Four PFI activists briefly detained for trying to hoist flag

Jan 6: A Thane resident lost a little over Rs 1 lakh in an online fraud involving popular payment gateways, police said on Saturday. The complainant, a resident of Patlipada, wanted to sell his furniture and posted an ad on Facebook on December 21, an official said.

On December 24, he received a call from one Rajendra Sharma who offered to buy the furniture and wanted to transfer the amount through payment gateways — Paytm and Google Pay, he said.

However, instead of the money getting credited to his account, the complainant found that Rs 1.01 lakh were debited from him during three transactions on two payment gateways, the official said.

The complainant realised that he had been cheated when the accused assured that he would return the money and asked him for another account number, he added.

An offense has been registered against the unidentified accused under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act and further investigations are underway, he said.

Udupi, Mar 31: Six people have committed suicide since liquor shops were shut down during a lockdown here to break the chain of the novel coronavirus.

Deputy Commissioner G Jagadeesha said in a statement here, "After continuous suicides out of depression over not being able to buy alcohol, the district administration decided to hold counselling sessions to such people.

"The district administration has appointed a team of Doctors for counselling. Anyone who needs counselling can call 1077 toll-free number," he added.

New Delhi, June 27: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led union government of India is not ready to stop all imports from aggressive China in spite of mount calls to boycott Chinese products in India.

The Centre is reportedly considering to stop only non-essential imports from the neighbouring country.

However, the Inward shipment in sectors such as automobiles, pharmaceuticals, certain electronics and others will continue until a domestic alternative is found.

“India will gradually move towards import substitution. It will not happen overnight. In the meantime, attention has to be paid on production and job creation. We cannot throttle our industry. There are certain absolutely essential imports. Needless to say, those will keep going,” official sources said.

Sources said that both the government and the industry are in the process of identifying products that can be domestically manufactured in the medium term. There are certain chemicals, automotive components, handicrafts, cosmetics, agriculture items and certain consumer electronics, which can be manufactured domestically in the short to medium term. The government is doing all it can to raise the capacity of domestic industries.

However, there are certain other imports in the automobile and the pharmaceutical sectors which cannot be done away within the short to medium term. Their domestic production at the moment may not be that cost-effective.

The six-crore strong traders’ body CAIT has been at the forefront of such a demand and has launched a campaign to celebrate Indian Diwali this year with a total absence of Chinese goods.

“Ease of doing business, capital availability at lower rates and globally competitive logistics and energy costs are some of the prerequisites that the government should look into to ensure the growth of the domestic auto component industry,” according to Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA) Director General Vinnie Mehta.

Maruti Suzuki Chairman R C Bhargava said, “People who are boycotting Chinese goods have to remember that in some cases it may lead to their being asked to pay more for the same product."

Meanwhile, domestic rating agency Acuite Ratings & Research has analysed the current import portfolio from China and found 40 sub-sectors have the potential to lower their import dependency on China. These sectors contribute to $33.6 billion worth of imports from China and about 25% of these imports can be substituted by local manufacturing without any significant additional investments.