News

TOI : PUNE: A family from Bibvewadi travelling in a tempo to a place of worship was allegedly thrashed by 20-25 employees of the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) outside the Katraj depot on Tuesday afternoon.

One of the family members - a six-month pregnant woman - was kicked in the stomach in the melee and was undergoing tests to determine the condition of her foetus at the time of filing this report.

The family was going to Shivapur to pay obeisance to goddess Kalubai in a tempo driven by Deepak Salunke (24). Salunke’s parents, his two brothers, Satish and Prakash, their wives and two children were in the vehicle.

According to eyewitnesses, an argument broke out when a PMPML bus plying on the BRTS route brushed against the tempo near the Katraj depot.

An irate Deepak yelled at bus-driver Sunil Tambile for driving rashly. Incensed at this, Tambile obstructed the tempo near the Katraj snake park, the Salunke family members told TOI .

They said Tambile and bus conductor Madhukar Nande got down from the bus and started beating up Deepak.

Deepak’s brothers, Satish (27) and Prakash (23), tried to intervene but they too were allegedly thrashed by some 20-25 PMPML workers who had by then gathered at the spot. The family alleged that a stone flung by one of the PMPML employees hit Deepak’s father, Nathuram (50). Even Prakash’s pregnant wife, Jyoti (20), was not spared as she was kicked in the stomach, they added.

Jyoti was rushed to the Sassoon hospital around 4 pm. Hospital dean Dr Anand Malik said, “We conducted a sonography but found no reason for an abortion. She was discharged from the hospital soon thereafter as her family wanted to take her to Bharati hospital.”

However, the Salunke family said Jyoti had suffered…More

TOI : PUNE: If a survey conducted by the state Urban Development Department (UDD) is any indication, Pune will soon bid goodbye to poverty.

Rising investments, growing businesses, booming IT and construction sectors and subsequent growth in job opportunities have helped in improving standards of living and significantly bringing down the poverty levels across the city.

The survey, which was carried out in 18 big cities besides 225 towns across the state, showed a nine per cent dip in poverty levels in the city since 1998.

State UDD principal secretary T.C. Benjamin, who was earlier Municipal Commissioner of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), termed urbanisation as the major cause for this change.

“The survey found that the number of BPL (below the poverty line) families in Pune and other big cities has gone down by about 9 per cent. Besides, families earning less than Rs 591 per person per month, which is the cut-off amount decided by the Union government to recognise BPL families, were surveyed. Other parameters like accommodation, profession and living conditions were applied,” Benjamin said.

The survey also found that urban poverty in the state has gone up by only 3.46 per cent since 1998 while poverty levels have grown in smaller towns by about 13 per cent.

Incidentally, 40 per cent of Pune’s population - an estimated 14 lakh people - live in slums. According to Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) estimates, about 1 lakh people migrate to the city every year and a majority of them settle in slums.

Pune’s slum population has grown by 176 per cent since 1991. Print Save EMail Write to Editor Get personalised news s…More

TOI : PUNE: The University of Pune (UoP) will give priority to disabled soldiers in its forthcoming recruitment of 400 non-teaching staff.

“This is our opportunity to meet the government norm of filling up the 3 per cent job quota for the physically handicapped persons,” said UoP vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav at the launch of a diploma course in industrial administration and services management, exclusively designed for disabled soldiers.

The one-year full-time diploma would be conducted at the Queen Mary’s Technical Institute (QMTI), an inter-services organisation for imparting vocational training to the disabled soldiers, at Khadki.

The university’s department of management sciences (PUMBA) will implement the course that will have a 13 basic management courses component in the first six months followed by a two-month stint each for industrial contact and specialisation studies. Security and office administration, retail management, banking and insurance, infotech and travel and tourism will be the areas of specialisation.

Jadhav said, the joint initiative by PUMBA and QMTI was aimed at taking the vocational training offered by the latter a step ahead to raise the employability of the soldiers, who are rendered disabled while in action.
Pune sub-area commander and QMTI chief Brig R.J. Sharma said, the institute has set a vision for transforming itself from a skill-based to a knowledge-based organisation to cater to the job requirements of the emerging globalised scene.

The PUMBA has designed the diploma course on the basis on a three-week survey by a 13-member team of first-year MBA++ students for collecting feedback on corporate approach to extending jobs to disabled ex-servicemen.

The team visited 61 companies, mostly in the manufacturing sector considering that industrial training is QMTI’s forte, and a few in infotech and business process outsourcing, retail and media sectors, in and around Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Vinudas Akde, who led the PUMBA…More

TOI : PUNE: With the first phase of the common integrated police application (CIPA) project nearing completion, the police department is expected to start working on the second phase soon.

Under the first phase, around 20 police stations in the city were taught how to feed data and save soft copied in a computer terminal. Accordingly, daily station dairies, first information reports (FIRs) and arrest details are fed on the computer on daily basis.

CIPA, a multilingual application, provides an efficient way of organising crime records for generating reports and crime analysis. The application has been developed in JAVA language on Linux operating system by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Currently, the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) and the city police are in charge of setting up the application in around 128 police stations under the nine commissionerates in the state.

“In the phase I, works in stations under police commissionerates were taken up. However, we could not complete the work in eight stations in the city, as they were not given their respective common criminal information system (CCIS) code by National Crime Records Bureau,” inspector Hanumant Bhapkar said.

Under the project, policemen are being trained to handle the nitty-grittys of the software.

The second batch of five constables and one officer from each police station is currently undergoing training, conducted by senior technical assistant Vishal Brahmane.

“We haven’t witnessed any hurdles in teaching the software to the policemen. However, at times it is confusing, as a lot of data has to be fed into the system under different columns,” Brahmane said.

He added that the second phase will cover stations under the rural police. “After all the police stations across the country have been covered under the system, officials will take decision on connecting stations and uploading FIR details on…More

TOI : PUNE: The cyber crime cell of the city police on Tuesday arrested Shrinivas Ram Kulkarni of Badlapur in Raigad district for allegedly duping a hotel to the tune of Rs 7 lakh in 2007.

Judicial Magistrate first class A K Mandavgade remanded Kulkarni to police custody till April 13.

According to the police, one Colin Anderson, who wanted to come to India, had booked a room in a hotel on Ganeshkhind road for a week by sending an e-mail in November 2007.

The police said that Anderson gave details of his credit card to the hotel authorities and asked them to withdraw Rs 7 lakh; to pay the hotel bill of Rs 2 lakh and the rest to be handed over to Kulkarni, who was working for a private firm. The police said that Kulkarni allegedly misappropriated the amount.

Meanwhile, the credit card holder, one Linda from the US, complained to her bank that Rs 7 lakh had been illegally withdrawn from her account. As per credit card rules, the bank withdrew Rs 7 lakh from the hotel’s account and deposited it in Linda’s account. Hotel officials realised that they had been cheated and lodged a case against Anderson and Kulkarni with the Chatushrungi police on November 2, 2007.

PSI Sanjay Tungar is investigating the case. Print Save EMail Write to Editor Get personalised news s…More