Vol. 65 No. 328 | WEDNESDAY | MAY 25, 2022 | 16 Pages | Qutab verdict reserved OUR BUREAU NEW DELHI An additional district court of Delhi on Tuesday reserved its order on a plea seeking to restore 27 Hindu and Jain temples inside the Qutub Minar complex. During the hearing the court said that the existence of idols inside the complex was not in dispute. The issue was whether the plaintiffs have a right to worship, the court remarked, reports Bar and Bench. Advocate Hari NO PLACE OF Shankar Jain, apWORSHIP: ASI pearing for the plaintiffs, referred to article 25 of the Constitution. “There’s denial of fundamental right (Article 25). A fundamental right is never lost,” Jain submitted. “You mean that this is your fundamental right,” the court queried. “Yes,” replied Jain. Jain had moved the Saket district court after a civil court rejected his plea on the ground that the suit was barred under the Places of Worship Act, 1991. The civil judge had also observed that the wrongs of the past cannot be a basis for disturbing present-day peace and, if it is allowed, the fabric of the Constitution, its secular character will be damaged. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE OBJECTIONS INVITED A Varanasi court hearing the Gyanvapi MosqueKashi Vishwanath Temple dispute on Tuesday asked the parties to the case to file their objections to the advocate commissioner’s survey report. SHASHANK RAO  MUMBAI , The city of dreams is, in reality a city of accidents. More than 45 per cent of the road accidents that occurred in Maharashtra, happened in Mumbai, in the first four months of this year - the city accounted for 8,768 of the total 19,383 accidents in the state, between January and April, in which 5,333 people were killed and 9,120 people injured. The other districts and cities on the list include Ahmednagar (554 accidents), Pune (539), Nashik (536), Kolhapur (406).  However, the death of over 5,000 people in road mishaps in just four QUAD ROLLS OUT $50 BN INFRA PLAN FPJ DESK TOKYO The Quad leaders on Tuesday launched a new initiative for the Indo-Pacific that allows the partner countries to fully monitor the regional waters and announced over USD 50 billion of infrastructure assistance for the region over the next five years. PM Modi dubbed it as a constructive agenda that provides new energy to democratic forces. The announcement on the rollout of the ‘Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness’ and the funding assistance came at the second in-person Quad summit in Tokyo amid rising global concerns over China’s increasingly belligerent behaviour in the region. In a clear message to an aggressive China, the leaders of the grouping, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden, CONTD. ON NATION PAGE ‘Harassed’ couple commits suicide GAUTAM S MENGLE MUMBAI A middle-aged couple was found to have died by suicide at their rented residence in Nagpur on Sunday evening. They left behind a suicide note blaming their landlady for sustained harassment in the three-anda-half years of their tenancy which includ, ed forcing them to pay her water and electricity bills along with their own. Accord- LAST WORD Father gets overnight access of minor child URVI MAHAJANI MUMBAI Granting a father overnight access to his minor child, the Bombay high court observed that a ‘child requires love, affection and quality time to be spent with both the parents’ for overall development and hence, separated parents must set aside their ‘acrimonious past and hatred’. Justice Milind Jadhav, granted the father overnight access to his seven-year-old son on May 23, so that the father and child could spend time together during the child’s summer vacation, from May 24 to June 5. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE TAILPIECE I BEG INDIA: IMF CHIEF Agencies/Davos: International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva on Tuesday implored India to reconsider its ban on wheat exports, saying the country could play a key role in international food security and global stability. “I do have an appreciation for the fact that India needs to feed nearly 1.35 billion people and I do have appreciation for the heatwave that has reduced agricultural productivity but I , would beg India to reconsider as soon as possible because the more countries step into export restrictions, the more others would be tempted to do so and we would end up as a global community less equipped to deal with the crisis,” CONTD. ON NATION PAGE I DO MY WORK AND DISAPPEAR... I DON’T HAVE A PR TEAM: ABHAY DEOL MUMBAI HAADSON KA SHEHER ing to the Kalamna police, the deceased have been identified as Manoj Lodhi, 50, and his wife Mamta (45). The Lodhis lived on the first floor of a modest ground-plusone structure, while the owner of the building stayed on the ground floor. Police said that the couple was last spotted by their neighbours on Sunday afternoon but neither of them stepped out of their house for several hours after that. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE EDIT CHINA TO BE BLAMED FOR ITS OWN ISOLATION months does not seem to be unduly worrying to traffic authorities.  “While the accidents in Mumbai aren’t fatal, what we have found is that there are more people getting injured. Whereas in the rest of the state, fatalities are a concern,” said an official from the Regional Transport Office.  According to sources in the transport department, the number of accidents in Mumbai as compared to those in the rest of the state is high because of the ongoing works on various infrastructure projects; namely the metro, road construction, drainage improvement work across the city and its suburbs. Apart from this, bad roads, pot- FROM JAN TO APR 2022 FILE PIC Idols exist, in dispute is the worship right CENTRE RELEASES RS 47,600 CR TO STATES AS SHARE IN TAXES EDITIONS: MUMBAI*, Pune, Indore, Bhopal, Konkan, E-paper CITY REPORTS MORE THAN 45% OF ROAD ACCIDENTS IN STATE holed roads and barricaded roads and dividers have also apparently contributed to accidents, claim the authorities.  Transport experts claim that current road conditions make 330c. 280c. Sunrise: 06:01 am Sunset : 07:10 pm road commutes all the more dangerous during monsoon when roads are wet. “Primarily proper , construction of roads itself is a big issue, as the quality is poor. Given that there are speedier cars and two-wheelers on the roads now, the need for better roads has never been greater,” said a transport expert.  The number of vehicles in Mumbai has crossed 42 lakh, of which two-wheelers alone comprise 22-24 lakh, with many of these being pandemic purchases because of the lockdown, during which public transport - local trains and BEST buses – were out of bounds for most people. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE China, Russia N-bombers cock a snook at summit FPJ NEWS SERVICE TOKYO Chinese and Russian strategic bombers flew over the Sea of Japan as US President Joe Biden and PM Modi hobnobbed at a Quad summit in Tokyo. The nuclear-capable bombers were conducting a joint military exercise. It was provocation enough for Japan to scramble its jets to register a protest; more so when Tokyo was hosting the leaders of the Quad grouping. Nobuo Kishi, Japan’s Defence Minister, condemned the exercise as “provocative” and “unacceptable”. According to the defence ministry , there was no incursion into Japanese airspace by the four bombers. Russia and China conducted joint nuclear bomber exercises over the Sea of Japan in 2019, 2020 and 2021, but Tuesday’s flight was the first time such a manoeuvre occurred with a US president in the region. China is rattled as it sees the Quad as not just an eco grouping but an Asian NATO. The Quad leaders on Tuesday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force”, although they avoided direct references to Russia or China in Graft charge: Mann sacks own minister 5-yr-old assaulted by peon in school Sauntered into playground on holiday LEADING FROM THE FRONT a joint statement. Their statement referred to the war in Ukraine, however, and listed a range of activities that Beijing has regularly been accused of in the region. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE STAFF REPORTER MUMBAI The Navghar police in Mulund have arrested the watchmancum-peon of a school for the alleged sexual assault of a fiveyear-old girl on the school premises on Sunday. Police said the 51-year-old accused has been employed with the private school for the last 30 years and was one of their oldest employees. Police said that the school did not have a compound wall and children from the neighbouring areas regularly come to the school playground. “On Sunday evening, the victim went to the playground and the accused offered her a chocolate. She went with him and he took her to a room in the school building, where he sexually assaulted her. He then left her there and went home. The victim, too, went home and told her parents about the incident,” an officer at the Navghar police station said. The victim’s parents rushed her to the police station and police immediately took her to a government hospital for a medical test. Subsequently, an FIR was registered against the accused. “The victim did not know the accused but she gave us his description. We made inquiries at the school and the management told us that the description fit one of their employees, which helped us identify the accused,” said Senior Police Inspector Sunil Kamble, Navghar police station. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE RAJESH MOUDGIL / CHANDIGARH Punjab health minister Dr Vijay Singla was arrested by the state’s anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on Tuesday minutes after chief minister Bhagwant Mann expelled him from his Cabinet over corruption charges and handed over the case to the police for action. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Being can cause LOW IMMUNITY & you can be a victim of dangerous diseases UNDERWEIGHT Gain 3 to 5 kgs weight within a month with sugar-free Nutrela Weight Gain. 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