Venur: Jewellery worth lakhs of rupees was stolen from a house in Naravi allegedly by a group of four masked men, who tied up the lone woman resident before making away with their loot.

The incident took place on Saturday evening at the residence of 67-year-old Prabhavathi Nayak in Arsikatte near Naravi in Belthangady taluk, said sources.

The group of masked looters, who forcibly entered Nayak’s house, reportedly bound her limbs with a rope and silenced her by thrusting cloth into her mouth.

They then stripped Nayak of her gold chain and ear rings, before stealing three gold bangles, three gold rings, a gold chain and a mobile phone in the house. They left the house, declaring among themselves in Tulu, “Our job here is done!” according to the police complaint.

The stolen gold items are worth a total of Rs 4.6 lakh, the sources said.

A case has been registered by the Venur Police. Also, Deputy Superintendent of Venur Soumya J and the police staff members are learned to have visited the crime site.

Puttur: In a motorbike and scooter collision on the Maani-Mysuru national highway bypass here, a local youngster was reportedly killed on the spot recently.

Naushad, 22, son of Abdul Aziz, a resident of Sampya in Aryapu village of Puttur, was the victim, said sources. He worked in a cloth store near the KSRTC bus stop in Puttur.

Naushad was riding the scooter that hit the motorbike. The victim’s body was shifted to the mortuary at the Puttur government hospital.

Puttur Traffic Police have registered a case and are investigating, sources added.

Ahmedabad: A man from Bopal has complained to the Railway police here that his bag, which contained jewellery worth Rs 6 lakh, was stolen as the start of his journey on the Vande Bharat train.

Paresh Sonani, 55, resident of Bopal, filed an FIR with the police on Friday, and told the police that the incident took place on Tuesday, reports Times of India.

Sonani told the police that he had left his house and took a BRTS bus to Iskcon Crossroads, from where he traveled to the Kalupur Railway Station in an AMTC bus. He added that he got on the Vande Bharat train and put his bag on his seat, but, after a while, found that the bag was stolen he was distracted.

He filed a complaint of theft against an unknown person with the Ahmedabad Railway Police, who are learned to be checking the CCTV footage at the station for clues on the case.

Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is unlikely to attend the upcoming winter session of Parliament due to the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, the party said on Saturday.

The winter session of Parliament is likely to commence in the first week of December in the old building and conclude by the end of the month, sources had said on Friday.

There is a proposal to hold the session between December 7 and 29 and a final decision regarding the dates will be taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, they had said.

Asked whether party MPs participating in the yatra will attend the session, Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh told reporters that it is unlikely that he and three other parliamentarians — Rahul Gandhi, K C Venugopal, Digvijaya Singh — who are walking in the yatra consistently would attend Parliament.

Ramesh said they would inform the Speaker and the Chairman accordingly that they would not be able to attend the upcoming session.

He said the yatra, which has completed about half the 3,570 km distance, is seeing massive enthusiasm in Maharashtra currently and several allies of the Congress are participating in it.

Nationalist Congress Party leaders Supriya Sule, Jayant Patil and Jitendra Awhad joined the yatra and so did Shiv Sena’s Aaditya Thackeray, Ramesh said, asserting that this reflected that the Maha Vikas Aghadi combine was intact.

He said the yatra is likely to enter Madhya Pradesh on November 22.

Talking about the sub-yatras, Ramesh said while Odisha became the first state to begin a yatra simultaneously with the main yatra on October 31, Assam was next to join starting a more than 850-km-long yatra on November 1.

On the birth anniversary of former prime minister Indira Gandhi on November 19, the party’s Tripura unit will begin a yatra, Ramesh said.

On December 28, the West Bengal Congress will begin a Bharat Jodo Yatra in its state, he said.

Also in the next fortnight or so, the Congress will take out a Bharat Jodo Yatra in Bihar from Banka to Bodh Gaya, covering an estimated 1,100 km, Ramesh said.

Jay Shah

Melbourne: New Zealand’s Greg Barclay was on Saturday unanimously re-elected as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC) for a second two-year term.

Besides Barclay’s re-election, BCCI secretary Jay Shah was elected as the head of ICC’s all powerful Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee at the board meeting.

Barclay was unopposed following the withdrawal of Zimabwe’s Tavengwa Mukuhlani from the process, and the ICC Board reaffirmed its full support to the New Zealander to continue at the helm.

Jay Shah will have the responsibility of heading ICC’s most important committee. Al the major financial policy decisions are taken by the F&CA committee before it is ratified by the ICC board.

“Each and every member accepted Jay as the head of F&CA committee. This is an equally powerful sub committee apart from the ICC chair (Greg Barclay),” an ICC source told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

It includes the revenue sharing among the member nations and also the various major sponsorship deals that the global body inks through the year.

The F&CA committee is always headed by an ICC Board member and Shah’s election makes it clear that he will represent the BCCI on the ICC Board.

The F&CA head’s position used to be India’s during the N Srinivasan era but during Shashank Manohar’s tenure as ICC chairman, the BCCI’s power and might had significantly reduced.

In fact during the Committee of Administrators’ tenure, there was a point when BCCI didn’t even have any representation in the F&CA committee.

Former BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was a member of the F&CA committee till last year.

“India is a commercial hub of global cricket with more than 70 percent sponsorship coming from the region. It is imperative that an ICC F&CA should always be headed by BCCI,” the ICC source said.

Sourav Ganguly to remain ICC Cricket Committee head

Former India captain Ganguly, who completed his tenure as BCCI president last month, will remain the head of ICC’s Cricket Committee.

Lucknow: The construction of a mosque in Ayodhya, being built pursuant to the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, is expected to be completed by December next year, the trust entrusted with the task has said.

“We hope to get approval to the map of the proposed mosque, hospital, community kitchen, library and research centre from the Ayodhya Development Authority by the end of this month. Soon after we will start the construction of the mosque,” Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust secretary Athar Hussain told PTI.

The construction of the Dhannipur Ayodhya Mosque is likely to be completed by the end of December 2023, while the remaining structures on the five-acre Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah Complex will be come up subsequently, he said.

The Supreme Court, in its verdict in the long-standing Ayodhya dispute, ordered the construction of a Ram temple on the 2.77-acre plot where the Babri Masjid once stood, and directed that five acres be allotted for building a mosque in the Uttar Pradesh district.

The ‘bhoomi pujan’ for the temple was performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2020 and, according to the temple trust, it is likely to be opened to devotees in January 2024.

The timing of the completion of the temple and the mosque is significant as the next parliamentary election is scheduled for early 2024.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust, formed by the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the construction of the mosque, has also decided to build a hospital, community kitchen, library and a research institute.

“The trust will start the construction of all proposed structures simultaneously and the mosque is likely to be completed first because of its small size. Although no deadline has been fixed, it will hopefully be constructed within a year’s time,” Hussain said.

Efforts are being made to raise funds for the construction of the mosque and other structures in the complex, he said.

Hussain said the hospital will begin with 100 beds and later upgraded to a 200-bed facility. The community kitchen will initially have the capacity to serve 1,000 people daily and subsequently expanded to cater to 2,000 people.

He said the trust decided to build an Indo-Islamic Research Centre and a library so that the people of the area can benefit from them.

Hussain said that about a month ago, during perusal of the application for obtaining NOC from the fire department for the mosque and other facilities, the department had objected to the narrow approach road.

The district administration was immediately informed about this.

Taking prompt action, the administration has completed the process of measurement of additional land to be given to widen the approach road, the trust secretary said.

He said the land given by the government to the Waqf Board is recorded in the revenue records as agricultural land, so no construction can be done on it without changing its use.

“The trust has already applied for change in its land use and the administration has assured it of completing the entire process and approve the map within 15 days,” he said.

Dallas (US): Two historic military aircraft collided and crashed Saturday during an air show in Dallas, exploding into a ball of flames and sending black smoke billowing into the sky. It was not clear how many people were on board.

Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive Airport, about 16 kilometers from the city’s downtown. News footage from the scene showed crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area inside the airport perimeter. Dallas Fire-Rescue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reported injuries among people on the ground.

Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.

“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”

Officials would not say how many people were on board the planes, but Hank Coates, president of the company that put on the airshow, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, typically has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane, has a single pilot.

No paying customers were on the aircraft, said Coates, of Commemorative Air Force, which also owned the planes. Their aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.

A team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators will arrive at the scene of the crash on Sunday.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the NTSB had taken control of the crash scene, with local police and fire providing support.

“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.

The planes collided and crashed around 1.20 pm, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.

Victoria Yeager, the widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She didn’t see the collision, but did see the burning wreckage.

“It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.

“We were just hoping they had all gotten out, but we knew they didn’t,” she said of those on board.

The B-17, a cornerstone of US air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a US fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter plane appearing to fly into the bomber, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and setting off a large ball of fire and smoke.

“It was really horrific to see,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it occurred. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”

A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically on a video that Young uploaded to her Facebook page.

Air show safety – particularly with older military aircraft – has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said then that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.

Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for November 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.

Videos of previous Wings Over Dallas events depict vintage warplanes flying low, sometimes in close formation, on simulated strafing or bombing runs. The videos also show the planes performing aerobatic stunts.

The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.

Puri (Odisha): Servitors of the Jagannath temple in Puri on Saturday wrote to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, seeking punishment for those who allegedly made “objectionable” remarks against gods.

In the letter, the Chhatisha Nijog, the apex servitors’ body comprising 36 different groups, said people claiming to be rationalists have hurt religious sentiments of Hindus by ridiculing century-old traditions during the recent solar and lunar eclipses. The particular group of people made slanderous remarks in television channels against Lord Ram and Lord Laxman, it said.

“They even said that rice and chicken can be offered to Lord Jagannath as prasad,” it added.

It said the state government will be responsible if there is any major law and order situation in the state.

Copies of the letter were also sent to Chief Secretary SC Mohapatra and Director-General of Police SK Bansal.

Earlier this week, eight people were arrested for allegedly attacking a group that organised a biryani feast in Bhubaneswar during the two eclipses.

Nagpur: A 40-year-old man has been arrested here for allegedly hoodwinking his teen daughter into writing suicide notes to implicate his relatives, and then asking her to enact suicide during which he actually murdered her.

The 16-year-old girl was found hanging from the ceiling fan of her house in Kalamna area of Nagpur city on November 6, a police official said on Saturday.

Police registered a case of abetment to suicide against her stepmother, uncle, aunt and grandparents on the basis of five suicide notes found in the room, said the official of Kalamna police station.

But an examination of the victim’s father’s mobile phone during the probe revealed that there was a fiendish plot behind what looked like a suicide.

“In the mobile phone, we found a photograph of the victim enacting a suicide bid. It came to light that he had asked his daughter to act as if she was hanging herself and clicked a photograph, claiming he wanted to teach his relatives a lesson,” the police official said.

“Before that he had asked her to write five suicide notes naming these relatives. When the girl did that and then tied the noose around her neck and stood on a stool as instructed by him, he clicked a photo and then kicked the stool, causing her death by hanging. She died in front of her father and 12-year-old sister,” the official said.

The accused then left the house. He later called police, claiming that he had stepped out for some work and upon return found that his daughter had hanged herself, said the official.

Police initially registered a case of abetment to suicide under the Indian Penal Code against the five relatives. But then the investigators realized that something was amiss.

“After we came upon the suicide enactment photo in his phone, we questioned the man, and he confessed to murdering his daughter. His first wife had ended her life in 2016 and the second wife had also left home,” the official said.

The man, who works as a labourer, was arrested for alleged murder. Police were probing the motive behind the crime, the official added.