Woman held for smuggling in memory cards

January 6, 2012

smugler

Bangalore, January 6: A 40-year-old woman was held on Thursday morning for smuggling in 31,520 micro-secure digital chips from Hong Kong.

Officials of the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU), Customs, at Bangalore International Airport (BIA) caught Rosy Bhatia from Delhi red-handed as she tried to walk away with the chips worth Rs 63.04 lakh, packed in 53 polythene pouches and concealed in her stockings, hidden under a salwar suit.

The cards, bearing the “Made in Taiwan” tag, were being smuggled into the country.

The customs sleuths intercepted her after she alighted from a Dragon Airways aircraft from Hong Kong around 2 am and immediately arrested her for offences under Section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962.

Rosy Bhatia, according to a senior AIU official, was carrying approximately 31,520 such cards with the capacity of two gigabytes on her.

The officials, following a tip-off, waited for Rosy Bhatia to arrive and watched her moves. She passed through the green channel without declaring the goods and the value in the customs declaration slip. Questioned by the Customs, she simply said she had nothing to declare.

“She was a smart woman. She had packed these chips in 53 small polythene pouches which were concealed in her stockings, over which she was wearing a salwar,” said an official at the airport.

The AIU team had received specific intelligence from their Delhi counterparts that she would be smuggling in memory cards into the country.

“It was not viable to wait until she reached Delhi although she had an early morning flight to Delhi today (Thursday). There were chances of her disposing the smuggled articles in Bangalore, making it difficult to trace,” the official explained.

Initial interrogation revealed that this was the first time she was travelling through Bangalore. Besides, she had no history (cases registered) against her for smuggling.

“It is very difficult to believe that she was smuggling for the first time. The trade has been going on for sometime,” the official said. Her passport revealed that she had been to Hong Kong over 10 times in the last six months and the duration of her stay was between a day and two on most occasions.

“She would travel to Hong Kong and other places in South-East Asia on the excuse of buying textile goods to sell in India,” another official said.

Rosy Bhatia was produced before a local court here and was granted conditional bail.

Stating that there is a larger network operating in the country, officials said last month a passenger was caught at Kolkata airport, travelling from the same country and smuggling the same good, using the same modus operandi.

Also, a similar consignment was seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence here about six weeks ago, officials said.

They said there was a huge demand for such products in the country. “Our telecom market is growing. With electronic goods like this attracting 27-30 per cent in duties, smuggling them is very lucrative,” the official said.

Gaffar Market in Delhi, National Market and SP? Road in Bangalore, Heera Panna in Mumbai, Fancy Market in Kolkata and similar places in other key cities of the country play home to several shops that sell these products at discounted rates, hurting the licensed retail outlets.

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News Network
May 6,2020

Bengaluru, May 6: Central Crime Branch Police have nabbed 71 people involved in various crimes taking advantage of Lock-down which prevents movement of people in the street and seized stolen properties worth about Rs 1.70 crore, official said on Wednesday.

Police said that in all 56 cases were booked. In all 17,312 duplicate Sanitisers, 2000 lts of Chemicals, 18,750 fake Masks, 270 Thermometers and two cars were seized from the arrested culprits.

During the raid godowns where rice and dal meant for free distribution during lock-down were robbed and stored were also seized.

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Agencies
March 3,2020

Panipat, Mar 3: A 22-year-old man was charred to death after he came in contact with a live electricity wire while posing for a TikTok video near the Matlaudha railway station here, police said on Tuesday.

The incident took place on Monday evening when Vikas, a resident of Dharamgarh village, climbed a pole over which the wire was passing and posed for the video, police said.

His three friends were standing below when the accident took place.

Vikas came in contact with the wire carrying 25,000 volts current and was burnt, police said.

Police have sent the body for a post-mortem and started investigation into the matter.

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News Network
February 10,2020

Mumbai, Feb 10: Ankita Pisudde, a resident of Hinganghat town in Wardha, was critical after sustaining 40% burns on February 3 when she was set afire, allegedly by one Vikesh Nagrale (27) while she was on her way to college.

The 25-year-old woman lecturer who was set on fire by a stalker in Maharashtra’s Wardha district last week died at a hospital in Nagpur on Monday morning, a police official said.

Ankita Pisudde, resident of Hinganghat town in Wardha, had been critical after sustaining 35 to 40% “grade III” burns on February 3 when she was set afire allegedly by one Vikesh Nagrale (27) while she was on way to her college, they said.

She was undergoing treatment at the Orange City Hospital & Research Centre here, located around 75 km from Wardha.

“Doctors at the hospital declared her dead at 6.55 a.m. today,” Hinganghat’s police inspector Satyaveer Bandiwar said.

The woman sustained deep burn injuries on scalp, face, right upper limb, left hand, upper back, neck and eyes along with severe inhalational injuries, the hospital said in a medical bulletin on Monday.

She died of “septicemic shock” after suffering from deep dermal burns along with severe inhalational injuries, respiratory distress and related complications, it said.

Around 4 a.m. on Monday, her oxygen levels deteriorated inspite of ventilator support, coupled with decreasing urine output and reduction in blood pressure, the hospital said.

As part of immediate resuscitation measures, medicines were escalated to maintain the blood pressure and all feasible steps were taken to improve the oxygen levels in blood, but the patient remained “extremely critical”, it said.

“Around 6.30 a.m., she had bradycardia and inspite of prolonged cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the patient could not be revived and was declared dead at 6.55 a.m.,” it said.

The probable cause of death was “septicemic shock”, the bulletin added.

During her treatment, she underwent tracheostomy (creating an opening in neck to place a tube into the windpipe to allow air to enter the lungs), burn dressings, debridement and escharotomies, the hospital informed.

Debridement is a medical procedure to remove dead, damaged or infected tissue, while escharotomy is a surgical procedure used to treat full-thickness (third-degree) circumferential burns.

The woman’s parents and uncle were kept informed about her deteriorating health condition and death, the hospital said, adding that the body was later handed over to police for postmortem and other formalities.

After the woman’s condition deteriorated, the hospital informed about her critical status to Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Wardha Guardian Minister Sunil Kedar, Nagpur Divisional Commissioner Sanjeev Kumar, Police Commissioner Bhushan Kumar Upadhyay, Wardha Collector Vivek Bhimanwar and Wardha Superintendent of Police Basavraj Teli.

Heavy security was deployed in Hinganghat to avoid any law and order problem following her death, the police said.

Several locals, mostly women and college students, took out a march in Wardha city last Thursday, demanding death penalty for the accused.

Home Minister Deshmukh visited the hospital on Tuesday and announced that the accused’s trial would be fast-tracked.

The State government last week flew Navi Mumbai-based National Burns Centre director Sunil Keswani to Nagpur to supervise the woman’s treatment.

It has also appointed well-known lawyer Ujjwal Nikam as special public prosecutor in the case.

According to the victim’s relatives, Nagrale, who was arrested within hours of the incident on February 3, had been harassing her for quite some time.

Nagrale and the woman were friends till two years ago when she severed ties with him due to his “irrational behaviour”, the police earlier said.

A special team led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Trupti Jadhav will probe the case, the Wardha Police said last week.

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