Indians question Aadhaar, but get naked before white man for visa: Union Minister

New Delhi, Jan 11: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the curative petition of two death row convicts in 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case on January 14.

A five-judge Bench of Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan will hear the petition filed by Vinay Sharma and Mukesh.

The duo had moved a curative petition in the top court after a Delhi court issued a death warrant in their name and announced January 22 as the date of their execution.

Besides them, two other convicts named Pawan and Akshay are also slated to be executed on the same day at 7 am in Delhi's Tihar Jail premises.

They were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in the national capital on the night of December 16, 2012.

The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya, died at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment.

A curative petition is the last judicial resort available for redressal of grievances. It is decided by the judges in-chamber.

If it is rejected, they are legally bound to move a mercy petition. It is filed before the President who has the power to commute it to life imprisonment.

The court after issuing a black warrant in their name gave them two weeks' time to file both the curative and mercy petition.

May 9: Two more companies are said to be eyeing stakes in Reliance Jio Platforms, the $65-billion digital unit of Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries, suggests a Bloomberg report. If these deals materialise, they would add to a growing list of firms that have recently invested in the Indian company.

US private equity firm General Atlantic was considering investing about $850 million to $950 million in the Mumbai-based company, a Bloomberg report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The deal could be completed as soon as this month, though no agreement had been finalised and plans may change, it added.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) is also considering to buy a minority stake in Jio, Bloomberg said in a separate report.

General Atlantic declined to comment on the report, while Jio and PIF did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. Hours earlier on Friday, Reliance Industries announced a $1.5 billion stake sale in Jio to Vista Equity Partners, the third deal in just over two weeks.

The conglomerate cut a $5.7 billion deal with Facebook for a 9.99 per cent stake in Jio on April 22 and a few days later, it secured a $750 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake.

Together the three deals will inject a combined $8 billion in the telecoms-to-energy group and help it pare its debt.

Vista's investment gave Jio an equity value of Rs 4.91 trillion ($65 billion) and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 trillion, said Reliance, controlled by billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani.

The potential investments from New York-based General Atlantic and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which manages over $300 billion in assets, would inject money on top of the $8 billion which Jio has already raised.

Saudi's PIF has been buying minority stakes several companies. Last month, it disclosed an 8.2 per cent stake in coronavirus-hit Carnival Corp, sending the cruise operator's shares up nearly 30 per cent higher.

Lucknow, May 9: The first patient to receive plasma therapy as an experimental treatment for coronavirus infection in Uttar Pradesh died following a heart attack on Saturday.

The patient, a 58-year-old doctor, was admitted at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) here.

The doctor, who was on ventilator since the last 14 days, died on Saturday evening following a heart attack, KGMU Vice-Chancellor M L B Bhatt said.

Since he had high blood pressure and diabetes, he was under the continuous observation of doctors in the isolation ward, Bhatt said.

“The patient was in a stable condition. His lungs had improved, but he later developed urinary tract infection. Two reports of his samples came out as negative (for COVID-19) today,” the vice-chancellor said.

“He, however, suffered a heart attack around 5 pm. Despite all efforts, he could not be saved,” he said.

The doctor from Orai in Uttar Pradesh was administered plasma therapy at the state-run KGMU on April 26. He was administered the plasma donated by a doctor from Canada who was the first COVID-19 patient admitted at the hospital and later recovered.

Tulika Chandra of Blood Transfusion Department, KGMU said, "When the patient was given plasma therapy, his condition was very bad. His lungs, however, improved. But as he was an old patient with diabetes, he was kept on the ventilator.”

Convalescent Plasma Therapy is an experimental procedure for treating COVID-19 patients. In this treatment, plasma, a blood component, from a cured patient is transfused to a critically ill coronavirus patient.

The blood of a person who has recovered from COVID-19 develops antibodies to fight the virus. This therapy uses the antibodies from the blood of a cured patient to treat another critical patient.

The Union health ministry, however, had advised against considering the therapy to be a regular treatment for coronavirus, adding it should be used for research and trial purposes till there is a piece of robust scientific evidence to support its efficacy.