A 16-year-old girl from Boisar in Palghar taluka here was allegedly gangraped by two persons, rural police said.
The matter came to light last evening when the victim lodged a complaint against accused Shakeel Abdul Ansari and Santosh.
While Ansari was arrested, the other one is still at large. Police have launched a manhunt for him.
The victim worked in a factory in Boisar industrial estate and the accused had befriended her there. Later, she moved to Nalla Sopara following which on May 22 one of them called her to Boisar railway station for a meeting.
At the railway station the girl was fed a vadapav, which was possibly laced with sedatives. She fell unconscious and the duo took turns to rape her, the complaint said.
The police have charged both the youths under various sections of the IPC and sections 3, 4 and 8 of the protection of children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
The entire nation witnessed the historic moment when Narendra Modi took oath as the 15th prime minister of India. Besides all important dignitaries in the world present at Rashtrapati Bhavan to be a part of this big day, Bollywood heartthrob Salman Khan too made his presence felt there.
The 48-year-old actor was seen to be comfortably seated alongside father Salim Khan at the venue. The entire ‘Khandaan’ was in attendance. Salman was accompanied by mother Salma and younger brother Sohail Khan.
The other B-Town biggies who were captured included Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha and Anupam Kher. Also, actor Vivek Oberoi who earlier in the day had tweeted: “On my way to delhi! Atmosphere even in the aircraft is electric! Everyone is buzzing about the swearing in! #NaMoPm”, was present at the ceremony.
However, the invites were sent to mega star Amitabh Bachchan, Lata Mangeshkar and Rajinikanth as well but they could not make it to the grand event.
Police on Monday filed a chargesheet against the lone accused in the murder and suspected rape of a woman software engineer from Andhra Pradesh, who was found killed in early January.
The 542-page chargesheet against Chandrabhan Sudam Sanap, a history-sheeter who worked as a railway porter and then as a driver in Nashik, was filed in a Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court.
“Police have filed a 542-page chargesheet, which included the statements of 76 witnesses,” said Public Prosecutor Kiran Bendhbar.
The 28-year-old accused has been charged with murder, rape, destruction of evidence under the Indian Penal Code and also relevant provisions of the Indian Railways Act. Crime Branch arrested Sanap in early March, nearly two months after the murder of the 23-year-old techie, employed with IT major TCS in suburban Goregaon, who went missing from the Lokmanya Tilak terminus in Kurla after arrival from her native place in early hours of January 5.
According to police, Sanap spotted the woman sitting at railway station alone and offered to drop her to Andheri, where she resided.
He convinced the techie to sit on his motorcycle and strangled her at an isolated place when she resisted his attempt to rob her. Police later claimed they suspected victim was raped too.
The victim’s decomposed body was found off the Eastern Express Highway in suburban Bhandup on January 16. The assistant system engineer, a native of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, had returned to Mumbai after a visit to her hometown.
A fortnight after a private firm’s diamonds and diamond-studded pendants worth Rs. 6.49 crore were robbed, city police on Monday claimed to have cracked the case with the arrest of six accused, including a woman, and recovered valuables worth over Rs. five crore.
Udaybhan Singh, Om Prakash Singh, Rajesh Saroj, Dhiraj Singh, Bipin Singh and Savitri Thakur were arrested from the city and neighbouring Thane district, Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Sadanand Date said.
“Eighty per cent of the valuables were recovered from the accused. The accused were produced before a court which remanded them in police custody till June 5,” Date said.
Savitri was arrested while the rest were apprehended yesterday, Date added.
According to police, complainant Ramesh Kumar Gupta, security supervisor at SR Securities, and three others had on May 9 arrived at Borivali railway station by train from Surat, carrying the consignment of diamonds belonging to Malka Amit JK Logistics.
SR Security had been hired to transport its goods, and this particular consignment was to be delivered to the firm’s branch at the Bandra-Kurla Complex.
The police said Gupta’s colleague and accused Udaybhan Singh, a driver with the security picked him up and others in a vehicle from Borivali railway station, drove them up to the National Park and stopped there saying that tyres were damaged.
IPS officer Date said that around 4 pm a group of men who were carrying guns and some sharp weapons got into the vehicle and threatened Gupta and his colleagues. Uday Singh had also connived with them.
Date further added, “Uday Singh then drove them to Virar in neighbouring Thane district where he and his associates abandoned the vehicle and fled with the consignment.”
“During the probe, it was found that Uday Singh already had criminal cases registered against him in the past. Acting on information, all the six were arrested from different places for their roles in the robbery case,” Date said, without elaborating the role of each of the accused in the crime.
A Mumbai sessions court on Monday extended the judicial custody of Anjani Sinha, a former chief executive officer (CEO) of the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), until 9 June after he failed to secure a surety of Rs.5 lakh for bail.
On 9 May, the Bombay high court granted bail to Sinha in connection with the Rs.5,574.34 crore payments crisis at the commodity bourse.
“It is not a cash bail, we are finding it difficult to secure the surety as the economic offences wing has attached our properties and no one is willing to be a guarantor,” said Sinha’s wife Shalini Sinha. “We appealed for a cash bail before the court but it was rejected.”
This is the second time when the court has extended Sinha’s judicial custody since the bail order of the high court.
Sinha was arrested on 17 October by Mumbai Police’s economic offences wing (EOW) in connection with the payments crisis, after the arrests of Jai Bahukhandi, former assistant vice-president of warehousing at NSEL, and Amit Mukherjee, former assistant vice-president of business development.
NSEL is 99.99 per cent owned by Financial Technologies (India) Ltd (FTIL).
Meanwhile, the vacation bench of the sessions court is set to hear the bail application of Jignesh Shah chairman and group chief executive of FTIL, Shreekant Javalgekar, former chief executive of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX), on 27 May.
The EOW of Mumbai police arrested Shah and Javalgekar on 7 May. Both have also been sent to judicial custody till 31 May in connection with the payments crisis at NSEL.
The crisis at NSEL came to light on 31 July. Subsequent investigations have highlighted the possibility of fraud and, according to the Forward Markets Commission, the involvement of promoters.
Maharashtra Congress mocked Shiv Sena for muting its “aggressive” stand on Pakistan and getting ready to join the NDA government, saying that BJP had never cared about its ally’s views on how to deal with the neighbouring country.
“During the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure, Shiv Sena opposed ceasefire with Pakistan and Vajpayee was critical of the Sena when he spoke in the Rajya Sabha,” Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said.
Sawant said Vajpayee had snubbed the Sena by saying that the party’s sentiments (on the subject of Pakistan) can be understood but it shouldn’t take its protest beyond a limit.
“The danger (to the ceasefire) is not so much from those opposed to it in Kashmir but from those demanding its withdrawal,” Sawant quoted Vajpayee as saying from the newspaper reports of the Rajya Sabha discussion.
“If this was the case during Vajpayee’s government, it is better not to talk about Shiv Sena’s stand under Modi’s stewardship,” Sawant said.
Sawant also said only four days ago Sena president Uddhav Thackeray had demanded snapping of cricket ties with Pakistan, but Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi went on to invite Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his swearing-in.
“Uddhav Thackeray spoke of pressing the nuclear button (if Pakistan continued to support terrorism) in his statement yesterday. It was nothing but a poor attempt to cover up the Shiv Sena’s embarrassment,” the Congress spokesperson said.
Six men, convicted in Akshardham temple terror attack of Sep 24, 2002, but acquitted of all charges by the Supreme Court last week, on Monday demanded compensation, rehabilitation and punishment to officials who falsely implicated them in the case.
The convicts who have been acquitted are Chand Khan, 35, a mechanic from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, Adam Ajmeri, 45, and Mufti Abdul Qayyum, 37, both residents of Ahmedabad. They were convicted and sentenced to death earlier.
Besides, there were other three other Ahmedabad residents – Mohammed Altaf, 30, a shopkeeper working in Saudi Arabia, who was given five years’ sentence which he completed, Mohammed Salim, 37, a tailor also working in Saudi Arabia, and Maulvi Abdulla, 55, a cleric. The last two were sentenced to 10 years jail each.
Addressing a press conference here, they unitedly demanded that the Gujarat government and then chief minister Narendra Modi – who headed the home department – should adequately compensate them for the long periods of incarceration they wrongly suffered.
“I had been working in Saudi Arabia for 13 years and I was arrested under pretext of some problem with my passport. The security officers brutally beat me up… fractured my foot.
They gave me options on which case I wanted to be charged under – the Akshardham Temple terror case, Haren Pandya murder case, or the Godhra train carnage,” claimed Salim.
“Our lives have been totally ruined because of this case. Our families were hounded. We have nothing in life and have to start from scratch at this age. The time lost in jail will never return, now the state government must at least give us suitable compensation for the manner in which we were wrongly implicated,” pleaded Maulvi Abdulla.
Mufti Qayyum said that all the six acquitted accused are consulting lawyers to file cases in the Gujarat courts seeking compensation as well as punishment for all the police officials who slapped false cases against them, tortured and incarcerated them all these years before the apex court acquitted them honourably.
Jamiat Ulama-e-Maharashtra (AM) legal cell secretary Gulzar Azmi, which provided free legal aid to all the accused, said that now it is the turn of the security officials who acted illegally against these six acquitted people to answer in courts.
“Not only should they be booked, they should be prosecuted so that an example is set for all such security officials booking innocent Muslim youth and ruining their lives forever,” Azmi said.
Last week, allowing the convicts’ pleas against the conviction and sentencing in the case, a Supreme Court bench of Justice AK Patnaik and Justice VG Gowda Friday held that the prosecution failed to establish their guilt beyond reasonable doubt and they deserved exoneration from all charges.
The Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre, sworn-in this evening, has six ministers from Maharashtra, including three cabinet ministers.
UPA II also had six ministers from the state towards the end: cabinet ministers Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel of NCP and Sushilkumar Shinde of Congress, ministers of state Milind Deora, Pratik Patil and Manikrao Gavit (all Congress).
Congress stalwart Vilasrao Deshmukh, who handled heavy industries portfolio, died while in office; Mukul Wasnik quit the cabinet to take up organisational post in the party.
Of the three cabinet ministers from Maharashtra who took the oath of office, Nitin Gadkari hails from Vidarbha. Gopinath Munde — his rival in state BJP — hails from Marathwada (central Maharashtra). Anant Geete, a Shiv Sena MP, is from the coastal Konkan region.
Among the ministers of state, Piyush Goyal is from Mumbai, Prakash Javadekar is from Pune and Rosaheb Danve is from Jalna in Marathwada.
Interestingly, the heavy industries portfolio has been a monopoly of sorts for Maharashtra. Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi handled it in Vajpayee cabinet, and now his party colleague Geete has got it. In UPA, the ministry was with Praful Patel and late Vilsarao Deshmukh at different times.
Meanwhile, BJP workers celebrated the swearing-in of the NDA government here by bursting firecrackers and distributing sweets. An open bus and motorcycle rally was held in south Mumbai.
A 24-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping and raping a minor girl at his residence in Bandra west, under the pretext of marriage, the police said.
According to the Bandra police, the accused, one Sarju Gupta, was arrested on Sunday, after the survivor’s parents complained to the police that he abducted their 17-year-old daughter and sexually abused her.
In her complaint, the survivor’s mother alleged that the accused knew the girl who stays in the vicinity for the last one-and-a-half years and regularly met her after promising to marry her.
“The accused had met the survivor at a marriage ceremony, after which he befriended her,” a police official told, adding that the girl eloped with Gupta on May 18.
“Gupta convinced the girl, saying that nobody would oppose their marriage. Later, he took her to his house where he sexually assaulted her on different occasions. The girl’s mother had filed a missing person’s complaint on May 18 after she could not be traced,” the police officer said.
However, the girl returned home yesterday.
After her mother prodded the girl, she broke down and revealed her ordeal, which led the survivor’s mother to file a rape complaint against the accused, who was arrested by the police yesterday.
The accused has been booked under Sections 376 (Punishment for rape), 363 (Punishment for kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code, besides relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Narendra Modi took an oath of the office as 15th Prime Minister of this country along with 45 Ministers, including key leaders like Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Unlike every single government since 1989, Modi does not have any ‘coalition compulsions’ like his predecessors. The Bharatiya Janata Party on its own has 10 members more than the required 272 in the Lok Sabha for a simple majority. It is appropriate to mention that coalition politics has played immensely in deciding the strength of council to appease the member parties and have caused immensely on the decision making and exchequer. Of course, BJP have very small presence in Rajya Sabha to get the important legislations to pass through where it will require not only the support of allies but of the opposition. It is expected that this time coalition politics will have to say.
Narender Modi, who has become PM has talked about the principle of “MINIMUM GOVERNMENT AND MAXIMUM GOVERNANCE”. Let’s see, how he will fulfill these ideal ideas. India is neither America which is homogenous in its people nor Gujarat where people generally are more pro- business and less participative in debates concerning human rights and democratic representation. So, if Modi keeps a short cabinet and then plum post will be with either himself or with BJP’s bigwigs then it would be definitely make people neglect the government formation. This will give wrong signals, especially to those who were not traditionally BJP voters like Dalits and OBCs. However, they have voted this time for an OBC PM to get slice of power and development. From day one, the new government should lay a planned strategy to deliver goods. Development activities should go on full swing. Modi should not give any chance to his critics. Solar power, water harvesting, creating infrastructure and solving farmer’s problems, to double food production, strengthening law & order must be his foremost priority. I hope he has not included those who want to build their personal assets.
Everyone knows, NaMo is not averse to identify and will weed out such characters, despite political compulsions. While it is a good idea to merge the ministries and have compatible group of ministers directing them, there should be opportunities for all MPs to play roles in the areas that are important to their constituents and to gain experience as subject matter experts, managers, and leaders. By being knowledgeable about the policies, activities, and events, members will not be surprised about events and hopefully exhibit responsible behaviour. Besides getting usual tasks like policies, plans, and legislation, ministers should get their departments to develop scenarios and actions if unexpected events occur. This is done through simulations and wargames.
Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Shiv Sena’s Anant Geete figured in a compact Narendra Modi Cabinet which has involved a radical restructuring of various ministries with one cabinet minister heading a cluster of departments in complementary sectors. Smriti Irani, as Human Resource Development minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad as Law Minister and also have charge of Telecom. Nitin Gadkari has land a mega Transport Ministry that could even include the Railways and Civil Aviation portfolios. Modi’s Cabinet took Shape with Sushma with External Affairs, Jaitley as Finance Minister, Prakash Javadekar as Information and Broadcasting Minister. He could also head the environment ministry. Nirmala Sitharaman is a new Commerce Minister with independent charge. Piyush Goel has been handed Power & Coal Ministry with independent charge. In a clear indication that Modi is opting for major changes in the structure of the government, a statement issued by his secretariat on Sunday said that “focus is on convergence in the activities of various ministries where one cabinet minister will be heading a cluster of ministries which are working in complementary sectors. Modi is eventually aiming at “smart governance” where the top layers of government will be downsized and there would be expansion at the grassroots level. BJP’s allies, who are part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), account for only 56 members in the Lok Sabha. So, to that extent Modi’s dependence on allies is reduced. However, it does not have even 50 members in the Rajya Sabha with an effective strength of 245. Article 72 of the Constitution prescribes that the total number of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the Council of Ministers shall not exceed 15 per cent of the number of members of the House of the People. Prior to January 1, 2004 (effective date of 91st Amendment of the Constitution) the Prime Minister had discretion to appoint any number in his council of ministers. But the Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act in 2003 made a drastic change in curbing such power of the Prime Minister. This Amendment added clause (1A) in this Article which made a specific provision that, the total number of Ministers, including Prime Minister, in no case can exceed 15 per cent of the total number of Lok Sabha members. The Prime Minister can induct into his ministry a person who is not a member of either House of Parliament. However, a minister who for a period of six consecutive months is not a member of either House of Parliament shall at the expiration of that period cease to be one. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed his government for the first time in March 1998, he had 21 Cabinet and 21 Ministers of State some with independent charge. At the beginning of his second stint in October 1999, there were 22 Cabinet and equal numbers of Ministers of State. Subsequently, it was expanded to suit political expediencies. The UPA-I and UPA-II led by Manmohan Singh began with over 50 ministers and at some stage the maximum strength was 78.
So, let’s accept this new Modi government whole heartedly and respect public mandate and wait for a real change to happen.
A 16-year-old girl from Boisar in Palghar taluka here was allegedly gangraped by two persons, rural police said. 
The entire nation witnessed the historic moment when Narendra Modi took oath as the 15th prime minister of India. Besides all important dignitaries in the world present at Rashtrapati Bhavan to be a part of this big day, Bollywood heartthrob Salman Khan too made his presence felt there.