Kozhikode, Jun 5: The police on Wednesday took Badal, an inspector of the Central Excise, into custody, for threatening Union Minister of State V Muraleedharan.
Badal is reported to have called the Calicut City Police Commissioner and expressed caution of life threat on the Union Minister.
Police sources said the special branch of police is questioning the CE officer
New Delhi, Mar 25: The Indian Rail Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Wednesday appealed to the people not to cancel their e-tickets on their own in case of trains being cancelled by the national transporter due to nation-wide lockdown to help curb the spread of novel coronavirus pandemic.
Clearing the doubts of the railway passengers, IRCTC spokesperson Siddharth Singh said, "Doubts have been raised regarding cancellation of e-tickets subsequent to the halting of railway passenger trains.
"It may be submitted that for trains cancelled by the railways in its complete run, refund on e-tickets is full and automatic. In this case, no cancellation exercise is required to be done on the part of the user," he said.
The IRCTC official said that if user cancels his e-ticket in situations of train cancellations, there are chances he may get "less refund". "Hence passengers are advised not to cancel e-tickets on their own for those trains which have been cancelled by the railways," he said.
He also said that the refund amount will be credited to the user account used for booking e-tickets automatically and no charges will be deducted by the railways in case of train cancellation.
His remarks came as the national transporter announced the suspension of the passenger, mail and express services from March 23 till March 31. However, the railways extended the suspension of services till April 14 in the wake of the three week lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from March 25 during his second special address to the nation on Tuesday night.
The railways has cancelled over 13,600 passengers trains across the country in a bid to combat the spread of novel coronavirus. Only freight trains are running to ensure the supply of essential services. About 9,000 freight trains are transporting essential items every day across the country.
On Wednesday, India recorded 562 cases of COVID-19 with 10 deaths.
Srinagar, May 21: Two Border Security Force (BSF) personnel were killed and their weapons snatched by militants in the Pandach area on the outskirts of Srinagar yesterday.
According to IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar, the two BSF jawans, who were on road surveillance deployment, were fired upon by two of the three terrorists on a motorcycle around 5:15 pm on the 90-Ft Road at Pandach, near Soura.
They were critically injured and later succumbed to injuries. The terrorists escaped after taking away one AK rifle and one INSAS. Efforts were underway to trace the terrorists.
He said that two jawans, Constable Rana Mandol and Constable Ziaul Haque of ‘C’ company of 37th battalion, were injured and they later succumbed.
“The terrorists managed to take away the weapons of the martyrs. Area has been cordoned off and the search for the terrorists is on”, he said.
Residents around the spot said that the two soldiers were buying chicken for Iftar from a mutton dealer, around 300 meters away from their deployment location when three militants on a motorcycle stopped and opened fire on them.
Medical Superintendent SKIMS Dr Farooq Jan said that both the jawans were brought dead to the tertiary care hospital.
Senior Police officials said it was a “clear case of security lapse” as the two jawans had left their spot of deployment on Srinagar-Kargil-Leh road and gone to a shop 500 metres away on a different road.
They said that possibility of terror attacks and subsequently claims by the new outfit TRF had been flashed to all forces earlier this week.
The terror strike in the capital city has occurred a day after an encounter in downtown Srinagar, where two Hizbul Mujahideen militants, including the top wanted Junaid Sehrai, had been killed on Tuesday.
In the last one month, five Army and Police personnel and two militants had got killed in an encounter in Handwara area of Kupwara, a day before three CRPF men were killed in another attack.
Mumbai, Mar 29: Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale led from the front to create India's first coronavirus testing kit even when she was in the last stage of her pregnancy.
Bhosale's efforts paid the price with her team delivering the testing kit in a record time of six weeks.
Bhosale gave birth to a baby girl just a day before submitting the kit to the authorities for evaluation.
"It was like giving birth to two babies," Bhosale told PTI over the phone.
The virologist said both the journeys - that happened in parallel - were not without challenges.
"There were complications in the pregnancy while work on the test kit was on. The baby was delivered through cesarean," she said.
Bhosale said she felt that it was the right time to serve the people to help them in combating the coronavirus threat.
"I had been working for five years in this field and if I don't work in emergency situations when my services are needed the most, then what is the use?" she said.
Though Bhosale was not able to visit the office due to the pregnancy, she was guiding a team of 10 persons working on the project at Mylab Discovery in Pune.
The strong bonds forged with the team over the years and their support made it possible, she said.
Company's co-founder Shrikant Patole said just like drug discovery, test kits too go through a lot of quality checks to improve the precision.
He credited Bhosale for the success of the project.
The COVID-19 testing kit delivered by Bhosale's team will reduce the time taken for delivering a result to 2.5 hours from the prevalent practice of eight hours.
A pioneering approach to testing without compromising on the results was adopted, Bhosale said.
The Maylab test kit will cost Rs1,200, a quarter of Rs 4,500 per kit that the government has been spending on testing so far.
"I'm happy that I could do something for the country," Bhosale said.
As of Friday, only 27,000 of the 1.3 billion people were tested for the virus in the country.
According to experts, high scale testing is essential because it alone can ensure an early diagnosis of COVID-19 and lower down the fatalities.
The company is confident of ramping up the capacity at its plant in Lonavala to deliver 100,000 kits a week, Patole said.
He said the authorities are helping the company, including giving priority for shipping of the raw materials.
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