Law to punish husbands after instant talaq will be a New Year gift for Muslim women: Modi

Noida, Jul 16: A key aide of 1993 Mumbai blasts case convict Abu Salem who worked in his illegal property business in NCT of Delhi has been arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh police, officials said on Thursday.

Gajendra Singh, who was also close to gangster Khan Mubarak, was nabbed in Mumbai late Wednesday night by the Noida unit of the STF, they said.

"Gajendra Singh had taken Rs 1.80 crore from a Delhi-based businessman in 2014 in a property-related case. When he was pressured to return the money, Singh had Khan Mubarak's shooters open fire at the businessman in sector 18 of Noida," Additional Superintendent of Police, STF, Raj Kumar Mishra said.

The businessman was in his car when the attack took place, and he narrowly escaped, the officials said.

Mishra said Singh had paid the shooters Rs 10 lakh, and the agency has cracked the money trail of the transaction.

"Gajendra Singh also invested Abu Salem and Khan Mubarak's money into properties in Delhi-NCR," the officer added.

Singh was wanted in a couple of cases registered at a police station in Noida where he has been lodged now for further proceedings, the STF said. 

New Delhi, Feb 29: India’s economy expanded at its slowest pace in more than six years in the last three months of 2019, with analysts predicting further deceleration as the global Covid 19 coronavirus outbreak stifles growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The gross domestic product (GDP) data released yesterday showed government spending, private investment and exports slowing down, while there is a slight upturn in consumer spending and improvement in rural demand lent support.

The quarterly figure of 4.7% growth matched the consensus in a Reuters poll of analysts but was below a revised - and greatly increased - 5.1% rate for the previous quarter.

The central bank has warned that downside risks to global growth have increased as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, the full effects of which are still unfolding.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken several steps to bolster economic growth, including a privatisation push and increased state spending, after cutting corporate tax rates last September.

In its annual budget presented this month, the government estimated that annual economic growth in the financial year to March 31 would be 5%, its lowest for last 11 years.

Modi’s government is targeting a slight recovery in growth to 6% for 2020/21, still far below the level needed to generate jobs for millions of young Indians entering the labour market each month.

The annual GDP figure for the September quarter was ramped up from an earlier estimate of 4.5%, while the April-June reading was similarly lifted to 5.6% from 5%, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed on Friday.

Capital Investment Drop

In the December quarter, private investment grew 5.9%, up from 5.6% in the previous quarter, while government spending rose by 11.8%, against 13.2% in the previous three months.

However, corporate capital investment contracted by 5.2% after a 4.1% decline in the previous quarter, indicating that interest rate cuts by the central bank have failed to encourage new investment. Manufacturing, meanwhile, contracted by 0.2%.

“It appears growth slowdown is not just cyclical but more entrenched with consumption secularly joining the slowdown bandwagon even as the investment story continues to languish,” said Madhavi Arora of Edelweiss Securities in Mumbai.

Many economists said that the government stimulus could take four to six quarters of time before lifting the economy and the impact of those efforts could be outweighed by the global fallout from the coronavirus epidemic that began in China.

“The coronavirus remains the critical risk as India depends on China for both demand and supply of inputs,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank.

Indian shares sank on Friday for a sixth session running, capping their worst week in more than a decade. The NSE Nifty 50 index shed 7.3% over the week, while the Sensex dropped 6.8%, the worst weekly declines since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Separately, India’s infrastructure output rose 2.2% year on year in January, data showed on Friday.

A spike in inflation to a more than 5-1/2 year high of 7.59% in January is expected to make the RBI hold off from further cuts to interest rates for now, while keeping its monetary stance accommodative.

Lucknow, Jun 20: A media body on Saturday described as "an act of intimidation" the filing of an FIR in Uttar Pradesh against a journalist over a report on the impact of the lockdown on a village, saying it was part of an "established pattern" of harassment of independent scribes.

In a statement, the Media Foundation put on record its strong protest over the FIR filed by the Uttar Pradesh government against Supriya Sharma, executive editor of news portal Scroll.in.

The case was filed against Sharma for allegedly misrepresenting facts in a report on the impact of the lockdown in a village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, police sources had said on Thursday.

The FIR against Sharma and the Scroll editor-in-chief is an "an act of intimidation and a case of abuse of process", intended to discourage honest and critical reporting, the Media Foundation said.

The Media Foundation was started in 1979 with the aim of upholding freedom of speech, expression and information.

The FIR against Sharma is only the latest instance of similar coercive actions against professional journalists, part of "an established pattern of harassment and humiliation of independent journalists", it said,

"It is an unacceptable encroachment on press freedom," said the foundation, whose chairperson is veteran journalist Harish Khare.

The Media Foundation called upon the judiciary, and central and state governments to uphold the spirit of freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed in the Constitution.