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TOI : PUNE: A Pakistani national, who had completed his seven-year jail sentence here after being convicted of spying for ISI, is now missing from a city police station where he had been kept for the last three months awaiting deportation.

According to police, Sayeed Desai, convicted after confessing to his crime in October 2007 by a court here, went missing after he left Sahakar Nagar police station premises last morning for a cup of tea.

Desai (50) had been set free subsequently since he had completed his sentence. He spent more than eight years in the Yerawada Jail as an undertrial.

Booked by city police in June 1999 on charges of passing on classified information pertaining to the Ordnance Factory at Khadki, Desai - after his conviction and release - was kept at Sahakar Nagar police station premises pending formalities of his deportation.

The court, while setting Desai free, had directed the police to complete formalities for his deportation by approaching the Pakistani embassy.

However, police sources said, the embassy officials had been apathetic in the case resulting in delay in sending back the man who is at present an unwanted guest.

Combing operations have been ordered to trace Desai and all airports in the country are put on alert, a senior police official said.

Police made it clear that Desai was free man as he had completed his sentence and he had been accommodated in the police station premises on humanitarian grounds pending his deportation…More

TOI : PUNE: Admitting that there has been an inordinate delay in civic water projects, municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi assured elected members on Tuesday that he will invite officers from the Maharashtra Jal Pradhikaran (MJP) to head projects for improving the water distribution network.

Meanwhile, mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale issued orders to the civic administration asking them to ensure a check over use of drinking water for construction purposes.

She added that planning and permissions for new constructions, coming up in the fringe areas, should be considered only after catering to the water needs of the existing population.

During the General Body of the Pune Municipal Corporation on Tuesday, elected members grilled the civic administration over the poor water distribution system in the city, which is inconveniencing citizens.

The meeting witnessed noisy scenes as corporators of ruling parties, including Mahadev Babar, Prakash Galande, Usha Kalamkar, Suman Pathare and Shivaji Shinde and Congress corporator Dattatray Sasane agitated before mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale demanding an immediate improvement in the system.

All corporators elected from municipal wards near Ahmednagar road - which suffers acute water problems - lashed out at the civic officials.

Claiming that the water problem was a serious one and the administration was not taking cognisance of the issue, Shiv Sena corporator Sachin Bhagat threatened to resign.

Corporator Mahadev Babar of the Shiv Sena lamented that there had been innumerable discussions on water problems had been held, but there had been no action from the administration’s side.

An agitated Usha Kalamkar said water was supplied at odd hours to the areas in her ward, and women were facing a tough time due to this.

“Women come to me demanding that water be supplied during the day. How are we to answer to these women? Won’t these problems ever be solved?” Kalamkar…More

TOI : PUNE: Passing over the approximately 900-metre patch on the Sinhagad viaduct, popularly know as Wadgaon bridge, is a tough task. Repair work on this patch has been moving at a slow pace, i.e. since November last, creating traffic snarls and there absence of traffic police is only making matters worse.

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is carrying out the project.

“We use this patch for daily commuting. For the last two months, crossing this patch has been tough. We use the new flyover parallel to this viaduct,” Kamlakar Dahibhate told TOI.

The road, which is part of the national highway, witnesses heavy traffic flow. People going to Satara and Mumbai use the highway. Now, with repairs going on, people use the parallel road known as New Wadgaon Brigdge. This flyover is a one-way, the rule being flouted by motorists regularly.

“The bad patch has been disturbing our schedule daily. We are never sure about what time we will reach our destination. We get stuck in traffic always. Sometimes, we waste hours at same spot due to the traffic jam,” Dahibhate, a painting contractor said…More

TOI : PUNE: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) effort to give a saffron tinge to the booming information technology (IT) sector in the city is gaining momentum. Sangh’s experiment of ‘IT Milan’, in which IT professionals are brought together to discuss RSS ideals once in a week, is attracting youths in large numbers and it’s now mulling over organising special IT ’shakhas’ in Pune.

“Number of youths joining IT companies is on rise. We have introduced the IT Milan concept to groom professionals towards RSS way of thinking,” Katcheshwar Sahane, Western Maharashtra Prant Sanghachalak of RSS, said on Wednesday.

IT Milan is not a typical shakha involving exercise and games. “It is like a get-together. Various issues and problems faced by the nation, culture and religion are discussed in these get-togethers. The response in Pune is good and we could plan special shakhas for the IT people. The RSS is hunting for good professional brains and Pune IT sector has potential to provide it,” said Sahane. Sangh was planning to start similar IT Milan in cities like Kolhapur and Solapur, he added…More

TOI : PUNE: For Salimuddin Sheikh, ‘A’ always stood for Allah and ‘B’ for Bismillah. The madrassa graduate from Mau, near Benares, is an imam in a Pune mosque and has led the prayers there for the last 15 years. Recently, Sheikh learnt, ‘A for Apple, B for Ball’.

The imam has not joined a crash course in English. It’s his son, seven-year-old Umar, a first standard student who has been going to an English medium school, a rare phenomenon in the society of imams. The boy is now taking his father into the fascinating world of secular education.

Umar is one of nearly 100 such imam scions in Pune, aged between five and 10 who have joined English medium schools, mostly run by non-Muslims. Predictably, a madrassa, run on the community’s charity, or a moribund municipal school, is what children of most Indian imams attend. With the possible exception of Ahmed Bukhari, the incendiary imam of Jama Masjid in Delhi, imams in this country are generally underprivileged. With their meagre monthly income (between Rs 2000-Rs 3000) from the trustees of mosques, these holy mediums cannot afford good schools.

A regular English medium school in Pune charges about Rs 17,000 a year for the kindergarten. So, the English medium school is a very convenient taboo for the imams. But now a group of Pune imams have boldly deviated from the traditional path. To the dismay of many peers, these community leaders (’imam’ literally means leader) are poised for change. In a few years from now, their wards will be choosing careers that were out of bounds for their fathers and, needless to say, their mothers. The children, with handsome salaries as trained professionals in a globalised economy, will travel miles away from their parents’ depressed, tiny tenements.

“It’s a silent revolution. The imams’ way of looking at the world…More

TOI :
PUNE: Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agent Mohammed Syed Desai, who was under surveillance at the Sahakarnagar police station for the past three months, escaped from the police station on Wednesday.

Desai, who was released from the Yerawada central prison on October 27, 2007, after serving his term for a spying offence, was demanding an expeditious process for his deportation to Pakistan.

Desai, who was feeling homesick, even filed a contempt petition last month against the city police chief and the CBI, accusing them of not pursuing his deportation. The police chief, in turn, has filed a criminal revision application before the district court urging setting aside of the lower court’s order seeking steps for Desai’s deportation.

Prior to filing the contempt plea, Desai had also resorted to hunger strike, which resulted in his hospitalisation.
Against this backdrop, Desai vanishing act is a source of worry for the cops.

According to Sahakarnagar police in-charge H N M Shaikh, Desai had asked head constable D H Sankpal to accompany him for tea and breakfast at a nearby hotel around 6 am. Sankpal asked Desai to wait as he had to attend the nature’s call. When Sankpal left for the toilet, Desai walked out of the police station…More