4-year-old Kerala boy, returning after Umrah, dies on board flight

Bengaluru, Feb 28: Historian S. Shettar, 85, breathed his last early on February 28 in Bengaluru. He was suffering from respiratory problems and was hospitalised for over a week.

Shettar was known for his multi-disciplinary work, encompassing linguistics, epigraphy, anthropology, the study of religions and art history. He had extensively worked on the Jain practice of ritual death in Karnataka and Asoka edicts. He had studied and compiled early edicts in Kannada and worked extensively on the growth of Kannada language down the ages.

Born in 1935 at Hampasagara, Ballari district, he went on to study at Cambridge University and started his career as a Professor of History at Karnatak University, Dharwad, his alma mater. He later headed the National Museum Institute of the History of Art, Conservation and Museology in 1978 and Indian Council for Historical Research in 1996. He was also a visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.

He was a bilingual historian who wrote in English for most of his career, but started writing in Kannada in later years. In the last two decades, he developed a keen interest in linguistics and wrote multiple books on classical Kannada and Prakrit. His 2007 book “Shangam Tamilagam” is considered a seminal work in the study of the early period of Dravidian languages. It won him Bhasha Samman from Central Sahitya Akademi. He later wrote two works on Halegannada, classical Kannada. His most recent work was “Prakrita Jagadvalaya” in 2018.

Bengaluru, Jun 11: A love triangle took a violent turn when a final-year engineering student was assaulted by both her current and former lovers. She's now battling for her life in the ICU, police said. 

For the 22-year-old woman, who lives in Sidedahalli, it was a case of fast-changing relationships. She broke up with a fellow student Babith, 21, a few months ago after having dated him for four years. Four months ago, she started seeing another collegemate named Rahul, 22, and everything seemed fine. 

On June 7, she went to Rahul's house, ostensibly for his birthday party, after informing her parents. Babith got wind of it and barged into Rahul's house. The trio got into an argument, and Rahul abused and assaulted her. 

The woman decided to leave him, and went with Babith to his house in Chikkabanavara, North Bengaluru. But things didn't end there. Babith picked an argument with her. Things became so bad that he attacked her with a helmet. 

He then panicked and called her parents, asking them to take her home. When her parents arrived, they found only Babith, his mother and sister in the house. Babith's family directed them to a bedroom where she was lying motionless, with her face being badly wounded. 

When her parents demanded to know what had happened, nobody responded. They took her to a hospital where her condition remains serious. A while later, Babith came to the hospital and gave her parents the key of her scooter. He told them what had happened and allegedly warned them against filing a police complaint. 

Her mother, however, filed a complaint with the jurisdictional Soladevanahalli police. According to her, Babith had fought with her daughter at their house for not taking his phone calls six months ago. 

Shashikumar N, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North), said both the men had been arrested and that further investigations are underway. 

Bengaluru, Jun 18: Examination for PU II English paper, which was postponed for more than three months due to threat of Coronavirus, was held on Thursday across the state.

The authorities were forced to postpone the examination of the English subject, scheduled in March, abruptly due to the threat of Covid-19 which spread like wildfire and has so far claimed lives of more than 100 in the state.

There are over 1,016 examination centres across the state. All the students were put to thermal scanners and were ensured wearing face masks. Each centre has sanitisers. Those with cold, cough and fever were assigned a separate room.