‘Lajja Gauri’ idol discovered on roadside at Barkur

Belagavi, Mar 14: After the first COVID-19 related death reported in the state, less number of people are travelling in North West Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) buses, official sources said here.

There were less number of travellers on Saturday as compared to any other day.

According to sources, many passengers cancelled their reservations to major cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Goa and Kalaburagi too.

Madikeri, Apr 27: Four labourers, who were travelling to Kerala via Makutta on foot, were stopped by Karnataka Forest Department officials and handed over to police.

Police said on Monday that the labourers identified as Anish, Radhakrishna, Shrinil and Prabhakar, who were working in the Coffee plantations in Chembellur and Ontiyangadi. As the roads to Kerala were sealed following lockdown, they were held up in the district.

The forest guards, who spotted them walking through the forest area, brought them back to the town as per the directions of the higher officials last evening. DCF Shivashankar, ACF Konerira Roshni and Ranger Arun Kumar were present.

New Delhi, Jan 17: The Supreme Court on Friday closed the monitoring of the killing of rationalist M M Kalburgi in 2015 in Dharwad.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat noted that the charge sheet has already been filed and the matter was assigned to the sessions court. The court, however, noted two accused had absconded and could not be arrested till date, according to reports.

Senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, appearing for the Karnataka government, submitted that the High Court had also stopped monitoring of the matter.

The top court had in early last year directed that the Karnataka High Court's Dharwad bench to monitor the probe. The Karnataka police SIT, which investigated Gauri Lankesh case and filed the charge sheet, was allowed to take over the Kalburgi case.

Umadevi, in her 2017 plea, drew a parallel between Kalburgi's murder and killings of Narendra Dabholkar and Comrade Govind Pansare in Maharashtra and sought an SIT probe by a retired Supreme Court or a High Court judge. She urged the top court to monitor the probe till it reached its logical conclusion as there was no progress in the investigation conducted so far by the Karnataka police.

The court had earlier sought to know if there was a "common thread" in murder cases of Communist leader Pansare and rationalist Dabholkar in Maharashtra, and Kannada writer Kalburgi and journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka.