Saudi Arabia, the country having very rigid Sharia law, is yet to differentiate between consensual sex and rape. Raped women should not expect the authorities to pay heed to their voice instead they should ready to face 100 lashes for involving in illicit sex.

Same is the case of Filipino women, dubbed as "Camille" in media who visited the country for livelihood but was raped by her co-worker. She did not move to the authorities being known to the strict Sharia law and thus compelled to let the offender roam free.

On his first visit to India, the UK’s number one best-selling crime writer, Ian Rankin, shared privileged information about his protagonist, inspector John Rebus, central to his multi-award winning detective fiction series.

The Scottish writer introduced the hardy, cynical and antisocial Edinburgh cop in the book Knots & Crosses in 1987 and concluded the series with Rebus retiring in Exit Music in 2007.

In Mumbai on a tour organised by the British Council, Rankin revealed that Rebus could soon make a comeback.

“Rebus is merely retired not dead. He is working with the police department as a civilian. He lives in a compartment in my head, waiting patiently to be brought back to life,” said Rankin.

A report in the Washington Post has alleged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke the law in collecting more than 2,000 telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or by persuading phone companies to provide them, in the US.

The FBI officials tried to justify their actions by issuing approvals afterwards.

"This practice ceased in 2006 and never involved obtaining the content of telephone conversations. Additionally, steps have been taken to ensure similar situations do not occur in the future," said FBI spokesman Michael Kortan.

Bharti Dolariya, the alleged subordinate of Chetan Mehta, was questioned by Navrangpura police in connection with a fraud involving job promises made by Mehta to over 300 people, the dream which never materialized. The police, however, found a woman; working at the Mehta owned Cross World Organization, innocent and did not arrest her.

KC Rathod, the police inspector, Navrangpura police station, informed that the woman, who was a telephone operator, has nothing to do with the scam as suggested by preliminary examinations. Naroda resident Dolariya, the police inspector said, was assigned a work to transfer telephone lines to Mehta.

Ahmedabad serial blasts case is expected to see hearing on Jan 19 as the Designated Sessions Court has framed charges against the 62 accused on Monday.

Justice Bela Trivedi framed the charge sheet in the high security Sabarmati Central Jail for the July 26, 2008 blats which killed 57 people and injured 150. The blasts were carried out in close proximity to one another starting in Maninagar which is the constituency of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The blats occurred in the hospitals as the injured from other blats in the city were brought in. 24 died in the blasts at the Government Civil Hospital including doctors, nursing staff and those injured in blasts elsewhere.

The niece of British Defense Minister Quentin Davies, Jessica Davies faced the murder trial in France on Monday accused of killing her lover during a frenzied sex game. The accused is alleged believed to have slashed the throat of a man she grabbed from a pub.

The accused, Jessica Davies, 30, is a former model, and has been accused of killing Olivier Mugnier, 24, while under full influence of alcohol and anti-depressant drugs.

Melbourne, January 11 : A crime lord in South Africa suffered embarrassment when his fake penis fell after he got busted during a drug raid.

Fat Murphy, booked for possession of stolen property, later revealed in the court that he was hermaphrodite who holds both male and female identity documents.

Police said that they were searching the crime lord, feared on the streets of Cape Town''s notorious Cape Flats suburb, when a strap-on dildo fell off his body, reports Sunday Times.

"I had a vagina that could not be penetrated. But I also had male organs, testes. But I always knew I was really a man and that was what I wanted to be," the Courier Mail quoted Murphy as telling the court.

Mumbai, Jan 4 : At least eighteen students of Seth G S Medical College in central Mumbai here have been arrested by the police on charges of ragging.

The Bhoiwada Police station in the city has filed a First Information Report (FIR) against the students, who were interning with King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital.

"Enquiry is going on and once the investigation is over, we will be able to tell you the details. The students have been handed over to us," said Vikram B Patil, senior police inspector.

London, Jan. 2 : Danish Police have confirmed shooting and injuring an al Qaeda-linked man armed with an axe who broke into the home of a controversial cartoonist Kurt Westergaard to kill him.

According to Sky News, police said the 28-year-old Somali man was trying to kill Westergaard, who triggered worldwide protests after drawing cartoons of Islam''s Prophet Mohammed.

London, Jan 2 : Police have arrested a man who is allegedly involved in the theft of an artwork by Impressionist artist Edgar Degas.

According to a judicial official, "an employee of the museum, a night watchman" was taken into custody from Marseilles.

A security guard noticed that the artwork titled Les Choristes (The Chorus) - on loan from the Musee d''Orsay in Paris - was missing from the city''s Cantini Museum on December 31.

Jalandhar, Jan 2 : The Counter Intelligence Branch of Punjab Police seized around 18 kilograms of methamphetamine in Jalandhar here on Friday.

Sources claimed the seized drugs are worth 900 million rupees in the international market.

Three persons identified as Narinder Kumar, Pankaj and Sanjeev have been arrested and the police has also impounded the two cars that they had used to transport the narcotics.

Rupesh Verma is no ordinary cheat. Out on a con job for the past three years, Verma purchased 166 luxury cars, acquired ten hotels and resorts in various cities and stacked more than Rs 20 crore in bank accounts.

When the police raided Verma's office on Barakhamba Road last week, they were shocked to find cash and gold coins worth Rs 2.4 crore piled in cupboards and drawers.

He allegedly cheated more than 500 people to the tune of Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh each. He is learnt to have duped several policemen also.

Verma was arrested on December 16 while he was addressing the media at the Press Club of India when investors came to know that he was there.

London, Dec. 30 : On an average, 12 murders in the United Kingdom are identified as honour killings, and there is one man who knows too well the devastation such incidents have on a family that lives to tell the tale.

Brit Sikh Jagdeesh Singh recalls how ten years ago his sister, a mother-of-two Surjit Athwal, was murdered at the command of her mother-in-law Bachan Athwal for daring to ask her husband Sukhdave for a divorce.

Warangal (Andhra Pradesh), Dec 28 : Andhra Pradesh Police have arrested two Maoists and retrieved six million rupees during a raid in the State''s Warangal district on Sunday.

Shah Nawaz Qasim, Superintendent of Police, Warangal said the police took into custody Velagandula Veeraiah and Siddam Shetty Vykuntam at Mangapet as they were trying hand over the money to other Maoists near a forest.

A total of 24 people have been charged so far with insurance fraud after they put false claims to be Pennsylvania’s residents to obtain benefit of lower rates on their automobile insurance.

Out of the 24 charged, 17 people belong to New York and six to New Jersey, while the 24th is a Reading woman who allowed her New Yorker brother to use her address to get auto insurance at lower rates.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said the rate evasion leads to $12-$15 million in claims on Pennsylvania policies that affects the pockets of every other driver in Pennsylvania.

New Delhi, Dec 26 : A Chinese woman has been given a three-year prison sentence for kidnapping her neighbour’s 9-month-old son in May.

The neighbour had asked Zhao, 28, to watch the infant while she was away for a few hours on May 22.

Zhao took the baby and fled town, reports the China Daily.

And weeks later, she was arrested from a hostel in Anyang, Henan province.

She told a court in Beijing that she had no motives of making a profit from kidnapping the baby.

New Delhi, Dec 26 : The Union Home Ministry on Saturday issued a show cause notice to former Haryana Director General of Police S. P. S Rathore asking him to provide reasons why his police medals should not be withdrawn and his post-retirement pension be reduced in connection with his role in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case.

Simultaneously, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said after a meeting with CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat that there was merit in reopening the case for fresh scrutiny.

Dadar police arrested three persons for assaulting four sadhus outside Siddhivinayak Temple in Prabhadevi.

The police said the three attackers are Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) activists and were identified with the help of a video footage.

Vishvanath Naik (42), Laxman Patil (42), and Kiran Kadivarekar (26) were arrested on Wednesday on charges of assault, rioting and criminal intimidation.

Milind Bharambe, deputy commissioner of police Zone V, said video footage of the assault shot by a news channel was used to identify them.

London, December 24 : Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of the Colorado Balloon Boy, have been handed jail sentences.

The couple had wrongly informed the authorities and the media that their six-year-old son Falcon had floated away in a home-made balloon.

Now, Richard will serve 90 days behind bars.

Starting from January, he will be in prison for 30 days, but after that the remainder of the term will be on "work release" basis, allowing him to work during the day but spend his nights in jail.

For the second time in less than a month, money has been illegally siphoned using a mobile phone. The Amboli police are investigating a case in which a petrol pump owner was cheated of Rs 2 lakh.

Bandra resident, Mohan Kavat (44), lodged a complaint saying that his father’s SIM card (Loop mobile) was blocked last month end.

Kavat owns two petrol pumps in the city.

Kavat then contacted the service provider’s Jogeshwari (W) branch. “We learnt that imposter was issued a new SIM issued when he submitted a driving license belonging to my father.”