Tourism industry badly hit in Kodagu due to natural calamity

Kozhikode, Feb 28: Nearly 200 Umrah pilgrims from Kerala were deboarded from their flights to Saudi Arabia from Calicut international Airport here on Thursday after the gulf nation enforced a temporary ban on foreigners seeking to visit the holy cities of Makkah and Madina, following coronavirus scare.

Saudi Arabia halted travel to the holiest sites in Islam over fears about a viral epidemic just months ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage, a move that came as the Mideast has over 240 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus.

According to Airports Authority of India officials, as many as 84 of passengers from the Saudi Airlines and 104 from the Spice Jet Airlines were denied permission to board the flights and travel to Saudi Arabia.

However, other passengers bound to Jeddah were permitted to fly, they said.

A private tour operator here said two batches of 40 pilgrims each were denied permission to travel to Makkah to perform Umrah on February 27.

Umrah is an Islamic pilgrimage that can be performed at any time of year.

"The pilgrims were denied entry by the two airlines, Spice Jet scheduled at 05.30 hrs and Saudi Airlines at 1130 hrs," Naiful Akbar, a travel agent said.

The Airport Authority of India sources said, "the passengers were asked to alight by the Spice Jet airline staff following an instruction received by them."

Udupi, July 20: A youth, who was under depression after his business came to a halt due to lockdown, has killed self in Kundapura taluk of Udupi district. 

The deceased has been identified as Nitish Shetty (31), son of Prabhakar Shetty, a resident of Giliyaru in Kota area of Kundapura. 

Shetty was running a secondhand car business in Bengaluru. The business had completely stopped due to covid-19 lockdown. 

After returning to his hometown, he could not find any other job. Hence he was under depression. Hence on July 18 he handed himself to death in his house, police said. 

A case has been registered at jurisdictional Kota police station.

Mangalore, Jan 12: City police on Sunday arrested five people for their alleged involvement in a Rs 50 crore fraud by promising people higher monetary returns.

Police said that the arrested persons are Manjunath Nayak, a resident of Derebail; Denzil Mascarenhas, a Konchady resident; Ashok Naik, a Derebail resident; Vikas Nayak and Vishwanath Naik both residents of Bengaluru were arrested.

The arrested were employed in the ‘Speak and Group’ concern, started by Dhanush M K of Kundapur along with his friends. The firm had managed to collect huge sums of money from people, including NRIs by promising monthly four percent returns on their investment. The employees managed to entice people by showing them a few insurance schemes claiming higher returns.