Fresh data collected by the ministry of home affairs shows that the maximum number of youth are being booked under rape charges in the 16 to 18 years age bracket. In fact, the offence of rape falls only second to burglary reported against children (under 18 years of age), bringing them directly in conflict with the law.

Even as the government succumbed to the political parties’ pressure to keep the age of consent for consensual sex at 18 years in the new anti-rape bill cleared by Parliament, fresh data collected by the ministry of home affairs shows that maximum number of youth are being booked under rape charges in the 16 to 18 years age bracket. In fact, the offence of rape falls only second to burglary reported against children (under 18 years of age) bringing them directly in conflict with the law.

The recent terror attack in Hyderabad has put the NCTC proposal back on home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s table.

The Central intelligence agencies have indicated that the Hyderabad twin blasts were aimed at escalating the simmering communal tension at the behest of Pakistan-based outfits. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is expected to take over the Hyderabad blast probe shortly, is probing the cross-border linkage to last week’s twin bombings in Hyderabad as it suspects that the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba-Indian Mujahideen network has been used to carry out a “proxy war’’ to create communal unrest.

National Investigation Ag-ency sleuths have fanned out across Bihar, UP, Jharkhand and Maharash-tra in a terror hunt after Thursday’s twin blasts in Hyderabad. Three absconding IM operatives — Asasd-ullah Akhtar, alias Haddi; Waqas, alias Ahmed; and Bada Sajid — have come to the notice of the NIA and Hyderabad police who are examining CCTV footage to look for leads on the trio.

Probing the Indian Mujahideen-Lashkar link to the Hyderabad blasts, Central agencies are now looking for the crucial missing links who helped the IM module busted by the Delhi police in October 2012 reconnoitre Dilsukhnagar and two other locations in Hyderabad last year.

Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s move to revive the controversial National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in January this year is being opposed by the non-Congress state governments. Not only this, the Intelligence Bureau is also learnt to have raised a red-flag to the proposed counter-terror agency.

The Union home ministry in a note prepared on the vexed Telangana issue has warned of a direct fallout of giving separate statehood to it in the Northeastern region on the country.

The Union home ministry did foolproof groundwork in the run-up to the hanging of Afzal Guru. According to highly placed government sources, the home ministry had sought a detailed security review report about the prevailing law and order situation in the Kashmir Valley from Central intelligence agencies nearly 10 days ago.

The Union home ministry has sent a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) request to Singapore in the December 16 Delhi gangrape case for seeking medical records of the deceased gangrape victim and issuing summons to the three doctors who treated her for testifying in the ongoing rape trial here.