3 held while trying to sell drugs among students; ganja worth Rs 10 lakah seized

Mysuru, Feb 29: More than 7,000 industrialists and entrepreneurs have left the country due to a deficit of trust, and incidents like the violence that rocked northeast Delhi will only affect the economy further, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of Art of Living Foundation, said on Friday.

Sri Sri was speaking at a corporate wellness conference on the theme, 'Wellness and Wellbeing for a Progressive Nation', hosted by CII in Mysuru. He said an atmosphere of fear and mistrust pervades the country and does not augur well for the economy.

"Bankers, too, are suspicious of everyone and not extending loans to industrialists. This has posed lots of problems," he said. "This attitude among bank officials should go as life depends on trust. When there is a deficiency of trust, there is a possibility of the economy slowing down," Sri Sri added

He said society is now facing two important issues - aggression and depression. "Some people stage protests and pelt stones which happened recently in Delhi. This is really unfortunate," he said, adding, "Fear lurks in the nation's capital, which is being used by many to create terror. This will affect the economy. No country will prosper without peace."

Wellness is the need of the hour, he said, adding, "Corporates used to spend half their health to gain wealth and spend half their wealth to regain their health. This isn't good economics. We have to talk and convince people to invest in wellness."

Bengaluru, May 14: Reformed underworld don Muthappa Rai, who was battling cancer for the past year, was said to be in a critical condition at Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru, late Wednesday night. Doctors said he was on life-support at the time of going to press. Rai (68), realtor, entrepreneur and founder of pro-Kannada organisation Jaya Karnataka, had retired from public life after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was part of an ongoing investigation into gangster Ravi Pujari, who was extradited from Senegal recently.

Born in Puttur into a Bunt family, he started out as a bank employee in Bengaluru, and later ran a live band restaurant. In 1994, he was shot in a Bengaluru court by a man dressed as a lawyer, after which he was bedridden for a couple of years.

Rai Moved to Dubai in 1996. He was deported from the UAE to India in 2002, and was arrested in Bengaluru when HT Sangliana was the police commissioner. Both Rai and Pujari had allegedly been associated with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

Srinagar, Jan 14: Davinder Singh, deputy superintendent of police, who was arrested on Saturday along with two Hizb terrorists and a Hizb overground worker in Kulgam, has confessed to his interrogators that he had received Rs 12 lakh from the terrorists to ferry them to Jammu and then Chandigarh for their onward journey to New Delhi, IG (Kashmir) Vijay Kumar told the media here on Monday.

Intelligence sources said the terrorists planned to carry out attacks on Republic Day.

The DSP was suspended on Monday and is likely to be stripped of all his awards, including the President’s Police Medal for anti-militancy operations.

Davinder, who was interrogated by various intelligence agencies, including IB, military intelligence and RAW, besides the police, has disclosed that he had put up the terrorists at his Indira Nagar house in Srinagar, right next to the Army’s 15 Corps HQ, and thereafter accompanied them to Jammu in a Maruti car driven by the Hizb overground worker, intelligence sources claimed.

Meanwhile, sources said the Union home ministry may hand over the case to the NIA to find the real motive of the terrorists, Davinder’s links to terrorism and whether he had helped terrorists in the past as well.

The two Hizb terrorists arrested with Davinder are Naveed Babu alias Babar Azam, a resident of Nazneenpora in south Kashmir’s Shopian district, and his associate Rafi Ahmad Rather. The Hizb overground worker, identified as Irfan Shafi Mir, was driving the vehicle when it was intercepted by the police on Saturday. Irfan Shafi Mir has travelled to Pakistan five times on his passport.

Davinder, interestingly, was on duty ensuring security cover for the envoys of 15 countries who visited Srinagar at the Union government’s invitation last week.