News

TOI : PUNE: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the crime branch arrested two persons for allegedly duping nine people under the pretext of installing mobile towers in the city on their land.

Uttar Pradesh resident Pradeep Sharma (50) registered a complaint that the suspects, identified as Anjan Satra and Badal Vishwas, hailing from Kolkata, duped him and others to the tune of Rs 11.88 lakh.

The complainant said Satra and Vishwas, allegedly working for one TIC networking Limited Company, had placed an advertisement in newspapers in July 2008, asking for places in the city in order to set up mobile towers. According to the advertisement, the agent providing land was to receive Rs 25,000 as brokerage.

In the deal, the land owner would receive Rs 2.88 lakh an annum if the location was in the city or Rs 2.76 lakh if it was in the rural limits.

After reading the ad, Sharma approached its director Satra. He handed over the demand drafts of nine people, worth Rs 7.80 lakh, to Satra and Vishwas. He also handed over Rs 1.20 lakh in cash. Later, he gave a demand draft of Rs 2.88 lakh on behalf of an agency called Shlok Tarun.

The Bund Garden police, who had filed a complaint, said the suspects took the money as security for installing the towers and promised to return it in four months.

“They had rented an office on Sassoon road and employed 10 people. The EOW received a tip-off regarding the suspects running a suspicious business and nabbed them,” officials said.

Sub-inspector S R Dhamse is investigating the case. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More

TOI : PUNE: The Sahakarnagar police arrested Anil Purushottam Junnarkar (30), a printing press owner from Bibvewadi, for allegedly raping a 25-year-old housemaid. The woman, in her police complaint, said she was raped by the suspect, who she claims married her in a temple and later left her.

The Sahakarnagar police said the woman used to work as housemaid at the suspect’s house. “After Junnarkar’s wife left him, he developed intimate relations with the complainant and promised to marry her. Later, when his parents got wind of their relationship, they asked him to marry the woman,” a police official said.

Junnarkar and the complainant then allegedly married in a temple. “She showed us the photographs of the marriage. However, there is no formal marriage record like a certificate from a registrar or court documents,” the police official further said. Junnarkar also purportedly made casteist slurs against the woman, who belongs to a backward caste.

The complainant said that Junnarkar asked her to leave his house on September 8. She claims to be pregnant with his child. However, the Sahakarnagar police said a medical check-up of the complainant is yet to be conducted to verify the allegations.

The police has booked Junnarkar under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to cheating, rape and co-habitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage, along with sections of the Atrocities Act.

The police have also booked the suspect’s mother, Suman Junnarkar, brother-in-law Narendra Ghatpande and sister Varsha Ghatpande in the case. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More

TOI : PUNE: The crime branch of the Pune rural police on Friday arrested four scrap vendors and recovered copper wires allegedly stolen from transformers belonging to the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) worth Rs. 40 lakh.

The seizures were made in raids at Wagholi and Mantarwadi near Devachi Uruli. The suspects were identified as Vishnu Kumal of Wagholi, Fattechand Mehta of Gultekdi and Aslam Khan and Jakir Khan, both from Mantarwadi.

Acting on a tip-off, the police team, led by inspector Bhausaheb Andhalkar, raided Vaibhav Metal’s godown near Wagholi, owned by Kumal, near Wagholi. The police recovered copper wires worth Rs. 30 lakh from the godown and arrested Kumal and 40 workers.

The police raided another godown in Wagholi which is owned by Mehta and seized copper wires worth Rs. 6 lakh.

In a raid at the Hindusthan scrap centre in Mantarwadi, copper and aluminium wires worth Rs. 4 lakh were seized. The police arrested Aslam and Jakir in this connection.

Cases have been registered against the scrap vendors under Section 136 of the Indian Electricity Act, Andhalkar said.

Later on Saturday, the accused were produced before a special court and remanded to judicial custody for 14 days. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More

TOI : An alert bus commuter chased three men and got them arrested near airport on Wednesday night. The trio had stolen his gold chain and mobile.

Anil Ingale, a salesman and a resident of Anandnagar, was on his way back home in a city bus on Wednesday night when the incident took place. He was standing near the bus door when three people accosted him and forced him to alight near Eden Garden on Nagar road. The suspects then snatched his gold chain and handset, together worth Rs 20,800, and beat him up.

After they left him, Ingale went to the Ramwadi police chowkey to file a complaint. As he reached the place, he saw the suspects getting down from an autorickshaw. He gave them a chase and caught one Sagar Gadve (25), a Mundhwa resident.

Ingale handed over Gadve to the Ramwadi police chowkey. The other two suspects, Vasant Jadhav (24) and Gajrayya alias Suresh Sonawane (23), also from Mundhwa, were arrested later. The police also recovered the stolen gold chain and mobile phone from the suspects. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More

TOI : PUNE: The multi-role strike fighter squadrons of Sukhoi 30MKI, which had moved out of Lohegaon Air Force station have now returned in style — after a successful Red Flag excercise in the US. In the next few months, the fleet will be enforced with a third squadron, making it one of the strongest airbases in the western region.

Although the squadrons returned from Jodhpur a few weeks ago Saturday’s comeback was more apt following the multinational air exercise in the US.

The Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) of South Western Air Command (SWAC), Air Marshal K.D. Singh said that the Lohegaon Air Force base will get a new Su-30 MKI squadron by Dec 2009. Currently, the Lohegaon Air Force base has two squadrons of Su-30 MKI, ‘Lightnings’ and ‘Rhinos’.

The Su-30 MKIs will roll out from the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited factory at Nasik. Recently, the Jaguar Squadron was shifted and located to Jamnagar airbase in Gujarat for strategic reasons. “Pune was primarily developed as a base for the Sukhois and a lot of investment has gone into this,” said another Air Force officer.

On Saturday afternoon a batch of four Sukhoi 30 MKIs arrived, flying side-by-side, then peeling off one by one, signalling their arrival after a successful mission at Exercise Red Flag at Nellis US Air Force base in Nevada.

The team comprised eight Sukhoi-30MKI fighters, two IL-78 mid-air refuellers, one IL-76 heavy-lift aircraft and about 250 air warriors (90 among them were officers). They pitted their skills against American F-15s and F-16s, as well as French Rafale fighters and South Korean F-15K jets.

Air Marshal K.D. Singh welcomed the IAF’s top-gun pilots as Sukhois returned to Pune from Abu Dhabi — their last stopover — while the other aircraft went back to their respective units. Also present was NDA Commandant Air Marshal T.S. Randhawa, who is…More

TOI : PUNE: Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray has termed as “outrageous” the alleged comment by Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) K L Prasad that “Mumbai was not anybody’s ancestral property.”

The top cop had made the remark while briefing the media on the recent agitation by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) against the Bachchans, following SP MP Jaya Bachchan’s controversial remarks on Marathi.

In an editorial in the party mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ today, Thackeray said the kind of statement made by Prasad had never been made earlier by any police officer in Mumbai.

Perhaps, his sense of Hindi is poor and that resulted in an unintended wrong usage. Henceforth, all police officials should be instructed by government to address press conferences only in Marathi. These people spend their whole life in Maharashtra and refuse to learn or speak Marathi. This is unacceptable, the editorial said.

Thackeray also denounced the talk of separating Mumbai from Maharashtra and asserted that only Marathi people had the right over the great city for which Shiv Sena would continue to wage its fight. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More