Sri Lanka emergency law bans face covering after attacks
Colombo, Apr 28: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday announced a ban on face covering, a week after militants carried out coordinated suicide bombings that killed 253 people.
Sirisena said he was using emergency powers to ban any form of face covering in public. The restriction will take effect from Monday, his office said in a statement.
"The ban is to ensure national security... No one should obscure their faces to make identification difficult," the statement said.
It came days after local Islamic clerics urged Muslim women not to cover their faces amid fears of a backlash after the bombings carried out by jihadists affiliated to the Islamic State group.
Muslims in the majority Buddhist nation account for about 10 per cent of its 21 million population.
Most Sri Lankan Muslims practise a liberal form of the religion and only a small number of women wear the niqab.
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Ghatkopar hoarding collapse accused brought to Mumbai, to be produced in court
Mumbai (PTI): Bhavesh Bhinde, an advertising firm’s director, whose company had put up the giant hoarding that collapsed in Mumbai killing 16 people, was brought to the city early on Friday, a police official said.
Bhinde, director of M/s Ego Media Pvt. Ltd., the advertising agency which recently installed the billboard that crashed in suburban Ghatkopar on Monday evening, was apprehended from Udaipur in Rajasthan on Thursday, he said.
Bhinde was then taken to Ahmedabad and from there he was brought to Mumbai by flight, the official said.
The police team along with Bhinde arrived at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport around 5 am and he was taken to a crime branch office, he said.
He will be produced before the court later in the day, he said.
After trailing Bhinde for three days, the city police nabbed him on Thursday from Udaipur, he said.
The 120 feet x 120 feet hoarding collapsed onto a nearby petrol pump in the Chhedanagar area in Ghatkopar during gusty winds and heavy unseasonal rains, killing 16 people and injuring 75 others.
After the tragedy, a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under the IPC was registered at the Pant Nagar Police Station against Bhinde, all directors of the advertising agency Ego Media, its officials and employees, officials had said earlier.
