The Border Security Force on Thursday seized Bangladeshi currency totaling 8.02 lakh Taka, or Rs 6.55 lakh in Indian currency, in West Bengal’s Nadia district, a senior BSF official said.

The suspect, however, fled the spot, he said.

Acting on a tip-off, BSF troopers kept a vigil near the India-Bangladesh border in Mankhola and seized the packet containing the Bangladeshi currency thrown by the fleeing smuggler.

As many as 377 artificial earrings were also seized, a BSF release said.

The seized currency was handed over to the Customs Department at Nadia district’s Tehatta.

BSF’s south Bengal frontier has seized foreign currency totaling Rs 53.21 lakh and arrested four Indian smugglers in 2018 so far.

BJP’s Nishikant Dubey on Thursday said in the Lok Sabha that the CBI will file a charge sheet against Vijay Mallya and name a former Finance Minister, leading to loud protests from the Congress.

Participating in a debate on The Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, the lawmaker asked if two Finance Ministers during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance rule were involved in sanction of loans to Mallya.

“You get the loan sanctioned without collateral and if he has run away, you say he has run away. Who gave the loans? Who created the situation? Which Congress leaders he had relations with? The CBI is going to file a charge sheet and it will have the name of a former Finance Minister,” he said.

The leader of the Congress in the house Mallikarjun Kharge immediately asked how was Dubey aware of the impending CBI action and said it showed “all this is pre-planned.”

“You people are doing this to fix (opponents),” he said.

Dubey said that he had not taken any names and there had been several Finance Ministers in the past.

Punjab Police arrested a priest and self-styled healer from the Delhi international airport following a complaint from a woman in Zirakpur that he had raped her, said an official on Thursday.

Zirakpur station house officer (SHO) Pawan Kumar said the priest, Bajinder Singh, was nabbed from the Delhi airport as he was about to board a flight for London where he was scheduled to attend a healing event on July 21.

Singh is the pastor of a church in Punjab’s Jalandhar district. He was reported to be popular among people as a healer.

The woman, a resident of Zirakpur town, adjoining Chandigarh, had complained to the police in May this year that Singh had sexually assaulted her and even recorded a video of the assault.

She alleged the accused used to threaten her that he would post the video on social media if she complained about him or did not agree to his demands.

“We had received a complaint of rape from the woman in May this year. The accused was on the run since then. We had got a lookout notice issued against him. We nabbed him when he was leaving for England,” the SHO said.

He said 3-4 other persons were also named in the FIR (first information report) registered in this matter.

The police have registered a case against Singh under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the IT Act.

These include rape (376), cheating (420), outraging the modesty of a woman (354), obscenity (294), causing hurt (323) and criminal intimidation (506) under IPC and Section 67 (transmitting sexually explicit content) of the Information Technology (IT) Act.

As many as 1,10,333 cases of rape were registered in the country between 2014-16, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said today.

Rijiju said in Rajya Sabha that 38,947 cases of rape were registered in 2016, 34,651 cases of rape were registered in 2015 and 36,735 cases of rape were registered in 2014.

Altogether 3,38,954 cases of crime against women were registered in 2016, as many as 3,29,243 cases of crime against women were registered in 2015 and 3,39,457 such cases were registered in 2014, he said in a written reply.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday filed a charge sheet in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal against 34 individuals and foreign and Indian companies including former IAF chief S.P. Tyagi, his two cousins, advocate Gautam Khaitan and Italians Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke.

While filing the chargesheet under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the ED informed the magistrate that money was laundered through “multiple foreign companies”.

The court was told that “foreign companies were used as fronts to park alleged kickbacks”.

The ED chargesheet named the former IAF chief’s cousins Sanjeev Tyagi and Rajiv Tyagi along with Bruno Spagnolini, former CEO of AgustaWestland, and Giuseppe Orsi, the former chief of Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica.

Others named in the chargesheet are Rajeev Saxena, Director of Dubia-based firm Matrix Holdings, his wife Shivani Saxena and advocate Gautam Khaitan’s wife Ritu Khaitan.

The chargesheet also names some Indian and foreign companies like Aeromatrix Info Solution Ltd, Windsor Group Holdings, Ismax International Ltd, Cricklewood Ltd, Long Lasting Ltd, Matrix Holding Pvt Ltd, UHY Saxena, Dubai Interstellar Technologies Ltd, O.P. Khaitan and Co International Mediterranean Consulting, Tunisia Infotech Design Systems, Gordian Services, Finmeccanica SPA and AgustaWestland.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) — the prime investigating agency — has already filed a chargesheet in the case.

On January 1, 2014, India cancelled the contract with Finmeccanica’s British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW-101 VVIP choppers to the IAF, over alleged breach of contractual obligations and on charges of paying kickbacks amounting to Rs 423 crore.

The CBI, which registered an FIR on March 12, 2013, alleged that S.P. Tyagi, who was the IAF chief from 2004 to 2007, and the other accused received kickbacks from AgustaWestland to help it win the contract.

The FIR mentioned charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

According to the CBI, S.P. Tyagi allegedly took bribes of several crores from AgustaWestland through the middlemen — and a complex set of companies in several countries — to change the specifications of the contract.

The operational flight ceiling of the choppers was reduced from 6,000 metres, as originally proposed, to 4,500 metres and the cabin height was brought down to 1.8 metres.

The twin modifications were allegedly meant to rig the deal in favour of AgustaWestland, which eventually walked away with the order to supply the 12 choppers for the Communication Squadron of the IAF to ferry the President, the Prime Minister and other VVIPs.

The CBI probe revealed that several payments were made to S.P. Tyagi by middlemen Haschke, Gerosa and Christian Michel James, whose name was not mentioned in the ED chargesheet.

The leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde on Wednesday said a businessman had allegedly secured loans worth over Rs 5400 crore on the basis of fake documents made in the name of farmers.

Raising the issue under Rule 289, Munde (NCP) said Ratnakar Gutte, promoter of the Gangakhed Sugar and Energy Limited in the state’s Parbhani district, had also transferred bank loans obtained by various groups firms into different accounts.

He claimed Gutte had formed 22 shell companies to route the money.

“In 2015, Gangakhed Sugar Factory procured bank loans in the names of more than 600 farmers under the ‘Harvest and Transport scheme’. These farmers are now getting bank notices for loans amounts some of which are as high as Rs 25 lakh,” Munde claimed.

He further alleged that several companies which were part of the group were shell companies which had little or no assets of value.

Munde informed the House that an FIR had been registered against Gutte on July 5 this year under various sections of the IPC but no arrest had been made so far.

Calling the issue a very serious one, Munde said that any laxity on the part of the government could allow the businessman to flee the country like PNB scam-accused diamantaire Nirav Modi.

Council Chairman Ramraje Nimbalkar took cognizance of the issue raised by Munde and sought information from the government.

Nimbalkar asked the government whether the Special Investigation Team formed to probe the matter was appointed by the court or not.

After being on the run for more than two weeks, the prime suspect in the brutal murder of an SFI member in a Kerala college has finally been nabbed, police said on Wednesday.

Mohammed Ali was nabbed from the Kerala-Karnataka border, on Tuesday and was being interrogated, a police officer said here.

According to the police, Ali was involved in the stabbing of 19-year-old Abhimanyu, when the Students’ Federation of India and the Campus Front of India groups clashed late on July 2, over graffiti space on the walls of the Maharajas College here.

Both Abhimanyu and Ali, the Alappuzha district president of Campus Front of India and its unit secretary studied at Maharajas College.

Soon after the July 2 incident, Ali along with his parents had gone missing from their home in Alappuzha.

The police had earlier pointed out that there were 15 people who were directly involved in the murder and had arrested four. Another six who were arrested had helped the main culprits.

Trouble had started after both groups wanted to put up their wall graffitis ahead of the commencement of the new academic year. The scuffle led to one death while another student was injured.

In a shocking news, an 11-year-old girl with a hearing disorder was allegedly gang-raped by at least 22 men in Chennai for over 7 months. Police have today arrested 18 men including the security men, lift operator and water suppliers of the society and are searching for others in connection with the case.

An 11-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted over a period of 7 months at various places inside her apartment campus in Chennai,” Police said.

According to police, the Class VII girl was allegedly sedated with injections, drug-laced soft drinks before sexually assaulting her and was videographed. The accused reportedly blackmailed the child for a prolonged period with the threat of releasing the videos and sexually exploited her for months.

Police said the matter came to light after the victim, narrated the sequence of incidents to her elder sister, who later brought this to the notice of their parents, following which a complaint was lodged.

According to the source, the girl told police that elevator operator Ravi Kumar, 66, first sexually assaulted her in an unoccupied flat in the complex. Three days later two men from outside the complex also raped her and videotaped the incident. Other men later joined in Rajiv to sexually assault the child repeatedly.

“The girl’s father was away at work through most of the day. Her mother, a homemaker, did not think anything was amiss when the girl came home late from school. She assumed that her daughter was playing with friends in the complex,” reported a police officer as saying.
The identified suspects include security guards Murugesh, 54, Palani, 40, Abishek, 23, Sugumaran, 60, Prakash, 58, and Umapathy, 42; elevator operators Ravi Kumar, Paramasivam, 60, Dheenadayalan, 50, Srinivasan, 45, and Babu, 36; plumbers Jaiganesh, 23, Raja, 32, Surya, 23, Suresh, 32; an electrician Jayaraman, 26; a housekeeping employee, Rajasekar, 40; and a gardener, Gunasekar, 55.

A minor widow has been done to death in the national capital allegedly by her brother-in-law and two others, two months after her husband committed suicide, police said on Tuesday.

After the death of her husband, the 16-year-old had started living with her parents. Two days prior to her killing, she had gone to her maternal grandparents in Badarpur, where the incident took place, according to the police.

On Monday evening, she was found unconscious with stab marks on her body, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said.

“She was immediately shifted to Apollo Hospital where she was declared dead,” Biswal said.

Her grandparents told the police that the victim’s brother-in-law, Amit, along with two others, came and stabbed the girl with a knife and fled.

A newly married woman was found dead at her in-laws’ residence here, police said on Monday. The husband has been arrested.

Iram was found hanging from a ceiling fan on Sunday in Gokulpuri.

“Several wounds were found on Iram’s body. Her family alleged that her husband, Nazim, was having an extra-marital affair, leading to quarrels, after which she was beaten to death,” a police officer said.

Iram and Nazim married five months ago and she was two months pregnant.

“Nazim, who ran a small cosmetic shop, was arrested after the victim’s father alleged foul play. Other family members are at large,” the officer added.