Karnataka minister calls EC a puppet of Modi govt; wants scrutiny of EVMs

Mangaluru, Jun 17: The first chartered flight repatriating Indians stranded at Kuwait for months landed at the international airport here.

The Jazeera Airways flight privately booked by the Keralites and coastal Kannadigas living in the Arab country had left sometime in the afternoon with 160 passengers on board.

The flight also carried the mortal remains of Sathish Kochu Shetty (45), who died in a fire tragedy at a refinery in Kuwait on June 14.

Patna, Mar 31: In arguably the first of its kind incident in the country, a young man in Bihar was beaten to death precisely because he had informed the district control room about two corona suspects who had arrived here in the State from Mumbai.

The incident took place in Sitamarhi in North Bihar where a 20-year-old youth Bablu Kumar was allegedly killed by Sudhir Mahto and Munna Mahto.

The two Mahtos had arrived from Mumbai to Sitamarhi around ten days back. Bablu, in the meantime, informed the district control room about the arrival of two persons from a State where a large number of people were afflicted with coronavirus.

A team of doctors on March 24 reached Runnisaidpur in Sitamarhi to examine the two suspects. Three days later, these two persons from Maharashtra tested negative.

But the incident (of informing control room and subsequent medial test) created such enmity between the family of Mahtos and Babloo that on Sunday when they found the 20-year-old young man sitting alone, they thrashed him so mercilessly that he died on the spot.

Shocked and grief-struck, Babloo’s father Vinod Singh eventually lodged an FIR with the police and named Sudhir Mahto, Munna Mahto, and their family members as accused in the killing of his son.

The police on Monday raided the place and arrested the Mahtos.

But then, this is not an isolated case of violence. In another incident that took place in Bihar’s Jehanabad district, a BDO Ajay Kumar and a police officer Chandrashekhar Kumar were attacked by fellow villagers when the officials reached there to quarantine those migrants who had reached there from Delhi. So angry were the villagers with the officials’ move to isolate the migrants that they smashed the window-panes of the government vehicles and attacked the officials.

The officials had to beat a hasty retreat. But they soon returned with additional police team which used brutal force and took local leaders into custody before restoring normalcy in the area.

Bengaluru, Jun 10: The Karnataka Anti-Corruption Bureau on Wednesday conducted raids at 14 places linked to four government officials in the state.

On receiving received credible information about the officials amassing disproportionate assets, an illegal assets case was registered and raids are being conducted at 14 places linked to them, ACB said in a release.

It said the raids are still on and investigation is being carried out about their assets.

Raids are being conducted on properties linked to L Sathish Kumar, Additional Commissioner, Department of Commercial Tax; N Ramakrishna, Divisional Forest Officer, Srinivasapura, Kolar; Gopalshetty Mallikarjuna, Executive Engineer, District Development Cell, Raichur; Raghappa Lalappa Lamani, Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam Ltd official in Almatti, Bagalkote, the release said.