The Border Security Force (BSF) Monday recovered nearly 11 kg of heroin in this Punjab district bordering Pakistan, officials said.
BSF officials said that the seizure was made in Bhikiwind area, 30 km from here. Pakistani smugglers, who allegedly pushed the drugs consignment from the Pakistan side late Sunday night, escaped under the cover of darkness.
The heroin is worth nearly Rs.55 crore in the international market. No arrests have been made.
–IANS
Three people of a gang were arrested for circulating fake Indian currency in Delhi and neighbouring towns, police said Monday. Fake currency with a face value of Rs.6.5 lakh was recovered from them.
Mohd. Farid-ul-Islam alias Farid, 26, Kunja Bihari Pandey, 42, both residents of Gurgaon, and Safiq-ul-Alam alias Safiq, 26, a resident of Malda in West Bengal, were arrested Sunday, police said.
Farid was nabbed from outside the New Delhi Railway Station when he went to deliver a consignment of counterfeit notes with a face value of Rs.5 lakh, police said.
A 12-year-old girl was raped by her step-father, a four-year-old girl was raped by a neighbour here and two other minor girls and a woman were sexually assaulted in separate incidents, police said Monday.
The step-father of a minor girl raped her in her house in east Delhi’s Welcome area Monday afternoon when she was alone at home, police said. The attacker is missing and on the run.
A four-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by her 19-year-old neighbour Raju in west Delhi’s Kirti Nagar area Sunday night, police said.
Parliament Monday passed the UPA government’s ambitious National Food Security Bill which aims to provide cheap food grain to two-thirds of India’s 1.2 billion population.
The Rajya Sabha passed the bill Monday by a voice vote after an almost 10-hour-long debate. The legislation was passed by the Lok Sabha last week.
A record number of 237 amendments were tabled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and other opposition parties but were either rejected or not pursued.
The bill will now be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his assent, and will then become a law.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault Monday rejected opposition’s calls for a parliament vote on the Syria crisis.
“It’s up to the President of the republic to decide whether a vote (of parliament), which our constitution does not require, to take place on Wednesday,” Xinhua quoted Ayrault as saying.
“There will be a debate without a vote because in any case the final decision will be taken by the president when the coalition will be formed,” he added.
At least eight people were killed and eight others wounded in separate attacks, including a suicide bombing, in Iraq’s capital Baghdad Monday, police said.
In one of the attacks, a group of gunmen and a suicide bomber hit the house of Wisam al-Hardan, leader of the Sunni paramilitary groups of Sahwa of Anbar province, in Hartiyah district near Baghdad Green Zone, killing six of his bodyguards and injuring eight others, Xinhua reported citing a police source.
Hardan escaped the attack with wounds, the source added.
Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, has launched a new Arabic Twitter account to engage with the Arabic-speaking community on the popular social media platform.
Twitter users that read Arabic can stay up-to-date with the airline’s latest activities by searching and following @EtihadAirwaysAR on Twitter.
The new account is one of the first Twitter accounts in the airline industry solely dedicated to tweeting in the Arabic language.
French intelligence reports indicated Monday that the chemical attack of Aug 21 in Damascus was conducted by the Syrian government forces.
The nine-page intelligence report, declassified by the French government, said since April this year at least three chemical attacks in Syria were staged by the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Xinhua reported.
The report was unveiled by French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault during a meeting with lawmakers, defence and foreign ministers, intelligence and security officials to discuss situation in Syria.
UAE’s Minister of Energy Suhail Mohammed Al Mazrouei met with Singapore’s Ambassador to the UAE Umej Singh Bhatia Monday and discussed bilateral ties between the two countries.
Al Mazrouei said the United Arab Emirates was keen on strengthening trade and economic ties between the two countries, adding that the UAE is moving toward expanding the use of clean energy and promoting a culture of guided energy use.
Anjana Padmanabhan, the 10-year-old talent who has won the first “Indian Idol Junior” title, aspires to fly higher, literally! She wants to become a pilot but she would also like to establish herself as a playback singer.
“I want to become a pilot but I have always wanted to become a playback singer too,” Padmanabhan told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
Will she be able to balance both worlds?
“Yes, I’ll manage,” she said in an innocent tone, a day after she was announced the winner of the “Indian Idol Junior” finale Sunday.
There’s something else also that she wants to balance.
In an apparent dig at BJP leaders like Narendra Modi for using Twitter to score points, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said they were turning the sweet chirping of birds (dictionary meaning of twitter) into the jarring sounds of politics.
“The dictionary meaning of twitter is the chirping of birds which makes a man happy hearing them in the morning,” Kumar told reporters emerging from his “Janata Ke Darbar mein Mukhya Mantri” programme.
“But some leaders through excessive tweeting have turned it into a jarring sound,” he said.
Kingfisher Airlines Chairman Vijay Mallya has blamed almost everyone, including engine suppliers, employees, banks and tax authorities, for grounding of the carrier since October last year.
In the airline’s annual report (2012-13), he also mentions that the company is in talks with a “potential investor”.
United Breweries (Holdings) Ltd, the holding company of the airline, has filed a case against International Aero Engines AG in a Bangalore Court, claiming Rs 1,677 crore in damages, for allegedly supplying inherently defective engines, said the report.
Police have issued a look-out notice as it stepped up searches to nab serial rapist Jaishankar, who escaped from the high-security central prison in a dare-devil act.
Home Minister K J George today visited the Parappana Agrahara jail, from where the notorious criminal, with the help of a bamboo pole and bed-sheet, and wearing a police uniform, scaled the high security inner and outer northern periphery wall with electrical fencing and jumped down early yesterday, in a filmy style stunning the police.
The Central Government seem to be moving in a fast forward mode for the formation of a separate Telangana state.Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde disclosed on Monday that the curtains on the contentious issue of Telangana state would be drawn within 20 days after the Union Cabinet meeting on Friday approves the draft resolution for bifurcation of the state.
As many as nine MPs from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions were suspended for the rest of the monsoon session for disrupting the proceedings of Lok Sabha here on Monday.
The suspended MPs include A Sai Pratap, Anantha Venkatrami Reddy, Lagadapati Rajagopal, Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and K Bapi Raju of Congress party and Nimmala Kristappa, M Venugopal Reddy, KN Rao and N Sivaprasad of Telugu Desam Party.
Bollywood ‘khiladi’ Akshay Kumar’s character in his forthcoming film “Boss” will be introduced by megastar Amitabh Bachchan. For Akshay, it is an “honour”.
“It’s an honour and a privilege to have a legend like Amitabh Bachchan introduce my character in ‘Boss’. I’ve been his biggest fan since childhood and have even had the pleasure of working with him. He is an institution by himself,” Akshay said in a statement.
Akshay and Amitabh have earlier worked together in movies like “Khakee” and “Waqt: The Race Against Time”.
A benchmark index of Indian equities markets closed 266.41 points or 1.43 percent up Monday on global cues.
All the sectors were trading in green. The rally was led by metal, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), oil and gas and consumer durables sectors.
The 30-scrip S&P Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 18,691.83 points, closed at 18,886.13 points, up 266.41 points or 1.43 percent from its previous day’s close at 18,619.72 points.
The Sensex touched a high of 18,942.06 points and a low of 18,678.93 points intra-day.
Eight key infrastructure sectors that include coal, power, crude oil, gas, cement and steel, posted a sluggish 3.1 percent growth in July, government data showed Monday.
The eight core infrastructure industries — that have 37.9 percent weight in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) — had posted 4.5 percent expansion in the corresponding month of last year, and 0.1 percent growth in June 2013.
For the first four months of the current financial year, the average growth is 1.9 percent, according to data released by the ministry of commerce and industry here.
Hyundai Motor India Monday reported an increase of 11.58 percent in total sales in August, which stood at 52,319 units as compared to 46,886 units sold in the corresponding month of 2012.
“Exports have shown decent growth on account of strong demand from non-European markets while the domestic market continues to witness pressure,” said Rakesh Srivastava, vice president (sales and marketing), Hyundai Motor India.
“The overall market is suppressed due to various macro-economic factors. The frequent and steep increase in fuel prices continues to impact the already low market sentiments.”
After a lull of nearly a week, Pakistan troops Monday again violated the ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC), opening unprovoked firing at Indian positions in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, a defence spokesman said.
The spokesman said Pakistan troops used small arms and automatic weapons to target Indian Army positions in Mendhar sector of Poonch district.
“Pakistani firing started at 1 p.m. Our troops gave a calibrated response to Pakistan fire and the firing exchange continued up to 2 p.m.”, he said.
A nine-year-old girl was kidnapped from Delhi by an auto-rickshaw driver who raped her in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, Delhi Police said Monday. The driver has been arrested.
Omprakash, 42, was arrested Monday by Delhi investigators from his hideout in Ghaziabad for raping the girl Saturday afternoon after kidnapping her from outside her school in east Delhi’s Seemapuri area, police said.
“The accused persuaded the girl to board his auto-rickshaw on the pretext of dropping her home in Ghaziabad. Instead, he took her to a secluded spot and raped her,” said a police officer.
Five women have been allegedly molested and kidnapped after violence erupted between two groups of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), during the Panchayat Samiti election, in Burdwan district of West Bengal on Monday.
According to reports, 25 people have been injured in the incident, in which bombs and brickbats were used. Media reports suggest that of the two groups involved in the clashes, one was led by Paresh Pal, while the other was led by Janardhan Chatterjee. Further details are awaited. (ANI)
Jodhpur Police on Monday confirmed that Asaram Bapu has been declared medically fit—physically and mentally—by doctors, and said the extension of the self-styled godman’s police custody will be sought for further investigation. Jodhpur Police also said they are clear that they had enough evidence against Bapu in a case that is ‘purely criminal’ in nature.
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Monday expressed confidence about the country”s law enforcement agencies nabbing underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and all other criminals who had taken refuge abroad.
“We will bring one by one. All will come. Just wait,” Shinde told reporters here when asked whether there was any chance to arrest Dawood and bring him back to India.
Amitabh Bachchan starrer, ‘Satyagraha,’ which has received positive feedback from the critics, has minted 39 crore in its opening weekend.
The flick, which is directed by Prakash Jha, cashed in 11.21 crore on the first day of its release.
Film critic and trade analyst Taran Adarsh took to Twitter to say that the flick has seen excellent monetary growth, as it raked in 11.21 crore on Saturday and 14.83 crore on Sunday.
The political drama, which released on August 30, has had the biggest ever opening, among all the films by Jha. (ANI)