According to police, Indirani (40), a tout for Sudha Hospital, had forcibly taken her daughter to the facility for ovum donation in return for money.

Indirani was accompanied by her paramour Syed Ali and another woman during the visit to the hospital.

The hospital is said to have paid a total of Rs 25,000 to the accused.

Unable to bear the torture of her mother, the girl had gone to her relative’s house in Salem in May and narrated the ordeal.

Meanwhile, the relatives lodged a complaint against Indirani and two others with Erode South Police this morning following which they were arrested.

The victim was rescued by the police from the trio and admitted to the Government Headquarters Hospital in the city.

Police are interrogating the accused and the hospital authorities.

He was speaking at the concluding ceremony of the third year Sangh Shiksha Varg (officers’ training camp) here.

Hindus should realize that Muslims are descendants of their own ancestors and their “brothers by blood relation”, Bhagwat said.

“If they want to come back then we would welcome them with open arms. Even if they do not come back, it does not matter, we already have 33 crore gods, more will be added…everyone is following their religion,” he said.

“Everyone should understand and respect the sentiments of each other. There should be no extremism in the heart, in the words or in the work. There should not be words of intimidation from both sides,” the RSS chief said.

“Though it is less from the Hindu side. Hindus have maintained a lot of restraint. Hindus have paid a lot of price for this unity, even at the cost of (accepting) the division of the country. Even then such voices (of intimidation) come from their side and no one from their side protests against it,” Bhagwat further said.

If there is extremism on any side, it should be criticised, he said, adding that Hindus do object to extremism.

“The Hindu community does not accept any kind of extremism. Hence all kind of people came into the Hindu community (sought shelter from the Hindus), be it the Jews or Parsis,” Bhagwat further said.

He also said that the Hindus should “improve their Hindu character” and become more powerful.

A united Hindu community has the potential to create a new world by resolving global conflicts, Bhagwat said.

NEW DELHI:  The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pulled a few surprises on its own cadre by dropping some top leaders, including former Union and state ministers, and a party general secretary, from its list of Rajya Sabha candidates.

Among those who did not find a place are Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, former ministers M J Akbar and Shiv Pratap Shukla, and party’s former general secretary O P Mathur, who was in charge of Gujarat and was once considered the man who would replace

Vasundhara Raje as BJP’s top leader in Rajasthan. Others who lost out are RSS favourite Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, former Union minister Prakash Javadekar and BJP spokesperson Zafar Islam, who was credited with facilitating Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia’s entry into the BJP.

All of them are outgoing members of the Rajya Sabha and were expected to be renominated. Congress leader RPN Singh, who had recently joined the BJP, has also lost out.

The party on Monday announced four more candidates for the polls — the party’s OBC wing chief K Laxman and Mithilesh Kumar from Uttar Pradesh, Sumitra Valmiki from Madhya Pradesh, Lal Singh Sirhoya from Karnataka.

With this addition, the BJP has so far named a total of 22 candidates for the election for 57 Rajya Sabha seats.

A surprise entrant into the race whose name was earlier doing the rounds was the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Tariq Mansoor.

He is said to be close to RSS leader Krishna Gopal Sharma and has become the first Vice-Chancellor in the history of AMU to get an extension in tenure. He was given a one-year extension after his term ended last month. 

Meanwhile, despondency runs high in the camp of Naqvi, who is in the Rajya Sabha from the Jharkhand quota of BJP.

“Is it the prize that a minority leader gets for being loyal to the party?,” a Muslim BJP leader told TNIE.

“At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims to be working on the mantra, sab ka saath sab ka vikaas, dropping a lone Muslim face in the ministry, whose loyalty to party remains unquestioned so far, will put a dent on its image,” another BJP leader, preferring anonymity, said.

A day earlier, her mother and party president Sonia Gandhi had tested positive for coronavirus.

In a tweet, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said, “I’ve tested positive for COVID-19 with mild symptoms. Following all protocols, I have quarantined myself at home.”

“I would request those who came in contact with me to take all necessary precautions,” she added.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was in Lucknow on Wednesday to address a state-level ‘Chintan Shivir’ and returned to Delhi on Thursday.

MUMBAI:  The upcoming elections for six Rajya Sabha seats in Maharashtra has turned out to be a fierce battle between ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance and the opposition BJP, making each vote count. Seven candidates for six seats are in fray.

Deputy CM Ajit Pawar said that NCP minister Nawab Malik and former home minister Anil Deshmukh, who are behind the bar, will approach the court to get permission to exercise their voting rights.

As per its present strength in Maharashtra Assembly, BJP can elect two candidates for Rajya Sabha but has fielded three candidates. It has created a direct fight against Shiv Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar.

NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena will elect one each while Sena has fielded second candidate for the sixth seat of the Rajya Sabha. Both the BJP and Shiv Sena face a shortage of 10 votes.

If all independent MLAs, who have supported the MVA government, support Sena’s second candidate, then Pawar will sail through. However, BJP is also trying to woo these independents to back its candidates.

Sources in BJP said the party was asking Sena to withdraw its candidate and in return, BJP will help Sena to get its 10 candidates elected unopposed in upcoming council elections. 

The notice said the movement of the public on the staircase be stopped immediately.

The notices have been sent under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure, under which parties are required to respond within 60 days.

The petitioners claimed that costly idols taken from the Mathura’s Keshav Dev temple were buried under the staircase of the Agra’s Begum Sahiba Masjid mosque by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb when he allegedly destroyed the temple here in 1670.

“Relocate the deities within the stipulated time failing which they would be liable to bear the cost,” said advocate Mahendra Pratap Singh, one of the petitioners.

The notices have been sent to the Union government through the central secretariat, New Delhi; Director, Archaeological survey of India, New Delhi; Superintendent, Archaeological survey of India; Agra; and the Director, Archaeological survey of India, Mathura.

Earlier, a Mathura court had refused to entertain a plea over the issue, asking the plaintiffs to sent legal notices to the respondents.

Shekar MD, principal, Government First Grade College, Uppinangady, suspended the six students on Tuesday.

The action followed after a group of male students started attending classes by wearing saffron shawls as a mark of protest.

Meanwhile, on Thursday two TV news channel journalists who went to the college to report the hijab controversy were kept under detention by some pro-hijab students.

They also deleted the video clippings from their mobile phones.

According to a complaint lodged by Ajit Kumar and Paveen Kumar, who work for two Kannada news channels, 20 students surrounded them and pushed them around and then took them to a classroom where they were detained.  

The students let them go  only after deleting the video clippings. Later, the same group of students also objected to two more journalists entering the college after which the latter returned.

Later in the day, Uppinangady police booked a case aga­inst 25 students of the college un­der IPC sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntarily ca­u­sing hurt), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 149 (unlawful as­s­embly with common object).

Notice to students

Some students of University College, Hampankatta, Man­galuru, continued to miss classes over hijab.

Dr Anasuya Rai, prin­cipal, said the college has decided to serve notice to students who are skipping classes over hijab.

She said after the college refused permission to 11 students to attend classes with hijab, they sit in the library and return home.

SHANGHAI: Traffic, pedestrians and joggers reappeared on the streets of Shanghai on Wednesday as China’s largest city began returning to normalcy amid the easing of a strict two-month Covid-19 lockdown that has drawn unusual protests over its heavy-handed implementation.

Shanghai’s Communist Party committee, the city’s most powerful political body, issued a letter online proclaiming the lockdown’s success and thanking citizens for their “support and contributions”. The move came amid a steady rollback in compulsory measures that have upended daily life for millions while severely disrupting the economy and global supply chains.

While defending President and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping’s hardline “zero-Covid” policy, the country’s leadership appears to be acknowledging the public backlash against measures seen as trampling already severely limited rights to privacy and participation in the workings of government.

In one such step, the Cabinet’s Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism issued a letter Tuesday laying out rules banning “non-standard, simple and rude indoor disinfection” by mostly untrained teams in Shanghai and elsewhere that have left homes damaged and led to reports of property theft.

Full bus and subway service in Shanghai was being restored from Wednesday, with rail connections to the rest of China to follow.

Still, more than half a million people in the city of 25 million remain under lockdown or in designated control zones because virus cases are still being detected. The government says all restrictions will be gradually lifted, but local neighborhood committees still wield considerable power to implement sometimes conflicting and arbitrary policies.

Negative PCR tests for COVID-19 taken within the previous 48 hours also remain standard in Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere for permission to enter public venues. That measure didn’t deter people in Shanghai from gathering outside to eat and drink under the watch of police deployed to discourage large crowds from forming.

“With the lockdown lifting, I feel very happy. I feel today how I feel during Chinese New Year – that kind of mood and joy,” said Wang Xiaowei, 34, who moved to Shanghai from the inland province of Guizhou just a week before the lockdown began.

Liu Ruilin, 18, said she wasn’t sure her building’s security guard would let her and others out on Tuesday night. The restriction ended exactly at midnight, she said. “Then we said, Let’s go to the Bund to have fun,'” she said in the city’s historic riverside district.

“We thought there wouldn’t be too many people here, but we were surprised after coming over that a lot of people are here. I feel pretty good – quite excited.” Schools will partially reopen on a voluntary basis, and shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and drug stores will gradually reopen at no more than 75% of their total capacity. Cinemas and gyms will remain closed.

Health authorities on Wednesday reported just 15 new Covid-19 cases in Shanghai, down from a record high of around 20,000 daily cases in April. A few malls and markets have reopened, and some residents have been given passes allowing them out for a few hours at a time.

The lockdown has prompted an exodus of Chinese and foreign residents, with crowds forming outside the city’s Hongqiao Railway Station, where only some train services have resumed.

Even while the rest of the world has opened up, China has stuck to a “zero-Covid” strategy that requires lockdowns, mass testing and isolation at centralized facilities for anyone who is infected or has been in contact with someone who has tested positive.

The country’s borders also remain largely closed and the government has upped requirements for the issuance of passports and permission to travel abroad.

At least half of foreign companies in Shanghai are waiting until next week to reopen while they put in place hygiene measures, said Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, a vice president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

As a precaution, many companies plan to have only half their workforce on site at a time. “There is still quite some uncertainty and a scare that if there is a positive case in the office building or in your compound, you might be locked down again,” said Schoen-Behanzin, who works in Shanghai.

The strict restrictions in Shanghai, the country’s commercial capital and home of the world’s busiest port, dragged down Chinese economic activity and disrupted global manufacturing and trade.

Retail sales fell by a worse-than-forecast 11% in April from a year earlier, government data show. Auto sales fell by almost half from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Private sector forecasters have cut their estimates for this year’s economic growth to as low as 2%, well below the ruling Communist Party’s target of 5.5%. Some expect output to shrink in the three months ending in June. “The economy is really in a crisis,” said Schoen-Behanzin.

The Port of Shanghai, the world’s busiest, appears to be back to 80% to 85% of its normal operating capacity, according to Schoen-Behanzin. She cited data that said the port had a backlog of 260,000 cargo containers in April.

“The rest of the world will feel these delays probably (through) June or July,” she said. The city will likely see a “mass exodus” of foreign residents this summer, “especially families with small kids”, Schoen-Behanzin said.

She said about half of Shanghai’s foreign residents had already left over the past two years. “People are really fed up with these lockdowns,” she said. “It’s not safe, especially if you have small children.”