Prosecutors completed Air-India bombing case
Prosecutors in Vancouver, Canada, have completed their case against two Sikh men charged with the 1985 Air-India bombings that killed 331 people, Reuters reported.

Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri are charged with two bombings, including the destruction of Air-India Flight 182 that was history’s deadliest bombing of a civilian airliner. Prosecutors had originally thought they would need to call more than 1,000 witnesses against the accused Sikh bombers. The list was cut to 600 when the trial formally began, but less than 90 were actually called to testify. Malik and Bagri have independent legal teams, and neither has said how long they expect their defense presentations to take or whether the accused men will testify.



Lawsuit over Muslim head scarf settled in Oklahoma
The Muskogee School District in Oklahoma will pay an 11-year-old Muslim girl, Nashala Hearn, an undisclosed sum and amend its dress code to settle a lawsuit brought in her behalf after she was twice suspended from classes for wearing a head scarf, The New York Times reported. The settlement was announced by the Justice Department, which agreed that the girl’s religious liberties had been abridged by the school’s dress policy, the report said, adding that the settlement provides that the school permit attire that is worn for religious reasons.

“This settlement reaffirms the principle that public schools cannot require students to check their faith at the school house door,” sad R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. “The Department of Justice will not tolerate discrimination against Muslims or any other religious group. As the President and the Attorney General have made clear repeatedly, such intolerance is un-American, and is morally despicable.”



Police cleared New York cabdriver in alleged rape case
A New York cabdriver who was alleged to have raped a passenger after following her to her Manhattan home was cleared by the police on May 18. “Police have located the cab driver in the incident. He has been interviewed and the police department and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Bureau have declined to prosecute at this time. The investigation is continuing,” a release said.

Quoting the police, The New York Times reported the incident took place early on May 16. A 28-year-old woman who hailed a yellow cab after a night out on the Upper West Side was raped by the driver after he followed her into her Lower Manhattan apartment, it said.

A video surveillance camera captured an image of the assailant, described by the police as an Indian man in his 30’s, 5-foot-10 to 5-foot-11 and about 170 pounds, following the woman into her building about 2:40 a.m., a police official was quoted as saying.

It said after the woman got out of the taxi, she apparently did not notice the driver following her into her building in the financial district, the official said. The woman went to bed and awoke to find the driver on top of her, raping her, the police said. There was no sign of forced entry into the building or the woman’s apartment, the police said. Waitresses in the bar where the woman left her friends said only two groups of patrons were there early Sunday. Both were elegantly dressed, the waitresses said, and watched the basketball playoff game, the newspaper said.

(Compiled from news dispatches by Shaji Iype)