07-03-2005, 09:15 PM
Folks, this thread is to collect facts, evidence and analyses. No rants, pls, though certainly the humorous side of this should not be overlooked, in view of the very large egos that are apparently involved.
There is clearly a growing controversy about the history, nature and current activities of the organization called "AID-INDIA". Some recent things that come to mind:
1. Senior leaders of AID-INDIA participated in a recent Bay Area march along with Pakistan-American Alliance members carrying posters saying:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ALLAH WILL DESTROY TERRORIST INDIA<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
leading Sulekha postors to wonder whether AID stands for
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ALLAHS FOR INDIA'S DESTRUCTION<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Asked to explain this atrocious behavior, the Board of Trustees of AID-INDIA, and functionaries below them, have been equally evasive.
2. AID-INDIA blatantly participated and solicited funds for the "PadaYatra" by "ASHA for Education" founder and leader Sandeep Pandey, spending some $20,000 on what was clearly a political grandstanding exercise with no charitable project justification. I for one fail to see how this can be legal under the IRS rules for 501c3 charities. The "Padayatra" incidentally, was a flop since the Pakistanis refused visas even to the most pro-Pakistani of the marchers. There is no evidence that donations were returned to donors, so one must ask what happened to the money. I would think that all AID-INDIA donors who have claimed tax deductions for donations to this "charity" since 1991, now face the choice of either filing amended tax returns and withdrawing the deduction and paying the added tax with penalties - or waiting for the IRS to come after them for fraud, since they must clearly be aware by now about the nature of AID unless they are former O.J. Simpson Jurors.
3. AID-INDIA collected over $1M as donations after the tsunami. There is no evidence that they were even in the area until several days after the tsunami, and their own statements show that they had no direct presence in the affected areas, except for some functionaries sitting in the relief distribution centers, or driving trucks around with journalists. They claim that their grassroots relief delivery was done by DYFI and TNSF "volunteers". Pinged on this, they got their media friends to make blatantly false statements like "DYFI has NOOOO political connections", managing to fool some of the many desis who would indeed qualify as O.J. Simpson jurors.
Recent photos of DYFI "volunteers" burning buses, looting and ransacking educational institutions, throwing stones at law-enforcement personnel and indulging in other violence, prove that the statements by AID were absolutely false. There is no explanation forthcoming from AID leaders for this.
Also, the owner of the Sulekha Portal, Mr. Satya Prabhakar, made a personal appeal and set up a very unique "Sulekha Matching" scheme where Sulekha claimed to "match" donations to AID. It turned out that Sulekha was simply taking 50% of the donations from people, and calling them "Sulekha Matching". At the time this appeared to be a very shady deal, but now it appears to match the standard ethics of the AID-INDIA organization. Prabhakar has not commented on the concerns about how the funds are being used.
4. A couple of days ago, an AID-INDIA initiated Petition with obvious political motivations bypassed the Maharastra Mandal Convention in Atlanta, and disturbed a faculty meeting at Georgia Institute of Technology with visiting Maharashtra CM V. Dehmukh in another political granstanding exercise: the Faculty Advisor of AID at G.I.T. delivered a "Petition" to the CM accusing him of violating the human rights of slum dwellers in Mumbai, and that of course was blazoned all over as a major victory.
5. There is a growing list of documents at the site http://www.aidindia.info. The evidence there is very damning against AID-INDIA. AID leaders have vehemently denied that the information is true, but their own actions repeatedly lead the impartial observer to say: "Q.E.D."
6. Beyond what the aidindia.info site records, there are serious suspicions around that AID-INDIA , headquartered in College Park Maryland, is a front organization for the CPI(Marxist-leninist) Party in India. In 2004, CPI(M/L) officially merged with the Naxalite terrorists, and formed CPI(Maoist) , linked to the Nepalese terrorist "rebel" CPN(Maoist) which is invading that country and murdering thousands of people. Both CPN(Maoist) and CPI(Maoist) are on the 2005 List of Terrorist Organizations of the United States State Department.
Thus, donors to AID-INDIA face the added headache (a VERY serious one) of being accused by Homeland Security of donating money to known, declared foreign terrorist groups.
Incredibly, there are still desis who are unaware of much of this, and are being suckered every day by the glossy web pages and tear-jerking propaganda pamphlets of the AID-India. They claim that the "projects" of AID-INDIA are excellent.
I think it is time to focus on the reality of those "projects" to remove that misconception. Behind every AID-INDIA funded project appears to be a scam to either channel funds to terrorists, or encouraqe whatever group is destabilizing the government and creating fertile environments for Communist recruitment, towards a Communist takeover of India.
Comments/ info please.
There is clearly a growing controversy about the history, nature and current activities of the organization called "AID-INDIA". Some recent things that come to mind:
1. Senior leaders of AID-INDIA participated in a recent Bay Area march along with Pakistan-American Alliance members carrying posters saying:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ALLAH WILL DESTROY TERRORIST INDIA<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
leading Sulekha postors to wonder whether AID stands for
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ALLAHS FOR INDIA'S DESTRUCTION<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Asked to explain this atrocious behavior, the Board of Trustees of AID-INDIA, and functionaries below them, have been equally evasive.
2. AID-INDIA blatantly participated and solicited funds for the "PadaYatra" by "ASHA for Education" founder and leader Sandeep Pandey, spending some $20,000 on what was clearly a political grandstanding exercise with no charitable project justification. I for one fail to see how this can be legal under the IRS rules for 501c3 charities. The "Padayatra" incidentally, was a flop since the Pakistanis refused visas even to the most pro-Pakistani of the marchers. There is no evidence that donations were returned to donors, so one must ask what happened to the money. I would think that all AID-INDIA donors who have claimed tax deductions for donations to this "charity" since 1991, now face the choice of either filing amended tax returns and withdrawing the deduction and paying the added tax with penalties - or waiting for the IRS to come after them for fraud, since they must clearly be aware by now about the nature of AID unless they are former O.J. Simpson Jurors.
3. AID-INDIA collected over $1M as donations after the tsunami. There is no evidence that they were even in the area until several days after the tsunami, and their own statements show that they had no direct presence in the affected areas, except for some functionaries sitting in the relief distribution centers, or driving trucks around with journalists. They claim that their grassroots relief delivery was done by DYFI and TNSF "volunteers". Pinged on this, they got their media friends to make blatantly false statements like "DYFI has NOOOO political connections", managing to fool some of the many desis who would indeed qualify as O.J. Simpson jurors.
Recent photos of DYFI "volunteers" burning buses, looting and ransacking educational institutions, throwing stones at law-enforcement personnel and indulging in other violence, prove that the statements by AID were absolutely false. There is no explanation forthcoming from AID leaders for this.
Also, the owner of the Sulekha Portal, Mr. Satya Prabhakar, made a personal appeal and set up a very unique "Sulekha Matching" scheme where Sulekha claimed to "match" donations to AID. It turned out that Sulekha was simply taking 50% of the donations from people, and calling them "Sulekha Matching". At the time this appeared to be a very shady deal, but now it appears to match the standard ethics of the AID-INDIA organization. Prabhakar has not commented on the concerns about how the funds are being used.
4. A couple of days ago, an AID-INDIA initiated Petition with obvious political motivations bypassed the Maharastra Mandal Convention in Atlanta, and disturbed a faculty meeting at Georgia Institute of Technology with visiting Maharashtra CM V. Dehmukh in another political granstanding exercise: the Faculty Advisor of AID at G.I.T. delivered a "Petition" to the CM accusing him of violating the human rights of slum dwellers in Mumbai, and that of course was blazoned all over as a major victory.
5. There is a growing list of documents at the site http://www.aidindia.info. The evidence there is very damning against AID-INDIA. AID leaders have vehemently denied that the information is true, but their own actions repeatedly lead the impartial observer to say: "Q.E.D."
6. Beyond what the aidindia.info site records, there are serious suspicions around that AID-INDIA , headquartered in College Park Maryland, is a front organization for the CPI(Marxist-leninist) Party in India. In 2004, CPI(M/L) officially merged with the Naxalite terrorists, and formed CPI(Maoist) , linked to the Nepalese terrorist "rebel" CPN(Maoist) which is invading that country and murdering thousands of people. Both CPN(Maoist) and CPI(Maoist) are on the 2005 List of Terrorist Organizations of the United States State Department.
Thus, donors to AID-INDIA face the added headache (a VERY serious one) of being accused by Homeland Security of donating money to known, declared foreign terrorist groups.
Incredibly, there are still desis who are unaware of much of this, and are being suckered every day by the glossy web pages and tear-jerking propaganda pamphlets of the AID-India. They claim that the "projects" of AID-INDIA are excellent.
I think it is time to focus on the reality of those "projects" to remove that misconception. Behind every AID-INDIA funded project appears to be a scam to either channel funds to terrorists, or encouraqe whatever group is destabilizing the government and creating fertile environments for Communist recruitment, towards a Communist takeover of India.
Comments/ info please.