At least nine people were killed and eight others injured on Saturday morning (April 28) after a passenger vehicle carrying them rammed into a stationary goods truck in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh.
The accident took place on highway at Lakhimpur Kheri district about 129 km north of Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh.

The passenger van was carrying 17 people. Nine people died on the spot. The injured persons were rushed to a nearby hospital in Shahjahanpur.

Police have registered a case and ordered investigations to ascertain reasons behind the accident.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

The Supreme Court today stayed till May 7 the trial in the Kathua gangrape and murder case, after being seized with petitions seeking shifting of the trial to Chandigarh and handing over the investigation to the CBI.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra said it will deal with the prayer of the victim’s father for shifting the trial to Chandigarh and the plea of the accused seeking handing over the probe to CBI.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on May 7. The child from a minority nomadic community had disappeared from near her home in a village near Kathua in Jammu region on January 10. Her body was found in the same area a week later.

During the hearing, the apex court witnessed heated exchanges between senior advocate Indira Jaising, who appeared for the victim’s family, and advocate Harvinder Chaudhary, who was representing the accused. Jaising said the case be transferred to Chandigarh due to proximity to Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir and the incidents of obstruction of police personnel by lawyers of the local court.

She said that attempts were made to intimidate the presiding judge of the court and the crime branch officials were heckled by the lawyers, as is evident in the affidavit of Jammu and Kashmir government. Chaudhary said his clients do not have faith in police investigation and the probe should go to CBI. She alleged that the police was hand-in-glove with vested interests to falsely implicate the accused while the real culprits were someone else.

Advocate General Jahangir Iqbal Ganai, along with standing counsel Shoeb Alam, appearing for Jammu and Kashmir, opposed the prayer for a CBI probe and said the SIT of the crime branch was investigating the case. Ganai said the trial could be shifted from Kathua and Jammu to some other district in the state as there were 221 witnesses and most of the statements recorded so far were in Urdu.

Alam said that Jammu and Kashmir has its own penal law and if the trial is shifted to Chandigarh, then it may create several problems. Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the Centre, said the government was ready to provide any assistance if required but the call has to be taken by the Jammu and Kashmir government.

The apex court had yesterday given a stern warning and said it would transfer the Kathua gangrape and murder case from the local court in the “slightest possibility” of lack of fair trial, saying the “real concern” was to hold proper prosecution.

The eight-year-old’s father had moved the apex court earlier, apprehending threat to the family, a friend and their lawyer Deepika Singh Rajawat. A separate plea was also filed by two accused seeking that the trial in the case be held in Jammu and the probe handed over to the CBI.

The state police’s Crime Branch, which probed the case, filed the main charge sheet against seven persons and a separate charge sheet against a juvenile in a court in Kathua district last week. The charge sheet revealed chilling details about how the girl was allegedly kidnapped, drugged and raped inside a place of worship before being killed.

(PTI)

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who is facing charges for financial irregularities involving an amount of around Rs 9,000 crores, as well as money laundering cases in India, on Friday said it was his democratic right to vote in the Karnataka Assembly polls but he “cannot travel” to India.

Mallya had represented Karnataka twice in the Rajya Sabha.
“It is my democratic right to vote in Karnataka but conditions of my bail are such that I cannot leave the UK,” Mallya told reporters outside the Westminister Magistrate’s Court where the hearing in his ongoing extradition trial is being held.

However, when asked about his opinion on the state polls, he said, “I haven’t been following the politics there so cannot comment on the political developments.”

former Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee vice president allayed apprehensions in a section of the media that the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is contesting from Badami for the fear of losing in his home constituency Chamundeshwari in Mysuru district.

In an informal chat with Hindusthan Samachar, he claimed that there’s nothing unusual about chief minister’s and prime minister’s contesting from two different constituencies.Did not Prime Minister contest from Vadodara in Gujarat and simultaneously at Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh he shot back.

Such contests will make a big impact on the voters of such regions and will help garner more votes along with the traditional one’s explained the former Chairman of the state legislative council.

It may be recalled here that he had quit the party positions he had held so far recently to register his protest against denial of party ticket to contest from Kolar city constituency in neighbouring Kolar district.However he denied quitting the party on such grouse and clarified that he’s only resigned from the positions he had held so far and hasn’t thought of bidding adieu to the party yet.

The Kolar district Congress committee had a piquant situation sometime back when two rival Muslim factions fought among themselves in the party meeting.If one group was trying to persuade the representatives of the state committee to give the party ticket to Muslim this time as well the rival was vehemently opposing the same.

The latter was of the opinion that the party had lost thrice whenever the ticket was given to a Muslim candidate.Interestingly this time also Zameer Ahmed,a former IAS officer has been given the party ticket much against the wishes of local party men. VR Sudarshan was also a contender and ultimately ended up in losing the ticket.

Party sources claim that further damage has been stalled by convincing VR Sudarshan that his interests will be taken care of after the polls.

Hindusthan Samachar/Manohar Yadavatti

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was on Thursday awarded the National Intellectual Property (IP) Award 2018 in the category ‘Top R&D Institution/Organisation for Patents and Commercialisation’, an official statement said.

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu gave out the award to CSIR Director General Girish Sahni at a function organised by the Indian Intellectual Property Office and Confederation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (CII) here to celebrate the World IP Day.

CSIR Laboratories have been developing and providing technology focused at the unmet need and the cutting edge knowledge base and human resource on the other for socio-economic development in the country, it said.

“The CSIR S&T domains range from environment to health and drinking water, from food, housing, energy to specialty chemicals and petrochemicals, glass and ceramics to mining, metals and minerals, medicinal plants, leather to machinery, instrumentation and strategic sectors including aerospace.

“It is contributing for the Missions such as Swachh Bharat, Swasth Bharat, Samarth Bharat, Make in India, Innovate for India, Startup India and Skill India,” said the statement

The CSIR has been ranked ninth in the world among the 1,207 government institutions, with an overall global ranking of 75 in the world, covering 5,250 institutions, as per the statement.

“Pioneer of India’s intellectual property movement, CSIR today is strengthening its patent portfolio to carve out global niches in select technology domains,” it said.

Among the other awardees were IAS officer couple Mayur Maheswari and Ritu Maheswari who were presented a special citation award for their patent invention to facilitate communication among various health stakeholders which they later assigned to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry for free utilization.

Ritu Maheswari is currently the District Magistrate of Ghaziabad and Vice Chairperson of Ghaziabad Development Authority while her husband is posted in Delhi.

The Indian Intellectual Property Office confers IP Award on outstanding innovators, organisations and companies in the fields of patents, designs, trademarks and geographical indications on the occasion of World IP Day every year.

The Congress on Thursday complained to the Karnataka Police that the aircraft in which its party President Rahul Gandhi flew to Hubballi in the state earlier in the day suffered a snag mid-air.

“The aircraft on a special flight (VT-AVH) from New Delhi to Hubballi suffered serious malfunction and tilted heavily to one side during the course of the flight,” a party official and Gandhi’s aide Kaushal Vidyarthee said in the complaint.

The complaint, addressed to the state’s Director General Neelamani N. Raju, requested the state police chief to “ground” the aircraft at Hubballi and investigate its malfunction.

However, a Hubballi Police official told IANS over phone that no complaint has been received by the local police station on the issue so far.

The complaint letter, also shared by the Congress through its official Twitter handle, however, does not mention the exact make of the aircraft the Congress President flew in and whose it was.

According to the letter, there were a total of three other passengers in the aircraft besides Gandhi and the complainant Vidyarthee — Rampreet, Rahul Ravi and Special Protection Group officer Rahul Gautam.

Alleging the aircraft’s auto-pilot mode was not functional and the aircraft could be landed only after two unsuccessful tries as it was “shaking and making unusual audible sounds”, the letter pointed to a possible “intentional tampering” with the aircraft’s functioning.

“The technical snags coupled with the failed auto-pilot system raise issues of aviation safety and intentional tampering which endangered the life of the passengers,” it added.

Gandhi arrived at Hubballi airport at around 11.25 a.m. on Thursday on a two-day visit to the poll-bound state to launch the party’s campaign for the May 12 legislative assembly elections in the coastal region.

In New Delhi, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said that demanded a thorough investigation into the “serious case of aviation mechanics failure”, including the possibility of a “foul play”.

“Today Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other passengers were travelling by special flight from Delhi to Hubli. At about 10:45 am, the auto-pilot was lost off the flight. The flight tilted on one side and took a nosedive.

“For a few minutes, this special flight was off-the-radar. There was a lot of shuddering, although the weather outside was normal and sunny. On the third attempt, the flight finally landed at Hubli,” he said.

“It was then informed that the auto-pilot had failed, also the radars of the flight had partially failed.”

Surjewala also pointed out that usually when an SPG protectee is travelling, the complete details of the pilotsand the aircraft are submitted to the DGCA and the SPG.

“Only when all of these are cleared, then the flight plan is okayed. This is a serious case of aviation mechanics failure.

(Ians)

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday attacked Narendra Modi government’s foreign policy and said “new US visa rules is a huge setback for India”.

“New US visa Rules, huge setback for India. There are some things a hug can buy. For visas, you’re on your own,” tweeted Gandhi, attaching a Times of India story with a headline “Startup visas, work permits for spouses of H-1B visa holders to go”.

“Foreign policy by Narendra Modi, foreword by Donald Trump,” he added.