40 years ago April 21, 1986: Iranian FM walks out

The night-long concluding session of the non-aligned coordinating bureau was marred by a protest walk-out by the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, even as the conference made an appeal to Iran and Iraq to end their six-year war. At least 100 people were feared killed when a giant irrigation reservoir burst its embankment, unleashing torrential flood waters that inundated a town. Many residents of Kantalai, 209 km northeast of Colombo, were sleeping when the embankment gave way at 4 am. Government officials in Trincomalee estimated that 18,000 people had been rendered homeless. Refugee centres have been set up at two schools. Marxist leaders are concerned about the penetrability of the proverbial iron curtain around their party organisation arising out of the action taken against 10 senior partymen for advocating an alternative political line. At the meeting held earlier this week, the Kerala state committee decided to try to plug the leak in the organisation and simultaneously discipline the rebellious elements. Three specific measures announced by party bosses at the meeting are clear pointers to this mood of alarm. As a first step, a three-man team, headed by secretariat member Chadayan Govindan, has been set up to guess or ascertain how sensitive or inconvenient information about party matters is fed to newspapers. K K Chellappan and P N K Gurudasan will assist Govindan in nabbing the culprits The Deputy Inspector-General of Prisons, A B Shukla, was interrogated by the police in the case of the escape of Charles Sobhraj and some others from New Delhi’sTihar Jail. Shukla was interrogated by detectives of the Crime Branch at Tihar itself.