NRIs Corner

Around 150 Indian expatriates registered themselves during a special drive launched today by the Indian Embassy to assist individuals who have overstayed in Saudi Arabia.

The expatriates had either not obtained final exit from the Tarheel (deportation) Office or were facing difficulties
in rectifying their status, said a statement from the Indian Embassy.

The special registration drive, which will continue for three days, is aimed at helping Indians who have overstayed in
Saudi Arabia.

An Indian-origin man was today found guilty by a court in New Zealand, of kidnapping and raping two young women in 2008.

Pravin Fia Hari Prasad Kumar faced retrial in the High Court at Auckland for the rape, kidnapping and sexual assault.

He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced in December, Fairfax Media reported.

While on bail for the 2008 rapes he escaped his electronic monitoring and did not attend his first trial, but it went ahead in his absence and he was convicted, it said.

(IANS) Twenty nine fishermen from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all Indian nationals, who were jailed for illegally entering Qatari waters will be freed Oct 14 when their two-week jail term ends, The Peninsula reported.

They were detained Sep 30.

Though the Eid-al-Adha holidays in Qatar will end only Oct 20, the Indian embassy in that Gulf nation is hopeful of arranging their release Oct 14 as some officials will be on duty during the holidays.

According to the report, the fishermen will be sent back to the UAE after their release.

A court in New Zealand Friday held an Indian-origin man guilty of kidnapping two young women and raping them.

Pravin Fia Hari Prasad Kumar faced retrial in the Auckland High Court on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual assault of two young women in 2008, Fairfax media reported.

The court was told that Kumar’s first victim was a prostitute who initially agreed to have sex with him in exchange for money Sep 27, 2008.

The woman had asked Kumar to pay up first and wear condom but he didn’t agree.

He drove her to a remote location in Wiri, South Auckland, and raped her.

An 18-year-old Indian-American student in Philadelphia, whose body was found in her dormitory room in August, died of alcohol poisoning, according to media reports.

Kinara Patel, a sophomore at Villanova University, was found dead on August 29 inside her dormitory room.

The Delaware County medical examiner, whose office released autopsy results on Sunday, has declined to disclose Patel’s blood-alcohol content at the time of her death, Philly.com reported.

When he arrived in Accra in 2001, Indian industrialist Akoliya Patel only wanted to mine for gold and diamonds that he is now doing across Africa. More than a decade later, he has also become Ghana’s main financier to develop cricket in this West African nation of 25 million people that was a British colony till 1957.

Last year, two coaches from India came to train members of the various cricket clubs that have sprung up around capital Accra.

An 18-year-old Indian-American student of Villanova University in Philadelphia, whose body was found in her dormitory room in August, died of alcohol poisoning, according to media reports.

The Delaware county medical examiner, whose office released autopsy results of Kinara Patel, a second year student from Hackensack, New Jersey, has declined to disclose her blood-alcohol content at the time of her death, philly.com reported.

(IANS) A Delhi court Monday granted interim bail for 15 days to four friends of NRI student Anmol Sarna, who died after a drug party. All the four are facing drug abuse charges.

Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri gave interim bail to Sarna’s friends — Madhav Bhandari, Pranil Shah, Shivank Gambhir and Rythm Girhotra, all in their 20s, till Oct 22.

Sarna’s family members, however, protested the order and indulged in verbal duel with the relatives of the four, and said they would move a higher court for cancellation of the bail.

A one-and-a-half-year-old Indian infant died in a hospital in Oman’s capital Muscat after a television set fell on him.

The toddler died after a television set fell on him Friday while he was pulling a wire connected to it, the Times Of Oman reported Saturday.

The parents of the deceased boy Aadhi are from the south Indian state of Kerala.

The body of the baby has been flown to India.

According to the report, the parents of the deceased were not present in the room where the television set was kept at the time of the accident.

A British Sikh co-founder of a far-right group that protests Islamic extremism, who fled from jail ahead of a court hearing last week, will reportedly hand himself in to police.

The trial of Guramit Singh Kalirai, a 31-year-old English Defence League(EDL) activist, was going on at Nottingham Crown Court for taking part in an attempted armed robbery but he fled ahead of the court hearing.

He was given a jail sentence for six and a half years in his absence last week, the International Business Times reported.

Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan arrived last night from Mumbai via Singapore in Auckland, New Zealand and is now currently residing in the Pullman Hotel .

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has formally nominated an Indian American Sikh lawyer Gurbir Grewal to be the next Bergen county prosecutor.

If confirmed by the State Senate, Grewal would become the first Indian American prosecutor in New Jersey, as well as the first person of Sikh origin to occupy the office.

Since 2010, Grewal has worked at the US Attorney’s Office in Newark as the Deputy Chief of the Economic Crimes Unit and Computer Hacking and IP Crimes Unit.

British citizens enjoy the widest range of visa-free travel in the world, being able to visit 173 countries with just a passport, while Indians get visa-free or visa-on-arrival access in 52 countries.

The UK citizens are at par with those from Finland and Sweden for visa-free access, according to Henley & Partners Visa Restriction Index.

Nine out of the top ten in the index are European Union countries, with the tenth being the United States.

An Indian engineering student from the University of Nottingham fought off stiff worldwide competition to be awarded the overall prize at a British government-backed entrepreneurial contest.

Ashutosh Pathak is working on developing a much cheaper, more efficient pipe inspection and leakage detection system.

His impressive skills secured his Brobotics team, which boasted participants from seven countries and five continents, USD 7,500 in Amazon web credits and a working space to help them develop their ideas further.

Two Indian-origin men have been sentenced by a New Zealand court for defrauding a city council in Aukland of more than USD 676,855 over a decade.

Hemant Kumar Maharaj and Suresh Din were sentenced after they appeared in the Auckland District Court yesterday for sentencing after being found guilty in June of charges including using a document with intent to defraud and dishonestly using a document.

Maharaj was also convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

An Indian, extradited to the US following an Interpol alert for allegedly raping a 14-year-old American girl in 2009, has been charged with rape, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

Amit Singh, 32, was extradited to the US from India last week and has been arraigned on a grand jury indictment charging him with rape in the first and second degrees, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

He was remanded by Judge Angelo Delligatti and is due back in court on October 11, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said. He faces 25 years in prison.

Abu Dhabi will have six new Indian schools and offer around 15,000 seats and give a relief to parents of students whose villa schools are facing closures.

The Indian Ambassador to the UAE, M.K Lokesh said that the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) has given an assurance that the interests of the pupils at villa schools will be taken care of.

Lokesh said that as seven Indian villa schools face closure, affecting a total of 5,854 students, the new schools will offer around three times more seats, the Gulf News reports.

Mahatma Gandhi’s 144th birth anniversary was marked with Bhajans and Vedic prayers at his iconic statue at Tavistock Square in London today.

The Indian High Commission organised the event that was attended by the Deputy Mayor of Camden, Councillor Lazarro Pietragnoli, British Indian MP Virendra Sharma and other senior representatives from Indian organisations based in Britain.

A 32-year-old Indian has been extradited to the US to face charges in the 2009 rape of a teenage girl as she walked to her school.

Amit Singh was extradited to the US from India last week and has been arraigned on a grand jury indictment charging him with rape in the first and second degrees, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

He was remanded by Judge Angelo Delligatti and is due back in court on October 11, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said. He faces 25 years in prison.

British police failed to find an Indian-origin man who was lying dead in his bed for 12 days after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers, an inquest has heard.

The inquest at the Southampton Coroner’s Court heard that Amar Khosah, 52, was reported missing July 23 by a health worker after he missed two appointments.

Khosah was actually dead and his body was lying in his bed at his home in the British city of Southampton, the Daily Mail reported.

The future of 570 students has been thrown into jeopardy after yet another Indian school in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was ordered to shut down at the end of the current academic year.

The Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) has ordered the closure of The Little Flower Private School in Abu Dhabi, effective from the 2014-15 academic year, the Gulf News reported.

This is part of its clampdown on villa schools or schools run on designated residential plots, the paper said.

The ADEC started the clampdown for avowed safety reasons in 2008 when there were 72 such schools.

A Sikh man has sued his former employer in London for over 50,000 pounds for allegedly hurting his religious belief verbally, physically abusing him and sexually harassing him.

Harminder Dhanota, 42, claimed at the Central London Employment Tribunal Monday that he was verbally and physically abused by colleagues at the London office of Saudi Arabian bank Samba Financial Services and his workmates would dislodge his turban, the Daily Mail reported.

Dhanota told the tribunal that his boss Jack Tanna also insulted his religion by showing him porn on a mobile phone.

Australian authorities have detained 18 Indian asylum seekers, who are likely to be sent back to India in line with newly elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s policy to combat people smuggling.

The Indians were among 128 asylum seekers, travelling in three boats, intercepted last week and sent for offshore processing, the Australian Associated Press reported today.

“The first vessel was found on Tuesday carrying 18 people from India, who are being interviewed in Darwin,” Operation Sovereign Borders Acting Commander Air Marshall Mark Binskin was quoted as saying.

Doctors from Indian and other ethnic minority communities in Britain are less likely to be promoted to senior hospital jobs, a latest medical investigation found.

White doctors are three times more likely to be selected for senior hospital jobs than doctors from ethnic minorities, the investigation found.

A Indian-origin researcher has developed a new feedback system that allows robots to operate with minimal supervision, and can lead to making of a robot capable of learning or even become autonomous.

Developed by Dr. Jagannathan Sarangapani, makes use of current formation moving robots and introduces a fault-tolerant control design to improve the probability of completing a set task.