Archives for 2021

Mumbai: A court in Mumbai on Friday extended till July 27 the police custody of businessman Raj Kundra and his associate Ryan Thorpe in a case related to alleged production and distribution of pornographic films through apps.

The crime branch of Mumbai Police also recorded the statement of Kundra’s wife and actor Shilpa Shetty in connection with the case.

Seeking his further custody, the police claimed that Kundra had plans to sell 119 adult films to a person for a sum of USD 1.2 million. Separately, an investigation officer said that the police also wanted to probe alleged transfer of funds from a South Africa-based sports betting firm into Kundra’s bank account.

Kundra was arrested on July 19 by the police under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act.

He, along with Thorpe, was produced before the magistrate after their earlier remand expired on Friday. Seeking the duo’s further custody, the police told the court that the probe found that Kundra set up Armsprime Media Pvt Ltd, which, through London-based Kenrin Pvt Ltd, bought the Hot Shots app to upload “objectionable videos” on social media. Kundra’s phone contained WhasApp chats regarding Kenrin and its economic transactions. These conversations also revealed that he had discussed selling 119 adult films to a person for USD 1.2 million, police said.

They wanted to probe if this deal went through and the videos were transferred, the remand plea said.

Searches at the accused’s office led to the seizure of 51 obscene videos, the police said.

An employee who handled accounts of Hot Shots told investigators that between August 2019 and November 2020 it earned a net profit of GBP 4,000 to 10,000 per month, police said, adding that Kundra’s company Viaan Industries was involved in the maintenance of the app.

Viaan’s employees told the police that the app was removed from Google Play in June 2020 and the Apple app store in November as it had obscene content, the remand plea said.

Thorpe allegedly directed the employees to remove all data related to the Hot Shots app after a case was registered in February this year, so IPC sections related to `destruction of evidence’ have been added to the case, the police said.

The police also wanted to record the statements of the women who were allegedly lured and forced into acting in porn films by the accused, the application said.

During the day, the police recorded Shilpa Shetty’s statement in the case at her residence. They also seized a laptop from the house. As per police, Shetty was a director of Kundra’s firm for some time.

Kundra on Friday moved the Bombay High Court, seeking quashing of the lower court’s order remanding him in police custody. He claimed that the alleged porn videos in question did not contain any sexually explicit scenes. The petition is yet to be heard.

Bengaluru: Heavy rains in various parts of Karnataka over the past 24 hours have claimed three lives, led to landslides in eight places and evacuation of about 9,000 people, while the government has sounded a red alert in seven districts.

The Indian Coast Guard said that it conducted a day-long rescue operation in the flood-hit Uttara Kannada District and rescued 161 people from Khargejoog village, Unglijoog, Kharejoog and Bodojoog Islands.

The Indian Railways cancelled a few trains due to landslides between Sonalium- Kulem, and Dudhsagar-Caranzol.

The Goa Express Special train was stopped at the Londa station in Belagavi district and passengers were served food.

Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, who reviewed the flood situation with top officials on Friday, directed all district in charge ministers and MLAs to oversee relief work in their areas and ordered cancellation of leave of officials, who are responsible for flood relief work.

He said the government would extend all necessary support to relief and rescue efforts and assist farmers who suffered losses due to the untimely rain and hailstorms.

Yediyurappa directed officials to send the National Disaster Response Force and the State Disaster Response Force personnel to the needy districts and open relief camps.

He urged them to seek Indian Army’s help and helicopters in relief operations.

He also instructed the officials to submit a proposal for financial assistance if it was required.

Dr Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority, said parts of Belagavi, Chikkamagaluru, Dharward, Haveri, Shivamogga and Uttara Kannada are facing the brunt of floods due to incessant rains over the past few days.

The rivers Krishna, Cauvery, Tungabhadra, Bhima, Kapila (Kabini) and many others in Malnad and coastal Karnataka are in spate, the KSDMA officer said.

Details shared by him showed that 131 villages in 18 Taluks are badly hit, affecting 16,213 people.

While three people lost their lives, two are missing.The rains damaged 21 houses completely and 804 houses partially.

Sixty-five bridges, 10 schools and a primary health centre were damaged, while 291.03 km of roads were washed away.

So far, 8,733 people have been evacuated to safety.

The state has opened 80 relief camps where 4,964 people are staying.

Landslides were reported in eight places, including Virajpet in Kodagu district and Arabail Ghat in Uttara Kannada district.

A red alert has been sounded in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, Hassan and Kodagu districts for the next 24 hours in view of a possible heavy to extremely heavy rainfall and an orange alert, in Belagavi and Dharwad, the officer said.

The rains have also led to filling up of most of the reservoirs in Karnataka, including Almatti, Bhadra, KRS, Kabini, Harangi, Hemavathi, Narayanapura, Malaprabha and Ghataprabha, he said.

Meanwhile, the ICG said in a statement that its Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and rescue operations were pressed into service at short notice to carry out rescue operations in the islands in Uttara Kannada District.

It said the armed forces were in constant touch with the civil administration of the affected state.

“ICG Forces teams are aware of the need to keep the road and rail links open to ensure uninterrupted supply of life saving oxygen and drugs required for treatment at COVID-19 hospitals. The ICG Force remain ready to mitigate the impact of the incessant heavy rains , save lives and provide succour to the fellow citizens,” the statement added.

Bengaluru: An international team of astronomers has carried out an extensive new survey of the Milky Way, revealing previously unseen signatures with unprecedented sensitivity and details that hint at how stars form and die, complex processes that have fascinated researchers for centuries.

The results were published in a series of papers in ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ by the team, which includes scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST).

The data for the survey, which spanned a large part of the Milky Way, was gathered using two powerful radio telescopes: the Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA, and theEffelsberg100-m radio telescope operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy Germany, as part of the GLOSTAR (Global View on Star formation in the Milky Way) project.

Nirupam Roy, Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics and Rohit Dokara, his former undergraduate student from IISc, as well as Jagadheep D Pandian, Associate Professor at the Department of Earth and Space Sciences in IIST are among the Indian scientists who are part of the GLOSTAR project, Bengaluru-based IISc said in a statement on Friday.

Dokara, now a PhD student at MPIfR, is the first author on one of the papers that reports the detection of new supernova remnants (SNRs) structures born from the explosive death of massive stars in our galaxy.

Previous surveys have detected only about one-third of the expected number of SNRs in the Milky Way (which is nearly 1000), according to the statement.

The GLOSTAR team has now discovered 80 new SNR candidates in the VLA data alone,with more expected to be identified from the combined Effelsberg and VLA data.

They were also able to confirm the presence of 77 previously discovered SNR candidates and reclassify a few that were misidentified.

This is impressive, considering that the northern telescopes utilised by GLOSTAR are able to see only half of the inner regions of the Milky Way, it said.

“This is an important step to solve this long-standing mystery of the missing supernova remnants,” said Dokara.

The researchers were also able to detect other traces of star formation.

One of them, for example, is radio emission from methanol molecules in a nearby large star-forming complex ‘Cygnus X.’

These are typically emitted from massive stars in very early stages of formation.

The team was also able to detect dense pockets of ionised hydrogen, another tell-tale sign of the presence of massive young stars.

Young stars are usually surrounded by thick clouds of dust and gas.

“Because visible light gets absorbed in this dense cloud around stars, most of the optical telescopes dont reveal much.

What people look for, instead, are radio emissions,” explained Roy, who has previously worked at both NRAO and MPIfR.

“Since the GLOSTAR survey detects a wide range of radio emission such as that from methanol molecules to ionised hydrogen, it is able to probe the formation of massive stars from very early to relatively late stages, which is important to get a complete picture of star formation in the Milky Way,” added Pandian, who has also previously worked at MPIfR.

The Effelsberg radio telescope is a single large dish spanning 100 m in diameter, capable of detecting large-scale structures, whereas the VLA is a collection of small antennas which work together as an interferometer to capture the details at high resolution.

The data pooled from both telescopes helped the researchers paint a more comprehensive picture of different astrophysical objects in the region.

“This clearly demonstrates that the Effelsberg telescope is still very crucial, even after 50 years of operation,” said Andreas Brunthaler of MPIfR, project leader and first author of the survey’s overview paper.

Karl Menten, the Director of MPIfR, who initiated GLOSTAR, added: “Its great to see the beautiful science resulting from two of our favourite radio telescopes joining forces.”

Both Pandian and Roy currently maintain Max Planck-India Partner Groups with Menten to continue the close collaboration and, in particular, to expand the scope of the GLOSTAR project.

Other members of the research team include scientists from MPIfR and NRAO, and collaborators from institutions in the UK, South Africa, Mexico, France and Australia.

With observations and analysis ongoing, more results are expected to be published over time, it was stated.

CHANDIGARH: Ahead of taking charge of the state Congress, Navjot Singh Sidhu met Chief Minister Amarinder Singh at the Punjab Bhawan here on Friday.

Speaking to reporters outside the Punjab Bhawan, Congress MLA Pargat Singh said Sidhu met the chief minister over tea in the presence of AICC in-charge of Punjab affairs Harish Rawat.

The two leaders sat next to each other and the meeting between them was cordial, he added.

Senior Congress leaders Manish Tewari, Partap Singh Bajwa and Lal Singh were also present.

This was the first time in nearly four months that Sidhu and Singh met each other.

The chief minister’s media adviser tweeted pictures of the two leaders having a chat.

The Congress leaders will head to another venue where Sidhu will assume charge as the party’s new state unit chief.

Four working presidents of the Punjab Congress will also assume charge at the ceremony at the party’s state headquarters here.

Singh, who reached here from his farmhouse in Siswan, had invited party leaders for tea at the Punjab Bhawan.

Sidhu came from Patiala and went to the Punjab Bhawan shortly before Singh’s arrival.

Media was not allowed entry inside the Punjab Bhawan.

Ministers, Congress MLAs and other senior party leaders were also present at the Punjab Bhawan.

Kuljit Singh Nagra and Sangat Singh Gilzian, two of the four newly-appointed working presidents of the state Congress, had on Thursday extended a formal invite to the chief minister at his farmhouse in Mohali’s Siswan for the installation ceremony.

The invitation letter was signed by over 55 legislators.

In an apparent bid to bury the differences with the chief minister, Sidhu had separately requested Singh to come for the installation ceremony and said he had “no personal agenda”.

Sidhu and Singh have been at loggerheads for some time, with the Amritsar (East) MLA recently attacking the chief minister over desecration cases.

Singh had earlier opposed Sidhu’s appointment as the state Congress chief and said he would not meet him until the cricketer-turned-politician apologised for his “derogatory” tweets against him.

On Thursday, after the Congress leaders met the chief minister, the latter’s media adviser had tweeted, “Punjab CM @capt_amarinder has invited all @INCPunjab MLAs, MPs and senior party functionaries at Punjab Bhawan for tea at 10 am on Friday. They will all then go to Punjab Congress Bhawan together from there for the installation of the new PPCC team.”

Congress president Sonia Gandhi appointed Sidhu as the new president of the party’s Punjab unit on Sunday, notwithstanding the strong opposition from Singh.

She also appointed four working presidents in the Punjab Congress — Sangat Singh Gilzian, Sukhwinder Singh Danny, Pawan Goel and Kuljit Singh Nagra — to assist Sidhu in the run-up to the state Assembly polls next year.

On Wednesday, several legislators backing Sidhu had said there was no need for him to tender an apology to the chief minister.

Tensions between Singh and Sidhu flared up in April after the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed a probe report into the 2015 Kotkapura police firing incident.

Sidhu attacked the chief minister through his tweets over the issue of alleged delay in justice in the 2015 sacrilege and subsequent police-firing incidents.

The Amritsar legislator had resigned as a state minister in 2019 after he was divested of his local bodies portfolio.

Sidhu had switched sides from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the Congress before the 2017 state Assembly polls.