A day after Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav made shocking comments on rape, a 13-year-old Dalit girl was killed after being allegedly sexually assaulted, with the attackers brutally stabbing her eyes and private parts while she had gone out of her house in Hardoi, police said on Thursday.

The girl had stepped out of her house to buy medicine for her father when the incident happened, police said.

Her body with stab marks on her eyes and private parts was found yesterday from a field under Sursa police station area, they said.

The body has been sent for post-mortem examination, police added.

The SP supremo had yesterday kicked a fresh controversy with his comments on rape, saying while one man commits rape, four are named to “settle scores” and that rape by four persons was not “practical”.

This was not the first time that the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister has made shocking comments on rape.

While opposing capital punishment for rape last year, he had sparked outrage by saying “ladke, ladke hain…Galti ho jati hai (boys will be boys…They commit mistakes).”

Speaking on the law and order situation in the state at a function here, Yadav had said considering UP’s population, the crime rate was “very low”.

Amitabh Thakur, the suspended Uttar Pradesh-cadre IPS officer, on Thursday said that fellow IPS Sanjiv Bhatt’s sacking by the Gujarat government was tantamount to him receiving a gallantry award.

“(Former) IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s dismissal is the supreme award of gallantry for whatever he (Bhatt) thought (to be) true,” Thakur and his social activist wife, Nutan, said in a statement.

“Bhatt’s adherence to his conscience even at the cost of the prices (sic) he had to pay… Makes him feel proud of being an IPS officer, at a time when he finds so many IPS officers kneeling to the ground for petty gains,” they said.

Bhatt was sacked on the grounds of ‘unauthorised absence from service’. Bhatt has claimed that the action had followed “a sham inquiry” into “completely fabricated charges”.

Bhatt had taken on Narendra Modi, when the latter was the Gujarat Chief Minister, over the handling of the 2002 riots, while Thakur has accused Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, of trying to intimidate him.

Two days back, Thakur had defended Bhatt following Gujarat government’s notice to the latter over a video purportedly showing him with another woman and seeking explanation for having extra-marital relationships. Bhatt denied that the man in the video was him.

Thakur had said in a letter to the state home secretary that this action was an invasion of privacy.

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) appeal to argue the Uphaar cinema fire tragedy case further and directed it to file a review petition.

“It will not be proper. We have already passed the order,” a three-judge bench headed by Justice AR Dave said when senior advocate Harish Salve, who has been representing CBI in this case, sought 15 more minutes to argue some of the points in the matter.

“I have been doing this case pro-bono since 2000. Please grant us 15 minutes time from 3.45 to 4 PM today…If the court is not convinced, then throw us out,” Salve said.

The bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel, did not allow the plea and asked the probe agency to file a review petition with all the points which have been left out.

The moves comes a day after the apex court denied a jail term for the Ansal brothers – Sushil and Gopal – but directed them to pay a fine of Rs 30 crore each within a three months to the Delhi government.

The SC ruling had utterly disappointed the victims of the Uphaar fire tragedy and they have now decided to file a review petition along with the CBI in connection with the case. Neelam Krishnamoorthy, mother of Uphaar victims and one of the petitioners in the case said, “f we don’t challenge this order then it will set a very wrong precedent.”

Overturning the pleas of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the victims’ association, a three-judge bench of justices AR Dave, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel on Wednesday asked Sushil and Gopal Ansal to pay the total fine of Rs 60 crore in three months and deposit it with the Delhi government, which in turn will spend the money on welfare schemes.

While Sushil had spent over five months in prison, Gopal was in jail for over four months immediately after the tragedy.

The bench rejected the submissions of senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for CBI, that the convicts be sent to jail to serve the remaining jail term. “My instruction from CBI is to press for their custody,” Salve said, when the court sought his views. Senior advocate KTS Tulsi, who represented the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT), also said that the convicts not only be jailed, but rather their punishment should be enhanced.

Fifty-nine people, trapped in the balcony of the theatre in South Delhi, had died of asphyxia following the fire and over 100 were injured in the subsequent stampede on 13 June 1997 during the screening of Bollywood film “Border”.

Pakistan on Thursday canceled the Commonwealth parliamentary conference over issue of invitation to J&K assembly speaker.

On August 11, refusing to budge from its stand, Pakistan had said that come what may it would not invite the Speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Islamabad.

Pakistan had also said that if India wanted to boycott the meeting it was “their choice”.

“If India does not attend the conference, because of the Kashmir issue, it is their choice. We cannot budge from our stand,” National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq had said then.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Special Adviser on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz had said Kashmir was a disputed territory and Pakistan does not recognise its Assembly.

“Pakistan does not recognise and accept the said Assembly as legitimate one,” Aziz had said.

In a move which had miffed India, Pakistan had invited the Speakers of the Indian Parliament and the state assemblies but has refused to invite J&K Assembly Speaker Kavinder Gupta.

Pakistan had not sent an invitation to the J-K Assembly Speaker for the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting to be held from September 30 to October 8 in Islamabad while invitations have been sent to all the other Speakers in India.