Haven’t become PM of India to redraw border: Manmohan Singh to Nawaz Sharif

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's displeasure with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif's on failing to restore ceasefire on the border followed a blunt message he delivered to Sharif in New York about a month ago when he said, "I have not become prime minister of India to redraw the boundary."

The PM's September 29 meeting with Sharif, which took place amid escalating firing on the Line of Control and the international border, began with Singh making no bones about his resolve to protect India's territorial integrity.

In fact, Singh's "Churchillian moment", reminiscent of the British leader's declaration in 1942 that he had not become the King's first minister to "preside over the liquidation of the British Empire", even surprised his senior aides as the PM brushed aside Sharif's arguments.

Singh responded to Sharif's attempt to raise India's "role" in Baluchistan, saying the matter had been raised by previous Pakistani PMs as well without an iota of proof being offered. The firmness must have struck Sharif, considering that it was Singh who heeded Islamabad's insistence to put Pakistan's allegation of Indian meddling in Baluchistan on the bilateral agenda.

Sources said Singh's unusually sharp words expressing his "big disappointment" with Sharif on Friday indicate his annoyance over the Pakistani PM not heeding an unambiguous signal that firing on the LoC and the border must stop.

On his way back from Beijing, Singh told the media, "Let me say that I am disappointed, because in the New York meeting, there was a general agreement on both the sides that peace and tranquility should be maintained on the border, on the Line of Control as well as on the international border and this has not happened."

In the New York meeting, Singh had also categorically rejected the Pakistani suggestion that restoration of the 2003 ceasefire agreement could be discussed by a politico-military committee, insisting the matter be sorted out at the military level.

The PM made it plain that Indian and Pakistani directors general of military operations must sort out the ceasefire violations and restore peace and tranquillity on the LoC and the international border.

Singh's insistence on the DGMO mechanism stemmed from India's view that Pakistan's civilian government could not be less accountable than the military. "The government in Pakistan is expected to implement the agreement arrived at in New York," said sources.

Singh's tough talk on Friday signals his waning patience as the political calendar in India begins to rapidly move towards the 2014 elections and Congress wards off the opposition charge of being soft on Pakistan's aggression on the borders.

Sources said the PM junked his moderate approach — even when being critical of Pakistan — as he felt nothing short of an unequivocal comment would work, given the rising tensions on the J&K border and LoC.

On Friday, the PM did express the hope that Sharif would "even at this late hour" recognize that the developments on the border do not augur well for both nations, but this time around he made it clear that the onus was on Pakistan to mend fences.

In the past, Singh has laboured hard to convince Pakistani leaders that combating terrorism and preventing hostile behaviour on the border was in Pakistan's interest. For him to give vent to his frustration would mean that he feels the scope for a middle ground with Pakistan is shrinking.

The episode and subsequent lack of action on the part of Pakistan has strengthened the assessment in India that Sharif remains a somewhat tricky customer who might say one thing at a meeting only to go ahead to do just what he wants.

The Pakistani PM is seen as neither willing nor capable of reining in the army, but the Indian government — at least in the current situation — has decided that it cannot continue to receive political flak at home without holding Sharif to account.

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New movie shows why Pakistan loves to hate India

ISLAMABAD: Militants overrun a Pakistani police academy and kill 100 officers. An Indian spy and her accomplice waltz in a glitzy flat in Islamabad to celebrate the success of their mission.

This is a scene from Waar (" Strike"), Pakistan's first big-budget movie which opened this month to enthusiastic audiences in the nuclear-armed South Asian country of 180 million.

Filmed with the support of the all-powerful military, the movie depicts every volatile aspect of Pakistan's rocky relationship with India.

Even in Pakistan itself, Waar is denounced by some liberals wary of what they see as fiery nationalistic rhetoric and scenes demonising India.

The narrative is simple and packed with action.

Indian villains team up with Islamist militants to plot spectacular attacks across Pakistan. Pakistani security forces jump in and save the day.

"Like any other action film, we wanted to show the triumph of good over evil," said director Bilal Lashari, 31. "And we wanted to do it with a great amount of spectacle and scale."

Politics aside, Waar is fun to watch. Helicopter gunships whizz over mountains and commandos lay siege to militant sanctuaries in Pakistan's picturesque, lawless tribal regions.

"The army was great in that they gave us a lot of logistical support," Lashari said. "All the scenes with the helicopters and the mountains - they couldn't have been done without the army."

Though yet to be screened in India, the film serves as a reminder of tensions between the neighbouring states, which have fought three wars since independence from the British in 1947.

India and Pakistan trade accusations of staging cross-border attacks and supporting militants in Jammu and Kashmir, where violence has seen a resurgence in recent months.

The movie has proved hugely successful. On a recent viewing in a packed cinema in the capital, attendees leapt to their feet to applaud patriotic scenes.

In one such moment, a retired officer takes on an Indian contractor on the roof of a building while a female Pakistani officer rushes to defuse a chemical bomb planted on the balcony.

Many cheered as the officer reduced the Indian man's face to a pulp. A woman turned to a group of giggling boys and scolded them for "laughing during such a serious movie".

"Of course India supports terrorism in Pakistan," said Sheila Raza, 23, as she left the cinema. "I think Waar is an accurate portrayal."

Record box office receipts

Presented almost entirely in English, Waar took more than three years to make and officially cost around $2.2 million in a country where the average film is made on less than $25,000.

Its distributors say Waar grossed more than $900,000 during the first week - a record for Pakistani cinema.

But some in Pakistan have mocked Waar as a propaganda movie. Cultural critic Nadeem Paracha said: "This film is basically the Pakistani state's fantasies being played out on a big screen."

India's film industry produces highly successful anti-Pakistan films of its own.

Bollywood film "Ek Tha Tiger", one of the Hindi film industry's biggest box-office successes in 2012, but banned in Pakistan, depicted a Pakistani intelligence agent choosing her love for an Indian agent over her country.

This year, a film based on an Indian operation to capture a fictional mafia don given asylum in Pakistan riled Pakistan's censor board. The villain in "D-Day" was loosely based on real-life gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who India says is harboured by Pakistan.

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Robin Thicke is comfortable naked

Robin Thicke is comfortable being naked.

The 'Blurred Lines' hitmaker admits he and his wife Paula Patton - who have been married since 2005 - regularly wander around the house without any clothes on and they want to try and encourage their three-year-old son, Julian, to do the same.

Speaking to Elle magazine, he said: ''In our household, nudity is not frowned upon. We're much more free with ourselves.''

The 'Baggage Claim' actress previously admitted that her beau's boastful claims in his 'Blurred Lines' video - which shows a balloon with the words ''Robin Thicke has a big d**k'' etched across it - are very much true.

She said: ''Robin's like, 'Listen, if I'm, you know, in the Miami Heat's locker room, I don't know where I stand, but ...but I think that the statement is fairly accurate!''

The couple became high school sweethearts after Paula fell for Robin's sexy singing ability, which led to their first smooch.

She said: ''He sang Jodeci's 'Forever My Lady' to me. He did a full-out R&B onstage performance in his dad's living room. Then he kissed me. It worked!''

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Indira Gandhi ordered a gold hunt in 1976; Pak sought share

NEW DELHI: The last time the Indian government, led by the redoubtable Indira Gandhi, went looking for hidden gold among private property, Pakistan also jumped on to the bandwagon.

In 1976, at the height of the Emergency, Indira ordered the Indian Army to march off to look for hidden treasure in Jaigarh fort, which was still a property of the Jaipur royal family. Legend had it that Man Singh had stashed away huge amounts of treasure from some of his campaigns. That legend persisted after India's independence. With Gayatri Devi imprisoned during Emergency, Indira thought it fit to search Jaipur royal properties for the treasure.

The correspondence finds space in an invaluable work of history, India-Pakistan Relations (1947-2007), edited by Avtar Singh Bhasin, released earlier this year and is mandatory reading for any student of history.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, heard about the treasure hunt and decided Pakistan should not be denied its share. In a letter to Indira on August 11, 1976, Bhutto said, "As your expedition of locating the treasure proceeds, I would urge you to remain cognizant of Pakistan's claim to its due share of this wealth. This is an asset which was not known at the time of partition between the two successor states (then called dominions) of India and Pakistan.

"However, the order that was enforced with the agreement of both governments did not fail to provide that any property or benefits can be shared between them where such sharing is just and equitable. The historical provenance of this treasure, regardless of the location of its physical discovery, makes it the joint patrimony of our two countries and I am confident that, with an approach based on equity, we will dis-countenance any usurpation and amicably arrive at a formula for the division between us."

Indira did not dignify Bhutto's claim with a response until December of that year. By then, the Army division sent to unearth the treasure returned empty-handed after three months of fruitless search. Responding to Bhutto on December 31, 1976, Indira said, "I had asked our legal experts to give careful consideration to the claim you made on behalf of Pakistan. They are of the clear opinion that the claim has no legal basis. Incidentally, the treasure has turned out to be non-existent."

Bhutto complimented Indira on abolishing the old royalty, saying, "Both our countries have taken the same view of the rights of the princely order and, with complete justification, abolished it as an appendage or association of the colonial regime. I am certain that no one can maintain the argument that your government's action involves confiscation of the private property of any individual or dynasty."

The Pakistani PM justified asking for a share of the riches. "It is clear that the treasure is a historical inheritance of the subcontinent which was bequeathed to it by its pre-colonial sovereignties, especially the Mughal emperors in coalition with their Rajput allies. That, before or during the anarchy which ravaged the subcontinent and invited foreign domination, these assets were misappropriated and hoarded by a particular warlord has no bearing whatsoever on their legal or moral ownership." Indira, however, would have none of it.

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Tanisha caught smoking in Bigg Boss

Bigg Boss 7 contestant Tanisha Mukherjee has been in news for all bad reasons off late, and now she is in news for smoking. Tanisha has been stressed out a lot lately and it is a known fact that she smokes. The pretty sister of successful actress Kajol, was seen smoking in Bigg Boss house and she was holding her cigarette pack while talking to her good friend Armaan Kohli.

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Mickey Virus

Story: The cops are cracking a cyber crime case and they hire hacker Mickey to crack the plot. It opens a lethal can of worms that no ordinary anti-virus can kill.

Review: We aren't internet keedas here, but let's try cracking into Mickey's (Manish) world of codes, crypts and consoles. This one isn't so deadly that we can't decode, or so simple that we just download and ESC (read: escape). So, risk it and hit ENTER!

The Delhi cops, headed by ACP Siddhanth (Chaudhari) and inspector Bhalla who can't tell a 'hawker' from a 'hacker' (Varun Badola) are investigating a case on cyber crime, where hackers are getting killed in broad daylight. They suspect a hound of hackers who are running this racket, and the only way to vandalize their plot is to find a hacker who can outsmart them and decrypt their devious designs.

There comes Mickey, the fairly unambitious, lazy Delhi boy, whose brain operates faster than any high-speed internet, and his zubaan needs a 'backspace' at all times. He is popular as 'Kung-Fu Chameli' in cyberspace, and strangely, he meets his woman of web dreams, Kamayani (Elli) in reality.

The cops hire Mickey, but as he unscrambles the case he gets 'spammed' by a well-programmed series of crimes, and he desperately needs to hit Ctrl+S (read: Save) before they take the 'Mickey' out of him.

Manish is apt for the role, he makes a good debut with confidence and promise. He flavour his lines with Dilliwala twang, though in scenes his repetitive expressions need to 'refresh'. From Mickey's hack-gang, Floppy (Rahgav Kakkar) is funny, and Chutney (Puja) is impressive. Elli looks like an animated creation out of a cyber-game. Performance - never mind! Varun Badola kills the other viruses in this game with his brilliant act.

Varma allows his characters to flourish in wit and humour. The plot is intelligent; there are laughs (sample: a tee printed - 'Jab Tak Hai Trojan'), some suspense and surprises too. Though direction is not error-free, it could've been more innovative and he often tips the balance between comedy and thriller.

This virus won't crash your system. Watch it!

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Stone pelting at Mahendra Singh Dhoni's residence

RANCHI: Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni's residence came under attack on Wednesday night soon after the 4th ODI against Australia being played at JSCA international stadium was called off because of rains. The stone pelting occured at around 9.30PM stealthly as no one was seen on spot when the incident occured.

The frontage of the Harmu Housing colony bound residence of Dhoni which has a big tinted glass cover was shattered. Though Dhoni and his family members were not at home, all of them being at stadium at that time the news spread like wild fire.

When asked Dhoni's family members denied that the incident had anything to do with the match results. " It is the fifth time that the house was attacked and unless we verify the CCTV footages we are not going to accuse anyone blindly," said Gautam Gupta, Dhonis brother in Law.

Asking district administration to be more alert about security arrangement Gupta said that ab FIR would be lodged after verification of the footages.

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Salman is a fakir, who lives a simple life: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

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Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 50, is most comfortable only with himself. While he is fond of his mother and sister, he can be most honest and transparent only with himself. He is extremely observant and sensitive and has come to the view that relationships don't work for him. He gives all to his work and lives his life through his characters. Ahead of his upcoming film Ram-Leela, he talks to TOI about his love-hate relationship with his father, his mentor Vidhu Vinod Chopra and what made him add Leela to his name. Excerpts:

How did you think of becoming a filmmaker?
My grandfather was a rich man who stayed in a bungalow in Walkeshwar, but by 25, he went bankrupt and we had to move into a 200 sq ft place where, for a bathroom, you had to wait in a line for two hours. My father produced films in the 50s, but they were films like Jaazi Lootera that I have never seen. I was five when he took me with him to a studio, where a cabaret was being pictured. I was wondering why this girl was wearing so little clothes, was eating an apple and was jumping on a man with equally little clothes and then they kept throwing this apple at each other as it was not reaching the correct point. I was fascinated. I would wait for hours to listen to Vividh Bharati and would look at the small mirror and dance to Shammi Kapoor songs. I had to go through the red light area to go to school, as we lived two lanes from there. That one lane had six theatres, so life was fascinating. Then one day, a makeup trunk came with all kinds of wigs and costumes and that was the Pandora's box for me. I decided to be a director. Even though I was a brilliant student, going to college were the worst years of my life, as I was going there only to complete my graduation. I joined the film institute in the editing course and that is where I thought I would blossom. I lost my father while I was at the institute and did not know where to start till Vidhu Vinod Chopra came there and hired me to shoot a song in Parinda. I then landed up assisting Vinod for seven years.

What did you learn from Vinod?
I learnt the courage to speak and be fearless from him. He would write on his board — 'Damn I am good' with his autograph. He taught me to believe in my work and pushed me to speak. He would say, 'If you don't speak, how will you arrange your monies, how will you speak to your actors?' That was the opening phase. Of course, once I started speaking, I was told to speak less. I learnt the discipline and focus with which he worked. I would go for all music sittings with him and would sit at RD Burman's feet while he was composing his songs for 1942: A Love Story. Burmanda would say, 'If you want to celebrate a good song, you must eat and celebrate and order good food immediately. In 50 minutes flat, he made Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga, threw the pen and said, 'Machhi mangao' and went straight to the kitchen to cook food. That innocence to discover and being excited about your work is what I learnt from these two people. Of course, RD passed away and did not live to see the success of his music.

Talk about RD Burman?
He was gorgeous, sitting in his black silk kurta and black silk lungi, records beautifully lying and stacked there in his white room with white gaddis and his harmonium with his unclear conversation and a sparkle in his eye, to listen to some new sound. I was mad about that man's music. His openness made him a great music director. Nobody lives music the way he did. I learnt to listen to people from him, even if it was from an assistant. Never to feel afraid of criticism is what I learnt from him. He was going through a critical time. The industry had moved him out. He had no work. A music company came to Vinod and said, 'Move him out of 1942 and we will give you double the money' and, of course, Vinod did not agree and asked them to leave the room. Burmanda was large-hearted. A man who would feed people when he made a good song. It was 7.30 in the morning and I was listening to a song from Kati Patang when Farah (Khan) called me to say dada was gone.

Let's talk about your father?
All through my childhood, I was told that films did not make money and that it was a world not meant to be in. There were a lot of people we had to take money from and a lot of people we needed to pay money to. I remember my grandmother would take me walking from Bhuleshwar to Colaba to collect 10,000 from a producer we had lent money to, in the past. That man would make us wait for hours and all through walking back, she would keep telling me how not to be in films. And yet my father took me 18 times to see Mughal-e-Azam. He introduced me to all kinds of music ranging from Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahab's to Dada Kondke's. So I was completely confused as a child. We would be put into a good school, but would need to borrow money from our relatives to pay the fees. They would procrastinate giving it to us. The fact that they would come and ask for the money back would make me not come out of the house. I started feeling isolated. I relied only on music for anchorage and I would go into my imaginary world. My father had a love for life and lived it king-size even though we could not afford it. So I went to the other extreme of complete deprivation and simplicity to save for the times to come. I loved him immensely, but could not express it. Today, I regret that. I wish he was alive today. I get my angst, aesthetics and suffering from him. I feel the presence of the man as I am too average a person to have made the films I have. I still go to our old house, playing old music in my car to experience him. I am fulfilling what he dreamt.

Are there stars you worked with who are your friends?
They come and go and all the relationships are transitory and transactional. But I would call Salman and Rani my friends. They have been people I have been closest to and have loved immensely. I realise that I don't want anything from them and nor do they. Salman was temperamental. Sajid and Farah Khan had talked to him about me being this struggling director during Khamoshi when I first went to meet him at Filmistan. It was my birthday and he made me wait for six hours. But surprisingly, when he saw me, he said, 'I know you. We have some karmic connection.' He was a good man and cared for small things, but tried to be a brat. Inside he is a fakir, who lives a simple life. Rani lives for her parents and people she loves and is very expressive. They both gave me a lot of belief in myself.

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Are you insecure?
Terribly. I am insecure about the fact that if my film does not do well, I will not be loved and there will be nobody to listen to or talk to. So I work very hard for people to appreciate my work. I saw my father and so many great stars, including RD Burman, go through that. I wait for that one call to come after the trailer that says people have liked it. Saawariya did not do well and I can never forget that Diwali sitting alone in the house. There were crackers bursting all around and there were newspapers slamming me and nobody at home, except my mother and me in our own rooms. I cried immensely. That wanting to be loved comes from my childhood and is a part of all my characters. Be it Salman in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Shah Rukh in Devdas or Hrithik in Guzaarish or Ranbir in Saawariya. It is actually me seeking love. It is a residue of the emotions in my childhood, of me being the ugliest cousin, of seeing the treatment meted out to my family for basic survival.

What makes you possessive?
I have anger and angst towards life. To get that one meal or that school fee for the month, to get that ability to get what I want and cling on to it, is my state of mind. It comes from there that I won't let anybody take away what I have created. So I am possessive only about what I create as it is impossible to do that, given the circumstances I grew up in. My cinema is very personal. I remember my grandmother taking out her last silverware and taking it to Zaveri Bazaar to sell it. I would see that she would strangely go down, avoiding talking to me. That became Helen selling the piano in Khamoshi. My father loved his drinks. I made Devdas as a tribute to the half bottle my father last drank from, saved by my mother. And then when my grandmother came back from Zaveri Bazaar, she bought me a plastic pigeon from the money she had got. And that became Magic (Hrithik's pigeon) in Guzaarish. I was very attached to her. She had a box of coins and worked till she died. Every morning she would empty the jar and count the coins. That is the scene in Guzaarish. My childhood sounds and images are what is captured in my films.

All your films are seeking love. Where does that come from?
I have seen a stormy relationship as far as my parents are concerned. But my mother was too much in love with my father and my father loved us all a lot, but never expressed it. There was a big turmoil about how to handle relationships. It led to my isolation. But the day my father was in coma, despite everything, my mother refused to go home and kept sitting besides him holding his hand and praying. And for the first time, all he kept saying was Leela, Leela, Leela… I went to him and said, 'All your life you did not bother, now why are you calling out her name?' But that is the day I decided to add my mother's name to mine and from Sanjay Bhansali I became Sanjay Leela Bhansali. I realised that love is not about what you get, but about what you give. I understood what love stories were made of. All that he could not express in his life, he was expressing in that sub-conscious state.

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Obama grills Sharif over Mumbai attack trial, LeT; asks Pak to stop terror export

WASHINGTON: Any residual doubt that Pakistan is a duplicitous terrorist state was set to rest by the time Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met US President Obama in the White House on Wednesday with leaked US intelligence reports that showed Islamabad acquiesced to Predator strikes on some terrorists targets even as the country's intelligence agencies shielded and helped others. The US president also implicitly accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism.

The disclosures relating to drone strikes from 2007 to 2011, when Gen Pervez Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari were in power, did not stop Sharif from predetermined talking points during his two-hour meeting with the US president that included pleading for a stop to the attacks. "Pakistan and the United States have a strong ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. We have agreed to further strengthen this cooperation. I also brought up the issue of drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes,' Sharif said with a straight face, with US president next to him.

Obama, who had already spoken by then, ignored the drone issue altogether, but praised Sharif for his commitment in trying to reduce "incidents of terrorism inside of Pakistan's borders, and the degree to which these activities may be exported to other countries." Implicit in the remark was that Pakistan is a terrorism-exporting country, and the drone strikes were a legitimate US response in areas where Islamabad has no control and has ceded sovereignty.

The fact that Obama grilled Sharif over Islamabad's dodgy approach to terrorism, particularly in reference to India, was confirmed by the Pakistani prime minister himself. "He (Obama) asked, why the trial of the (Mumbai) terrorist attack in India has not started yet," Sharif told reporters soon after the meeting, adding, "He (Obama) has raised the issue of (Dr Shakil) Afridi. He spoke about cross-border movement. He also talked about Jamaat-ud-Dawa."

In public though, the US president was careful not to embarrass his guest too much. "We talked about security and the concerns that both of us have about senseless violence, terrorism and extremism. And we agreed that we need to continue to find constructive ways to partner together -- ways that respect Pakistan's sovereignty, that respect the concerns of both countries," Obama said in a nuanced explanation that provided the sub-text to the drones strike imbroglio.

The Obama administration was evidently compelled to leak intelligence reports of the back channel agreement on drone strikes with Pakistan after Sharif upped the ante ahead of his meeting with the US president in an address to the US Institute of Peace on Tuesday, saying the attacks infringed on Pakistani sovereignty, it is an irritant in bilateral ties, and he would raise it with Obama. US officials had tried to walk Sharif away from the subject by suggesting that such strikes were inevitable when Islamabad ceded sovereignty to terrorists and was even complicit in their activity, but faced with Sharif's intransigence, partly driven by domestic considerations, the administration leaked a trove of documents to the Washington Post that exposed Pakistan as a dishonest, two-faced country that helped terrorists it considered state assets.

The documents, the Post said, show that not only did US officials share information with Pakistan on drone strikes, but the two sides also clashed on occasions over Pakistani military-intelligence agencies being in cahoots with terrorists. These included time-stamped videos of terrorists dispersing material and themselves soon after being tipped off by an intelligence courier that a drone attack, about which US shared information with Pakistan, was imminent.

In one case, the report says, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton cited "cell phones and written material from dead bodies that point all fingers" at a militant group based in Pakistan. "The US had intelligence proving ISI was involved with these groups," she is cited as saying. In another case, CIA deputy director Mike Morell is said to indicate that the CIA was prepared to share credit with Pakistanis for a drone strike if the agency could confirm that it had killed Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaida operative suspected of ties to plots against India. The agency would do so "so that the negative views about Pakistan in the US decision and opinion making circles are mitigated."

Overall, the disclosures suggest that the United States is cognizant of Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism, but instead of punishing the country, it will selectively leak information to walk it back from its self-destructive path. US President Obama's explicit reference to Pakistan exporting terrorism is the closest the US has come to publicly outing it as a terrorist entity.

But there is no indication though that Pakistan, dubbed Denialistan in some quarters, recognizes the gravity of the charges. In his USIP address, Sharif went so far as to assert that "Pakistan is neither source of nor epicenter of terrorism," even though his own political party, the Pakistan Muslim League, has well-chronicled links with terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The government in Punjab led by his brother is reported to make budgetary allocations to the internationally banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba aka Jamaat ul-Dawa, even as Washington appropriates US tax-payer dollars as aid to Pakistan.

None of these complications or contradictions is reflected in the 2500-word joint statement issued at the conclusion of the Obama-Sharif meeting. The statement, along with an elaborate fact-sheet, manages the optics of the visit and suggests that all is -- or will be -- hunky-dory between the two sides as the U.S tries to manage the relationship ahead of its 2014 drawdown from Afghanistan.

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Techie gang-raped by two drivers in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: Two car drivers were arrested on Tuesday for abducting and raping a 23-year-old software engineer employed with an IT major. Shockingly, the Inborbit mall abduction incident reported on Monday was not just a case of kidnapping but murky details emerged on Tuesday with the police disclosing that the two drivers abducted the software professional from Madhapur at 8.20pm on Friday in a Volvo car, drove her for nearly four hours on several stretches, including the Outer Ring Road (ORR), and raped her at an isolated area near Open Mind Birla School, Tellapur. They later dropped her near her hostel at around 2.30am. The software professional moved to the city just two months ago.

During the six-hour ordeal, the car drove through two tollgates of ORR and high security IT hub zone, while her friends approached Madhapur police. However, the victim could not be rescued and the accused were nabbed four days after the assault.

Cyberabad police commissioner CV Anand told the media: "The duo–V Satish, 30, and N Venkateswarlu, 28, both car drivers from Yellammabanda near Kukatpally–picked up the victim near Inorbit mall at Madhapur at 8.20pm and after gang raping her, dropped the victim back at her hostel after six hours. We suspect their involvement in more such offences and they have to be interrogated further."

Satish, works as driver of Manoj Agarwal, a corporate executive and resident of Malaysian Township. Venkateswarlu and Satish are friends.

On October 18, Manoj Agarwal went out of station leaving his Volvo D6-S 60 Model car (AP 09TVA 2762) with his driver Satish. After his employer left, Satish invited Venkateswarulu to his house and the duo began their 'joy ride' towards Madhapur IT Zone.

At Mind Space junction near Inorbit mall, Satish saw the software engineer waiting on the road for transport and he asked her where she wanted to go. The victim told Satish that she wanted to go to Gowli Doddi or Wipro junction. Satish then asked her to pay Rs 50 and a deal was struck for Rs 40. During this time, Venkateswarulu, who was posing like a passenger, sat in the rear seat.

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