UP civic poll: BJP sweeps big cities, but fails to open account in 36 districts

New Delhi, Mar 19: Lawyer of Mukesh Singh, who is one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, on Thursday mentioned a petition before the Registrar of the Supreme Court seeking an urgent hearing in the matter.

Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, through the petition, sought directions to bring call record, documents and reports of his client through any probe agency and passed appropriate directions and measure to ensure justice in the matter.

The petition, however, has not sought a stay on the execution, which is scheduled for the morning of March 20. The petition is likely to be taken up for hearing today.

Earlier today, the apex court dismissed the curative petition of Pawan Gupta, another convict in the matter, who claimed juvenility at the time of the crime.

This comes as the four convicts -- Mukesh Singh, Akshay Singh Thakur, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta -- are scheduled to be hanged at 5.30 am on March 20.

Meanwhile, several other petitions are also pending in the matter in different courts.

The case pertains to the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in the national capital. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.

Mar 16: A fourth batch of 53 Indians returned to India from Iran on Monday, taking the total number of people evacuated from the coronavirus-hit country to 389.

This comes a day after over 230 Indians were brought back from Iran to New Delhi and quarantined at the Indian Army Wellness Centre in Jaisalmer, the third batch to be evacuated from that country.

"Fourth batch of 53 Indians - 52 students and a teacher - has arrived from Tehran and Shiraz, Iran. With this, a total of 389 Indians have returned to India from Iran. Thank the efforts of the team @India_in_Iran and Iranian authorities," Jaishankar tweeted.

The Indians came in a Mahan Air flight that landed at the Delhi airport at around 3 am, officials said, adding that they were later taken to Jaisalmer in an Air India flight for being quarantined.

The first batch of 58 Indian pilgrims were brought back from Iran last Tuesday and the second group of 44 Indian pilgrim arrived from there on Friday.

Iran is one of the worst-affected countries by the coronavirus outbreak and the government has been working to bring back Indians stranded there. Over 700 people have died from the disease in Iran and nearly 14,000 cases have been detected.

Jaishankar had told Rajya Sabha last week that the government was focusing on evacuating Indians stranded in Iran and Italy as these countries are facing an "extreme situation".

Hyderabad, Jun 30: Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech announced that it has successfully developed Covaxin, India's first vaccine candidate for Covid-19, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).

The Drug Controller General of India - CDSCO, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare granted permission to initiate Phase I & II Human clinical trials after the company submitted results generated from preclinical studies, demonstrating safety and immune response. Human clinical trials are scheduled to start across India in July 2020.

The SARS-CoV-2 strain was isolated in NIV, Pune and transferred to Bharat Biotech.

The indigenous, inactivated vaccine developed and manufactured in the company's Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) High Containment facility located in Genome Valley, Hyderabad.

Announcing the vaccine development milestone, Dr Krishna Ella, Chairman and Managing Director said: "We are proud to announce COVAXIN, India's first indigenous vaccine against COVID-19. The collaboration with ICMR and NIV was instrumental in the development of this vaccine."

Dr Ella added, "The proactive support and guidance from CDSCO has enabled approvals to this project. Our R&D and Manufacturing teams worked tirelessly to deploy our proprietary technologies towards this platform."
Expedited through national regulatory protocols, the company accelerated its objective in completing the comprehensive pre-clinical studies. Results from these studies have been promising and show extensive safety and effective immune responses.

Speaking about Bharat Biotech's prowess, Suchitra Ella, Joint Managing Director said, "Our ongoing research and expertise in forecasting epidemics has enabled us to successfully manufacture a vaccine for the H1N1 pandemic."
"Continuing our focus on creating the only BSL-3 containment facilities for manufacturing and testing in India, Bharat Biotech is committed to advancing vaccine development as a matter of national importance to demonstrate India's strength in handling future pandemics," she added.

Bharat Biotech's track record in developing vero cell culture platform technologies has been proven in several vaccines for Polio, Rabies, Rotavirus, Japanese Encephalitis, Chikungunya and Zika.