Acting on a complaint filed by a local politician, the Jnanabharathi police arrested three persons, including a woman on charges of duping the leader of Rs 10 lakh after befriending him on Facebook.

P Harini alias Swati Gowda alias Khushi (25), Ravi Pengappa (40) and V Prakash (39) all residents of Tigalarapalya are the arrested.

In a complaint filed with police on last Tuesday, the victim, L. Srinivas, a resident of Nagarabavai and JD(S) general secretary alleged that Harini had befriended him on Facebook in August this year. The two kept exchanging messages and went on to become good friends.

During one such conversation, Harini informed Srinivas that she was setting up a dance class. A few days later she informed him that her father had made arrangements for Rs 2 crore towards the investment but she was falling short of Rs 3 lakhs. An unsuspecting Srinivas offered to lend her the money and a man whom she said was her brother picked up the money from near a bus stand in Bangalore University campus

Later Harini once again messaged Srinivas stating that she was in urgent need of Rs 10 lakh and since her father was out of town she requested him to loan her the amount. Srinivas agreed to lend Rs 7 lakh to her and this time too the money was collected from the same spot by a man whom she said was her manager. However, when Srinivas tried to contact her, later in the day, her mobile was found switched off. After attempts to establish contact with her failed Srinivas realised that he had been cheated by the gang and immediately filed a complaint with Jnanabharathi police.

The police have registered a case and recovered cash of Rs 4.5 lakh, an autorickshaw and a mobile phone from the accused.

PTI

A Dubai court has charged an Indian man with groping a woman while she was walking late at night.

Prosecutors on Monday accused the 30-year-old man, a driver, of taking the Filipina woman by surprise, inappropriately touching her and then fleeing the scene, reports the Khaleej Times.

The man denied the charge, claiming that he touched her by mistake.

The complainant, a 25-year-old waitress, told the prosecution that she did not know the suspect prior to the incident.

“It was at 1.20 a.m. on August 3. I was near a restaurant and was about to go to a supermarket. My friend was with me. There were five to six men coming in the opposite way. One of them groped me intentionally. I yelled at him but he then replied in a very abusive and vulgar manner.”

He did not just ignore her screams for help but also laughed and continued his way.

“I followed them and kept screaming until an African man came and restrained the defendant,” the complainant said.

A ruling will be pronounced on October 11.

IANS

City Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths raided 50 rowdy sheeters houses and detained 23 as they had search warrants pending against them.

Additional Commissioner of Police Crime branch formed a team comprising 100 police personnel, who started the raid at 5 am untill 11.30 am.

The raids were conducted simultaneously at all the houses of rowdies with teams of police keeping a watch on their movements.

Those detained have been identified as Lokesh alias Mulam, Kommaghatta Manja, Lakshmana, Mahim, Jonty, Lakkasandra Viji, Robbery Giri, Thothla Manja, Michael D’Souza, JC Road Shankar, Kodigehalli Appu, Gaali Ravi, JCB Narayana, Dhoodh Ravi, Dadiya Mahesh, Bethenagere Shankar, Jagadish alias Marenahalli Jagga, Vediappan alias Vedi, Atush, Raja Kutty, Thirumaran alias Kutty, Tanveer and Pappu alias Amir Khan.

Sleuts seized land documents and demonetised currencies, 15 cheques, 14 mobile phones, 300 gm gold ornaments, two currency counting machines, seven daggers, two longs and three machetes from their houses.

A man cut off his wife’s head in a gruesome show of anger and walked into the Srinivaspur police station with her head on Thursday, September 27.

The deceased has been identified as Roshini Khanam (22), a resident of Neelasandra in Bengaluru and wife of Azeez Saddam (26), a resident of Gafar Khan Mohalla.

Police sources have said that Azeez killed his wife as he doubted her faithfulness toward him.

It is learnt that, on the day of the murder, Azeez invited his wife to a mango field at Murugamalla in the Chintamani taluk, and upon her arrival, offered her juice laced with sedatives. As soon as she lost consciousness, he beheaded her with the help of a sharp knife, left the rest of her body in the field, placed her head in a travel bag and walked into the Srinivaspur Police Station. At the police station, he took her head out of the bag, kissed it repeatedly and placed it on the table and confessed to the crime.

A preliminary investigation into the incident revealed that Azeez is already married and that Roshini is his second wife, the police said.

A similar incident took place on September 10, where a man walked into the Ajjampura police station in the Chikkamagaluru district with his wife’s head of wife in a bag, handed it to the Police and confessed to murdering his wife for being unfaithful.

PTI

Bengaluru, home to some of the best educational institutions in the country, is fast becoming a hub for dubious firms offering fake degree certificates. The city police’s most recent catch was last week, when an MBA graduate was arrested for selling 300 fake certificates of about four universities. Police believe that he has sold them to his customers for a price ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.

Arjun (30), hailing from Andhra Pradesh, came to Bengaluru four years ago in search of employment. When he reportedly failed to find one, he, along with a few others, started an academy called Good Guide Educational Academy in Koramangala promising to help students pursue correspondence courses. “We found documents and fake marks cards of about 300 students. There might be more and we are probing,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police M B Boralingaiah.

The modus operandi used by him was to find students who have had a gap of three to four years after PUC or have done only one year of degree course. One such person to whom Arjun had promised to give a degree marks card from Periyar University approached the police after which the cops raided the office to find many marks sheets and birth, degree, and PG certificates with names of candidates written on them. There were many blank certificates too.

Many such scamsters
Police feel this is become a big scam and needs to be tackled soon. There are many people who have managed to get jobs in private firms with such fake certificates. It is only when the background verification is done by the companies that their fraud is revealed and many have lost jobs after that.

A senior police officer told TNIE that such rackets are spread across the country and more than 150 agents, who allegedly have close links with some of the universities whose fake mark sheets gets distributed, are involved in this. However, most of these scamsters do their “dealings” online. In 2017, the Central Crime Branch police raided an education consulting firm on MG Road and arrested a post-graduate who sold 2,000 fake marks cards.

Police then, with the help of a cyber forensic consultancy firm, and after the arrest of two such scamsters, skimmed through 39,600 emails which were recovered from them. “They had used email to contact clients and to distribute the fake documents. We went through each of those digital documents so as to identify the people who paid to get their degrees,” a senior officer who had conducted the raid said.

“While this is an old problem, over the last year there has been a spike in people venturing into this racket. These raids are just the tip of the iceberg,” the officer added. The employers, who conduct background checks, should always inform the police when they find something fishy, said a police officer.
Going by the raids in the recent past, as many as 40,000 people are working in and around the city with the fake degree certificates. Police rarely get formal complaints, and often take suo motu action.

PTI

Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat, on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee defiantly, forcefully and emotionally denied the accusations of sexual assault levelled at him by Christine Blasey Ford, calling them “a national disgrace.”

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” he said in his opening statement before the committee, adding that “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with ‘search and destroy'”, Efe reported.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has a Republican majority – just like the overall Senate – is tasked with approving or not Kavanaugh’s nomination.

At times breaking down in tears and pausing in delivering his statement, Kavanaugh told the committee that “My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional allegations,” but he vowed that he would never withdraw or quit.

The statement by the judge, who came to the Capitol holding his wife’s hand, came after Ford appeared before the committee earlier on Thursday, confirming for lawmakers that she was “100 per cent” certain that it was a drunken Kavanaugh who had sexually assaulted her at a house party in 1982 when they were both teens.

He said that he was not questioning Ford’s claim that she had been sexually assaulted by someone, but he declared that he did not do so.

The Senate hearing – broadcast live by major television news networks – riveted many Americans and comes amid increasing pressure to postpone a confirmation vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Earlier, before the committee, Ford had described taking and passing a polygraph test regarding her accusation.

“I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me,” Ford said in her opening statement at the hearing on her accusation.

“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school,” she told lawmakers.

Ford said that she had “agonized” for months since she learned about Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but ultimately she said “I thought it was my civic duty to relay the information I had about Kavanaugh’s conduct so that those considering his potential nomination would know about the assault.”

One of three women who have publicly accused the judge of sexual misconduct, Ford insisted that she is a “fiercely independent” person and nobody’s “pawn,” and asserted that she felt it was incumbent upon her to tell her story about what occurred at the house party in the summer of 1982, when both she and Kavanaugh were teenagers.

The hearing scheduled for Thursday by the Republicans – who are in the majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee – was set to hear testimony from both Ford and Kavanaugh on her allegation, but the GOP members have not moved to allow calling more witnesses who might be able to corroborate or refute either of their stories, including Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s close high school friend who Ford says was present in the same room during the attack.

IANS

A Special Court here has ordered an FIR against Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath and Vyapam scam whistleblower Prashant Pandey on a petition filed by BJP’s legal cell advocate Santosh Sharma.

Judge Suresh Singh, late on Wednesday, ordered Shyamla Hills Police Station to lodge a First Information Report (FIR) against the four and furnish a detailed report on the matter by November 13.

The court order has come on the BJP activist’s petition which alleged that the Congress leaders had submitted forged documents in connection with the Vyapam case. They were also accused of trying to mislead and manipulate the Supreme Court and the High Court.

It may be recalled that Digvijay had filed a petition in a Bhopal court and attached a 27,000-page chargesheet with it in connection with the Vyapam case. The next hearing on the matter is due.

The Vyapam scam pertains to college admissions and government recruitments and involves several politicians, businessmen and officials, in Madhya Pradesh.

Imposters were employed to write papers, exam hall seating arrangements were manipulated and forged answer sheets were supplied by bribing officials.

(IANS)

Antigua and Barbuda has assured India that it will extradite fugitive jewellery merchant Mehul Choksi as soon as the legal formalities are over, according to External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar.

The assurance was conveyed by Antigua’s Foreign Minister Chet Greene when he met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting, Kumar told reporters.

Greene, who had requested the meeting, told her that Prime Minister Gaston Alfonso Browne and the government were fully behind complying with India’s request for extraditing Choksi, Kumar said.

Sushma Swaraj asked that he be extradited expeditiously and Greene said there were internal legal and court procedures that had to be gone through to comply with the nation’s laws and as soon as they were taken care of Antigua would extradite him, according to Kumar.

Choksi, who is wanted in India over his alleged involvement in a scheme that defrauded Punjab National Bank of $2 billion, has reportedly taken the citizenship of the Caribbean island nation.

(IANS)

City sessions court awarded 20 years imprisonment and Rs.50,000 fine for a person who sexually assaulted his 8-years-old daughter.

Anvar (30), a resident of Kengeri is the guilty who has been awarded the punishment. According to the police, Anvar sexually assaulted his 8-years-old daughter when his wife was not at home. The incident happened in the year 2017.

“After sexually assaulting the daughter, Anvar threatened her of killing her and her mother if she revealed the incident.

But daughter complained to her mother who in turn approached the police seeking help. Based on the mother’s complaint Anvar was arrested. As the charges are proven in the court, the sessions court awarded him punishment,” informed the police.

PTI

An Indian-origin doctor has pleaded guilty to a healthcare fraud in the US, the Justice Department said.

Jayam Krishna Iyer, 66, from Clearwater, Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of the healthcare fraud earlier this week and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison, or 20 years, if her offence involves serious bodily injury, the Department said in a press release.

As part of the plea on Tuesday, Iyer agreed to surrender both her Drug Enforcement Administration registration number that she used to prescribe controlled substances, her Florida medical licence, and to a permanent exclusion from the Medicare and Medicaid programmes.

According to officials, Iyer owned and operated Creative Medical Centre in Clearwater that functioned as a pain management clinic.

She billed Medicare and Medicaid for office visits, tests and services provided to patients using her National Provider Identification number, as well as wrote prescriptions for controlled substances.

Beginning as early as July 2011 and continuing through December 2017, Iyer executed and carried out a scheme to defraud Medicare by billing for face-to-face office visits with Medicare beneficiaries, when, in fact, certain patients did not go to her centre and were not examined by her on the claimed dates.

Instead, family members of the patients went to her with notes requesting her to issue and provide prescriptions.

Officials said that she thereby violated a law requiring doctors to perform an in-person office visit and examination of each patient before issuing controlled substance prescriptions.

Iyer also falsified her electronic medical records to make it appear that the patient was present in her office. She submitted at least $51,500 in these types of false and fraudulent Medicare claims, the release said.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Florida Office of Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

It is being prosecuted by Assistant US Attorney Kelley Howard-Allen.

IANS