Compliments del police 4 bursting espionage rkt. During interogations, police shud try to reach top people, who wud benefit from leaked info
Bankura (WB): Seven sorcerers were arrested on Sunday for killing a woman for allegedly practicising black magic at a village in Jaipur of Bankura district.
“The seven persons beat her with brooms and scalded her with red-hot iron rods. She was declared brought dead in a local hospital when she fainted at Gelia village,” Superintendent of Police Sudhir Kumar Nilkanta.
Shibani Biswas (57) were taken to the sorcerers and the torture was meted upon her, he said.
PTI
New Delhi: Against the backdrop of leakage of documents from his ministry, Oil and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday asserted that all those who subverted the system would be punished but made it clear that the government was not targeting any particular corporate.
He also said that his ministry is ascertaining whether standard operating procedures (SOPs) for handling confidential information was violated.
“Yeh kisi ek ke bare mein ya kisi ek ki khilaf nahi hai. Hamare ghar mein chori hui hai and humne competent system ko approach kiya is cheeze ko throughly investigate karne ke liye. (this is not about anyone (corporate) or against anyone. Our house has been burguled and we approached the competent authority for investigation,” Pradhan told PTI here.
“One thing is clear that this government will not allow anybody to subvert the system. This government is determined to punish those who break law,” he told PTI here.
His comments came as the probe by Delhi Police continued to expand with 12 people, including five executives of private companies, being arrested and raids being carried out at various places. Those arrested include two staffers of the ministry.
According to police, some of the accused allegedly used fake ID cards to gain access to Shastri Bhawan, the building that houses the Petroleum Ministry on the second floor, in the middle of the night to get hold of confidential documents and allegedly sold them to purported agents of certain corporates.
The arrested executives belong to Reliance Industries, Essar, Cairn and Reliance Group.
“Nobody is above law. Nobody will be spared. Law will take its own course,” Pradhan has said.
“Nobody will be spared… Nobody can breach law, howsoever powerful he may be… We will not allow anyone to breach the system,” he said.
PTI
Mumbai: A bandh is being observed in Maharashtra on Sunday, following a call from the Left parties, to protest the cold-blooded murder of veteran CPI leader Govind Pansare.
The Opposition Congress and the NCP have also declared their support for the Left-sponsored protest.
RPI leader Ramdas Athawale participated in a ‘rasta roko’ at suburban Chembur here today to support the bandh and the Left workers held a protest at Worli Naka.
Meanwhile, Kolhapur police have announced a cash reward of Rs five lakh for anyone providing information about Pansare’s assailants.
The 78-year-old Communist leader’s mortal remains were consigned to flames in his hometown Kolhapur yesterday in the presence of a large number of his friends, supporters and admirers. However, no religious rituals were performed at the funeral.
Neither state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis nor any central Left leader attended the funeral.
Fadnavis said in Nashik yesterday that Pansare’s murder was a challenge to the system.
“It is not an attack on an individual. It is not an attack on an ideology. It is a challenge to the system,” he said.
Two motorcycle-borne assailants had shot at Pansare and his wife Uma on February 16 near their residence in Kolhapur when the couple was returning from morning stroll.
Pansare, who was hit by three bullets, succumbed to injuries at Breach Candy Hospital late on Friday. Uma is presently recuperating in a Kolhapur hospital.
The police have formed 20 teams to nab the attackers, but there has been no breakthrough so far.
PTI
MUMBAI: Communist leader Govind Pansare, who was shot at in Kolhapur four days ago, passed away at Breach Candy hospital in Mumbai on Friday evening.
Medical director Dr Geeta Koppikar said that Pansare passed away after his condition worsened around 9pm.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has reached Breach Candy hospital.
Govind Pansare was flown to Mumbai from Kolhapur on Friday in air ambulance.
The air ambulance carrying the critically injured Pansare left Kolhapur around 4pm, an official said.
Pansare, who was in the forefront of anti-road toll agitation, and his wife Uma were shot by unidentified persons near their house in Kolhapur on Monday when they were returning from their morning walk.
Police are preparing sketches of the suspects on the basis of information provided by Uma, who is recovering and now able to speak.
Teams of Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Mumbai police are assisting the Kolhapur police into the probe on the attack on the couple.
(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday complimented the Delhi Police for busting the sensational corporate espionage scandal in which classified documents, including an input for upcoming Finance Minister’s budget speech, were allegedly leaked.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief, who recently led his party to a historic win in the Delhi Assembly Elections, urged police to reach the ‘top people’ involved in the scandal.
The AAP chief took to Twitter to express his views.
Five senior executives from top energy firms and two consultants were among seven more people arrested on Friday.
“We have arrested five persons. Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav tonight. The arrests were made in the evening.
According to Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ashok Chand, all these company executives were receivers of the stolen documents which have been recovered by police teams during raids from their establishments.
Saxena is Manager, corporate affairs, Reliance Industries Limited(RIL); Chandra is senior executive, Jubilant Energy; Anand is DGM, Reliance ADAG; Vinay is DGM, Essar and Naik is GM, Cairns India.
They have been booked under IPC sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property).
Delhi Police Thursday arrested five people – two petroleum ministry employees and three others – for stealing documents and leaking them to corporate houses.
Rakesh Kumar, 30, Lalta Prasad, 36 – both brothers and residents of Delhi, and Raj Kumar Chaubey, 39, a resident of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, were held red-handed with photocopies of some secret documents in Shastri Bhawan Feb 17.
Based on information provided by them, government employees Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56 were also arrested. They were part of the multi-tasking staff (MTS) in Shastri Bhawan.
Police said Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar were on the payroll of Jain and he used to pay them Rs 40,000 each per month.
Feared Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, carrying a USD 10 million bounty on his head, had to repeat a year at school, was turned down for the Iraqi army and failed to win a university place to study law.
Baghdadi, who declared himself as Caliph and renamed the ISIS as Islamic State, was less than outstanding in his youth, according to information gathered by researchers in Germany.
44-year-old radical Islamist leader heads the dreaded ISIS that has seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and executed hundreds of civilians and foreigners has declared himself caliph of a new Islamic State had to repeat a year at school because he was so bad at English,” London-based Independent newspaper said, citing new details emerged about the background of the ISIS leader.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and Germany’s ARD TV channel showed new details yesterday after interviewing residents of Samarra, Baghdadi’s home town in Iraq, where he went to school and played football in its narrow streets.
“He loved power and being influential,” said one former neighbour of Baghdadi, who was the third of four sons born to a devout Sunni Muslim family.
“He was turned down for the Iraqi army, despite being a member of the Sunni minority favoured by the regime of the country’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, because he was too short-sighted,” the reports said.
Baghdadi was rated as “an average pupil at the town’s grammar school and his school matriculation marks were too low for Baghdad university to accept him on its law course,” the media reports said.
“Instead, he opted for Islamic theology, a subject whose study – perhaps combined with his earlier experiences – contributed to radicalising his views,” they said.
After eight years studying Islamic theology, he emerged with a PhD degree in 1999.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung said Baghdadi’s university doctorate helped him rise to become ISIS leader and enabled him to construct a “theological justification” for the organisation’s brutality.
“School friends of his have been killed by ISIS,” one neighbours told the Suddeutsche Zeitung. “Then he emerges as emir (chief) of this organisation – that’s really frightening.”
Drawing attention to the delay in clearing his name for Chancellorship of Nalanda University for a second term — although the Governing Board unanimously recommended it — economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on Thursday “excluded” himself from continuing in the position after his term ends in July.
In a letter to the board written with a “heavy heart,” Sen said that it was “hard for him not to conclude that the government” wanted him to “cease” being Chancellor. In the letter, Sen says that academics in the country remains “deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling Government.”
He added that it’s because of the absence of Government’s approval that the Visitor, President Pranab Mukherjee, has not been able to give his nod to the board’s decision of granting Sen a second term.
“It is hard for me not to conclude that the Government wants me to cease being the Chancellor of Nalanda University after this July, and technically it has the power to do so. This delay as well as the uncertainty involved is leading, in effect, to a decisional gap, which is not helpful to Nalanda University’s governance and its academic progress. I have, therefore, decided that in the best interest of Nalanda University, I should exclude myself from being considered for continuing as Chancellor of Nalanda University beyond this July, despite the unanimous recommendation and urging of the Governing Board for me to continue,” Sen said.
Sen, whose term as Chancellor ends in July this year, was unanimously picked by the Nalanda University Board to serve in the position for a second term during its last meeting on January 13-14 this year.
In his letter, the noted economist has said the board’s unanimous decision that was “firm and enthusiastic” was conveyed to the President, the Visitor of all Central Universities, in mid-January “drawing his attention to the urgency of the matter” but no response has been received yet.
Sen has pointed out that as per the Nalanda University Act of Parliament, the decision of the governing board becomes operational only after the Visitor’s assent.
“More than a month has passed since then, and it now seems clear that the Visitor has been unable to provide his assent to the Governing Board’s unanimous choice, in the absence of the Government’s approval. The Governing Board has not been favoured with a reply to its request, either from the President’s office or from the Ministry of External Affairs. As Board members are aware, our Visitor (President Pranab Mukherjee) has always taken a deep personal interest in the speedy progress of the work of Nalanda University, and given that, we have to assume that something makes it difficult — or impossible — for him to act with speed in this matter,” he says in his letter.
The Nobel Laureate, who in 2013 has come out against then Gujarat Chief Minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating he did not want him to become PM, had recently remarked, at Express Adda, that although he disagreed with Modi on many issues, the Prime Minister had been able to give “a sense of faith to people that things can happen.”
“I am also sad, at a more general level, that academic governance in India remains so deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling Government, when it chooses to make political use of the special provisions. Even though the Nalanda University Act, passed by the Parliament, did not, I believe, envisage political interference in academic matters, it is formally the case — given the legal provisions (some of them surviving from colonial days) — that the Government can turn an academic issue into a matter of political dispensation, if it feels unrestrained about interfering,” Sen says in the letter.
Adding that “non-action is a time-wasting way of reversing a Board decision”, Sen said this had also happened to the “revised Statutes that the Governing Board passed unanimously last year”, many of which he claims never received “formal acceptance or rejection from the Ministry of External Affairs, which had the role of coordinating with the Visitor’s office.”
“As you would also remember, there was considerable disquiet among Board members about the Government’s evident unwillingness to appreciate the international character of Nalanda University and to pay appropriate attention to the multi-country Governing Board of Nalanda. In particular, the Governing Board was kept completely in the dark about an attempted unilateral move by the Government to rapidly reconstitute the entire Board, and to do this in violation of some of parts of the Nalanda University Act,” the letter added.
Sen had threatened to quit the university last year before the Lok Sabha election after the finance ministry raised queries on the financial management of the university’s revival plan.
Doval raised an alarm over the frequent reporting of classified matters in the media. A TV channel’s report saying the Prime Minister was shown images of INS Arihant, a nuclear submarine, at a DRDO function proved to be the last straw, said sources. He then asked RAW to initiate action, TOI was told.
The NSA is learnt to have written to the cabinet secretary, Ajit Kumar Seth, sometime in mid-October, saying such reports based on classified information undermined national security and were an offence under the Official Secrets Act. Doval also pointed out that most leaks came from government offices and there was a need to follow official protocol related to classified information.
Seth then took up the matter with the ministers. The probe led to the petroleum ministry where Asharam, a peon with access to petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan office, turned out to be one of the key men in the racket.
READ ALSO: How it unfolded, what was leaked
Ministries and other government departments were alerted and asked to beef up their security. Once the probe began, dozens of phones were officially intercepted, after clearance from the home ministry. The investigators now have about a hundred hours of recordings to back their case.
Sources said on several occasions during the past four months fake papers were made to look like important ones to fool people under suspicion and even mock conversations were carried out to ensnare suspects. When such papers were leaked, the agencies could narrow down their probe.
Finally, armed with concrete leads and evidence, the agencies briefed ministers and bureaucrats. The NSA was informed about the breakthrough and the PM given the news. Decks were then cleared for Delhi Police commissioner B S Bassi to be brought into the picture in the second week of February. The initial choice was CBI but a top home ministry official had the last word and Bassi was asked to launch the crackdown.
The commissioner discussed the issue with two special commissioners and assigned the probe to the crime branch. The agencies also handed over crucial evidence, including call detail analysis, photographs, phone numbers and addresses of the suspects to the police. The crime branch then moved in and picked up the accused
NEW DELHI: In a sensational twist to the corporate espionage case in which sensitive petroleum ministry documents were being leaked, the crime branch on Friday evening arrested senior executives of India’s top private energy companies – Reliance Industries, Essar, Cairns India, ADAG Reliance and Jubilant Energy. Here are ten developments in the case so far.
1. The total number of arrests in the case has gone up to 12.
2. The cops are also looking for another petroleum ministry employee, Lokesh, who is currently absconding.
3. The probe has also revealed that coal and power ministry papers were being similarly leaked
4. The arrested petroleum ministry staffers also confessed that they tried to access the defence ministry but failed because the “modules” of that office were different and difficult to crack.
5. Police have denied reports appearing on TV channels that the petroleum ministry had been bugged.
6. TOI has accessed the FIR registered in case which give details of the papers recovered from the accused and reveals that even the input material on national gas grid for the FM’s forthcoming Budget speech had been leaked out.
7. The police brass has now formed a special investigation team (SIT) headed by joint CP Yadav and comprising additional commissioner Ashok Chand, DCP Bhisham Singh, ACP K P S Malhotra, inspectors Sunil and Kulbir Singh and sub inspectors Ritesh and Neeraj and a few more cops to carry out systematic investigations in the probe. If required, personnel of the cyber cell will be roped in as well.
8. Four accused in the corporate espionage case – former multi-tasking staffers at Shastri Bhawan, brothers Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, energy consultant Prayas Jain and former newspaper reporter Santanu Saikia – were on Friday remanded to police custody till February 23 by a trial court after police said the accused had to be interrogated on various aspects of the case.
The other three accused, Ishwar Singh, Asharam and Rajkumar Chaubey, were sent to two weeks of judicial custody after police said they were not required for custodial interrogation.
9. Cops tapped senior executives’ phones
The ongoing probe into leaked government documents is likely to lead to the arrest of more senior executives of top energy companies.
Investigative agencies have in their possession more than 100 hours of recorded phone conversations of five people connected with the racket, including two executives of a top energy company. These tapes indict a number of senior corporate executives, police said.
While one of two energy company officials whose phones were tapped has reportedly gone missing. The other has told cops that he has swine flu and would join investigations later.
These conversations were tapped by agencies in December and January in which the exchange of papers and the considerations involved are mentioned. The cops have also got to know around 12 bank accounts in which money was being transferred by the information seekers.
10. Govt says it is committed to transparency
The Centre on Friday said the action is aimed at inspiring “confidence in the minds of people that any wrongdoing shall not go unnoticed or unpunished”.
Speaking to the media on the issue, commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman said: “I think the government has taken a firm decision to act on this. The minister himself has said that firm action will be taken and that is the right take. It is definitely not in the interest of the country. The investigation will tell us whether it is an inherited issue. I am happy to say that this is something which has been very closely adhered to. We are on the side of keeping processes transparent and not on the side which will lead to corrupt practices.”
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UK-based billionaire Sanjay Hinduja tied the knot with Anu Mahtani this week in Udaipur, and the wedding was an Indian fairytale.
Think three days (starting February 10) spent in a palace, celebrating with Bollywood stars and watching performances by international celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, who flew down specially for the event. Doesn’t get much bigger than that.
The guest list was hefty, with stars like Preity Zinta, Shilpa Shetty, Raveena Tandon, Sophie Choudry and Dino Morea joined by designer Manish Malhotra (who dressed the bride). Other stars attending also joined Lopez and Scherzinger in the performances: Arjun Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, and Shibani Dandekar. Sohail and Seema Khan also attended, along with Maheep and Sanjay Kapoor.
Some of the best Instagram posts you’ll find under the newlyweds’ many hashtags – #SanjayAnuWedding, #SanjayHinduja and #SanjayAnu – include a video of Jennifer Lopez killing the stage in a black leotard…
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