NRIs Corner

An Indian-American doctor in New Mexico has been arrested following his indictment by a federal grand jury alleging unlawfully dispensing of prescription drugs resulting in the deaths of two patients, and health care fraud.

Pawan Kumar Jain, 61, who has been charged with 61 counts of unlawfully dispensing controlled substances and 50 counts of health care fraud, could face a sentence of life in prison if convicted, according to local Las Cruces Sun-News.

A Dubai Criminal Court heard the case of an Indian expatriate who has been accused of assaulting and robbing two men while impersonating as a police official, media reported Monday.

The Indian electrician, identified only as AMM, and two other unidentified men have been accused of robbing two Bangladeshi nationals, identified only as MS and MA, both 24, who were cycling back to their residence Jan 25 this year, The National reported Monday.

MS, one of the victims, said the three men claimed they were from the criminal investigations department of the Dubai police.

Two Indian doctors – an anaesthetic and a surgeon – have appeared in a court in Bahrain after a 16-year-old boy died during a routine operation in 2012.

The two medics operated Ali Sadiq Al Rahma at a private hospital in Northern Governorate after he complained of “stomache ache” in February 2012.

The teenager’s parents were told their son had to undergo an eight-hour emergency surgery, Gulf Daily News reported today.

Prosecutors said the Indian medics, who were not named in the report, continued with the operation despite the teen suffering side effects from the anaesthetics.

Two senior Indian doctors have appeared in a court in Bahrain in connection with the alleged manslaughter of a teenaged boy during a routine stomach operation.

Ali Sadiq Al Rahma, 16, was operated upon in an eight-hour emergency surgery in a private hospital in Bahrain’s Northern Governorate after he complained of “stomach ache” in February 2012.

Reminding the role played by non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the country’s development, UK-based leading industrialist Lord Swraj Paul has said almost USD 65 billion have come into India in the last six months through NRI deposits.

Lord Paul, who is the Founder Chairman of UK-based Caparo Group, also said “India tends to forget” the contributions made by the NRI community.

An Indian-American community organisation has sought the intervention of US lawmakers for securing the release of about 100 Punjabi youths detained by US immigration authorities in Texas for entering the US illegally.

Only 37 of the detainees at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) El Paso Processing Centre in Texas had gone on a hunger strike earlier this month, but all of them have since called off their protest at its intervention, North American Punjabi Association (NAPA) stated Monday.

Five Indian-South Africans will be conferred South Africa’s highest awards, National Orders, by President Jacob Zuma for their bravery and sacrifice during the country’s freedom struggle.

They are among 54 people to be conferred the honour at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Sunday.

The Order of Mendi for Bravery will be bestowed on three Indian South African veterans of the freedom struggle.

The New York police has arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with an attack on a Sikh professor and charged him with a hate crime .

Christian Morales was accused of pulling the beard of a Sikh professor before a group of young men who had called the professor ‘ Osama’ and a ‘ terrorist’ attacked him in September.

According to ABC News, Morales was charged with aggravated harassment in connection with attack on Columbia University professor Prabhjot Singh, who suffered a broken jaw.

An India-born man was sentenced to nearly four-and-a-half years in jail by a British court for running a fake marriage racket in the country, media reported.

Harpal Singh, 51, along with three other defendants, admitted to arranging sham marriages across Britain before the Cardiff Crown Court in Wales, the Daily Record reported Friday.

Harpal Singh, who was arrested last year for his own fraud marriage in Cardiff, was sentenced to four years and 20 weeks in jail and also recommended for deportation.

The body of Indian national Michael Cornelius Selvam Vellu, who was killed in a car accident alongside his employer Karpal Singh, will be flown to India today for funeral after special prayers here.

Michael, 39, and Karpal Singh, 74, were killed when the car they were travelling in collided with a lorry near near Gua Tempurung, Perak on Thursday.

He was Singh’s personal assistant.

Michael, who came from Vellore in Tamil Nadu, is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.

An Indian-American woman in north Texas, accused of killing her son and leaving his body in the bathtub for four days, claims she did so in accordance with her Hindu beliefs.

Pallavi Dhawan, 38, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 10-year-old son, Arnav, almost three months ago, describes the events in a sworn affidavit sent to police through her lawyer, David Finn.

In the affidavit published by Dallas Observer, Dhawan said when she tried to wake her son for school on Jan 29, he was cold and unresponsive.

Indian origin mom Pallavi Dhawan, who resides in Texas, Dallas has reportedly been accused for killing her 10-year-old son and keeping her body in bathtub for 4 days, which she said that she was following Hindu last rites rituals.

Dhawan who packed his son in ice wrote in an affidavit that she did not hurt or kill her son and loved him with all of her heart and never would hurt him in anyway, the New York Daily News reported.

The 38-year-old is now facing murder charges after she admitted to the Frisco police that she had committed the crime.

Rajat Gupta, India-born former director of Goldman Sachs Group, convicted in 2012 for insider trading, has agreed to surrender to prison authorities on June 17 to begin a two-year sentence.

US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan directed Gupta, 65, who lost a bid for a new trial last month, to surrender by 2:00 p.m. on that date.

In an order made public Thursday Rakoff said that Gupta and prosecutors consented to the surrender date.

Two Indian peacekeepers have been injured in a “deadly and unprovoked” attack by a mob of armed men on civilians sheltering inside a UN base in the war-ravaged town of Bor in South Sudan.

The Indian peacekeepers were protecting about 5000 internally displaced persons, who had taken shelter at the UN base in Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, when the “well-armed” members of the Dinka ethnic group yesterday attacked the base in the world’s newest nation.

A suspected carjacker in Britain, who stabbed an Indian-origin man to death while he was trying to prevent his Mercedes from being stolen, has admitted to his crime.

Harjinder Singh Bhurji, 32, who was accompanied by a female friend, was stabbed to death in the early hours of Sept 13, 2011 in Ilford in Britain’s Redbridge borough.

Rory Gordon admitted in the Central criminal court in London that he stabbed Bhurji but claimed he did not mean to kill the man, Ilford Recorder reported Thursday.

Anil Kumar, an Indian-American surgeon and small business owner in Michigan has filed papers as a Democratic candidate in the race for the US House of Representatives from the state’s 11th Congressional district.

Kumar, who has practised medicine in Metropolitan Detroit for the past 30 years, has raised over $600,000 to date, according to a media release from his campaign.

“I’m running for Congress because we need leaders with fresh ideas to get our state, and our economy, back on track,” said Kumar.

An India-origin woman has been selected as the New York City’s new commissioner of immigrant affairs.

Agarwal, who was earlier an advocate, will be tackling the biggest issues during her term, including language access in hospitals and pharmacies to help implement City Council and Mayor de Blasio’s push for a municipal ID card.

The 36-year-old, who was a public-interest lawyer and the daughter of Indian immigrants, said that she was thrilled to take up the role, adding that it was such a gift.

She was appointed in February.

An Indian woman, who was jailed last year for killing her drunk husband, will be released from jail on compassionate grounds and deported from Oman.

The 40-year-old woman, who worked as a teacher in a school in Sur city in northeastern Oman, was arrested after her 49-year-old husband’s unnatural death Oct 25 last year, the Times of Oman reported Tuesday.

Her two daughters also study in the same school.

The Appeals Court in Sur commuted the jail term of the woman from the earlier five year term to six months on compassionate grounds as her daughters are minor.

An Indian, part of 17 men allegedly involved in rioting at a Singapore dormitory, was today jailed for two weeks for attacking on a Bangladeshi fellow worker during a live screening of a T-20 World Cup cricket match.

Dharmaraj Ramesh, 25, was convicted of throwing an empty beer can on Ahsan Habib Md Fazlan Rahman, a Bangladeshi national, on the night of March 5, after the accused pleaded guilty to an amended charge of using criminal force.

India-born US poet Vijay Seshadri has won the prestigious 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category for his collection of poems “3 Sections.”

The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music were announced by Columbia University in New York.

The announcement said, Seshadri’s ‘3 Sections’ is a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia .

The prize for the poetry category is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author.

Bangalore born Indian-American poet Vijay Seshadri has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for “3 Sections”, called “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia.”

Seshadri, 60, will get the $10,000 prize for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, Columbia University, which administers the prestigious prizes announced Monday.

The husband of an Indian-origin woman, who was found dead in her house in South Ottawa in Canada’s Ontario province, has been charged with the first-degree murder of his wife.

Bhupinderpal Gill was arrested and charged Sunday with the killing of his wife Jagtar Gill, 43, in their living room in January this year, Ottawa Citizen reported Monday.

Gurpreet Ronald, a neighbour, was charged last week with first-degree murder in the same case.

Ronald has also been said to be romantically involved with the victim’s husband although Bhupinderpal has repeatedly denied the claim.

Three Indian maids in the UAE have been charged with robbing their employer’s house of cash worth 35,000 dirhams (about $9,500) along with other valuables.

The Indian women, identified only as MA, 27, BA, 31, and MB, 30, were charged for drugging and theft in the house of an Emirati employer MK, 44, in Dec 16 last year, The National reported Monday.

The housemaid MA denied the charge before the Dubai Criminal Court Monday, while the two others are at large.

The employer, who also owns a beauty salon, said she had withdrawn 20,000 dirhams to pay for an electricity bill.

The “India by the Nile” festival 2014 has brought yet another Indian classical dance form to Egyptian audiences who were left enraptured by the performances of the artist.

Renowned Indian Kathak dancer Marami Medhi performed April 6 in Alexandria and April 8 in Cairo to appreciative audiences, an Egyptian embassy statement Monday said.

The multidisciplinary festival, showcasing India’s arts and culture, is being held in various Egyptian cities between April 1 and April 20.

Medhi is founder of the Sur Sangam institute of Indian classical music and dance in Guwahati.

A medical tribunal in Britain has cleared an Indian-origin doctor of allegedly performing female genital mutilation on a woman during a routine plastic surgery.

Sureshkumar Pandya, a general practitioner, who did a routine labiaplasty surgery on a 33-year-old woman in East London’s Regency Clinic in March 2012, has been accused of botching up the procedure and mutilating the genitals of the woman, identified only as A, in the process.