Extortion scam at some Intl airport -

---sent in by : Jayonto Choudhuri on 10 April 2010 07:27

An Indian was detained in Bangkok for stealing a box of cigarettes in a duty-free shop in Bangkok International Airport . He had paid for chocolates and a carton of cigarettes. The cashier put a packet of cigarettes extra into his bag and he thought it was a free pack. He was arrested for shop-lifting and the Thai Police extortion price was 30,000 Baht for his release. He spent two nights in jail and paid 500 Baht for an air-conditioned cell, 200-300 baht for each visitor and 11,000 baht for his final release. The Police shared the money in front of his eyes. On top of that, he was charged in court and fined 2,000 baht by the magistrate and handcuffed and escorted to his plane. His passport was stamped "Thief". While there, his relatives requested help from the Indian Embassy and was told that they are helpless, many Asians are victimized similarly daily and letters and phone-calls to the Thai authorities are ignored. He shared a cell with a Singaporean the first night who paid 60,000 baht for his release. The second night was a Malaysian national who paid 70,000 baht.

Mind you this was not in a shanty shop in downtown Bangkok but in a duty free shop at the Bangkok Int'l Airport . BE WARNED.  

The above is 100% correct information because Mr.Rajan Khera's customer from India faced exactly the same scenario mentioned above when he was in transit at Bangkok Int'l Airport coming to Taipei .

Someone who went through the same ordeal in Dubai . He bought stuff at the Duty Free upon entering. The girl at Duty Free put a bottle of cologne in his shopping bag (he did not even see it happen). He was arrested for stealing (this is before he even picked up his lugg age). He sat at the airport jail where he was harassed for the whole day. NO FOOD, NO WATER for one day and only after he paid a fine (bribe of US 500...). That is all the cash he had in his pocket at the time. They let him go. These are scams that are happening all over the place. Please BE CAREFUL! All of this is pre-planned and the people who work at the airport know who to target.

Unbelievable but apply caution.... the duty free employees intentionally put extra items to scam the passenger and we think that our country is the most corrupted one.....

ALWAYS TAKE A RECEIPT FOR ANY FREE GIFT THAT THE DUTY FREE SHOP GIVES. PLEASE BE CAREFUL AND WATCHFUL WHEN YOU ARE BEING BILLED AND ITEMS PACKED IN INTERNATIONAL AIR PORTS (DUTY FREE SHOPS).

US Justice is Fast - Unlike India.

This is a dream judgement, especially the judge's observations. the US justice system certainly has its priorities right, giving a befitting outcome to the blood, sweat and tears of police investigators.

 

Richard Colvin Reid, aged 37, commonly known as the shoe bomber, is a self-admitted member of Al Qaeda who was convicted by a U.S. federal court of attempting to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoes. His motive was terrorism. He is currently serving a life sentence without parole in a super maximum security prison in the United States. His crime led to the new requirement of U.S. airline passengers having to remove their shoes for inspection before boarding.

 

Richard C. Reid

 

I wonder how many remember this person who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it?

 

Did you know his trial is over?

Did you know he was sentenced?

Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV or Radio?

Didn't think so. A few people do know about it !!!

Everyone should hear what the judge had to say.

 

Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court.

 

Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say. His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his 'allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah,' defiantly stating, 'I think I will not apologize for my actions,' and told the court 'I am at war with your country.'

 

Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:

January 30, 2003, United States vs. Reid.

Judge Young:   'Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you.

'On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the  United States  Attorney General.  On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutively.  (That's 80 years.)

'On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years again, to be served consecutively to the 80 years just imposed.  The Court imposes upon you for each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 that's an aggregate fine of $2 million.  The Court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines.

'The Court imposes upon you an $800 special assessment. The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it.. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further.

'This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes.  It is a fair and just sentence.  It is a righteous sentence.

'Now, let me explain this to you.  We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid.  We are Americans.  We have been through the fire before.  There is too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.  Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals.  As human beings, we reach out for justice.

'You are not an enemy combatant.  You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war.  You are a terrorist.  To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether the officers of government do it or your attorney does it, or if you think you are a soldier, you are not ----- you are a terrorist.  And we do not negotiate with terrorists.  We do not meet with terrorists.  We do not sign documents with terrorists.  We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

'So war talk is way out of line in this court.  You are a big fellow But you are not that big.  You're no warrior.  I've known warriors. You are a terrorist.  A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders.  In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and the TV crews were, and he said: 'You're no big deal.'

'You are no big deal.

'What your able counsel and what the equally able  United States  attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific.  What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?

'I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing?  And, I have an answer for you.  It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.

'It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom..  Our individual freedom.  Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.  Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom.  It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea.  It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom, so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.  It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.

'We Americans are all about freedom.  Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though.  It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to Preserve our freedoms.  Look around this courtroom  Mark it well.  The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here.  The day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.

'Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across  America  , the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.  The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

'See that flag, Mr. Reid?  That's the flag of the  United States of America  . That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag Stands for freedom.  And it always will.

'Mr. Custody Officer.  Stand him down.'

 

AND WE ARE STILL TOILING WITH KASAB WHO IS JUST ANOTHER COWARDLY RICHARD REID!

How valuables are stolen at the airport from Check-in Baggage

....sent in by Anil Agrawal to IndiaTopCop on 10 April 2010 10:00

HOW EASILY THEY OPEN AND STEAL FROM YOUR SUITCASE WHICH LOOKS PROPERLY LOCKED WHEN YOU REGAIN IT FROM THE BELT

"If you are travelling, with zippered suitcases, think again. Watch the attached video to see how loaders can steal from your locked zippered suitcases without even opening the lock. At some airports there is an option to shrink wrap the bag. I wish it was available everywhere".

After you watch this, you will not leave anything valuable in your suitcase anymore.

This is the way a bag is opened at the airport without your knowledge...
Many people would have things missing from their baggage, even when they received them at the arrival port UNOPENED and UNTOUCHED!

How did the thief (at the airport) do it? ..... Just watch the video

Don't leave your gold ingots and diamond necklaces in your zippered bags, okay?
They don't have to open lots of bags.
Only those with valuables, as told to them by the X-ray machines!

20100221: Echoes of injustice

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/53799/echoes-injustice.html

 

Sunday 21 February 2010

 

Echoes of injustice

Prasenjit Chowdhury

Jarnail and his family barely managed to survive the horror. But his account is replete with accounts of how police, save some gutsy officers like Maxwell Pereira, became complicit in acts of butchery.

I ACCUSE...THE ANTI-SIKH VIOLENCE OF 1984 Jarnail Singh Penguin, 2009, pp 165, Rs 350 It was Milan Kundera who in his book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting said that a totalitarian state wants its people to be forgetful. But forgetting as horrendous a crime as the anti-Sikh carnage is a crime and a greater crime if one urges to forget it. Jarnail Singh, who shot to fame for having flung his Reebok runner at the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram — he waxed eloquent on the CBI's clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler accused as a prime instigator — at a press conference in New Delhi and came to be riled and adored in differing circles though he missed his target, manages to hit his target on the dot this time. He pores deep into the skulduggery of covering up the truth, in apparent quest of which one government after another set up various committees and commissions — the Marwah Commission, the Mishra Commission, the Kapur Mittal Committee, the Jain Banerjee Committee, the Potti Rosha Committee, the Jain Aggarwal Committee, the Ahuja Committee, the Dhillon Committee, the Narula Committee and the Nanavati Commission — one after the other. It was an instance of a state-sponsored, state-directed and state-supported violence. There was something crudely comical about the whole exercise because the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 on the streets, roads and bylanes of Delhi still awaits redressal and justice, and rankles the collective memory(26 years down the line). In the intervening years, the ardour for justice has been blunted by the State. Surely the memory has dimmed for those who needed to move on and the call for justice has been made far less strident. Some intractable souls like Nirpreet Kaur whose father Nirmal Singh was burnt alive still grope for justice.  Recalling the charged times of the 1980s, Khuswant Singh in his book, The End of India, rightly notes that "the Bhindranwale chapter in Indian history is a perfect illustration of the disastrous results of not keeping politics separate from religion." The Congress under Indira Gandhi, the then President Zail Singh and the Akali Trinity, consisting of Harchand Singh Longwal, the party leader and 'dictator' of the agitation, Gurugharan Singh Tohra, who controlled the Sikh shrines including the Golden Temple, and Prakash Singh Badal, a former chief minister of Punjab were all responsible for the situation of volatile Punjab to worsen further and Bhindranwale to hold sway for their narrow political ends. To my mind, the cult of hatred must be traced long before Indira Gandhi authorised Operation Blue Star, by doing which, as Inder Malhotra says, "she knew she had also signed her death warrant." Jarnail and his family barely managed to survive the horror. But his account is replete with accounts of how police, save some gutsy officers like Maxwell Pereira, became complicit in acts of butchery. The army was not deployed, the then President Zail Singh turned out to be a milksop, the then Union Home Minister Narsimha Rao played dud, a role he repeated during his prime ministership during the Gujarat riots, the Doordarshan tried to inflame base passions by pointing out ad nauseam that Indira Gandhi was killed by his two Sikh bodyguards, the print media chose largely to give a sparse coverage to the killings, and the main accused — H K L Bhagat rose to become a cabinet minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government — the list of omissions and commissions is endless.   Unfortunately, there is no writer of Orhan Pamuk's standing in India — recall his gall to remind Turkey of its past riddled with Armenian genocide — to remind us of the sin of our own genocides. And Jarnail Singh is no Raj Kamal Jha either to weave a gut-churning masterpiece like his Fireproof. But he speaks straight from the heart and brings alive the horror so graphically that for three days in November 1984, some parts of Delhi became virtual Mano Majras — a small Indian frontier village in Khuswant Singh's novel Train to Pakistan — with all the killings, flames, raping and pillaging. In effect, Jarnail's tale is one of not only the murder of over 3,000 Sikhs, but also of justice for those who "exist in a twilight of bitterness and despair."