In an interim relief to Abbas Ansari, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Uttar Pradesh government not to take any coercive steps against him till further orders.
A bench of justices BV Gavai and BV Nagarathna issued a notice to the UP government on Abbas Ansari seeking relief in an arms act case.
In August, the Uttar Pradesh Police had raided several locations in different states across the country in search of MLA Mukhtar Ansari’s son Abbas Ansari, who was declared an absconder by the district police.
Abbas Ansari is accused in a fraud case of transfer of arms licence and an arrest warrant was issued by Lucknow Court following it.
Earlier on August 18, the Enforcement Directorate conducted multiple raids at the premises of former Bahujan Samaj Party’s MP Mukhtar Ansari in Lucknow and Ghazipur in connection with an alleged Prevention of money laundering case.
Earlier, a local court in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday rejected the anticipatory bail application of Mau Sadar MLA and Mukhtar Ansari’s son Abbas Ansari.
The court had issued a non-bailable warrant against him in the case registered at the Mahanagar police station in Lucknow in October 2019.
Rape convict Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on Wednesday organized a virtual ‘Satsang’ which was attended by many political leaders including the Karnal Mayor and many Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, sparking a fresh controversy.
Ram Rahim, who is serving a jail term after being convicted in rape and murder cases was released from Sunaria jail on 40-day parole.
The Dera chief’s family had submitted an application to the jail authorities seeking month-long parole for him. The opposition demanded a justification from the Bharatiya Janata Party over its leader’s participation in the Satsang.
Meanwhile, Karnal mayor Renu Bala Gupta, deputy mayor Naveen Kumar and senior deputy mayor Rajesh Aggi are continuously trying to defend their participation in the event.
The senior Deputy Mayor said, “I was invited to the Satsang by the ‘sadh sangat’. Online Satsang was done from UP. Many people in my ward are associated with Baba. We reached the program from social connection and it has nothing to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the upcoming bypoll election.”
Notably, the Adampur bypoll in Haryana is scheduled to be held on November 3. Besides, the state is also scheduled to hold panchayat polls soon. Deputy Mayor Naveen Kumar said that everyone who got information about the Satsang reached there.
On the question of taking the blessings of Ram Rahim to win the election, Naveen said that the people have chosen him from their ward and only the public decides this. “It is necessary to have the blessings of the people,” Naveen said.
Speaking about Dera chief’s parole, he said that anyone could seek parole at his own pleasure. “He may have taken parole for the festival of Diwali and we should not equate it with elections,” he added.
Notably, the opposition also alleged that Ram Rahim was granted parole due to the forthcoming bypolls. Earlier, Ram Rahim was granted parole for a month on June 17. Ram Rahim has been incarcerated since 2017 in Haryana’s Sunaria jail where he is serving a 20-year-term for raping two women disciples at his ashram’s headquarters in Sirsa.
Speaking on the same, Haryana minister Anil Vij said that his parole has nothing to do with Adampur bypoll. “Parole is granted by jail department. I have nothing to do with this. If a person from Karnal believes in Gurmeet Ram Rahim and has gone to see him, then what is the connection with Adampur polls,” Vij said.
Earlier in February, the Dera chief was granted three weeks’ furlough. While parole means the release of a prisoner either temporarily for a special purpose or completely before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour, a furlough is a short-term temporary release of convicts from jail. He was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017 for raping two women followers.
While, on October 8, 2021, the court convicted Ram Rahim and four others in connection with former Dera manager Ranjit Singh’s murder case. Ranjit Singh was murdered in 2002 on the premises of Dera Sacha Sauda. CBI had registered the case on the orders passed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in the year 2003 and taken over the investigation of the case earlier registered at Police Station Sadar in Kurukshetra. It was alleged that Ranjit Singh was murdered on July 10, 2002, when he was working in his fields at village Khanpur Kolian of District Kurukshetra in Haryana.
After a thorough investigation, CBI filed a charge sheet in the year 2007 against six accused and charges were framed in the year 2008. During the pendency of the trial, one accused expired on October 10, 2020, and trial proceedings were abated against him. The court had held the said accused guilty and convicted them on October 8, 2021.
On July 5, Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed the writ petition that was filed by some people alleging the replacement of Ram Rahim with a dummy person. Justice Karamjit Singh of the HC passed these orders while dismissing a plea and said that the plea lacked merit.
The plea was filed by Ashok Kumar and 18 other petitioners claiming themselves to be staunch supporters of the controversial preacher. The petitioners, in this case, said they had sought directions to “verify the authenticity” of the Dera chief as the state authorities in collusion with Dera functionaries including Priyanka Taneja alias Honeypreet and Prithviraj Nain had replaced a dummy person with the Dera chief.
Maharashtra Government has announced to issue Diwali kits to the ration card holders in Maharashtra which includes Rawa,Chana Dal, Sugar and Palm oil of 1 Kilogram at Rs 100 but still many people has not received the said kit in their respective ration shops.
Government of Maharashtra had announced this package in the cabinet meeting after which they were supposed to send those kits to local ration shops so that people can avail the benefits.
When afternoon spoke to some people they said inspite of completing all the formalities they are yet to receive those food products on ration shops as announced by the government.
Diwali festival would be starting from October, 22 and in this current scenario, the prices of LPG gas cylinder has gone up. People are still suffering due to price rise and inflation.
MP Priyanka Chaturvedi (Uddhav Sena faction) told Afternoon Voice “ The government in Maharashtra which is currently running the state is not willing to work people and only interested in political agenda’s they are only giving false hopes to the people”.
Sada Sarvankar MLA (CM Eknath Shinde faction) said “We have not received any complaints from people or any ration shops vendors about the Diwali Kits not been given to them”.
Sudhir Mungantiwar from BJP said “People should likely receive Diwali kits on time and if is still not received then we would look into the matter or request the state CM Eknath Shinde about this issue”.
Preeti Sharma Menon from Aam Aadmi Party said “ In Maharashtra, the government is only focused to finish off the rivalry political parties but they are not working for people as Diwali festival is quite nearby they should think how layman will celebrate the fest as everything has become so expensive”.
CBI and ED to conduct investigations into Uddhav Thackeray and his family’s wealth 5
Former Maharashtra chief minister and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and his family are under the scanner of ED and CBI for “disproportionate” assets. Public interest litigation (PIL) has urged Bombay High Court. It is listed for hearing on Wednesday before justices Sanjay Gangapurwala and R Petitioner Gouri Bhide a Dadar resident said “As a alert citizen of this country, I thought of helping the (Central) government to some extent in unearthing some more hidden, unaccounted wealth disproportionate to income and also unearth laundered money,”. Her father Abhay (78) is the second petitioner.
The Centre, the State, CBI, ED, Uddhav, his wife Rashmi and sons Aditya and Tejas are made respondents. Gouri has annexed documents to her petition “which elaborate the way in which corruption has taken place and huge properties and assets have been accumulated illegally” by Uddhav, Aditya and Rashmi. “It will be clear from those exhibits that holding an official post in any political party by itself cannot be a legal source of income. Similarly, holding the constitutional posts of chief minister and cabinet minister in any state also is not a source of income as the remuneration is limited,” Her petition alleges that Uddhav, Aditya and Rashmi have never disclosed any “particular service, profession and business as their official source of income.” “Yet we find that they have huge properties in a metro city like Mumbai and in Raigad district, which may run into crores,” it adds. It refers to raids conducted by CBI and ED on people “who are very very (sic) close” to them and adds that is “crystal clear that the huge undisclosed properties, cash and other wealth with those persons have a close nexus” to the trio.
Gouri’s family, like the Thackerays, were into printing press businesses. Her family owned the Rajmudra printing press at Prabhadevi. The Thackerays additionally published the magazine Marmik and newspaper Saamna. When she noticed the assets of Aditya in his election affidavit, Gauri did her own investigation. It informs that both Thackeray publications have never been subject to audit by the Audit Bureau of Circulation and nobody knows their print order.
The petition states that during Covid19 lockdown and the period of pandemic, when the entire print media was facing heavy losses, Thackeray Company Prabodhan Prakashan Pvt. Ltd showed “brilliant performance” of Rs 42 crore turnover and Rs 11.5 crore profit. It was also the period when Uddhav was the CM and Aditya a cabinet minister. “It seems it’s a clear case of turning the black money into white one. The unaccounted money gathered from BMC and other sources might have been dishonestly digested (sic) into the accounts of the above mentioned company and fictitious figures of profit have been shown for this digestion. This is not just a guess or baseless allegation. The statement of accounts of these companies will clearly reveal the fact. These assets are mainly benami transactions,” her petition adds. It alleges that the company’s share holding pattern was changed to ensure from 2020 new shareholder Tejas should also benefitted.
Gouri has a “hunch that activist Kirit Somaiya or even both the respondent central agencies must have huge information and links pertaining to” the Thackerays. Her complaint, though sent to the police commissioner on July 11, 2022 was forwarded to the Economic Offences Wing, “no further action seems to be taken and the petitioner has not been even informed about the status of her complaint.” “This clearly gives a ca?se of action for the present PIL,” her petition adds.
Gouri has prayed that HC direct the Centre, ED and CBI “to take cognisance of her complaint filed with Mumbai police and take the investigation in their hands.” Also to direct “the respondents to submit a status of the investigation every month’ to HC petition asserts
Shashi Tharoor's allegations are more than the number of votes 7
Mallikarjun Kharge is proven to be the most preferred choice of Congress leaders and he is all set to chair as Congress president. News agencies have reported that the elected president will take charge after Diwali in the presence of senior leaders in a programme at the Congress headquarters. The Congress is set to get a new president. This one major change can freeze the attack on Gandhi family being a dynasty. Former Union Ministers Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor were in the fray and it will be for the first time in 24 years that the party will get a party chief who does not belong to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Mallikarjun Kharge got elected as a Chief – Congress.
Mallikarjun Kharge, widely seen to be the “Gandhi-approved” candidate, won 90 per cent of the votes cast on Monday. He scored 7,897 votes while Shashi Tharoor finished with 1,072. Even before the results were announced, Rahul Gandhi had declared Kharge as the winner at a press conference in Andhra Pradesh. On the other hand, Shashi Tharoor alleged “extremely serious irregularities” in the election process. Salman Soz, representing Tharoor’s team, later said they had been “assured of a fair inquiry” and had agreed that counting should continue. The counting of votes, which began at 10 am at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, ended around 1 pm. Tharoor somehow accepted the defeat.
The election comes three years after Sonia Gandhi agreed to temporarily lead the party when Rahul Gandhi stepped down, taking responsibility for the two consecutive routes of the party in the 2014 and 2019 general elections. It was held after multiple calls for change and hiccups over finding a candidate against Shashi Tharoor. Kharge was a last-minute entrant, persuaded to contest by a section of Central leaders when Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot dropped out of the race even before it started.
Seen initially as the front-runner, Gehlot’s candidature went sideways after his loyalist MLAs launched an open revolt in Rajasthan to keep his arch-rival Sachin Pilot from succeeding him as the Chief Minister.Since Independence; the Congress has mostly been led by a member of the Gandhi family, who were elected unanimously. Elections were held only six times as there was more than one candidate – starting in 1939 when P Sitaramayya, backed by Mahatma Gandhi, lost to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The result is likely to be declared between 3 pm to 4 pm. The ballot boxes from the state headquarters have reached the counting place in the Congress office.
Shashi Tharoor today alleged “extremely serious irregularities” as votes were counted two days after the Congress held a milestone election, the first in over 20 years, and one in which no Gandhi was in the race. Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday levelled allegations of “extremely serious irregularities” in the conduct of the Congress presidential elections held in Uttar Pradesh. Soon after counting began, Tharoor’s team alleged that there were “disturbing facts” in the election process in Uttar Pradesh and demanded that votes in the state be cancelled.
Tharoor is the most circulated critic of the policies of the Nehru-Gandhis within the Congress, a party he chose to join because he was “ideologically comfortable with it”. It would be easy to dismiss Tharoor as a caricature of the Lutyens liberal who prides himself on being a walking thesaurus, an English language – snob, a lover of elite comforts. Yet, unlike the Gandhis, whose attempts to flirt with temple-hopping found few takers, Tharoor has publicly called himself a Hindu, and written two books on it.
Tharoor is also smart at social networking; he has 8.3 million followers on Twitter, compared to Sachin Pilot’s 4.1 million, and P Chidambaram’s 1.7 million. This gives him significant reach amongst politically-conscious youth. Perhaps to add to that appeal, he recently did a stand-up comedy routine for Amazon Prime Video. He is conventionally good-looking and is always perfectly turned out, attributes which always help in contemporary TV-driven politics. Throor is not loyal to the Gandhis and on several occasions he rebelled against party leadership.
Sashi Tharoor is a tech savvy person. He started using tweeters long back when very few people in India could actually understand the concept of tweeter. But, his remarks on twitter have made a mark and some have become very controversial. But, honestly his tweets are literally worth reading. He can sum up a story in such a way in the limited way of Tweeter, is really astonishing! He might be a good leader but definitely not very loyal or trustworthy, his intelligence and status is dominant and that is not acceptable to Congress veterans. Congress has typical internal discipline and protocol where Tharoor is the biggest mismatch.
In the meantime, his love life became a national gossip. His affair and then marriage with Sunanda Pushkar hogged the limelight for many days. Everything was going fine but sudden demise of Sunnanda Pushkar becaem a hotcake topic and it spread like fire, which gave him unwanted and demeaning fame to some extent accusing him for the murder of his wife. Tharoor is formidable for his cache and panache. He is perhaps the one of few open book personalities in the inchoate and martinet Congress party. The Hoi Pollio of India relates to Modi and usually has abnegation for a person like Tharoor and his westernized life. The egregious nature of Indian Politics has prevented good stalwarts from taking over. The obstreperous Arnab Goswami has maligned him on various occasions. But Tharoor stands tall despite his obvious forbearance.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, Gujarat | Image: Agencies
Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top brass on Tuesday attended the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting to hold a discussion on seat distribution for the forthcoming Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections at BJP National Headquarters in the national capital.
According to a BJP leader from Himachal Pradesh, the CEC meeting was attended by Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Minister Anurag Thakur, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur and other BJP stalwarts. BJP National President JP Nadda chaired the meeting. Last week, the Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the Assembly election in Himachal Pradesh.
The state will go to the polls on November 12 and the counting of votes will be held on December 8. It’s a perception of the political analysts that the ruling party has never returned to power so far in Himachal but BJP intends to return to power again as it did in Uttarakhand last year.
So, the Marathon meeting took place on the distribution of seats. A BJP leader said twelve to eighteen sitting MLAs won’t be given tickets for the upcoming Assembly polls and the final list would come within the next two days. The 15-member CEC has several new entrants like former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediurappa, Union ministers Bhupender Yadav and Sarbananda Sonowal, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, senior leader Om Mathur, OBC Morcha president K Laxman, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Satyanarayan Jatiya and Sudha Yadav. The list of candidates for Himachal Pradesh can be released by Wednesday. According to sources, the final decision has been taken on the names of all the candidates in the Himachal elections
October 25 is the last date for filing nominations in the hill state Although BJP’s rival Congress has released the first forty-six names out of sixty-eight seats on Tuesday. In which all nineteen sitting MLAs have again got the tickets in the first list. In the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defeated the Congress Party and won 44 seats while Congress secured only 21 seats in 2017.
At present, in Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly, the BJP has 45 MLAs, while Congress has 22 and CPIM has 1 MLA. In the upcoming state elections, The AAP is looking to set foot in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. In Gujarat, AAP could not open its account in the previous Assembly elections. After a massive victory in Punjab, the party is looking to spread its wings to other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, in Himachal Pradesh, the Congress is gearing up to challenge the BJP. With the announcement of the election schedule in both states, the model code of conduct will come into force.
The Congress on Tuesday declared its first list of 46 candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh with party fielding senior leaders including Kaul Singh Thakur, Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, Mukesh Agnihotri, Asha Kumari and Chander Kumar.
Vikramaditya Singh, son of former chief minister Virbhadra Singh, has again been fielded from Shimla Rural. The party has fielded sitting 19 MLAs from their traditional seats in the first list.
The polling for the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly will take place on November 12. The senior leaders, including chief ministerial aspirants, have also been fielded from their traditional seats.
Asha Kumari will contest from Dalhousie, Chander Kumar from Jawali, Kaul Singh Thakur from Darang, Prakash Chaudhary from Balh (SC), Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu from Nadaun, Mukesh Agnihotri from Haroli and Sanjay Awasthi from Arki.
The party has fielded Kuldip Singh Pathania from Bhattiyat, Ajay Mahajan from Nurpur, Surinder Singh Mankotia from Jaswan-Pragpur, Ashish Butail from Palampur and Chetram Thakur from Seraj. Congress national spokesperson Kuldeep Singh Rathore will contest from Theog.
The Congress is seeking to oust the BJP and has made “guarantees” to the people of the state. In the 2017 election, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 44 seats while the Congress got 21.
Amidst crowded trains in Mumbai, a video showing a man falling off from a Western Railway train has gone viral. In the video that surfaced on social media, we can see a man losing balance from the footboard of the local train and falling on the railway platform. The video footage shows the passenger managing to save himself from potential mishap; he stands up after falling on the platform. But our conscience must also hurt for people that die daily falling over from local trains. Our conscience must be hurt knowing that a BEST bus that is supposed to carry 51 people is carrying 120 and a local train that is supposed to carry 1,174 passengers is carrying 6,000. It’s not “bad luck” when there’s a stampede or a bridge collapse and people die, in fact it’s a miracle that it doesn’t happen more often.
We need to save the people who die because this city’s infrastructure is crumbling around them. And it would be disastrous if we left their fate to chance, only because we failed to see the bigger picture. Daily crowds of city travel using local trains in Mumbai and suburban trains are the lifeline of this metropolis. Mumbai is designed for just two modes of working – on or off. The city has the lowest road to total area ratio among the metros. It also has the highest population density.
7 million commuters use the Mumbai local train network every day. The Sealink was built at the cost of 16 billion Rupees (USD 250 million) and carries mostly cats and taxis. If even a part of this money had been spent on improving the railway system, majorities of Mumbai cities commuters’ world would have been traveling safer today. As a nation we get our priorities horribly wrong. Yet we don’t mind, if someone is killed or seriously injured in a rush-hour.
Mumbai local is the heart of Mumbaikar, it carries thousands of people day in day out. Most of the people spend their precious time here. There are a number of problems involved but not much can be done because we have already utilized all our resources to the maximum level so a convenient option would be to develop alternate routes and modes of transportation and get innovative techniques rather than trying to burden the already burdened local system. A better transportation system is one which caters the needs of all the consumers in time and with minimum level of comfort. The frequency of Mumbai local trains is as high as 3 minutes in western and central line during the peak hours. The frequency cannot be increased anymore because that will increase the risk of incurring an accident. So, the trains go jam-packed. Nothing more in terms of frequency can be done. Still the local trains of Mumbai need a lot of makeovers, but scope is not much wide. The number of coaches can be increased but most of the stations (platform length) need to be increased. The Harbour line did this very well and now has longer trains than other routes. Every year more than 3500 people die of railway accidents out of which 1/3rd accident takes place in Mumbai alone. Along with the railways (local) other dimensions need to be strengthened. GPS enabled train network systems can be very helpful in tracking the trains in real time and head-on collisions between two trains (any train viz express, local) can be avoided. Women should be given a priority, for example the number of toilets in the stations of local trains are very less.
Men can find a wall but for women they have to walk a lot to find a toilet that is too functional with basic requirements like water and cleanliness. To decongest the local trains, it is very important to develop alternate routes, lots of steps are taken in this direction but the pace of work is too slow like monorail, metro, development of routes which have more number of options for example with the introduction of Versova-Ghatkopar metro the situation of roads has functional to normal level also people have more options of traveling thereby saving time. Also, there should be more inclination by common citizenry to use public transport. The rise in population is a very big problem, if alternate routes, habitation centers, and working centers are not created in the fringe areas of Mumbai. Any prevalent transportation system will be insufficient, dysfunctional and overcrowded. Dirty trains, tobacco stains on platforms cost WR Rs 3.5 crore every year. It’s a simple thing but if stopped can bring about enormous difference in terms of cleanliness. Upgrading Mumbai’s locals is not an easy task. As you all know that Locals are the lifeline of Mumbaikars. If the locals come to a stop, the whole Mumbai will come to a standstill. Mumbai’s suburban system is very outdated and specially the Harbour line. The ones which are good are Western and Central lines. For upgrading Mumbai’s suburban system, they will have to halt it and stopping Mumbai’s local train would mean removing a heart from a person’s body. But this does not seem to be right. The main reason behind government spending hugely on Metro Trains is because of better connectivity as they travel across various towns where local trains cannot reach.
So much can be done and so much is needed of an hour, Mumbai local has limited space and maximum challenges, but still western railway has come up with an announcement to make over south Mumbai local train stations. Let’s see with time ahead launch of metro station and trains Mumbaikar might get solace in commuting.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that peace and tranquility in the border areas of India and China remain the basis for normal relations.
Speaking at the conference of the Center for Contemporary China Studies (CCCS) on “China’s Foreign Policy and International Relations in the New Era,” Jaishankar said, “Peace and tranquility in the border areas clearly remain the basis for normal relations. From time to time, this has been mischievously conflated with the sorting out of the boundary question.”
He further said that the truth is that the prerequisite has been and remains one much more modest, and even that was breached in 2020. Taking to Twitter, Jaishankar shared the main points and said that India’s search for a more balanced and stable relationship with China takes it across multiple domains and many options.
“Given the developments of 2020, they obviously focus on an effective defence of the border. This was notably undertaken even in the midst of Covid,” he added.
Referring to India and China tensions which intensified after the Galwan valley clash, Jaishankar said that establishing a way of life between New Delhi and Beijing after 2020 is not easy. “Yet, it is a task that cannot be set aside. And this can only become sustainable on the basis of three mutuals: mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest,” EAM added in a tweet.
The Galwan valley clash has strained the relationship between India and China. Recently, on September 13 completed the disengagement process in the Gogra Heights-Hot Springs area near Patrolling Point-15 in the eastern Ladakh sector, according to government sources.
The two sides have also completed verification of each other’s position’s adapter pulling back troops from the friction point. India and China have been engaged in a standoff since April-May 2020 over the transgressions by the Chinese Army in multiple areas including the Finger area, Galwan Valley, Hot springs, and Kongrung Nala. The situation worsened after violent clashes with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley in June 2020.
“Internationally, building deeper relationships and promoting a better understanding of its interests strengthens India. We must prepare to compete more effectively, especially in our immediate periphery,” Jaishankar said in a tweet.
Calling the tension between India and China, “a period of serious challenge,” Jaishankar tweeted that it will impact the relationship and prospects of the continent. It is the willingness to take a long-term view of their ties that the two countries must display today. The continuation of the current impasse will not benefit either India or China. New normals of posture will inevitably lead to new normals of responses.”
Earlier in the conference, Jaishankar said that in the past seven decades of engagement, India has taken a “bilateral approach to China.”
He further added that there are many reasons for this including a sense of Asian solidarity and suspicion of 3rd party interests that emanated from other experiences “Indeed, Indian policy in the past has exhibited a remarkable degree of self-restraint that led to the expectation that others can have a veto over its choices. That period, however, is now behind us. The ‘new era’ is apparently not just for China,” Jaishankar tweeted.
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has arrested three persons for allegedly smuggling 7,500 Nitrazepam tablets in Mumbai, an official said on Tuesday.
The NCB’s Mumbai zonal unit had received information that a consignment of tablets was being trans shipped by a local courier from Ahmedabad to the western suburb of Borivali here, the official said. Based on a tip-off, the NCB team laid a trap in the area on October 4 and apprehended the receiver who arrived there to pick up the consignment, he said.
The consignment contained 7,500 tablets of Nitrazepam, which did not have proper documentation, the official said. Following the interrogation of the arrested accused, it was found that a larger syndicate was at play and the consignment was to be delivered to two more persons, he said.
The anti-drug agency then arrested the other two accused from different parts of the city on October 14 and 17, the official said, adding that efforts are underway to track down other members of the syndicate.
Meanwhile, the anti-drug agency has claimed to have busted a social media-based syndicate and arrested two people from the city in August with a variety of narcotic substances such as LSD, mephedrone and hash oil, another official said.
The syndicate operated on social media platforms and trafficked drugs across Delhi, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, etc, he said. An Instagram based group named “PARTY_PACK” was identified, which was actively involved in trafficking drugs, he said. Most of the members in the syndicate were youngsters who were active of social media. Orders were placed and payments for the drugs were made online, the official said. Further investigations were underway to track down more accused involved in the syndicate, he added.
