Communal clashes in UP's Kasganj claim one life; 50 held, curfew imposed

Agencies
January 28, 2018

Kasganj (UP), Jan 28: At least three shops, two private buses and a car were torched on the second day of violence in Uttar Pradesh's Kasganj city on Saturday, police said after a young boy was killed in clashes following stone-pelting on a motorcycle rally that was taken out to celebrate the Republic Day.

Internet services had also been suspended till 10 pm on January 28 in trouble-torn areas in western UP, where a curfew was imposed after clashes yesterday, to prevent the spread of rumours on social media, they said.

Elaborating about the extent of damage, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said: "In all, three shops have been damaged, by pouring petrol below the shutter and setting it afire. A fire was also set on the seats of two private buses, but the engine of the buses are intact. One empty kiosk was also set ablaze by the anti-social elements. In the evening, the seats of an abandoned car were set ablaze."He claimed that no violence took place on Saturday, and "violence took place only Friday".

The ADG added, "Some anti-social elements had tried to break into the gate of a mosque yesterday, but were unable to do so, as police chased them away.

"Meanwhile, District Magistrate R P Singh said, "Internet services were also suspended in the trouble-torn area till 10 pm on January 28."Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar said, "Two cases were registered yesterday.

As many as nine arrests in two cases, 40 more preventive arrests have been made. ADG Agra Zone/Commissioner Aligarh/IG Aligarh range have been camping there since yesterday, an IG-level officer, D K Thakur, has reached there from Lucknow and camping since yesterday night."He added, "Five companies of PAC and 1 RAF company had reached there yesterday along with additional civil police officers/policemen from the zone.

One more Company of RAF has been provided today."The principal secretary (home) also informed, "After the peaceful cremation in the morning, some miscreants have tried to disturb peace which has been strictly dealt with.

Only sporadic attempts of arson in the outskirts took place today.A government spokesperson said prohibitory orders still remained in effect, but did not say whether the curfew had been lifted.A strong posse of RAF and PAC personnel have intensified vigil in the district, whose borders have been sealed to stop elements detrimental to peace from sneaking into the city."In all, 50 accused persons have been arrested.

Efforts are on to arrest the rest of the accused," the ADG said, adding that the figure was likely to go up.Elaborating on the genesis of the clashes, the police said in a statement that a few people were riding motorcycles carrying the tricolours and were chanting 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.As the procession reached minority community-dominated Baddunagar, "anti-social elements" pelted stones and opened fire. "In this (firing), Chandan was killed and Naushad was injured. Naushad was referred to Aligarh for treatment," it said. Another man, identified as Akram, received head injuries.The two were undergoing treatment at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College in Aligarh. Naushad was out of danger and Akram was being operated upon, the hospital authorities said.

The motorcycle rally was taken out by VHP and ABVP volunteers as part of celebrations on the 69th Republic Day.

Meanwhile, the police had stopped firebrand leader Sadhvi Prachi in Aligarh and prevented her from visiting Kasganj.

She, however, said: "If the district administration really wanted, it would not have allowed the violence."Earlier on Saturday, Additional DG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said, "Anti-social elements today tried to set on fire a small shop on the city's outskirts... Some of them have been taken into custody, while others were chased away.""Our main job at this point is to ensure...that brotherhood among communities remain intact," Kumar told reporters.

The police were trying to make people "understand communal bonhomie", he said, adding that the situation was under control now. "Sufficient police personnel have been deployed."Superintendent of Police, Kasganj, Sunil Kumar Singh, said: "Anti-social elements had set two shoe shops on fire in Ghantaghar market, and the fire brigade was pressed into action."Apart from this, one utensil shop was set afire and a bus was also damaged by anti-social elements, who set it on fire. Fire brigade was called in to douse the fires.

"Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya described the violence as unfortunate and said the people behind it would not go unpunished.But Samajwadi Party spokesperson Sunil Singh 'Sajan' demanded more than just assurance from the state government.

"The Uttar Pradesh government must act tough on the anti-social elements so that this acts as a deterrent for others."UP Congress spokesperson Virendra Madan suggested the violence was connected to Lok Sabha polls, due next year."The state government must show seriousness and control the situation at the earliest... Is there any possible link of this violence with 2019 Lok Sabha elections for polarisation?"Divisional commissioner of Aligarh, Subhash Chandra Sharma, said the violence erupted after the cremation of the boy, who died yesterday.

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News Network
March 5,2020

Mar 5: The fourteen Italians, who have tested positive for coronavirus, have been shifted to the Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon from an ITBP quarantine centre.

The hospital issued a statement on Thursday morning, saying these patients are housed on a completely separate floor, which has been quarantined and has no contact with the rest of the hospital.

There is a dedicated medical team wearing protective gear looking after these patients.All items used on the floor are isolated to that floor.

The isolated floor will completely contain the disease even with these asymptomatic persons. All other hospital operations are operating as normal, and there is no increased risk to patients, visitors or staff, the statement said.

Twenty-one Italian tourists and their three Indian tour operators were shifted out from an ITBP quarantine centre here on Wednesday as they were exposed to novel coronavirus.

An affected Italian couple is being treated at Jaipur's SMS medical college.

Officials on Tuesday said the foreigners have been sent to a private hospital in Gurgaon and a centre in the national capital while the Indians have been transferred to the Safdarjung Hospital.

Fourteen Italians and an Indian (driver), who were in the same group as the affected Italian couple, tested positive for the virus as per information provided by the Health Ministry.

The Italian tourists and three Indians were admitted to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force centre in Chhawla on Tuesday.

The Centre already has 112 people, 76 Indians and 36 foreigners, since February 27 after they were evacuated by an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane from China's Wuhan, the epicentre of the deadly coronavirus.

The first samples of these 112 people had tested negative when reports came in last week.

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News Network
April 28,2020

New Delhi, Apr 28: Outstanding loans amounting to Rs 68,607 crore of top 50 wilful bank loan defaulters in the country including firms of Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya have been technically written off till September 30, 2019, the Reserve Bank of India said in a RTI reply.

Absconding dimantaire Choksi's company Gitanjali Gems tops the list of these defaulters with a whopping amount of Rs 5,492 crore, according to the list.

This is followed by REI Agro with Rs 4,314 crore and Winsome Diamonds with Rs 4,076 crore.

Rotomac Global Private Limited has funded advances of Rs 2,850 crore which have been technically written off and Kudos Chemie Ltd with Rs 2,326 crore, Ruchi Soya Industries Limited, now owned by Ramdev's Patanjali, with Rs 2,212 crore and Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd with Rs 2,012 crore being the other companies.

Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines figures in the list at number 9, with outstanding of Rs 1943 crore which have been technically written off by the banks.

Forever Precious Jewellery and Diamonds Private Limited has loans of Rs 1,962 crore written off while Deccan Chronicle Holdings Limited have Rs 1915 crore written off loans.

Choksi's other firms Gili India and Nakshatra Brands also have loans of Rs 1,447 and Rs 1109 crore respectively written off.

REI Agro of Jhunjhunwala brothers is already under the scanner of ED. The CBI and ED are also probing alleged fraud by the owners of Winsome Diamonds.

Vikram Kothari's Rotomac is the fourth in the list. He and his son Rahul Kothari were arrested by the CBI for bank loan default.

In the last Parliament session, Rahul Gandhi had asked the government to provide a list of top 50 bank loans defaulters in the country, leading to sharp exchanges and uproar in the Lok Sabha.

"The information on top 50 wilful defaulters and their sum of funded amount outstanding and amount technically/prudentially written off as on September 30, 2019 reported in CRILC by banks, is provided," the RBI said in its written response dated April 24.

In his application, RTI activist Saket Gokhale had sought the list of defaulters as on February 16, but the RBI said the requested information is not available.

The RBI said that according to section 8 (1)(a) of RTI Act 2005 read with para 77 of Supreme Court judgement of December 16, 2015 in Jayantilal N Mistry case, information on overseas borrowers is exempted from public disclosure.

"Data is as reported by banks and RBI will not be held responsibly or accountable for any misreporting and/or incorrect reporting by the reporting entities," the RBI said in the written reply to the RTI query.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

Days after Twitter accounts of several billionaires were hacked to engineer a crypto scam, Twitter on Saturday said it is embarrassed, disappointed and, more than anything, sorry for what happened with some of its high-profile users as attackers successfully manipulated its employees and used their credentials to access internal systems, including getting through the two-factor protections.

In the first detailed summary of the "social engineering attack" via a crypto scam that hit at least 130 users this week, Twitter said for 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account and send Tweets.

"We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information via "Your Twitter Data" tool.

This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity.

"We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts," said Twitter.

The company said the attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.

"Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools," informed Twitter.

In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information, Twitter added, saying its forensic investigation of these activities was still ongoing.

"We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted".

The company said it will soon restore access for all account owners who may still be locked out as a result of the remediation efforts.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Twitter crypto scam can be traced back to a group of hackers who congregate online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell coveted online handles.

The report said that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".

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