Mahesh Theekshana, the Sri-Lankan spinner addressed a press conference after his team’s five-wicket win over Afghanistan on Saturday.
While responding about the team’s chase, the spinner said that the team never thought they were out of the hunt at the halfway mark. He refuted claims of his team being under pressure at mid-innings.
He said, “I don’t feel we were out of the chase at the halfway mark, we were in the hunt for the entire innings. ” Talking about the belief in the dressing room about the target he said, “Yeah we knew that we will get it because we have multiple winners in the team that played well last game too. So yeah getable chase always.” Speaking about chasing such targets against the other teams, he said, “We know that they have quality bowling attacks but we can surely beat them.”
He also gave the rationale behind him coming to bowl in the death overs.
The Sri Lankan said, “The presence of two right-handers till the 14th over was the reason why I was being held back.” Reacting to bowling the 19th over that went just for three runs, he said, “I had a good plan and that’s why I executed it and as a result, the 19th over had only three runs and I get wicket also.”
On being asked about the team not being able to dismiss Rahmanullah Gurbaz cheaply, he said, “It was good luck for him today, that’s why he played such a knock.” Talking about his team’s confidence for the remaining matches, he said, “We have confidence that we are a good team and we will win the next two matches also.”
A late blitz from left-hander Bhanuka Rajapaksa helped Sri Lanka defeat Afghanistan by four wickets in the first match of the Super Four phase of the ongoing Asia Cup 2022 at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Saturday.
Rajapaksa slammed swashbuckling 31 in 14 balls while Kusal Mendis played a knock of 36 runs. For Afghanistan Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Naveen-ul-Haq bagged two wickets each
Three children were killed and three others were injured after a blast took place in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, as per media reports.
The provincial police spokesman Ahmad Jan as quoted by Xinhua News Agency said that the incident took place in Hiwad Bazaar area on Saturday afternoon.
As per reports, all the victims were students. On Friday, a deadly blast killed 20 people including a renowned cleric in western Herat province.
Guzargah mosque in the city of Herat was bombed at around 12:40 pm (local time), Khamaa Press reported, citing authorities run by the Taliban.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Mawlawi Mujib Rahman Ansari, the cleric who led the prayers, was killed in what he described as a cowardly attack carried out by the “enemies of religion.”
Last month, a number of blasts were reported in the capital city of Kabul, claiming dozens of innocent lives. This series of blasts comes on the heels of one year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Rights groups said the Taliban have broken multiple pledges to respect human rights and women’s rights.
After capturing Kabul in August last year, the Islamic authorities have imposed severe restrictions on women’s and girls’ rights, suppressed the media, and arbitrarily detained, tortured, and summarily executed critics and perceived opponents, among other abuses.
Rights groups say that the Taliban’s human rights abuses have brought widespread condemnation and imperilled international efforts to address the country’s dire humanitarian situation
On the night of September 13, 1947, a group of 40 Marathi-speaking residents of Karachi boarded a Mumbai-bound boat, not knowing what future holds for them in India, a nation basking in freedom from the British rule, but also coming to terms with horrific violence of the Partition.
As the residents, all women and kids accompanied by a male passenger, left the Clifton harbour in the Pakistani port city with just meagre savings, they were aware life is going to be anything but easy in Bombay (now Mumbai), but their hearts and minds were filled with new-found hope and optimism.
After travelling for two days and battling hardships during the sea journey, they reached Mumbai, where they subsequently built their lives brick by brick with hard work and tenacity, and became an integral part of their adopted city.
This inspiring story has been documented in a hand-written note by Nalini Sahasrabuddhe, one of the travellers on the boat that left for Mumbai just a month after India attained freedom from the British Raj.
Nalini Sahasrabuddhe penned the note in 2010 when she was 90 and died nine years later, her daughter Supriya Gore says.
Gore told Agencies that her mother and two elder siblings, aged 5 and 3 years, were among the 40 travellers comprising women and children on the boat.
They were accompanied by Sakharam Korgaonkar, the only male passenger.
The note shared by Gore says the Partition, accompanied by mass communal violence, brought fear and tears in equal measures among Marathi-speaking population in Pakistan.
The community stayed united during the tumultuous period, but wondered how to move to safer places. Earlier, there were government orders to leave and several people had started migrating through the sea and trains. But after the Partition, the administration had virtually collapsed, says the note written in Marathi.
We could manage 40 tickets on a boat leaving for the Konkan coast (in Maharashtra). It was pitch-dark, the silence in the surroundings was deafening. “Children were crying and women and children got affected by sea sickness and started vomiting. One lady traveller had lime and sugar in her luggage and she gave them to those who had taken ill. We reached Mumbai Harbour around noon on the third day,” says Nalini Sahasrabuddhe in the note.
With their families reaching safely, the men came to Mumbai two weeks later. Gore says most of the families in Karachi had their relatives in Mumbai and nearby areas. Karachi was then-part of the Bombay Presidency and several Maharashtrians lived and worked in the port city.
In the two-page note, Nalini Sahasrabuddhe writes that her husband Sripad Sahasrabuddhe and his colleague Shantaram Korgaonkar were employed in M/S Mohanlal & Motilal, a cotton import export company. Fortunately, the company had an office in Mumbai, too.
Sripad Sahasrabuddhe and Korgaonkar started working in the company’s Mumbai office after migrating to the metropolis with families.
Gore says on arrival from Karachi the families shifted to Lalbaug in central Mumbai and areas like Kurla, Goregaon, Vasai, Andheri before settling in the western suburb of Vile Parle.
Gore’s mother Nalini Sahasrabuddhe writes about setting up of an organization, Refugees Traders Union, to raise money to build their own homes. Finally, a housing complex for the families came up in Vile Parle in 1960.
Today the fourth generation of the Marathi settlers who arrived from Karachi is residing in the complex along with their relatives.
The migrated families had also persuaded their relatives living in other places to shift to the housing complex in Vile Parle, now an upscale area of the metropolis.
Gore says her elder siblings recall that Karachi was then a prosperous city.
A grocery store in the port city was owned by one Kulkarni where sacks of dry fruits were sold. Kids had milk, dry fruits and fruits in abundance, she says. Gore says the Marathi-speaking families after arrival in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra kept in touch with each other through annual gatherings, keeping alive a bond nurtured over the years.
The housing complex in Vile Parle had architects and civil engineers from the group of Marathi speakers who landed from Karachi. Gore, who was born a year after the Partition, says her parents never passed on the bad memories of the Partition to their children or told them about their sufferings.
“We were inspired by our parents to face struggles courageously and succeed in life. The Marathi-speaking people who arrived from Karachi with mearge savings leaving behind their homes started life afresh and made it big in life through sheer dint of hard work and unity among the community,” she says. She says vocalist late Narayanrao Bodas and academician MS Pendharkar, who served as principal of Parle Tilak Vidyalaya, were from Karachi and had migrated to Mumbai post-Partition.
There was a Marathi school, “Karachi Shikshan Prasar Mandal”, in the Pakistani port city.
That school is now functioning out of Kudal in Sindhudurg district, Gore says. The Karachi-based school, now in Kudal, is over 100 years old.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday, took a dig at the Congress and CPI-M by saying that the world is ‘getting away’ from communism.
“Congress is diminishing from the country, and the world is getting away from the Communists. If Kerala has a future, it’s BJP,” stated Amit Shah while addressing the BJP SC Morcha meeting in Kerala on Saturday.
According to the Union Home Minister, the Congress party and the Communists never worked for the well-being of the Scheduled Caste, tribes and the poor.
“They treated them as mere vote banks,” claimed Shah. He challenged the Congress party to come up with a list of what they did for the SC and ST communities, as they ruled this country for a long time and still no good was done for the upliftment of the Dalits.
Shah said, “Modi government has worked for the development of the Dalits in the country in the last eight years. There are a lot of ministers from the SC community with the BJP Government. BJP made a president who’s from the SC community for the first time. And we also made a woman president who’s from the ST community, Droupadi Murmuji.”
“Modi Government gave Mudra loan to 10 crore people. Out of that, 50 per cent was reserved for the Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes. Cooking gas connection was provided to a total of 9 crores of people, out of which 5 crores were reserved for SC and ST. Under the Swach Bharat scheme, 5 crore poor people got water connection and among that three crores were for the SC community,” he further stated.
Shah chaired the 30th Southern Zonal Council meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday.
During the meeting Shah said that in the 30th meeting of the Southern Zonal Council held in Thiruvananthapuram today, 26 issues were discussed, nine issues were resolved, while 17 issues were reserved for further consideration.
The meeting was attended by the Chief Ministers of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Lieutenant Governors of Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Administrator of Lakshadweep, Chief Secretaries of Southern Zonal Council States, Union Home Secretary, Secretary Inter-State Council Secretariat and other senior officials of State and Central Ministries and Departments.
The Shiv Sena on Sunday claimed the credit for the restriction-free celebration of the ongoing Ganesh festival goes to party chief Uddhav Thackeray.
Thackeray fought the COVID-19 pandemic for two years with strict restrictions (when he had served as the CM of Maharashtra) and created awareness among people about the safety protocols, an article in the Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ said.
“The credit for the restriction-free festival celebration goes to Uddhav Thackeray. This hasn’t happened because of the Shinde-Fadnavis regime,” said the ‘Rokhthok’ column, published under the byline of Kadaknath Mumbaikar in the Marathi daily. The Thackeray-led government, which comprised the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, collapsed in June this year after a revolt in the Sena led by MLA Eknath Shinde and 39 other legislators.
On June 30, Shinde was sworn in as the CM along with BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.
The article in Saamana said there was a time during the pandemic when the festival could not be celebrated. This did not stop people from worshipping Lord Ganesh.
“The Shiv Sena has taken forward the legacy of Lokmanya Tilak of public celebration of the festival. There is a competition to break the Shiv Sena’s monopoly. If you (referring to opponents) want to end Marathi dominance in Mumbai, take control of Ganpati mandals or purchase them,” it said.
The public celebration of Ganesh festival started from Maharashtra and today attempts are being made to end the importance of the state, the Marathi publication said.
“Maharashtra is the original land of Hindutva. Veer Savarkar, Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s first Sarsanghchalak were born here,” it said. The article also hit out at yoga guru Ramdev for claiming that Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde was the torch-bearer of Hindutva and Balasaheb Thackeray’s legacy.
A 10-feet-long python fighting for its life due to multiple fractures and wounds will undergo plastic surgery soon which could be a breakthrough in treating the critically injured endangered wildlife, officials said.
The Indian rock python was rescued by the Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare (RAWW) and the Forest Department in August.
The reptile has been under observation and treatment by a team of veterinarians and animal rescuers for more than three weeks, a Forest department official said over the weekend.
The python has been in critical condition due to multiple fractures and open wounds from day one of its rescue.
However, with tremendous efforts and care it has been responding to the treatment, he said.
To save the life of the python and to improve its medical and physical condition, reconstructive plastic surgery is on the cards.
“The python has been critical and our teams are trying their best to treat it. Dr Rina Dev would be performing plastic surgery to reconstruct the damaged face of the python. This surgery would be a breakthrough in treating critically-injured endangered wildlife,” said Pawan Sharma, founder, RAWW, and Honorary Wildlife Warden with the Maharashtra Forest department.
Recently, a peacock with a fractured leg was rescued from Raj Bhavan and has successfully undergone major surgery and is responding well to treatment.
Sharma appealed to people to inform the Forest department and animal rescuers if they notice any injured or distressed wildlife.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Vijendra Yadav was shot dead on Saturday. The murder took place near Nimdihara Road of Karghar.
It has been reported that PACS President Vijendra Yadav was going for farming work when six bike-riding criminals opened fire at him, in which two bullets hit the former chief.
There is a suspicion of murder over old enmity. “One bullet has hit the head and one in the neck, due to which he died on the spot. The police took the body to the police station,” said the police.
None of the criminals has been arrested yet. While investigating the matter, the police noted that even before this, the former chief was once attacked in which he narrowly escaped.
Localised thundershowers on Sunday lashed western suburbs of Mumbai, as the city witnessed rains after a gap of nearly three weeks.
According to officials of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), such localised rain due to intense heat is a common phenomenon during this time.
After the first week of August, Mumbai did not receive showers.
There were occasional drizzles, but too less to be recorded, an IMD official said. “On Sunday morning, rains lashed only the western suburbs, that too north of Bandra till Borivali. The showers were intense in some pockets. Colaba in south Mumbai and the eastern suburbs hardly received any showers compared to the western suburbs. Such type of localised showers are not part of the southwest monsoon rains,” the official said.
Between 8.30 am on Saturday and 5.30 am on Sunday, the Santacruz observatory, which is representative of the western suburbs, recorded only 13.8 mm rainfall. “When the southwest monsoon is weak, intense heat could lead to such a situation and some pockets receive short spells of showers,” the official said
The Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested an absconding dreaded criminal wanted in firing incident of Samaypur Badli area from Rohini, said police on Saturday.
The accused has been identified as 43-year-old Naveen Yadav, a resident of Rohini. He was found involved in eight Criminal cases including murder and attempt to murder, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Crime Rohit Meena.
He was arrested under Section 41.1 Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The accused has been absconding for the last three years.
Acting on the secret information that Yadav has been hiding in a flat in Sector-18 Rohini, the team was constituted. The raiding team cordoned the flat in Sector-18 Rohini and deployed staff at all escape points.
“After suspecting police presence, accused tried to escape and jumped off from the flat, however, alert support teams immediately overpowered him and successfully apprehended the accused,” said DCP Meena.
In the incident, the accused got his leg fractured and he was immediately admitted to the nearest government hospital where his treatment is being conducted.
He was interrogated after taking permission of the treating doctor. He admitted his involvement in a case under Section 307/34 IPC at Samaipur Badli Police Station. The local police of Samaipur Badli Police Station and Mahindra Park have been informed about his arrest.
Further interrogation from the accused is in progress.
Earlier, The Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested three women wanted in an alleged case of murder for six years. All the three arrested women hailing from Mangolpuri –who were identified as Mamta (31), Varsha alias Heera (29), Prakashi (48)–were carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 each declared upon their arrest.
According to the DCP Crime Rohit Meena, six years ago on March 13, 2016, an altercation allegedly took place between two neighbours in Mangolpuri for giving way to the car of the complainant Prakash.
The quarrel got aggressive and the accused persons Hari Krishan, Veer Singh alias Veeru, Saurav alias Gullan, Prem Singh alias Lala, Brij Mohan alias Johny, Mamta, Varsha alias Heera, and Prakshi along with one juvenile barged in Prakash’s house and brutally thrashed the second party with sticks and swords, as a result of which, one of the injured persons Gyarsa Ram died during treatment in Hospital.
The Delhi Police (Outer) had registered a case at the Mangolpuri Police Station and had arrested five of the accused persons and apprehended the juvenile.
The police further said that the accused women (who are now arrested) were absconding and evading their arrest by changing their locations frequently.
They were also declared as Proclaimed Offenders (PO) by the court of Shirish Aggarwal, Metropolitan Magistrate (North-West) vide order dated July 29, 2016, and a cash reward was declared upon their arrest, it said.
The police further said that credible information regarding the three women was received by Head Constable Sunil on Friday that they were residing in 13 block of Trilokpuri Delhi, acting upon which they zeroed in on the address and apprehended them.
Fidayeen suicide attacker from Pakistan, Tabarak Hussain, who was captured by the Indian Army on August 21 at LOC in Naushera, died of a cardiac arrest on Saturday.
According to Army officials, Hussain was captured by the Indian Army while trying to infiltrate into the Indian territory in Naushera, Rajouri.
The captured terrorist, Tabarak Hussain, resident of Sabzkot village, district Kotli of Pakistan occupied Kashmir, is presently undergoing treatment at an Army medical facility.
Hussain was in an extremely critical condition before Army doctors saved his life. “He was being treated at Army Hospital in Rajouri and had bullet injuries in his leg and shoulder,” stated the army officials.
Hussain, while undergoing treatment in Army Hospital, told to the agencies that he had been sent along with three to four other terrorists were paid money by a Pakistani Colonel Yunus Choudhary to carry out a ‘fidayeen’ attack on Indian soldiers after crossing the LoC.
Hussain received a bullet wound while his accomplices escaped. “We were four-five people. We had come to die. We were sent by Pak Army’s Colonel Choudhary Yunus. He gave us money to attack Indian posts,” said Hussain responding to questions.
He said that the group had four to five guns with them. “We were asked to attack the Indian Army. I had come in 2016. This time we could not attack. The others ran away…After I was hit by a bullet, the Indian Army saved me,” he added.
On Saturday, the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested an “enemy agent”, for allegedly supplying secret information about police establishments and security forces to his Pakistan-based handler via different social media platforms.
The “enemy agent” identified as Abdul Wahid of Chergi Dool was arrested after a joint input was generated by the Kishtwar Police, 11 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), and Military Intelligence (MI).
