Rajasthani cuisine beckons at Sagar Ratna food fest

Dharwad, Jan 5: Hameed Khan, a noted sitar exponent and descendant of renowned sitarist Ustad Rahimat Khan, passed away at his residence here on Saturday night.

He was 69 and survived by wife Fareeda, son Mohsin Khan (a musician) and daughter Arma Khan (an artist).

Hameed Khan taught sitar at Karnatak University’s college of music and also at the family-run music school ‘Bharateeya Sangeeta Vidyalaya’. Several of his disciples who were foreign nationals helped him establish ‘Kalakeri Sangeet Vidyalaya’ at Kalakeri village near Dharwad, which provides music lessons to the deprived.

Mangaluru, May 13: Karnataka revised its standard operating procedure (SOP) for international passengers to allow pregnant women, children and senior citizens to entre home quarantine if they test negative for covid-19. 

The development comes after former minister and Mangaluru MLA U T Khader urged the government to follow the Kerala model in handling the repatriates and take extra care of pregnant women and senior citizens at Mangaluru and Bengaluru Airports.

Passengers will be initially dived into two categories. Category A includes passengers symptomatic on arrival while Category B passengers are those asymptomatic on arrival. 

While category A passengers will be directly shifted to covid-19 hospital, category B passengers will be sent to 14-day institutional quarantine.

If there are pregnant women, children below 10 years of age and senior citizens in category B, they will remain in institutional quarantine until they obtain a negative report (after throat swab testing for covid-19). It may take one or two days to get the throat swab testing report. 

Srinagar, Jan 14: Davinder Singh, deputy superintendent of police, who was arrested on Saturday along with two Hizb terrorists and a Hizb overground worker in Kulgam, has confessed to his interrogators that he had received Rs 12 lakh from the terrorists to ferry them to Jammu and then Chandigarh for their onward journey to New Delhi, IG (Kashmir) Vijay Kumar told the media here on Monday.

Intelligence sources said the terrorists planned to carry out attacks on Republic Day.

The DSP was suspended on Monday and is likely to be stripped of all his awards, including the President’s Police Medal for anti-militancy operations.

Davinder, who was interrogated by various intelligence agencies, including IB, military intelligence and RAW, besides the police, has disclosed that he had put up the terrorists at his Indira Nagar house in Srinagar, right next to the Army’s 15 Corps HQ, and thereafter accompanied them to Jammu in a Maruti car driven by the Hizb overground worker, intelligence sources claimed.

Meanwhile, sources said the Union home ministry may hand over the case to the NIA to find the real motive of the terrorists, Davinder’s links to terrorism and whether he had helped terrorists in the past as well.

The two Hizb terrorists arrested with Davinder are Naveed Babu alias Babar Azam, a resident of Nazneenpora in south Kashmir’s Shopian district, and his associate Rafi Ahmad Rather. The Hizb overground worker, identified as Irfan Shafi Mir, was driving the vehicle when it was intercepted by the police on Saturday. Irfan Shafi Mir has travelled to Pakistan five times on his passport.

Davinder, interestingly, was on duty ensuring security cover for the envoys of 15 countries who visited Srinagar at the Union government’s invitation last week.