The automated biometric identification system of Maharashtra Police and its cyber security project have bagged an award in the smart policing initiative category.
The award was given at a national conference on digital innovation and cyber security organised by the Haryana government in Gurugram on Wednesday, a release said.
Maharashtra Police’s Special Inspector General Brijesh Singh and a team from the cyber security cell accepted the award on behalf of the state.
The Maharashtra government had earlier introduced the Automated Multi-modal Biometric Identification System (AMBIS) as part of its plans to modernise the state police department and improve crime detection.
With the use of this system, the data of all criminals can be accumulated at one place and makes it easier to control cyber crimes.
Over 6.5 lakh fingerprints are being digitally stored using the AMBIS Technology to give momentum to cyber probe.
The prints of palms, retinal scan and other biometric information are also gathered by this technology, the release added.
A 35-year-old Canadian woman was allegedly molested by an employee of a city-based five-star hotel during her stay there, a police official said on Thursday.
Sumit Rao (32), a staff member of the hotel located in Juhu area, has been arrested in connection with the alleged incident that took place on January 5, he said.
The woman, a Candian national who works for an event management firm and often visits India, in her complaint alleged that while she was staying at the hotel, the man came to her room and molested her on the pretext of taking a selfie with her, the official said.
According to police, the woman brought the matter to the hotel management’s notice and then lodged a complaint at the Santacruz police station on Monday.
The accused was arrested on Tuesday and booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 354 (assault or criminal force on woman with an intent to outrage her modesty) and 354 (d) (stalking), he said.
Amid bilateral trade tensions, USIBC President Nisha Biswal said on Thursday that the trade between India and the US is much below than its potential, and both the sides should ease restrictions and put in an “overarching” framework.
Biswal, a former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, is leading a delegation of the US-India Business Council (USIBC) at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit (VGS) which will begin on Friday. The US, which was a partner country for two earlier editions of the biennial investor summit, refused to be a partner this year, citing pending bilateral trade disputes.
The biggest challenge to US-India trade relations is that we have not done the hard work of creating an overarching framework for trade, Biswal, who was born and brought up in Dahod in Gujarat, told PTI in an interview.
We do not have a trade agreement, we do not have an investment treaty, we do not even have a mini agreement, she said, adding that every time the two countries negotiate, it is highly transactional and there is no real incentive to compromise.
India announced retaliatory tariffs on 29 US products six months ago after US President Donald Trump imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminium items. However, despite the announcement, India is the only major country which has been postponing the implementation of retaliatory tariffs.
What, I think, the two governments have sought to do in the last few months is to take a small basket of issues that have been irritants and tried to resolve those so that it could become a kind of mini-agreement. The issues included tariffs on steel and aluminium from Indian side and from the US side it was tariffs on ICT and the policy of price control on medical devices. Both sides wanted more market access for some of their products, Biswal said.
Unfortunately they have not been able to get a conclusion on that thing. Our hope was that the two governments will sit together and decide this issue. The two countries should rather create a much more ambitious framework of trade, she said, adding that we should be best trading partners. While US-India trade continues to grow, it is no where near to the potential of what it should be. And that really requires both sides to take significant steps to ease restrictions or access to flow of investments and flow of trade in both directions. Around 500 US companies have significant business relations with India, against 6,000 to 7,000 US companies doing serious business with China.
Asked if the US decided not to be a partner for the VGS due to trade disputes, she said that, I can’t speak for the US government, but I can say that there have been some disappointments that these issues have not been resolved.
US Consul General in Mumbai Edgard Kagan, when asked about his country’s refusal to be one of the partner countries, had said that the Indian government needed to resolve the outstanding trade issues first.
Biswal, however, asserted that the US government and industry continue to prioritise India as very important trade and economic partner. The bilateral trade was USD 20 billion in 1980s, which grew to USD 100 billion in 2014-15, and now the target is to take it to USD 500 billion.
The USIBC has prepared a report, ‘India at 75’, with KPMG which will be released on Friday. The report outlines that the areas where the two countries can cooperate to take trade ties to the next level.
The Australian Open’s new balls this year are dividing opinion at Melbourne Park, with even the two greatest men’s Grand Slam winners of all-time failing to see eye-to-eye.
Roger Federer, winner of 20 Slams, says the new Japanese-made Dunlop balls behave differently in cooler night conditions and do not allow players to “out-spin” rivals.
But Rafael Nadal, the 17-time major winner renowned for his huge top-spin groundstrokes, countered: “I can’t say it’s a bad ball.” Australian John Millman reckoned “they’re a bit heavy” after losing on Wednesday night while his big-mouth countryman Bernard Tomic pulled no punches, saying they were “dead” and “really shit” before he lost in the first round.
Tournament director Craig Tiley has defended the change from Wilson balls, claiming earlier in the week he had heard only “positive feedback”.
He might have to change his mind after defending champion Federer offered a different opinion on Wednesday.
“Well, they definitely play a touch different to the ones we’ve had the last couple years,” said the Swiss master, who is going for a third consecutive title and record seventh in all at Melbourne Park.
“At night the spin is not taking off tremendously,” he added, noting that the semi-finals and final are played at night.
“It’s hard to out-spin guys here. I just feel like it’s really important to have fast enough courts for night session conditions. If you keep it slow, slow, at night the ball doesn’t move.”
Nadal, who is bidding to become the first man in the Open era to win each Grand Slam on two or more occasions, acknowledged the ball was different but reckons it is “fair for everyone”.
“The ball is big. With colder conditions, especially during the night, the ball is bigger,” said the Spaniard, who won his lone Australian Open title in 2009.
“Yes, the ball is going a little bit more slow, no? Not the high bounces that sometimes we used to have here. But the ball is what there is. it is fair enough, a good quality ball. I can’t complain.”
Federer was characteristically diplomatic with his criticism.
India can be a frontrunner in deployment of 5G but a lot will hinge on bolstering investments in fibre infrastructure, which is currently inadequate and trailing countries like China, TRAI Chairman R S Sharma said on Thursday.
Sharma noted that there has been consolidation in the Indian telecom market leading to an optimal situation of one public sector and three private sector players, and added that the sector will see stability.
“In 5G space, we can leapfrog inadequacies which we have in physical world, all of which can be overcome with use of information and communication technologies…There is a serious concern that while people are talking of 5G as a slogan but it won’t happen unless we put a lot of investment in fibre. Without fibre, 5G will not happen,” Sharma said.
He was speaking at the India Digital Summit organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
India has only 22 per cent of mobile towers connected on fibre, while 78 per cent are without fibre, on wireless. China on the other hand, has 80 per cent connectivity through fibre and the rest through wireless, Sharma pointed out.
“The optical fibre cable laid today till date is equal to optical fibre cable laid in China in one single year,” Sharma said adding fixed infrastructure will be critical for attaining a reliable and sustainable growth. Policies need to focus on promoting investments in infrastructure, he said.
“The National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) contains those set of policies and statements and we need to operationalise those to ensure investment,” Sharma said.
The new telecom policy — NDCP — aims to attract $100 billion investment and create four million jobs in the sector by 2022. It seeks to provide universal broadband connectivity at 50 Mbps to every citizen by 2022, and also talks of enhancing the contribution of digital communications sector to 8 per cent of India’s GDP, from the about 6 per cent now.
The TRAI chief further said that there would be a need to unbundle service and infrastructure layers at some point, and fibre sharing could be one of the options in infrastructure sharing.
“We think end-of-end service provisioning will not happen in 5G,” Sharma said.
He further said, the connectivity problems in the country need to be solved with urgency, and regulations should not be “constrained” by the fact that only a certain set of service providers should provide a particular service.
“No one should have the monopoly of providing services to people of this country, and we should solve this problem by whatever means and instruments we can deploy,” he said.
Sharma said that he believes that three private and one public sector player is in sync with other major markets.
“My sense is that the sector is going to acquire stability and looking at examples around the world the number of players…is a good number…and I don’t see it going down further,” he said.
The tenure of CBI’s Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who was sent on forced leave by the government, has been curtailed with immediate effect, according to an official order issued Thursday.
The tenures of three more officers – Joint Director Arun Kumar Sharma, Deputy Inspector General Manish Kumar Sinha and Superintendent of Police Jayant J Naiknavare — have also been curtailed, it said.
The development comes days after Alok Verma was shunted out of the post of CBI director and appointed Director General of Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guards.
Verma had refused to take up the new post, saying he had already superannuated from the police service.
To oppose the privatisation of electricity distribution supply in Thane Mumbra region, Congress party leaders vehemently protested against Torrent Power on Thane streets.
If the government doesn’t reconsider its decision to provide the contract to Torrent, they have warned a bigger protest. The decision was taken in a special meeting arranged on Wednesday.
The party cadres laid on streets to display their ire and also claimed a foul play of corruption in his move. A warning has been released by Manoj Shinde on behalf of the party that if the privatisation move won’t be taken back the protest will be intensified.
A big rage can be seen among the citizens after the privatisation decision. Another all-party protest will happen on Jan. 19.
Former BJP lawmaker Savitri Phule, who resigned from the saffron party last month, on Thursday met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
“I am only talking to strengthen the alliance,” Phule told agencies without giving any details.
She said that nothing concrete has so far happened. “I will inform you, if things take shape,” she told PTI.
The meeting comes days after once arch-rivals Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party announced their tie-up in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, sharing 38 seats each.
The meeting, which was also confirmed by SP’s chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary, lasted for about 15 minutes. He said both the leaders have met earlier as well.
Phule, who has often been critical of the BJP leadership, resigned from the party last month, saying it was dividing society.
However, she said that she will complete her tenure as a Member of Parliament and won’t quit the post.
The opposition alliance for Uttar Pradesh, which also includes Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal, has taken shape after consecutive successes in last year’s by-elections.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the SP had won five seats, while the BSP failed to win any seat. The BJP bagged 73 along with its allies of the total 80 seats.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the SP and the BSP got 22 per cent votes each.
Come to 2019, if both the parties continue to have a say in their traditional vote bank, the combine can create hurdles for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In the politically-crucial Uttar Pradesh, there are about 22 per cent Dalits, 45 per cent OBCs and 19 per cent Muslims, whose vote share will be decisive in the general elections this year.
A special CBI court in Panchkula on Thursday sentenced self-styled godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and three others to life imprisonment for the murder of a journalist over 16 years ago.
The Dera Sacha Sauda chief and the three others convicted last Friday in the case appeared before the court through video conferencing.
“All four have been sentenced to life imprisonment,” CBI counsel HPS Verma said.
On January 11, special CBI Court judge Jagdeep Singh had convicted the four men for the murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati in 2002.
All the four were convicted under section 302 (murder) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
Ram Rahim appeared through video conferencing from Sunaria jail in Rohtak, where he is already serving a 20-year-sentence in a rape case.
The three others – Nirmal Singh, Kuldeep Singh and Krishan Lal – appeared from Ambala jail.
The journalist was killed in Haryana’s Sirsa in October 2002 after his newspaper published an anonymous letter alleging sexual exploitation of women by the godman at the Dera headquarters in the same town.
Ram Rahim was named as the main conspirator in the case.
Chhatrapati’s family approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2003, seeking the transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The investigation was later handed over to the CBI which filed the chargesheet in July 2007.
In August 2017, the sect leader was brought to the Panchkula court where the CBI court judge pronounced the verdict in rape case.
The Bombay High Court on Thursday told that the CBI and the Maharashtra CID not to completely rely on the revelations made in the Gauri Lankesh case and conduct an independent probe into the killings of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and Left leader Govind Pansare.
A bench of Justices S C Dharmadhikari and M S Karnik asked both the probe agencies to make a “sincere effort” towards tracing the absconding accused in Pansare and Dabholkar cases. The directions came after the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the state CID submitted its progress report before the bench.
The bench noted that the SIT had said, among other things, that it was questioning those arrested by the authorities in Karnataka in the murder case of journalist Gauri Lankesh, to help trace the absconding accused in Pansare case. The bench noted that on the previous hearings too, both the CBI and the SIT had submitted that they were questioning the accused in Lankesh case to get information on the killings of Dabholkar and Pansare respectively.
You are questioning the accused in another case in Karnataka…but the report (SIT’s progress report) doesn’t reveal what the actual measures you are taking to arrest the absconding accused. You cannot rely completely on the revelations made by the accused in another case. How long will this go on? You have to conduct an independent probe, gather some independent material, especially since these crimes in Maharashtra (killings of Pansare and Dabholkar) took place before the crime in Karnataka, the bench said.
The CBI, however, argued through its counsel Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, that its officers were doing their best to trace the absconding accused. “It is not as if our officers are not doing anything. They are taking all possible steps and only very capable officers have been chosen to take part in these two operations (CBI’s and the CID’s)”, Singh submitted.
The bench also said that it seemed as if the probe machinery in Karnataka was making much headway, but the agencies in Maharashtra had failed to do so, especially due to bureaucratic hassles and lack of coordination with each other.
The unfortunate part is that in one state the machinery gets full assistance, while in our state, either the machinery is not working or not getting cooperation,” the bench said.
ASG Singh, however, submitted that the probe authorities in Maharashtra worked better than anyone else. Some arrests have been made in both the cases (Pansare and Dabholkar) and we will file a charge sheet soon in the Dabholkar case.
The bench has now directed both the CBI and the CID to submit their respective further progress reports by February 6. Dabholkar was shot dead on August 20, 2013 in Pune while on his morning walk. Pansare was shot at on February 16, 2015 in Kolhapur and succumbed to his injuries a few days later on February 20.
The CBI and the state CID are probing the killings of Dabholkar and Pansare, respectively. The high court has been hearing a plea filed by the family members of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking a court-monitored probe in both the cases. As per the probe agencies, some accused persons, including one Sharad Kalaskar, arrested in Lankesh case have revealed that they also had links to the killings of Dabholkar and Pansare.
