Lucknow: A 13-year-old boy from Uttar Pradesh, reportedly influenced by the Blue Whale challenge, hanged himself to death on Sunday evening.

Parth Singh from Maudaha in Hamirpur district was a class VI student of Jaipuria Public School.

One of Parth’s relative reveals that he had told his father that he was playing a game and will emerge victorious after completing the last level.

Parth was playing the game for some time and when his family tried to dissuade him, he secretly started playing it on his parent’s smart phones. It seems that he told his mother that their lives were in danger.

On Sunday, Parth said that he has to go to his friend’s birthday party in the evening and locked himself in the room. A few hours later when he did not respond to knocks, his father Vikram Singh broke open the door and found Parth hanging from the ceiling fan.

Maudaha circle officer Abhishek Yadav has confirmed that the Blue Whale Challenge is main reason for suicide. The smart phone used by Parth is sent to IT experts who are probing the issue.

Recently, that UP DGP Sulkhan Singh has already sent directives to all district police chiefs, asking them to remain vigilant and ban the playing of game by students. Yet the game claimed its first victim in Uttar Pradesh.

The Blue Whale challenge is an online game which requires participants to complete 50 life-threatening challenges and the last task is suicide. Vulnerable teens that fall prey to this game are threatened that their family will be harmed, if they wish to leave the game midway.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: Both India and China have come on a common agreement to end the lengthy stand-off at Doklam.

Soldiers were deployed from June this year at the Doklam region of Sikkim sector and both the nations have now decided to disengage their soldiers from the region.

The breakthrough was reached by diplomatic talks, India said.

“On this basis, expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site at Doklam has been agreed to and is on-going” said the Foreign Ministry.

The breakthrough comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to China in a few weeks for a summit of the BRICS group of nations.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday won the Bawana assembly bypoll here by a margin of over 24,000 votes, defeating former party legislator Ved Prakash who had defected to the BJP.

After the final round of counting, AAP candidate Ram Chandra got 59,886 votes against 35,834 votes of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ved Prakash. Congress candidate Surender Kumar got 31,919 votes, a poll official announced.

Percentage-wise, the winning candidate polled almost as many votes as the two other leading candidates combined.

The AAP candidate received 45.39 per cent of the total votes cast, while the BJP and Congress candidates got 27.16 and 24.19 per cent of the remaining votes.

While, 1.07 per cent of voters chose the ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option on August 23.

The by-poll was necessitated after Ved Prakash quit the AAP and resigned from the Delhi Assembly to join the BJP.

(IANS)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today questioned the Gujarat government over the slow pace of trial in the rape case involving self-styled godman Asaram Bapu.

A bench comprising justices N V Ramanna and Amitava Roy asked the state government why the victim has not been examined till now.

It asked the state government to file an affidavit in this regard and posted the matter for further hearing after Diwali.

The apex court had on April 12 asked the trial court in Gujarat to expedite the recording of evidence of prosecution witnesses in a sexual assault case lodged by two Surat-based sisters against the self-styled godman.

The court had asked the Surat trial court to record the testimonies of 46 remaining prosecution witnesses including the alleged rape victims.

Earlier, the top court had refused to grant bail to Asaram on various grounds including his poor health in two separate sexual assault cases lodged in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

The apex court, while dismissing his bail plea on January 30, had observed that Asaram had placed a “fictitious document” to persuade the court to grant him bail and had ordered registration of an FIR against those responsible for preparing and filing the alleged fake papers.

The two Surat-based sisters had lodged separate complaints against Asaram and his son Narayan Sai, accusing them of rape and illegal confinement, among other charges.

The elder sister, in her complaint against Asaram, had accused him of repeated sexual assaults between 2001 and 2006 when she was staying at his ashram near Ahmedabad.

In the case in Rajasthan, a teenage girl had accused him of sexual assault at his ashram in Manai village near Jodhpur. The girl, who belonged to Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, was a student living in the ashram.

The apex court had noted that trial in the matter was unnecessarily prolonged and the prosecution witnesses were being attacked, which led to the death of two witnesses.

The apex court had on November 18 last year sought the response of the Centre and five states on a plea seeking a CBI probe into the alleged murder of children and attacks on ten witnesses in the Asaram rape cases.

Asaram was arrested by Jodhpur Police on August 31, 2013 and has been in jail since then.

(PTI)

Chandigarh: Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, convicted of raping two women disciples, was on Monday August 28 sentenced to ten years in jail.

Special CBI judge Jagdeep Singh allotted 10 minutes each to both sides to put forth their arguments.

The prosecution demanded maximum punishment for Ram Rahim Singh, while the defence lawyer, S K Garg Narwana argued that the judge should take a lenient view since the Dera Sauda chief has worked for the welfare of people.

According to reports, Ram Rahim broke down in the court as the quantum of punishment was read out.

After the sentencing, Ram Rahim was taken for a medical check-up, given a jail uniform and put in a cell.

Reports of sporadic violence trickled through even before the sentence was read out. Two cars were torched by Dera Sacha Sauda supporters in Phoolka area of Haryana’s Sirsa, the sect’s headquarters.

The quantum of punishment was pronounced by a CBI court specially set up inside the jail premises in Sunaria, about 70 km from Delhi, where Ram Rahim has been lodged after his conviction on Friday.

Fearing a repeat of the violence that erupted soon after the court’s verdict in the rape case on August 25, in which over 30 people died, the authorities in Haryana on Monday issued shoot at sight orders in and around the District Jail near Rohtak ahead of Ram Rahim’s sentencing.

Chairperson of the Dera, Vipassana Insan, has appealed to followers to peacefully abide by the judgement.

Earlier in the day, Rohtak range Inspector General (IG) of Police Navdeep Singh Virk said: “We are on top of the situation. Adequate security arrangements are in place. If anyone tries to disobey the law, he will be shot at.”

Virk said 28 companies of paramilitary forces, along with Haryana Police personnel, have been deployed in Rohtak.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court judge Jagdeep Singh, who had on Friday held the Dera chief guilty of rape and criminal intimidation of two of his female disciples in 2002, was flown to Rohtak on Monday for announcing the sentence.

The sect chief has been convicted on two counts for rape (Section 376 IPC), criminal intimidation (Section 506 IPC) and Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman).

The minimum punishment for rape is seven years which may extend till life (term). The other sections have imprisonment for two and one years, respectively.

The district jail premises, about 10 km from Rohtak town, have been completely cordoned off by security forces, including the paramilitary and Haryana Police.

The Army has been kept on stand-by. No movement of people, other than those authorized, will be allowed within a distance of 10 km from the prison premises.

“We are fully prepared for any situation. The Army has been kept on stand-by,” Haryana Director General of police (DGP) B.S. Sandhu said.

The security forces in Haryana and Punjab were again on high alert on Monday as both states braced for the sentencing.

Curfew continued to be in place on Monday in Haryana’s Sirsa town, where the sect’s headquarters are located. The sect has lakhs of followers in the two states.

(Agencies)

Bengaluru: Performance of Karnataka state in industrial investment has moved up in this year also and helped the state to remain in the top position for second consecutive year until June 2017 with an investment of Rs 1.41 lakh crore, said Karnataka State Minister for Industry RV Deshpande speaking to media persons in Bengaluru here on Wednesday.

According to the data released by the Union Government’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Karnataka topped in the list of states with an investment of Rs 1.54 lakh crore last year after obtaining 11th rank in 2013 followed by 5th rank in 2014 and 4th position in 2015, minister added.

(Agencies)