Vol. 34 No. 13 | SUNDAY | JULY 31, 2022 | 17 Pages | ` 5 Where are you from, Anjaniputra? BETWEEN THE LINES TEESTA FAILS TO GET BAIL A sessions court on Saturday rejected the bail applications of activist Teesta Setalvad and former Director General of Police R B Sreekumar, arrested for allegedly fabricating documents to ‘frame innocent people' in the 2002 riots cases. The accused apparently aimed to "destabilize" the Gujarat government and defame the state for their ulterior motives, additional principal judge D D Thakkar said while denying them relief. Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, a third accused in the case, had not applied for bail. Bhatt was already in jail in another case when he was arrested. "It appears that the accused aimed to destabilize the government and tarnish the image of Gujarat within the country and abroad by using false documents to accuse the then government of having sponsored post-Godhra riots," the Sessions Court said in the order. Teesta’s arrest came within a couple of the Supreme Court on June 24 dismissing a petition filed by Zakia Jafri, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri had been killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. NO RESPECT FOR SLAIN PILOT KIN T he family of Flt Lt Advitiya Bal – one of the pilots who was killed on Thursday when an IAF MiG-21 jet crashed during a training sortie in Rajasthan -- travelled from Delhi to Jodhpur to receive his body. A Twitter user, who was on the same flight, gave a disconcerting account. "Flt Lt Bal's family was sitting adjacent to me in row 3. As we landed the Captain requested everyone to remain seated to allow the family to disembark expeditiously. Everyone in row 1 & 2 disregarded the announcement," tweeted Sherbir Panag, a financial crimes and corporate governance lawyer. In short, the passengers did not allow the flight lieutenant's family to pass, said Panag, son of lieutenant general (retired) HS Panag and brother of actor Gul Panag. ‘‘I and a few passengers had to scream at the top of our voices to make them sit down and allow the Bal family to pass. It was absolutely shocking to see one's fellow country men and women behave in this tone-deaf, selfish manner. That's the reality of our respect for sacrifice," he said. M QUOTE OF THE DAY argaret Alva, the opposition nominee for Vice President’s post, ripped through Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s comments that no money would be left in Mumbai or Thane if all Gujaratis and Rajasthanis leave. Also in her firing line was former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who happens to be the NDA’s Vice Presidential candidate. "The comments by the Governor of Maharashtra are unfortunate, but not unexpected. The message he's received from the ex-Governor of West Bengal is: Controversy, foolish comments and operating like an extra constitutional authority, is behaviour that gets rewarded," Alva tweeted. Reg. No. MCS/048/2021-23; RNI No. 46955/1988 M.p.c.s. office Mumbai-400001 EDITIONS: MUMBAI*, Pune, Nashik, Konkan, Indore, Bhopal, E-paper Koshyari’s hoshiyari in line of fire With the row over Lord Hanuman’s birthplace on a steady simmer, experts on Hindu culture shed light on the matter Bat and mouse SANJAY JOG MUMBAI Says that if Gujaratis and Rajasthanis were to leave Maharashtra, the state would have no money left Amid the ongoing political tussle between the Shiv Sena factions, the Maharashtra Governor  B S Koshyari steered himself into a controversy with his remarks that if Gujaratis and Rajasthanis were to leave Maharashtra, the state would have no money left. During a speech on Friday, Koshyari said, “If Gujaratis and Rajasthanis are removed from Maharashtra, especially Mumbai and Thane, there would be no money would left here,” and The Indian Esports industry is providing newer avenues for gamers further underlined his message, saying, “Mumbai would not be able to remain the financial capital of the country,” Koshyari added. Koshyari’s statement was strongly condemned by the opposition parties including the Shiv Sena, NCP, Congress and MNS, who demanded an apology from him and asked the Centre to recall him.  Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said it was time to display ‘Kolhapuri reacting to chappals’, Koshyari’s statement on the ‘Marathi Manoos’. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE The naked truth An advertising veteran shares his take on the trend on the use of nudity to express creativity GUV BAITS, PARTIES BITE Time to show Kolhapuri chappals & send him to jail – Uddhav Thackeray His name is ‘Koshyari’. But what he speaks and does as a governor, there is not the slightest ‘hoshiyari’ (smartness) – Jairam Ramesh We don’t agree with Koshyari’s view, Marathi community’s hard work has contributed to the development and progress of Mumbai – CM Eknath Shinde Marathi-speaking people have the lion’s share in the development & growth of Maharashtra – DyCM Devendra Fadnavis I had no intention of underestimating the Marathi man. I spoke only of the contribution made by the Gujarati and Rajasthani mandals to business, CLARIFIES KOSHYARI Ahead of BMC polls, Agusta chopper seized from Pune realtor ammo for Uddhav STAFF REPORTER MUMBAI SANJAY JOG MUMBAI The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, lately having been at the receiving end of the slings and arrows of political fortune, found itself filled with a new sense of purpose over the weekend, the fillip being provided by no less than their perpetual bete noire, the governor of Maharashtra.   Governor B S Koshyari showered praise on Gujaratis and Rajasthanis of the city at , a suburban Mumbai event on Friday This has served to pro. vide an opportunity to the chief of the Shiv Sena and the former chief minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray to aggressively play the ‘Marathi Manoos’ card to take 2 brothers, both minors, run over by trailer-truck STAFF REPORTER MUMBAI Two boys, aged 17 and 11 years, who have not been named since they are minors, were killed after being run over by a speeding trailer truck in Govandi on Saturday afternoon. The Deonar police have arrested the truck driver. According to the police, the accident occurred at around 2 p.m. at the Bainganwadi junction on Saturday The 4-wheel. er truck, driven by Dharmendra Yadav, was taking a sharp left turn at the junction at a high speed when he ran over the two boys, who were residents of Shivaji Nagar. “The deceased, who were brothers, were on an Activa scooter and riding behind the truck. They were crushed under its rear wheels when Yadav took the turn at a great speed and in a reckless manner,” said senior police inspector Ravindra Adane, Deonar police station. Passing motorists who witnessed the accident immediately stopped to help and called the police control room. The information was relayed to the Deonar police station and a team was despatched to the spot. The police rushed the boys to the Rajawadi hospital in Ghatkopar, where they were declared dead before admission. Yadav, who was taken into custody at the same time, was subsequently placed under arrest. “Yadav was not found to be drunk at the time of the incident. He was carrying a large consignment of iron rods, which he had weighed at a public service and was on his way back when the incident occurred,” Adane said. Yadav has been charged with causing death due to rash and negligent driving under the Indian Penal Code, along with relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act. on the BJP in the coming BMC elections. Thackeray will exploit every opportunity to target the BJP for its alleged move to separate Mumbai and thereby reduce its importance, after Governor Koshyari’s remarks that if Gujaratis and Rajasthanis were to leave Mumbai and Thane, Mumbai will lose its identity as the country’s financial capital.  Mumbai and the BMC have always been of great importance for the Shiv Sena and Thackeray has hinted that he CONTD. ON NATION PAGE HUGE CASH HAUL FROM 3 CONG MLAs After the washout of Parliament's winter session for a fortnight, owing to the pandemonium in both the Houses over the government’s refusal to discuss the price rise, a debate is listed on Monday in the Lok Sabha's agenda. However, the debate is still not on the agenda of the Rajya Sabha. Nonetheless, the Opposition may end the impasse in both the Houses and thus succeed in forcing a discussion on price rise. The Lok Sabha motion is, however, silent on Union Bank of India, and diverting them for personal use by falsifying their books of account. The CBI officers said that both the Wadhawans and Bhosale had stakes in the helicopter, and that these stakes stemmed from the WORTH HER WEIGHT IN GOLD LAW KUMAR MISHRA & ARITRA SINGHA PATNA The Howrah Police on Saturday night detained three Congress MLAs from Jharkhand with a huge cash consignment which could not be accounted for. Counting machines have been ferried to count the Rs 500 note bundles. According to Howrah Gramin SP Swati Bhangaria, , acting on a tip off, they stopped a car with a nameplate of Jamtara MLA and seized huge amounts of cash. The seizure happened in Ranihati area of Howrah in West Bengal. “Rajesh Kachhap, MLA Khijri, Naman Bixal Kongari, MLA Kolebira, and Irfan Ansari, MLA Jamtara, were travelling in the car from which the seizure was made. The MLAs were being quizzed,” said Swati. “UTTERLY SHOCKING! Huge amounts of cash recovered from a car of @INC India MLA from Jharkhand who was intercepted at Howrah. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Price rise debate listed in Lok Sabha OUR BUREAU NEW DELHI The CBI on Saturday seized an AgustaWestland helicopter from a property belonging to builder Avinash Bhosale, one of the accused in the Rs 34,615-cr loan fraud case. This was one of the biggest scams in recent times in which the accused include Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL) promoter Dheeraj Wadhawan and its former CMD  Kapil Wadhawan. They were accused of defrauding a consortium of 17 banks. The accused are alleged to have secured loans from the consortium, led by the recent GST hike on food items that has agitated the Opposition. Also, there is no uncertainty whether the spat between the ruling BJP and the Congress over party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s remarks on the president will blow over. This despite him apologising to the President in a letter sent to her on Friday, after not securing an appointment from her. Speaker Om Birla has to also decide on Chowdhury's protest at Union Women and Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani not affixing Mrs or Smt before Murmu while raising the issue of insult to her. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE proceeds of crime. The CBI has for the last few days conducted searches on the premises of the accused named in the FIR, seizing property worth crores of rupees as well as incriminating documents. Among these seizures were paintings of FN Souza and SH Raza worth Rs 5.50 crore. Bhosale, who was earlier arrested in the Yes Bank DHFL case, is currently in judicial custody and was chargesheeted in the previous case by the CBI earlier this week. According to CBI officials, investigations into the Union Bank of India case revealed that RKW Developers, a company owned by the Wadhawan family, has stakes in Varva Aviation, an Association of Persons, which owns an AgustaWestland AW109SP grand new helicopter.   CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Height curbs eased at Navi Mumbai airport SANJAY JOG MUMBAI Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Indian weightlifter Mirabai Chanu won a gold medal with a combined lift of 201kg in the Women's 49kg final at the Commonwealth Games 2022, in Birmingham, on Saturday In a big relief for the development of the Navi Mumbai International Airport, the realty sector and project-affected persons (PAP), the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has announced a relaxation in height restrictions around the airport. This will lead to faster development of projects while the PAPs will benefit as their lands are involved in huge transactions. This move also means that individual applications for height clearance will have to be made to AAI. The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), the nodal agency for the Navi Mumbai airport, said that the Airports Authority of India has approved shifting of the site of the airport surveillance radar 1 (ASR1) to Dhakale Island from the pres- CIDCO, realty players & environmentalists hail development ent site near DPS Nerul. This would resolve several issues that had arisen from height restrictions since 2018. The decision was jointly taken at a meeting between senior officials of the Union ministry of civil aviation (M0CA), GoI, AAI, CIDCO, NMIAL and IEAECOM on July 22. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE HC strikes down MSEDCL decision Maratha candidate from SEBC quota can’t be appointed on posts reserved for EWS URVI MAHAJANI MUMBAI In a significant ruling, the Bombay High Court has held that those candidates from Maratha community who had , applied for jobs with the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) in the Socially and Educationally Backward Class (SEBC) category cannot, retrospectively avail benefit , under the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice MS Karnik set aside the decision of MSEDCL which had permitted -- based on a GR of the erstwhile MVA government -- candidates from the Maratha community to avail benefit under the EWS quota, terming the same as “Illegal and bad in law”. The order was passed on Friday However, the detailed . 53-page judgment was made available on Saturday . CONTD. ON NATION PAGE June 27, 2019 May 2021 HC upholds Maharashtra government’s SC strikes down Maratha decision to provide reservation to the quota Maratha community under the Socially July 15, 2021 and Educationally Backward Classes MVA government issues Act, 2018. another GR permitting Sept 9, 2020 appointment under the EWS SC stays the decision following quota of those candidates challenge to HC order from Maratha community, who had applied under the Dec 23, 2020 SEBC quota (between the MVA government issues a HC judgment of June 2019 government resolution despite the and the SC stay on quota on matter pending in SC September 2020) THE EWS QUOTA IS OPEN TO ALL THOSE NOT COVERED BY ANY OTHER QUOTA AND WHOSE FAMILY’S ANNUAL INCOME IS BELOW RS 8 LAKH. 19-yr-old had preyed on 400 women in a month Pragya Thakur’s bike in court again SEXTORTIONIST GAUTAM S. MENGLE MUMBAI The 19-year-old Gujarat resident arrested in a sextortion case earlier this week has allegedly confessed to having targeted 400 women over the last one month. As if this weren’t shocking enough, the accused has also told the police that he started on his crime spree after he fell prey to a similar crime earlier this year. The accused, identified as Aditya Ravindra, 19, was arrested by the Antop Hill police from Gandhidam in Gujarat, after as many as 22 women registered a complaint against him. The accused was allegedly morphing pictures of the victims, taken from their social media accounts, into pornographic content and sending them these clips. He was then demanding money from them via e-wal- let services, threatening to release the clips on social media if they did not comply. Over the last three days, the police have been trying to get a sense of Ravindra’s criminal activities and have made several disturbing discoveries. “By his own admission, Ravindra has made morphed clips of nearly 400 women and sent those clips to the women, with a demand for money. He would trawl the internet looking for open profiles, take the pictures of the victims from their own pages and create the clips. Going purely by what the accused has told us so far, we suspect that the scope of his crimes ex- tends to several cities in India,” said senior police inspector Nasir Kulkarni, Antop Hill police station. The police have already started reaching out to other police stations in Mumbai to find out if they have received similar complaints from women in their area, and have also started getting results. “We have identified police stations like Versova, Malad and Goregaon where similar cases have been registered and the accused is suspected to have been behind them. However, going by the number of victims, there might be cases in many more police stations, both in and out of Mumbai,” Kulkarni said. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE LEGAL CORNER BHAVNA UCHIL MUMBAI BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur’s LML Freedom motorcycle, which was used in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, is likely to be produced in court on Monday for the testimony of a forensic expert who had examined it. It was to this motorcycle that an explosive device was strapped, which had gone off on September 29, 2008, in Malegaon town of Nashik district, killing six persons and injuring over 100. The two-wheeler had been It was to this motorcycle that an explosive device was strapped, which had gone off on September 29, 2008, in Malegaon town traced to Pragya Thakur, who is the prime accused in the blast case. The registration number on the bike was found to be fake. The chassis number, which is unique for every vehicle, was not available as it got corroded due to a solution applied during examination; however, the expert had arrived at three probable engine numbers of the vehicle. The authorities will bring to court on Monday yet another motorcycle – CONTD. ON NATION PAGE