Archives for April 2021

Karimganj (Assam): Violence broke out in Karimganj district of Assam on Thursday night after a mob spotted a BJP candidate’s vehicle being used to take a polled EVM to the strong room, forcing the police to fire in the air to bring the situation under control.

The vehicle of the polling party of Indira MV School in the Ratabari constituency broke down on their way to the strong room in Karimganj town, officials said on Friday morning.

“They took a lift in a private vehicle. Incidentally, the vehicle was registered under the name of sitting BJP MLA from Patharkandi Krishnendu Paul. When it reached Nimal Bazar area, some public spotted it,” an official of the district administration said.

Paul is also the BJP candidate from the seat this time.

The mob, mostly consisting of AIUDF and Congress supporters, vandalised the vehicle, upon which the polling party ran away, leaving behind the EVMs, eyewitnesses said.

“The Deputy Commissioner and Superintendent of Police reached the spot immediately and they tried to pacify the mob.

But the crowd did not listen, forcing the police to fire in the air to disperse them,” police sources said.

The DC and the SP then brought the EVMs to Patharkandi police station at night, from where it was taken and deposited at the strong room in Karimganj town, they added.

Ratabari and Patharkandi constituencies went for polls in the second phase on Thursday.

Palghar (Maha): A jobless TV actor was among five persons arrested in Maharashtra’s Palghar district for an ATM cards fraud, police said on Thursday.

The gang stole debit/credit cards on the pretext of helping people at ATM centres and then syphoned off money from the victims’ bank accounts, said an official.

The accused were identified as Dharmendra Dubey (40), Ajay Shukla (33), Bablu Saroj (35), Jitendrakumar Chamar (24), and Brijesh Chouhan (22).

Shukla had acted in various TV serials including crime shows and even in a web series. He allegedly told police

that he committed the crime as he was not getting work due to lockdown.

Palghar crime branch is conducting further probe.

Mumbai, Apr 1: Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Thursday claimed he never said that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should be replaced by NCP president Sharad Pawar as the UPA chairperson, and added that he had only underscored the need to strengthen the alliance.

He said that all the opposition parties need to come together to form a strong alliance at the national level.

His remarks come in the wake of Maharashtra Congress leaders criticising him for his suggestion that Pawar should take over as United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson.

“I have never said Sonia Gandhi should be replaced by Sharad Pawar as UPA chairperson. There is a need to strengthen the UPA for the sake of the country. I just said there is a need to strengthen the opposition alliance. I haven’t criticised Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi,” Raut said.

“I fact, I have stood up for them whenever they were targeted by the political rivals,” he told a television channel, when asked about the Congress leaders’ criticism over his recent remarks.

On being asked about his “accidental home minister” comment against Anil Deshmukh, Raut said, “Something happening by accident is a phrase. One always sees an opportunity in an accident.”

To a question on Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s remarks that nobody should play spoilsport in a coalition government, the Rajya Sabha member said, “People have played spoilsport by taking oath early morning.”

He was referring to Ajit Pawar’s early morning swearing-in with Devendra Fadnavis before the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government after the 2019 Assembly polls. Fadnavis and Pawar had taken oath as the chief minister and deputy chief minister respectively. However, their government had lasted for only 80 hours.

Replying to a question whether the Shiv Sena would join the UPA or go back to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Raut said his party does not play politics of convenience.

“Our alliance with Congress and NCP here was need of the hour since we felt we were cheated by the BJP,” he said.

Raut hit out at Maharashtra Governor B S Koshyari for taking no decision on nominating 12 members from his quota to the state legislative council.

“The governor doesn’t want the MVA to increase its strength in the Legislative Council. He feels the government will not last. But the MVA is strong and will last its full term,” he said.

This report was first published in NDTV

Mumbai: A 38-year-old coronavirus patient who had to sit on a protest outside the municipal corporation in Maharashtra’s Nashik after allegedly being turned back by a number of hospitals died just after midnight on Thursday.

Babasaheb Kole was seen on a ‘dharna‘, wearing an oxygen mask connected to a cylinder, last evening outside the civic body’s headquarters.

After about an hour, an ambulance from the corporation took him to the municipal hospital.

According to his family, at around midnight, his oxygen level went close to 40 per cent. A normal level of oxygen is usually 95 per cent or higher.

Babasaheb died around 1 am in the night.

“Two-three days back he was taken to Bytco (Hospital). From there, he went to another hospital, from there to the government medical college. Medical College said no bed. We went to a lot of hospitals. Nobody admitted him. Then we came back to civil (hospital) and got oxygen for him and put him on it. Nobody heard us,” his distraught wife told local journalists.

The police and the corporation say they have launched an investigation to find out who “instigated” the patient to picket the municipal building.

Maharashtra is struggling with a fresh wave of coronavirus infections that have pushed the state’s health infrastructure to the edge in many places.

The state reported nearly 40,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its second-highest single-day rise in infection tally since the pandemic began, a health official said.

The new wave in the state, home to the country’s financial capital Mumbai, have driven a surge in India’s caseload that currently stands at 1.22 crore, behind only the US and Brazil.

Bengaluru: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here have developed artificial enzymes that they said can successfully block reactivation and replication of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the host’s immune cells.

Made from vanadium pentoxide nanosheets, these “nanozymes” work by mimicking a natural enzyme called glutathione peroxidase that helps reduce oxidative stress levels in the host’s cells, which is required to keep the virus in check, an IISc statement said on Thursday.

The study, published in ‘EMBO Molecular Medicine, was led by Amit Singh, Associate Professor and Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Senior Fellow at the Department of Microbiology & Cell Biology and Centre for Infectious Diseases Research (CIDR), and Govindasamy Mugesh, Professor at the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.

“The advantage is that the nanozymes are stable inside biological systems and do not mediate any unwanted reactions inside the cells,” Mugesh said. “They are also quite easy to prepare in the lab.”

There is currently no way to eliminate HIV from a patient’s body completely, according to the statement.

Anti-HIV drugs are only successful in suppressing the virus; they fail at eradicating HIV from infected cells. The virus hides inside the hosts immune cells in a “latent” state and stably maintains its reservoir.

When the levels of toxic molecules such as hydrogen peroxide increase in the host’s cells, leading to a state of increased oxidative stress, the virus gets “reactivated” – it emerges from hiding and begins replicating again, it said.

A few years ago, Amit Singh’s team developed a biosensor to measure oxidative stress levels in HIV-infected immune cells in real-time, it was stated.

“We found that to come out of latency and reactivate, HIV needs very little oxidative stress,” he said.

One way to prevent reactivation is to keep the oxidative stress constantly low, which would “lock” the virus in a permanent state of latency.

Enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase are essential for this process; they convert toxic hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen. However, inducing the host cells to produce more quantities of these enzymes could disrupt the tightly regulated cellular redox machinery.

Around the same time, Mugesh’s group published a study showing that nanowires made of vanadium pentoxide can efficiently mimic the activity of glutathione peroxidase.

Singh’s lab, therefore, decided to collaborate with them.

The researchers prepared ultrathin nanosheets of vanadium pentoxide in the lab and treated HIV-infected cells with them.

The sheets were found to reduce hydrogen peroxide just as effectively as the natural enzyme and prevent the virus from reactivating.

“We found that these nanosheets were having some sort of direct effect where the expression of the host genes essential for virus reactivation is reduced,” said Shalini Singh, first author and Research Associate at CIDR.

When the team treated immune cells from HIV-infected patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy (ART) with the nanozymes,latency was induced faster and subsequent reactivation was suppressed when therapy was stopped, indicating that combining the two was more effective, she added.

Combining ART with the nanozymes also has other advantages.

Some ART drugs can cause oxidative stress as a side effect, which can damage heart or kidney cells, Amit Singh said.

“Adding a nanozyme like this can help in reducing the side effects caused by such ART drugs.” This can improve the quality of life of HIV patients undergoing treatment.

Although the nanozymes were found to be harmless to normal cells in lab tests, Mugesh said further studies are needed to understand if they can have other effects once they are introduced inside the body.

“Where will they go? Which organs will they enter? How long will they stay in the body? We need to look at all these aspects,” he added.