Archives for 2021

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.

Guwahati: Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) candidate Rangja Khungur Basumatary Thursday joined BJP ahead of the third phase of poll in Assam when the constituency in which he is a contestant is slated to go to the poll.

Basumatary had reportedly gone missing for two days and at around midnight on Wednesday, senior BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma had tweeted that he had met the BPF candidate, who would join the saffron party.

BPF is an ally of the opposition Congress in Assam, where two out of the slated three phased poll got over on Thursday.

“Official candidate of BPF and so called Congress-led alliance from Tamulpur LAC (legislative assembly constituency), Sri Ram Das Basumatary met me a short while ago. He has expressed his desire to Join @BJP4India and retire from the election,” Sarma tweeted.

Rangja Khungur Basumatary is also known as Ram Das Basumatary.

Basumatary told a local TV channel that he had decided to resign from BPF as the party did not lend any helping hand to him during the campaign.

Efforts made to contact him failed as his phone was switched off.

A statement by the Congress confirmed that Basumatary has joined the BJP on Thursday.

Tamulpur constituency is in Baksa district under Bodoland Territorial Region and will go to the poll during the third phase on April 6.

Reacting to the development, Congress MP Manish Tiwari said that Basumatary had gone missing due to threatening by BJPN and lambasted the saffron party for it.

Never in India did such immoral activities take place during elections – you (BJP) threatened to use the National Investigation Agency against the party and the candidate.

“You(BJP) want to win the poll by wrong means. This is a fascist mentality and it is BJP’s education. That party does not believe in democracy and democratic systems. This is absolutely the worst spectare of fascism that is on display in the Assam polls,” he told a press conference here.

Tiwari demanded that the BJP government in the state tell the people what had happened to Basumatary for two days.

“I demand a detailed probe into the incident by Election Commission. How come such an incident took place in front of the EC? Is the EC blindfolded?” the Congress leader said.

AICC spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said a Congress delegation will meet the EC Thursday evening to seek deferment of voting in Tamulpur constituency and disqualification of Sarma, a senior Assam minister, from contesting and further campaigning for the state poll as he is a “repeat offender” of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC).

Vallabh questioned why the EC was not checking Basumatary’s call records to find his whereabouts.

“We demand that the call records of Basumatary be made public so that the people of Assam get to know what coercion, intimidation or what proposal forced him to join hands with the BJP,” Vallabh said.

Commenting on the EC notice to Sarma for allegedly threatening BPF chief Hagrama Mohilary with using the NIA against him, Tiwari said “The EC issued the notice because it is convinced that such threatening language is not acceptable.

“The EC prima facie found him guilty. It is a conspiracy against the candidate. It is an attempt to subvert the election process. They (BJP) don’t believe in democracy and that is why they are resorting to such practice of threatening a candidate who is in the poll contest.

Sarma had said that he had got evidence of Mohilary’s alleged links with the recent recoveries of arms in Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) and the case was being given to the NIA for investigation.

Later the state Director General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta had reportedly said that there was evidence of militant and his group in the arms recovery.

“We ask the Gujarati Mama (referring to Sarma’s allegiance to BJP and that he is popularly called ‘Mama’) when did that evidence come? If it came before the MCC came into force, then why were you silent? It means you were indulging in a criminal offence. If it came after the MCC came into force, then how and who gave the evidence to you because police now reports to the Election Commission.

“Yesterday the DGP said that he has all the information. Is it a coincidence or deliberate? DGP Sir why are you not taking any action? Who has tied your hands? By making such statements, you are not strengthening the democracy, but weakening it,” Vallabh added.

New Delhi, Apr 1: The Congress on Thursday questioned the timing of Dadasaheb Phalke Award to superstar Rajinikanth, saying the government should not do anything that unnecessarily drags celebrities in political controversies.

Congress leader Rajeev Shukla said the government should not try to take political advantage out of everything and be wary of such actions.

“This award should have been given to him long back, why is it being given this year,” he said.

“The government should not do anything which unnecessarily drags our celebrities in political controversies. Rajinikanth is a respected film personality. The BJP and the government should be wary of this and it should not try to take political advantage out of everything,” Shukla told reporters.

He alleged that the government doing anything with elections in view is not proper, but noted that people know everything.

“The government should not try to take political gains out of everything it does. If the government has done this with the intention of making political gains and with elections in mind, then this is not appropriate in politics,” he said.

Rajinikanth is a widely respected film personality and we all respect him, as his career has been very successful.

Superstar Rajinikanth will be honoured with the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes days ahead of the April 6 Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, where the 70-year-old Rajinikanth resides and has a massive following among the people.

Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Indian cinema’s highest honour for an artiste, for the year 2019, will be presented to Rajinikanth on May 3.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Rajinikanth for his contribution to cinema while congratulating him on the honour.