Archives for November 2019

Varthaman was captured by the Pakistani Army on February 27 after his MiG-21 Bison jet was shot down in a dogfight with Pakistani jets during aerial combat.

KARACHI: Pakistan has displayed a mannequin resembling Indian Air Force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who downed its jet during aerial combat and was held captive for three days, in an exhibit at a museum run by the Pakistan Air Force in Karachi, according to a media report.

Air Chief Marshal Mujahid Anwar Khan this week inaugurated an entire new section of Pakistan Air Force Museum where a mannequin painted to resemble Varthaman with his signature handlebar moustache has been put on display, the Express Tribune reported.

Close to his statue are placed a tea mug and the fuselage and tail of Varthaman’s aircraft, MiG-21.

The gallery named Operation Swift Retort” also contains images re-enacting the moment Varthaman aircraft was shot down, and photographs showing him being handed back to India at the Wagah border crossing.

Varthaman was captured by the Pakistani Army on February 27 after his MiG-21 Bison jet was shot down in a dogfight with Pakistani jets during aerial combat.

Before his jet was hit, he downed an F-16 fighter of Pakistan.

He was released on the night of March 1 by Pakistan.

Varthaman, who showed courage and grace in handling the most difficult circumstances, was conferred the Vir Chakra, India’s third-highest wartime gallantry medal.

The Patek Philippe ‘Grandmaster Chime’ was sold as part of the Only Watch auction held by Christie’s on Saturday to benefit research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy

A one-of-a-kind Patek Philippe watch sold for $31 million (Rs 222 crore) at a charity auction in Geneva, making it the most expensive wristwatch ever auctioned.

The Patek was sold as part of the Only Watch auction held by Christie’s on Saturday to benefit research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

For the sale, watchmakers including Patek, Audemars Piguet and F.P. Journe created and donated one-of-a-kind watches, which are coveted by top watch collectors around the world. The fact that the sale was for charity helped boost the bidding prices, according to the auctioneers, CNBC reported.

The buyer of the watch has not been identified.

The Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime reference 6300A-010 is the only one of its kind that will be made in stainless steel.

It has 20 complications, including a grande and petite sonnerie, a minute repeater, instantaneous perpetual calendar with a four-digit year display, second time zone, and 24-hour and minute subdial. The watch’s most unique feature is front and back dials – one salmon coloured, the other black – that can be flipped or reversed.

The steel Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010 smashed the previous record for an auctioned watch – the $17.7 million fetched in 2017 for the Rolex Daytona once owned by Paul Newman.

Dineshwar Budhidat of Queens fatally stabbed his wife Donne Dojoy, 27, who worked as a bartender and then hanged himself from a tree on Friday, a report in The New York Post said.

NEW YORK: A 33-year-old man in the US allegedly stabbed his wife to death and then hanged himself because he was jealous of her liking for Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, according to a media report.

.Budhidat was “extremely jealous” because his wife was a huge fan of Hrithik, Dojoy’s friends told The Post, adding that her liking for the actor sent him into fits of rage.

She told me when she was at home watching a movie or listening to a song (with Hrithik in it), he would ask her to take it off because he would get so jealous,” Mala Ramdhani, 52, a karaoke singer at Gemini’s Ultra Lounge in Ozone Park, where Dojoy tended bar, said.

“Any movie Hrithik acted in, she wanted to see it,” Ramdhani said.

The report said Dojoy had moved out of her apartment where she lived in with her husband but had agreed to stop by the place to watch a movie and be with Budhidat.

But later in the evening, Budhidat texted his wife’s sister, saying he had killed her, and instructing that the key to the apartment could be found under a flower pot, police sources said later Friday.

He then left behind his wife’s stabbed body and hanged himself from a tree in a field nearby, the report said.

The New York Daily News reported that Budhidat had assaulted her weeks after they got married in July.

Dojoy even had an order of protection against Budhidat that came in a court case which stemmed from his arrest in August for slapping and strangling Dojoy a week earlier inside their Queens apartment.

“I think he loved her but at the same time, he was obsessed with her, because of the type of job she did,” Rodney, a friend of Dojoy’s, said in the report.

“She looked good, she always made her money, so he was probably jealous of her. Dojoy had told her friends that he was controlling and even violent with her at times.”

“She talked about him abusing her, controlling her, beating her, scaring her, threatening to kill her,” Rodney added.

“She never took it seriously because she loved him.”

Dojoy’s aunt, Silvin Dojoy, called her niece “a lovely young lady.”

“A beautiful girl. She was intelligent, and she worked hard.”

Of the husband, she said, “He was a coward. Who acts like that? Lift your hands against a woman? That’s a cowardly act. There is no reason for him to have done what he did. It’s unbelievable. He had no right to do what he did.”