much less had a date with, a girl, except the servant girls of his household,” the paper quoted a column from that time from its archives.

Serill Headley turned over the business to her son in 1985 but he quickly ran it into the ground, according to current owners of the restaurant. Meantime, he is said to have studied accounting, possibly at a community college in the Philadelphia region, and operated a video store, FliksVideo, with his mother.

A 2008 obituary of Serrill Headley in the Philadelphia Inquirer described her as an ”adventuress who contributed to Philadelphia’s restaurant renaissance when she opened Khyber Pass Pub in the 1970s.” It said she had purchased a neighbourhood bar on Second Street near Chestnut (now a trendy area) in which ‘’she left the regulars sitting at their stools arguing politics, while she transformed the surroundings with Pakistani wedding tents.”

Khyber Pass itself merited an Inquirer obituary when it closed in 1988, with the paper describing it as a ‘’saloon institution for the last 14 years” that ”provided a performing venue for all kinds of Philadelphia bands.” Its proprietor, Serrill Headley, blamed the closing on “tax problems and absentee management” caused by a long illness and an auto accident a year ago that left her with back and leg injuries, it said.

In Washington DC, there was no recollection in the diplomatic circuit of Saleem Gilani although archives showed a Director General of Pakistan Radio by the same name. But investigators are digging back into the records, also because the name Gilani (also spelt Jilani) has raised red flags in India, notwithstanding the fact that the Prime Minister of Pakistan shares the same name.

Source: TimesNow

The MoUs for setting up of Biogas based power plants at five Gaushalas in Haryana were signed in the presence of Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment and Forests, Shri Jairam Ramesh in New Delhi today.

The projects proposed to be set up at five selected Gaushalas for power generation from biogas to be produced from a mixture of cattle dung and agricultural residues / crop wastes are going to be based on the state-of-the-art technology. Since the Gaushalas only have the land and access to raw material and not the technology or finances, a project developer who is implementing similar projects of larger capacities in the State of Punjab, has been identified. The Developer M/s Sri Krishna Captive Energy Ltd. will implement these projects on BOOT basis in partnership with the Gaushalas. The Developer will fund the projects, execute and operate them for about 10 years and hand them over to the Gaushalas thereafter.

The projects are supported by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) under the Programme on Energy from Urban and Agricultural Wastes being implemented by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The development of projects at the Gaushalas has at its roots in the success of the first project for generation of 1 MW power from cattle dung installed at Ludhiana in the year 2004-05 under a UNDP / GEF assisted project implemented by MNRE. With a view to promote power projects based on cattle dung, a Field Visit-cum-Seminar was organized at the Project installed at Ludhiana in August, 2008, which was also attended by senior members of the AWBI. Secretary, MNRE had called upon the Gaushalas to set up such projects. MNRE and AWBI have been working on setting up of a few commercial projects on ‘build own operate and transfer’ (BOOT) basis at Gaushalas. This included MNRE’s participation in the Annual General Meeting of AWBI and meetings in the Ministry with the chairman of AWBI and representatives of some of the selected Gaushalas.

Each project of 350 KW is expected to cost around Rs.4 – 4.5 crore and would be eligible for a Central Financial Assistance (CFA) of upto Rs.1.05 crore (@Rs. 3.00 crore/MW) under the Programme on Energy Recovery from Urban Wastes, which also includes the component of biogas based power from cattle dung and agricultural residues. Proposal for sanction of subsidy will be considered in accordance with the provisions of Ministry’s programme as and when received. Further, even after sanction, while the first installment of CFA is to be given upon commencement of project execution and disbursement of 50% of loan sanctioned for the projects, the 2nd installment will be released after successful commissioning of the project.

The MoU essentially includes conditions for co-operation between the Gaushalas and the Developers. After signing of MOU, the project development activities including preparation of DPR, signing of PPA and financial closures would commence and it is expected that project execution would begin before the end of the year 2009 for projects to be completed in 6 to 9 months.

These projects are based on a concept that has already become popular in several European countries. The Developer M/s Sri Krishna Captive Energy Pvt. Ltd. is working in collaboration with a German technology company namely M/s. Envitech.

It is expected that these projects will lead to setting up of a large number of such projects for energy recovery from cattle dung and agricultural residues for decentralized power generation through an environmentally benign technology.