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TOI : KOLHAPUR: Denied his daily staple of porn and horror films on his personal computer, a youth from an affluent family decided to get rid of what he thought was the root cause of his misery.

Abhishek Patil (21) on Tuesday confessed that he had murdered his grandmother Shantabai Patil (67) in cold blood on April 3.

The youth was apparently angry that he had been asked to vacate his room to accommodate his grandmother after she had moved to their house recently. Police inspector G P Dabhade told TOI that Shantabai had recently shifted to the home of her elder son and Abhishek’s father, Shirish Patil, who is a doctor.

Abhishek was upset with his grandmother using his room as he could not get his dose of horror and porn clips which he used to watch on his computer, he said. Abhishek was told by his parents to share a room with his brother, Viren.

Abhishek, a student of a private polytechnic college in Jaisinghpur, had not been attending classes for the past two months and Shantabai often scolded him for that. “She once even chided him in front of guests, which made him contemplate murder,” Dabhade said.

On April 3, Abhishek smashed Shantabai’s head with a stone pestle, killing her instantly. He also stabbed Viren to make it look like an outside job. During interrogation, he tried to mislead the police by saying that Shantabai’s head had been smashed by an intruder. He claimed that he had tried in vain to catch the intruder.

However, the police found discrepancies in the statements given by Abhishek and other family members. Abhishek was picked up on April 5 and subjected to questioning.

On Tuesday, he finally cracked and admitted that he killed his grandmother and stabbed his brother.
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TOI : KOLHAPUR: In an incident of law keepers turning into law-breakers, two police constables were arrested on charges of robbing two people here on Wednesday.

The incident happened on April 3. The victims Wasim Davat (31) and Munir Phansofar (30), both from Ratnagiri, were searching a hotel for dinner when they met constables Altaf Sayyad (24) and Abdul Shaikh (24), both residents of Line Bazaar area here.

The cops asked Davat and Phansofar to come to the police station for an inquiry. On the way to the police station, the policemen allegedly robbed Rs 900 from Davat and Phansofar, who later returned to their native place.

However, inspector Anjil Gujar of Laxmipuri police station suspected some foulplay and called the victims on Thursday morning. They admitted to being robbed and filed a complaint against Altaf and Abdul who were arrested later.

Altaf and Abdul are constables in Karveer police station and Laxmipuri police station, respectively.
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TOI : PUNE: If you are fed up of your boss’ threats and want to teach him a lesson, then take a leaf from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) employees, who are ready to prove that bullying bosses could be busted using the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Civic employees, working in various departments, are seeking information about their bosses under the RTI in large numbers.

Many civic employees ensure that the information reaches the media and top civic heads like municipal commissioner and additional commissioners. In majority of the cases employees ask their friends and relatives to file the application, while there are some who directly seek the information.

Some of the most common questions asked are: whether their boss has the paid property tax, which files has he cleared and which he has held back, whether boss’ family is duping the civic body, do they have any illegal construction.

One of the PMC workeres said that there is no policy or procedure in place to check their bosses’threats. “A lot of times bosses are biased while writing confidential reports. The RTI has enabled us to seek information about our bosses, which makes them cautious in their dealings with other employees.”

“One of our bosses’ sons was involved in illegal construction. We sought the information and since then his behaviour has changed. He has mellowed a lot now,” said another PMC employee.

Another civic body worker has sought information on how their boss’ family would use the civic facilities and allowances.

However, it is not only employees who are seeking information about top bosses, some of the corporators are using the RTI Act to get the information about ‘errant’ officials.

PMC joint commissioner Arun Patil said, “When the RTI Act was implemented flow of applications seeking information about officers was…More

TOI : PUNE: Now you can expect to get your letters in time. The Pune division of the postal department is all set to introduce contractual mail motor service on routes like Pune- Mumbai, Satara and Kolhapur for the first time ever.

This will help faster and efficient movement of mails. The service will also help reduce dependence on railways and ST transport buses for sending mails.

This will be first time that the postal department is joining hands with private transporters for sending mails. Tenders have been floated and the process will be completed in a couple of weeks.

Notably, the department has witnessed significant increase in the volume of mails in last few years, especially on the Pune-Mumbai route. Moreover, the response to services like speed-post and business mails has been encouraging.

Nearly, 1500 bags of letters are transported from Pune to Mumbai on a daily basis by railways and 500 to 700 bags by postal vans. With each bag consisting of 2,000 to 5,000 mails, lakhs of letters are transported on a daily basis.

“The contractual mail motor service will be in additional to the existing services,” said S.C. Jarodia, postmaster general, Pune.

“The department at present is dependent on railways for bulk of the delivery. With increase in volumes, the space available in railway bogies is proving insufficient. Also the railway route is quite time consuming and expensive. To ease this pressure, the postal department is opting for a private contractual mail motor service. Initially, there will be two trips a day and will increase subsequently.”

“The postal vans at present carry 500-700 bags of mails every day. We expect similar volume to be carried through contractual mail motor service,” he said.

As this service is faster and cheaper the department plans to introduce it on the…More

TOI : PUNE: The Maharashtra council for agricultural education and research (Mcaer), headquartered in the city, has forwarded a proposal to the state government seeking establishment of a gardeners’ training centre in each district under the four agriculture universities in the state.

The proposal was cleared at the council’s 75th meeting, which was chaired by Mcaer president Vijay Kolte. As per the proposal, each gardener’s training centre is expected to cost Rs 2 crore, Kolte told reporters here on Thursday.
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