Father of Bollywood stabbing suspect plans to fight ‘false arrest’

The father of a suspected Bangladeshi illegal migrant accused of stabbing Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has claimed his son is being framed in a false case because he is an easy target.

Mohammad Shariful Islam Shehzad was arrested by the Mumbai police on Sunday for attempted burglary and stabbing of Mr Khan.

The actor, 54, underwent surgery after sustaining six stab wounds during an early morning break-in at his home in an upscale Mumbai neighbourhood on 16 January. He has since been released from hospital.

Mr Shehzad’s father, Mohammad Rohul Amin, who lives in Jhalokhathi in southern Bangladesh, told The Times of India newspaper that he will seek to raise the false arrest of his son as a “diplomatic issue” with India.

Relations between Dhaka and Delhi have soured lately over the extradition of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been living in India since her government was toppled by a street agitation last August.

“We may be poor but we are not criminals,” Mr Amin told the newspaper.

Mr Shehzad rode a bike taxi to earn a living in Bangladesh, his father said.

“They have arrested my son as a suspect but he is not the one whose photographs the police had released after the incident,” he said. “They have picked him up as he has some similarities to the suspect.”

Mr Amin, a village-level functionary for the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said his son was an easy target because he had entered India illegally, like hundreds of his fellow countrymen looking for work.

He son had fled to find “better earning and living prospects” after the situation in their village turned volatile last year following the return of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party to power.

“Since my son was an active supporter of Khaleda Zia,” Mr Amin said, referring to the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, “he faced immense backlash and decided to leave Bangladesh for better earning and living prospects.”

Mr Shehzad contacted an “agent” who helped him cross the border illegally and find work, first in West Bengal and then Mumbai, his father said.

Mr Amin said his son wasn’t the man seen in surveillance footage from Mr Khan’s house released by police last week. For one, he said, Mr Shehzad always wore his hair short, unlike the man in the footage with long hair.

Mr Amin’s statement, however, contradicts Mr Shehzad’s lawyer Sandeep Shekhane’s claim that his client is not a Bangladeshi.

“The police have no proof that he is a Bangladeshi,” the lawyer said.

“They said he came here six months ago. It’s a wrong statement. He has been living here for more than seven years.”

A Mumbai court on Friday extended Mr Shahzad’s police custody by five days until 29 January.

Mr Shekhane protested the decision saying there is no need to keep Mr Shehzad in custody except the “matter has been hyped” in the media.

The attack on Mr Khan made headlines beyond India and raised questions about safety in Mumbai, one of the country’s most populated cities and its financial capital.

Mr Khan is the son of the late Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, a former Indian cricket captain, and Sharmila Tagore, an actress. He belongs to an erstwhile royal family and holds the ceremonial title of the 10th Nawab of Pataudi.

Bank of Japan hikes interest rates to highest level in 17 years

The Bank of Japan has raised short-term interest rates by a quarter point, the highest in 17 years, signalling efforts to normalise monetary policy in response to persistent inflation and increasing wages.

The central bank raised the policy rate to “around 0.5 per cent” by a vote of 8-1, concluding a two-day policy meeting on Friday. Toyoaki Nakamura was the only board member to dissent against the decision.

The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, had signalled the hike to avoid a market shock as the broad direction of new US president Donald Trump’s policies became clearer. “There’s no change to our view of raising our policy rate and adjusting the degree of monetary support if the economy and prices move in line with our forecasts,” the governor said.

This was the highest hike in borrowing rates in Japan since the 2008 financial crisis.

The central bank had last raised the rates in July 2024, surprising analysts, sparking a period of intense volatility for the yen and prompting a one-day “flash crash” in Japanese equities which quickly rebounded.

The latest hike came as official economic data showed prices of goods and services, excluding certain volatile items like food and energy, increased by 3 per cent in December over the previous year.

The data indicated that consumer inflation could reach 2.7 per cent for the year ending March 2025, up from the October forecast of 2.5 per cent.

The key factors in the first rate hike since July appeared to be the release of these revised forecasts and clarity in initial reactions to Mr Trump’s return to the White House.

Mr Trump had threatened to impose punitive tariffs on all imports which could have impacted all countries that export to the US, such as Japan.

The central bank said it would continue to raise interest rates if economic growth and inflation stayed in line with its projections.

“The likelihood of achieving the bank’s outlook has been rising” with many companies saying they would continue to raise wages steadily in this year’s annual wage negotiations, the bank said in a statement announcing the decision.

“Underlying inflation is heightening towards the Bank of Japan’s 2% target,” it said, adding that financial markets remained stable as a whole.

Following the announcement, the yen rose around 0.5 per cent to 155.32 per dollar. The two-year Japanese government bond yield saw the highest rise since 2009, increasing to 0.705 per cent.

Chinese man sentenced to death for attack near Japanese school

A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced a 52-year-old to death for a knife attack that injured a Japanese mother and her young child and killed a bus attendant near Shanghai last June.

The attack, which took place on 24 June 2024 at a bus stop near the Japanese School of Suzhou in Jiangsu province, had caused concern about the safety of Japanese nationals in the country.

Zhou Jiasheng, apparently struggling with heavy debt and despair, targeted the Japanese mother and her son as they waited for the school bus, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

The mother and son sustained minor injuries but a female bus attendant named Hu Youping, 54, who stepped in to protect them was fatally stabbed. She succumbed to her wounds a few days later, becoming a symbol of selfless bravery.

Zhou told the court he carried out the attack because he “no longer wanted to live”.

The court handed him the death sentence.

Mr Hayashi noted that the ruling made no reference to the Japanese nationality of the mother and son injured in the attack. “We believe the crime that killed and injured innocent people, including a child, was absolutely unforgivable,” Mr Hayashi said.

Officials from the Japanese consulate in Shanghai were present for the sentencing.

The case was one of two knife attacks targeting Japanese nationals in China last year. In September, a 10-year-old Japanese student was fatally stabbed near his school in Shenzhen. The trial of the alleged perpetrator in that case only just began.

The incidents heightened fears of growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Following the Suzhou attack, Japanese officials had urged Beijing to ensure the safety of its citizens.

The Chinese government described the incidents as isolated, while technology companies, including Tencent and NetEase, vowed to curb online hate speech to prevent further violence.

The incident in Suzhou also drew attention to a wider problem of the rise in violent attacks across China.

In May last year, a stabbing attack at a hospital in southwestern China left two people dead and 21 injured.

In June, an attack in Jilin targeted four US university instructors and a Chinese bystander.

Will Trump be able to retrieve US military equipment from the Taliban?

On the eve of his presidential inauguration, Donald Trump pledged at a public rally in Washington to strengthen the US military by getting back billions of dollars worth of equipment left behind in Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul in 2021.

Although it was Trump’s first administration that signed the deal with the Taliban to withdraw Nato forces, the Republican has heavily criticised the way his successor Joe Biden handled the pullout and said the Democrat gave “our military equipment, a big chunk of it, to the enemy”.

“If we’re going to pay billions of dollars a year, tell them we’re not going to give them the money unless they give back our military equipment,” Trump said, referring to humanitarian aid. “So, we will give them a couple of bucks; we want the military equipment back.”

According to a report by the US Department of Defence in 2022, the US left behind $7bn worth of military equipment in Afghanistan as they withdrew from the country – much of it in the hands of the Nato-backed Afghan army – which was quickly seized by Taliban fighters as they swept the country.

The US forces tried to dismantle or destroy as much of their machinery as they could – from aircraft to computer systems – in the last weeks of their chaotic pull-out after 20 years of war. But huge amounts still fell to the Taliban in August 2021 when the US-trained military crumbled and surrendered to the Islamist militants.

The equipment includes aircraft, air-to-ground munitions, military vehicles, battle tanks, humvees, US track, weapons, bulletproof vests, camouflage uniforms, communications equipment and other materials which have not only deteriorated over the last nearly four years but also been dismantled by Taliban fighters.

However, experts say retrieving the US military equipment left behind in Afghanistan is far easier said than done.

Jason Campbell, a senior policy researcher at the RAND think tank in Washington, says the “billions of money” that Trump is referring to are the cash shipments sent by the US, as the single largest donor to the humanitarian causes in Afghanistan.

These cash shipments are handled very carefully through the UN and other non-governmental organisations to ensure a consistent financial drip to keep millions of Afghans alive through the aid, as the Taliban is prevented from international banking.

“This is all done to prevent what, ostensibly, Trump is at the very least insinuating that the US is sending $40m to the coffers of the Taliban every month and now they can do with it whatever they please,” Campbell tells The Independent.

Even if Trump is advised to negotiate with the Taliban to bring back American military equipment, the process will be far more arduous than it appears.

“To return it, just logistically, he will need to send a team to analyse and verify the equipment that is being discussed. His team will have to secure either some degree of overflight landing and agreements. This will always remain a critical issue, as it has been during the peak of the US involvement in Afghanistan – how you get equipment in and out of Afghanistan,” says Randall, former country director for Afghanistan in the office of the secretary of defence for policy.

In 2015, he recounts, the US found it more cost-effective to destroy its armoured Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAPV) as the Obama administration tried to reduce its footprint inside Afghanistan.

“It was more economical to quite literally destroy an MRAP than it would be to fly it back to the US, given that it doesn’t have any other immediate cause or immediate use for some of these outside of an active war zone,” he says.

On Tuesday, the Taliban clapped back at Trump and outright refused the suggestion it could return any of the leftover US military equipment.

An unnamed official said that instead of demanding the return of these weapons, Trump’s administration should further arm the Taliban with more advanced weapons to fight the mushrooming terror threats inside Afghanistan, including the Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) group.

The Trump administration is yet to disclose its plans for dealing with the Taliban regime more broadly, including on topics of its international recognition, funding through the UN and other aid organisations, and the brutal rights situation in the country – particularly for women and girls.

Officials who worked in Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani administration have been quick to dismiss Trump’s remarks.

“The new US president has been making these kinds of comments, not just about the Taliban, but about literally everything under the sun. It comes from a sense of the world is cheating America and that it’s playing America for supper,” says Ahmad Shuja Jamal, the former Afghan national security council official in the Republican government.

This is also a time for Trump to claim to his followers and voters that he will undo the damage by the Biden administration, Shuja says.

“It underpins a desire in Trump to fix America’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, because we are in this state where the Taliban have laid their hands on American military hardware,” he says.

The former Afghan civil servant warned the US president that talks with the Taliban will be trickier than he realises – since his 2020 withdrawal deal, its backing has only solidified among an axis of countries including China, Russia and even Iran.

Going to Kabul asking for American assets to be returned might also be interpreted as a sign of weakness, Shuja says, adding: “The Taliban sense weakness, and do not respect it.”

Taliban leaders could face ICC arrest warrant for persecuting women

The Taliban’s leaders could face arrest for enacting repressive policies against girls and women in Afghanistan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said on Thursday.

Karim Khan said he had asked the ICC to approve arrest warrants for the group’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Supreme Court head Abdul Hakim Haqqani who have been accused of crimes against humanity for gender-based persecution.

If issued, the warrants would be the first international acknowledgment of the Taliban’s persecution of Afghan women.

“These applications recognise that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban,” Mr Khan said. The ICC would be considering attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as a crime against humanity for the first time in its history.

“My office has concluded that these two Afghan nationals are criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming to their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women,” Mr Khan said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the Taliban leaders.

Such persecution by the Taliban leaders was “committed from at least 15 August 2021 until the present day across the territory of Afghanistan”.

The Taliban have barred girls and women from school beyond sixth grade, colleges, universities as well as most public spaces. In December, an edict issued by Akhundzada banned buildings from having windows and any exterior places from where a woman could be seen from the outside.

The Islamist group, which seized power in Afghanistan over three years ago after the collapse of the Nato-backed government, has invoked its interpretation of the Islamic law to impose harsh diktats against nearly 20 million Afghan women.

Mr Khan said his office would not allow the Sharia law to be weaponised for violations of human rights. “My office further submits that the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia should not and may not be used to justify the deprivation of fundamental human rights or the related commission of Rome Statute crimes,” he said.

The Taliban have not reacted to Mr Khan’s statement. The Independent has contacted Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid for a comment.

Human rights groups welcomed the ICC prosecutor’s move against the Taliban leadership.

“Their systematic violations of women and girls’ rights, including education bans, and the suppression of those speaking up for women’s rights, have accelerated with complete impunity. With no justice in sight in Afghanistan, the warrant requests offer an essential pathway to a measure of accountability,” said Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch.

While there is no deadline for the ICC to rule on the prosecutor’s request for a warrant, the decision typically takes around four months. If issued, the Taliban leaders named in the warrant could be arrested if they step foot in an ICC member nation.

It took a pre-trial ICC chamber three weeks to issue an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2023 but six months in the case of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year.

Britain told to give India its artefacts in lieu of £52trn reparations

A historian has suggested Britain return looted artefacts to its former colonies instead of vast sums in reparations, after an Oxfam report suggested India was owed over £52 trillion.

The report suggested that Western nations commit to providing former colonies with at least £4 trillion annually in reparations and “climate debt” – a sum reflecting the costs developed economies owe poorer nations for climate change.

The report, titled Takers not Makers: The Unjust Poverty and Unearned Wealth of Colonialism, said: “Oxfam calculates that between 1765 and 1900, the richest 10 per cent in the UK extracted wealth from India alone worth US$33.8 trillion (£27.38 trillion) in today’s money.”

It added that “this would be enough to carpet the surface area of London in £50 notes almost four times over”.

The figure of $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) was not calculated by the report’s authors but was attributed to two Delhi-based Indian economists, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik.

“Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised,” the report read. “Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most.”

Rana Safvi, a leading Indian historian and author, questioned the practicality and implications of such large sums in monetary reparations. She told The Independent that there were concerns about the complexity of addressing historical wrongs and the risk of opening a Pandora’s box, considering the vast scale of past injustices worldwide.

“What they can actually return are the artefacts, the jewellery, the documents, the manuscripts, the paintings, all that has been looted from India should definitely be sent back,” she said. “Not just India, you know – all these museums all over the Western world are populated by things from Africa and Asia only.

“While the return of money may be chasing a fool’s dream, repatriating artefacts and treasures illegally taken from India is necessary and achievable.”

The Oxfam report drew sharp criticism from some other academics. Prof Lawrence Goldman, of St Peter’s College, Oxford, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph: “Oxfam depends on public trust in the accuracy of information it provides. Producing bogus history warped by ideology hardly encourages anyone to dig deep in their pockets and send them cash.”

He added: “There’s a reverse argument in which Indians should pay Britain for saving them from becoming part of the French overseas empire in the 18th century or being swallowed by Tsarist Russia in the 19th century, or being overrun by the Japanese in the 20th century, all of which were real threats.

“But arguments of this type, in which history becomes ammunition for a political assault, are worthless.”

An Oxfam spokesperson told The Independent: “Putting an exact figure on the cost of colonialism to countries like India will always be a source of debate. We believe the figure we quoted in the report is a reasonable one, but other estimates can be made.

“However, very few would dispute that Britain derived a significant financial benefit from its empire and its colonisation of India in particular, and that these benefits accrued mainly to the richest people in the UK at the time.”

The report said that in 2024 billionaire wealth grew three times faster than in 2023, with five trillionaires projected within a decade. Meanwhile, crises of economy, climate, and conflict mean the “number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990”.

Most billionaire wealth – 60 per cent – stems from inheritance, corruption, or monopoly power, Oxfam said. It said that the world’s inequality has roots in colonialism, which enriched the wealthy while exploiting marginalised groups, including women and racialised communities.

“This exploitation of people worldwide drove an explosion of wealth for rich people in rich countries and contributed to deep inequality in the Global South, often favouring an elite few at the expense of the many.”

The “Takers not Makers” report said this legacy persists, as wealth continued to flow from the Global South to the Global North at a rate of $30m (£24.5m) per hour. It noted that to address this imbalance, reparations for colonial exploitation and systemic reforms targeting the wealthiest are necessary to achieve equality and end poverty.

“Reparations to the victims must be made to ensure restitution, provide satisfaction, compensate for damages incurred, ensure rehabilitation and prevent future abuses,” it said.

An Oxfam spokesperson added: “Along with many other scholars and activists, we believe it is reasonable to ask the richest countries to pay reparations for the harm done by colonialism. It’s not about asking individuals who are already struggling to pay for the wrongs of the past, reparations should be financed by those who continue to profit from these systems, such as the wealthiest individuals and corporations, not ordinary people.”

“We are not saying that colonialism is the sole driver of inequality; other causes include monopoly power and cronyism and corruption. But colonialism, both historically and in the modern day is a crucial factor that must be addressed to create a more equitable future for all,” they said.

Oxfam International executive director, Amitabh Behar, said: “The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable. The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated – by three times – but so too has their power.”

He added: “The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, running the world’s largest economy. We present this report as a stark wake up-call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the enormous wealth of a tiny few.”

Oxfam also suggested that governments cap top incomes, tax the rich, abolish tax havens, and reverse wealth flows from the Global South. “Inheritance needs to be taxed to dismantle the new aristocracy,” it said.

“Former colonial powers must also confront the lasting harm caused by their colonial rule, offer formal apologies, and provide reparations to affected communities,” the statement said.

Chinese mine worker killed in attack claimed by Isis in Afghanistan

China has called on Afghanistan to thoroughly investigate an attack that killed one of its nationals in northern Takhar province.

A Chinese citizen, surnamed Li, who was associated with a mining company, was killed by “unknown people” on Tuesday evening, Taliban police spokesman Mohammed Akbar said.

He was travelling to the Dasht-e-Qala district with a translator, who was unharmed in the attack.

The man was travelling without informing security officials, who typically accompany Chinese nationals on trips in the country, despite being told to inform “when crossing districts or provinces”, said Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul Mateen Qani.

China’s foreign ministry on Thursday said it was “deeply shocked” by the attack, calling on Afghan authorities to thoroughly investigate the incident and severely punish the perpetrators.

“We urge the Afghan interim government to take resolute and effective measures to ensure the security of Chinese civil institutions and projects in Afghanistan,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular press briefing.

Isis claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the intelligence group SITE.

Isis said it targeted a vehicle carrying the Chinese citizen, which led to his death and damage to his vehicle. The outfit said its “soldiers” used a machine gun to target the Chinese man.

The fatal attack on the Chinese national in Afghanistan marked the first such incident since December 2022 when a local offshoot of Isis, known as Isis-K, stormed a Kabul hotel popular with Chinese investors.

At least three Afghans were killed and 18, including five Chinese nationals, were injured in the attack. Following the attacks, Beijing urged its citizens to leave Afghanistan.

The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, following the withdrawal of US and Western allied forces after nearly two decades of military presence in the country.

Although Afghanistan’s de facto rulers claim to have restored peace and stability since taking control, the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) has carried out numerous high-profile attacks. These attacks have targeted Taliban officials, prominent religious figures, and members of the minority Shiite community in Afghanistan.

While no country has officially recognised a Taliban-led government China became the first country to appoint an ambassador to Afghanistan under the Taliban and has said it wants to boost trade and investment ties.

China holds particular significance for the Taliban, as it is courting foreign investment and regional partnerships to counter their ongoing international isolation, driven largely by their restrictions on women and girls.

Three people stabbed in random attack near Japan ski resort

A man died and two were injured in a stabbing attack at a train station in Nagano, a popular ski resort in central Japan, police said.

The incident, suspected to be a random attack with no one targeted in particular, occurred near JR Nagano Station at around 8pm local time on Wednesday.

The suspect, an unnamed middle-aged man, remained at large, the Kyodo News agency reported.

He used a blade-like object to attack three people waiting for a bus near the station, police said. One of them, Hiroyuki Maruyama, a 49-year-old man, was pronounced dead in a hospital. A 37-year-old man was wounded but stayed conscious, while a 46-year-old woman suffered a head injury from falling during the attack.

Maruyama was stabbed on the left side of the abdomen and went into cardiac arrest.

He was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after 10pm.

One of the survivors told investigators the suspect was a man of slim build in his 40s who wore pants, a jacket and a white scarf on his head.

Police said they were actively searching for the suspect in connection with charges of murder and attempted murder. A dedicated hotline had been established at the Nagano Central Police Station to provide information about the suspect’s whereabouts.

A witness said the suspect “appeared to be searching for his next target” as he moved around the train station after the attack, the Japan Times reported.

“I was with my child, and for a moment, the suspect pointed the knife in our direction. I was completely focused on protecting my family,” he said.

Stabbing attacks are more common than other violent crimes in Japan due to strict gun control laws. The country has witnessed a number of cases involving random knife attacks and arson on subways in recent years.

In response, a company said last year it was introducing blade-resistant umbrellas on Japanese trains to enhance passenger safety.

The stab-proof umbrellas are about 20cm longer than standard umbrellas, with reinforced canopies and thicker handles for better defence.