Noted women's rights activist Sonal Shukla passes away
Mumbai, (PTI): Noted women's rights activist Sonal Shukla died after cardiac arrest in Mumbai on Thursday, a colleague said.
Shukla (80) was the founder and managing trustee of the Vacha Charitable Trust and worked with adolescent girls and women over the last four decades.
Popularly known as Sonal Ben, Shukla was the co-founder of the group Forum Against Rape, now known as the Forum Against Oppression of Women.
Vacha started in 1987 as a library and women's resource centre. It was the first only women's book library with a collection of over 3,000 books. In 1991, it produced two music albums and two documentaries on women in the Independence movement.
As a college teacher, she was in charge of projects involving sanitation workers and fisherfolk, Mumbai's indigenous inhabitants.
She turned her own home into a support centre for battered women for two years.
Shukla had trained in Mahatma Gandhi's educational methods and had worked with the most deprived sections. Vacha gave space to poor girls to escape from family and community strangleholds through a programme of life skills and community work.
She taught us so many things, helped us improve our English and general knowledge and conducted so many activities for girls, said Dr Varsha Gupta, who runs a clinic in suburban Santacruz.
Gupta told PTI that she was not in touch with Shukla for a very long time.
I was eight years old when I first met her. Vacha staff taught us an hour or two before classes in the municipal school I was in began. This continued till I was 12 or 13 years old, Gupta said.
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China confirms its support to Pakistan during four-day conflict with India
Beijing (PTI): China, for the first time, has confirmed that it provided on-site technical support to Pakistan during the four-day conflict with India last year, official media reports here said.
China's state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday aired an interview with Zhang Heng, an engineer from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China's (AVIC) Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, a key developer of China’s advanced fighter aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicle design.
Zhang had provided technical support to Pakistan during the four-day war last May, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported, quoting CCTV.
Pakistan's air force operates a fleet of Chinese-made J-10CE jets, produced by an AVIC subsidiary.
"At the support base, we frequently heard the roar of fighter jets taking off and the constant wail of air-raid sirens. By late morning, in May, the temperature was already approaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). It was a real ordeal for us, both mentally and physically,” Zhang said.
What drove his team was the "desire to do an even better job with on site support” and to ensure their equipment could “truly perform at its full combat potential”, Zhang told CCTV.
“That wasn’t just a recognition of the J10CE; it was also a testament to the deep bond we formed through working side by side, day in and day out,” he said.
