Namaz should be offered in mosques, not on roads: Haryana CM on Gurugram incident

Mumbai, Mar 8: A day after the Enforcement Directorate registered a money laundering case against Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor and raided his premises, he was taken to the agency's office in Mumbai on Saturday for further questioning.

Kapoor, who was grilled by central agency's officials on Friday night at his Samudra Mahal residence in Mumbai, was shifted to the ED office in the metropolis around 12.30 pm.

ED officials said Kapoor was questioned throughout the night, with some rest time.

A senior ED official connected with the probe told IANS: "Kapoor will be questioned about Yes Bank loans to Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL)."

The official said that during searches a lot of incriminating documents were found and the agency wanted to grill him on his links with DHFL promoters and other companies.

Kapoor's alleged role in the disbursal of loan to a corporate entity and kickbacks reportedly received in his wife's bank account are also under probe.

The ED had filed the money laundering case against Kapoor and raided his residence, apart from issuing a look-out circular so that he does not flee the country.

The ED registered a money laundering case against Kapoor as a continuation of its probe against the DHFL wherein it was allegedly found that Rs 12,500 crore was diverted to 80 shell companies using one lakh fake borrowers. The transactions with these shell companies date back to 2015.

An ED official in New Delhi told IANS that the DHFL probe revealed that funds diverted by the DHFL originated from Yes Bank.

He said that the searches at Kapoor's residence on Friday night were meant to find out any irregularity in grant of loans to the DHFL by the Yes Bank.

The ED has accused Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan of DHFL of purchasing shares in five firms -- Faith Realtors, Marvel Township, Abe Realty, Poseidon Realty, and Random Realtors -- after which they were amalgamated with Sunblink.

The outstanding loans of these five firms, totalling around Rs 2,186 crore till July 2019, were allegedly appropriated onto the books of Sunblink to cover up the diversion of loans acquired from DHFL.

The ED's action comes after the RBI superseded Yes Bank Board for 30 days and appointed an administrator, putting a cap of Rs 50,000 on withdrawals by account holders for a month.

The RBI said that the bank's board was superseded "owing to serious deterioration in the financial position of the bank".

Former SBI CFO Prashant Kumar was appointed as administrator of Yes Bank, which has over 1,000 branches and 1,800-plus ATMs across the country.

On Thursday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the bank was on watch since 2017 and developments relating to it were monitored on a day-to-day basis.

New Delhi, Jun 6: With 9,887 new positive cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count touched 2,36,657 on Saturday surpassing Italy's latest tally of over 2.34 lakh, taking India to the sixth spot among countries with the highest caseloads of the virus.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said that India registered a spike of 9887 new cases and 294 deaths in the past 24 hours taking the tally to 1,15,942 active cases and 6642 deaths.

Today's count was the highest single-day spike in the country, which has now overtaken Italy, according to the tally posted by the Johns Hopkins University which posted that globally the coronavirus had infected over 66.64 lakh people and claimed over 3.91 lakh lives so far.

In india, the MoHFW informed that 1,14,073 persons have been cured/discharged/migrated so far.

Maharashtra remains the worst-hit State as the total number of COVID-19 positive cases reached 80,229. While the total number of active cases in the state stands at 42,224.

In Tamil Nadu, 28,694 cases have been detected so far while Delhi has reported 26,334 coronavirus cases.

United Nations, Jun 6: The COVID-19 pandemic, which has presented challenges for several nations, could be an “opportunity” for India to speed up the health insurance scheme Ayushman Bharat, especially with a focus on primary healthcare, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said.

WHO Director-General Ghebreyesus was responding to a question on the COVID-19 situation in India, where the number of coronavirus cases are increasing rapidly. India went past Italy on Friday to become the sixth worst-hit nation by the COVID-19 pandemic.

India saw a record single-day jump of 9,887 coronavirus cases and 294 deaths on Saturday, pushing the nationwide infection tally to 2,36,657 and the death toll to 6,642, according to the health ministry.

"Of course COVID is very unfortunate and it's challenging for many nations but we need to look for opportunities too. For instance for India, this could be an opportunity to speed up Ayushman Bharat, especially with a focus on primary health care. I know there is a very strong commitment from the government to speed up the implementation of Ayushman Bharat and with primary healthcare and community engagement, I think we can really turn the tide,” Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing in Geneva on Friday.

Ayushman Bharat is the world’s largest health insurance scheme and was launched by the Narendra Modi government in 2018. Last month, Modi had said that the number of people who have benefited from the scheme crossed the one crore-mark.

The scheme aims to cover more than 500 million beneficiaries and provide coverage of Rs 500,000 per family per year.

Referring to the Ayushman Bharat scheme, Ghebreyesus added that “using and speeding up what has started could actually help in India and that's what WHO was very appreciative by the way when Ayushman Bharat started. And this could be a very good opportunity actually to test that and speed up and use it to really fight this pandemic.”