12-year-old girl to appear in Class 10 Bengal board exam
Kolkata, Oct 27: The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) has allowed a 12-year-old girl -- who never enrolled in school, and instead, studied at home -- to sit for the Madhyamik Examination 2019 as an external candidate.
WBBSE president Kalyanmoy Ganguly said Saifa Khatun qualified the eligibility test conducted by the WBBSE for external candidates in August, and her case was "unprecedented" in the history of Madhyamik Examination (Class 10 board examination) in the past two decades.
The minimum age to appear in the examination is 14, Ganguly said.
Khatun, who hails from Howrah district, secured 52 per cent marks in the eligibility test, results of which were announced on October 11.
Another board official said the girl's father Mohammed Ainul had moved the WBBSE to allow her to sit for the Madhyamik Examination 2019.
The last such instance of an external candidate appearing in the board examination before the minimum age was in the early 90s, the official said.
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Tahawwur Rana being brought to India in special flight: Sources
New Delhi, Apr 9 (PTI): Mumbai terror attack accused Tahawwur Rana is likely to be brought to India in a special flight on Thursday after all hurdles for his extradition were removed by the US, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Rana, 64, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, was lodged in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Los Angeles.
A multi-agency team has gone to the US and all paperwork and legal issues are being completed with US authorities to bring him to India, they said.
Rana is being brought to India after his last-ditch attempt to evade extradition failed as the US Supreme Court justices rejected his application.
"You are all aware that the US Supreme Court has rejected his plea. As far as extradition of Rana is concerned, at this point, I do not have an update," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
"We will provide you an update at an appropriate time," he said while replying to a question during his weekly media briefing.
Rana is known to be associated with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks.
On November 26, 2008, a group of 10 Pakistani terrorists went into a rampage, carrying out a coordinated attack on a railway station, two luxury hotels and a Jewish centre, after they sneaked into India's financial capital using the sea route in the Arabian Sea.
As many as 166 people were killed in the nearly 60-hour assault that sent shockwaves across the country and even brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
In November 2012, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman among the Pakistani group, was hanged to death in Yerawada Jail in Pune.
At a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House in February, President Donald Trump announced that his administration has approved the extradition of a "very evil" man "to face justice" in India.
In his emergency application, Rana had sought a "stay of his extradition and surrender to India pending litigation (including exhaustion of all appeals) on the merits of his February 13 petition."
In that petition, Rana argued that his extradition to India violates United States law and the United Nations Convention Against Torture "because there are substantial grounds for believing that, if extradited to India, the petitioner will be in danger of being subjected to torture."
