Friday, November 23, 2007 (Lucknow)

Terror struck Uttar Pradesh on Friday afternoon with five bomb blasts going off almost simultaneously in three cities of Varanasi, Lucknow and Faizabad.

Thirteen people have been reported killed so far with several others injured. Nine people have been killed in Varanasi. Four deaths have been reported from Faizabad.

All the blasts went off in and around civil courts. It seems the explosives were packed on parked bicycles in the court complexes.

Steel pellets have been recovered from the blast sites, which were also used in the Hyderabad blasts in August.

''There was smoke everywhere. People were hurt and bleeding. We did not see the bomb but the explosion was very powerful,'' said an eyewitness in Varanasi.

The Home Ministry says it's a terrorist strike meant to disturb communal harmony.

Majlis-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (MIM) MP from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi has charged the influential upper castes with using the Telangana issue as an election affair to further their own political interests.

Speaking to newsmen at Karimnagar on Sunday, he alleged that the weaker sections comprising Backward Classes (BCs), Scheduled Classes  Scheduled Tribes and minorities lost their voice in the “selfish politics” being pursued by three dominant upper castes (Velama, Reddy and Kamma) in the State.

The Telangana Praja Samiti merged in the Congress after winning about 10 MP seats on Telangana plank in the 70s, he noted. In an indirect reference to M. Satyanarayana Rao, the MIM MP said, “The present Karimnagar MLA won on the samiti ticket at that time. Of late, he is talking in a different language.”.

Calling it a ‘treasure trove’, Md Zahoorullah, a post-graduate student from Chennai, said, "Whenever we try to search for books, our clothes are filled with dust. The librarian who is not well-versed either in Urdu or Arabic, and when we ask her for a book, she tells us to search on our own," Zahoorullah, said. Responding to the remark, Md Yawar Ali, senior assistant at the library, said, "When we gave an advertisement for a suitable candidate for the post, nobody approached us. So the government appointed a librarian on contract basis." The 539 rare manuscripts were recently digitised by the Dubai-based Juma Al Majid Center for Culture and Heritage, which also digitised over 30,000 books and manuscripts at the Osmania University Library as well as other places like Idara Idabiyate Urdu.

Dubai for long was perceived as the land of hope by thousands of villagers in rural Andhra Pradesh. A visa to the UAE was a dream come true, a possible way out of mounting debts, a hope for a new beginning.

But behind the veneer was a stark reality. Most migrants went to work on illegal visas, often misled by brokers, who led them to believe that if a visiting visa costs about Rs 50,000, a work visa would cost at least Rs one lakh.

Most often, both the passport and visa would be taken away by the agent after landing in the UAE. So, the migrants lived like thieves constantly living in fear that they would be caught with no rights, no voice, the life of a `kalli villi', which means `illegal immigrant' in Arabic.