Archives for November 2018

The Central Bureau of Investigation has discovered that five minor girls, and not two as reported earlier, died in a shelter home in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district.

Their post-mortems were conducted at a government hospital, police said on Monday.

The CBI, probing the alleged rape of 34 girls at the shelter home, on Sunday searched documents at Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital and found that the post-mortems of five girls of the shelter home were conducted there.

According to the hospital register, the post-mortems of two girls were conducted in 2013, two in 2015 and one in 2017.

The CBI officials are now trying to find out as to whom the bodies of the girls were handed over after their autopsies and also whether cases were registered in the matter.

“A team of CBI officials is likely to soon interrogate some hospital doctors to collect more details about the case,” a district police officer said.

The CBI had earlier found human bones at a cremation ground on October 4 following a tip-off. It had also carried out an extensive excavation at the shelter home premises on suspicion that some inmates might have been killed and buried there, but could not recover anything from there.

Last month, a shelter home employee Krishna Ram, who also ran the press of Brajesh Thakur — the main accused — told the CBI sleuths that some bodies were stuffed in gunny bags and disposed of in the Burhi Gandak river a year ago.

However, the CBI could not recover anything from the river.

According to the CBI, Ram disclosed that Brajesh Thakur had ordered the disposal of the bodies.

He reportedly revealed that two inmates of Thakur’s NGO, Seva Sankalp Ewam Vikas Samiti, had died under mysterious circumstances and their bodies were dumped in the river from Akharaghat Bridge with the help of Guddu, another employee of the shelter home, and Vijay Tiwari, Thakur’s driver.

Of the 42 girls lodged at the short-stay home run by Brajesh Thakur’s NGO, 34 were found to have been sexually assaulted. The crime came to light after a social audit by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, five months ago.

The shelter home has been sealed, and Thakur sent to jail.

The Supreme Court is monitoring the CBI probe into the case.

IANS

Three buses parked in a Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) depot caught fire on Monday, police said.

The fire brigade has put out the blaze, they said.

It was not immediately known how the buses caught fire, but the police suspect it to be the handiwork of some anti-social elements.

The depot is situated near residential areas in Ranchi.

IANS

 The Opposition Congress and NGOs will join a rally here on Tuesday to demand ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s resignation, an organiser of the march said on Monday.

“The march will be held on Tuesday. Social activist Rajan Ghate, who is on an indefinite hunger-strike, will lead the march to Parrikar’s residence in Dona Paula. The march will be attended by Goa NGOs, leading individuals and some political parties, including the Congress,” organiser Aires Rodrigues, a city lawyer, told the media.

State Congress President Girish Chodankar confirmed his participation.

Ghate has been on a hunger strike for the past four days at the Panaji city square, demanding that Parrikar, who is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer and has been unable to attend office for several months now, resigns from the post and hands over charge.

Parrikar has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi for nearly nine months.

He returned from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences on October 14 and has not moved out of his private residence for any official event since.

Apart from the Opposition, which has been demanding his resignation for several months now, cabinet ministers from the ruling alliance conceded on Saturday that Parrikar’s absence from office had brought the state administration to a standstill.

IANS

 Four people were killed on Monday as a massive fire enveloped a factory here, an official said.

The Delhi Fire Service said the blaze was reported from Karol Bagh’s Beadonpura area at around 12.20 p.m.

“The victims were brought out of the factory. They died before reaching the hospital,” the official said, adding that one person who was injured was being treated.

“Initial probe has suggested that the fire originated due to the use of steam press.”

IANS

Congress leader and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah Sunday said the much-awaited expansion of the HD Kumaraswamy-led coalition cabinet in Karnataka would take place “at the earliest”.

“We will have to do it (cabinet expansion); we will do it as soon as possible,” he said.

Speaking to reporters in Hubballi, he referred to the ongoing elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and said the party’s state leadership would soon seek Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s time to discuss the expansion.

State Congress Chief Dinesh Gundu Rao and Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara had recently said the cabinet expansion would take place within this month.

The cabinet expansion and appointment of MLAs as heads of boards and corporations that was to take place in October were put on the back burner by the Congress-JD(S) coalition, as the schedule for the November 3 bypolls to two assembly and three parliamentary seats in the state was announced.

Several MLAs, especially those from the Congress, who are aspirants for ministerial posts, have been demanding the expansion to be taken up at the earliest.

Some of them, including former Minister M B Patil and senior legislator BC Patil even met Congress General Secretary in-charge of Karnataka KC Venugopal on Saturday to put forward their case.

According to Congress sources, many MLAs feel that this is the right time for cabinet expansion, with the ruling coalition winning two of the three Lok Sabha seats and both the assembly constituencies.

This would be the second cabinet expansion since the coalition came to power in May in a post-poll tie-up between Congress and JD(S).

Under the power-sharing arrangement reached by the two parties, Congress will have 22 ministers and the JD(S) 12. In the earlier exercise on June 6, Kumaraswamy had inducted 25 ministers, taking the ministry’s strength to 27.

However, the lone BSP Minister in the coalition cabinet N Mahesh, who was inducted from JD(S), quit his post in October, citing personal reasons, but said he would continue to support the ruling coalition.

There are now six vacant ministerial positions left for the Congress, and two for the JD(S). The decision to expand the cabinet has come amid speculations that some disgruntled Congress MLAs were still being wooed by the BJP, besides reported factionalism within the party.

With the growing number of aspirants and limited ministerial berths in hand, Congress is preparing a list of MLAs to be appointed as heads to boards and corporations, in an effort to prevent any kind of resentment, party sources said.

PTI

Public Work Department Minister H D Revanna on Sunday, November 18 said that Kumaraswamy does possess a currency printing machine to print notes.

Revanna reacting on the allegations made on his brother Chief minister Kumaraswamy by the farmers with regard to loan waive off scheme and protest by sugarcane growers Revanna said that to announce support price immediately, Kumaraswamy doesn’t possess a currency printing machine. He further added that he very well knows the people who are encouraging the protests to demand support price.

Talking with regard to the issue of support price to sugarcane cultivators he expressed that the centre has to intervene and provide support price to the sugarcane farmers of Karnataka.

PTI