
Mumbai News Highlights, Aryan Khan Arrest Highlights: The Narcotics Control Bureau Saturday questioned the driver of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan, who was arrested in connection with the cruise ship drug raid case, news agency ANI reported. Aryan Khan (23) was among eight persons arrested in Mumbai on October 3 by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in connection with an alleged drugs bust on a cruise ship the previous evening.
Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik Saturday alleged that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had detained Rishabh Sachdev, brother-in-law of BJP leader Mohit Kambhoj (Bhartiya), but let him off within hours. He alleged that the NCB released Sachdev following calls from BJP leaders in Delhi and Maharashtra. Kambhoj is a former president of BJP’s Yuva Morcha in Mumbai. Malik said NCB had detailed 11 persons during the raid on the cruise ship but it let off three, including Sachdev, Pratik Gaba and Amir Furniturewala.
Maharashtra on Saturday reported 2,486 fresh coronavirus positive cases, taking the tally of infections to 65,75,578 while 44 fatalities pushed the toll to 1,39,514, the health department said. A total of 2,446 patients were discharged during the day, taking the number of recoveries in Maharashtra to 63,99,464, it said in a statement. Maharashtra is now left with 33,006 active cases.
Mumbai city reported 510 new cases and three deaths due to Covid-19, pushing the number of cases to 7,48,195 and fatalities to 16,152, it said. The overall number of cases in the Mumbai region now stands at 16,85,477 and the death toll at 35,344.
A magistrate's court has no jurisdiction to entertain a bail application for an offence with prescribed punishment of more than three years under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act as it is triable by a special court, as per the order by which the bail plea of Aryan Khan and two others, held in the cruise ship drugs case, were rejected.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate(ACMM) R M Nerlikar had rejected their bail pleas on Friday.
In the 15-page order, the details of which were made available on Saturday, the ACMM said "this court ceases its jurisdiction to entertain the applications for bail" considering section 36A and the fact that all three were held for one crime under various provisions of the NDPS Act for which the prescribed punishment was more than three years. All the alleged offences are exclusively triable by the special court, his order further stated.
Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, as well as Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha were arrested on October 3 following the alleged seizure of banned drugs aboard a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast. They have been booked under various provisions of NDPS Act and are currently in judicial custody. (PTI)
Mumbai police on Saturday pasted a notice outside the residence of IPS officer Param Bir Singh, asking him to appear before it in connection with an extortion case on October 12, an official said.
Recently, Maharashtra Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil had said that there were reports that Singh, a former Mumbai police commissioner who is now facing at least five criminal cases in the state, had left the country, but there was no confirmed information.
The crime branch of Mumbai Police is probing an extortion case registered against Singh in suburban Goregaon and wanted to question him, the official said.
A police team went to Singh's flat in Nilima building in Malabar Hill area and pasted a notice outside as he was not there, the official added.
The case was registered at Goregaon police station on the complaint of builder-cum-hotelier Bimal Agrawal. Besides Singh, dismissed police officer Sachin Waze, Sumit Singh alias Chintu, Alpesh Patel, Vinay Singh alias Babloo and Riyaz Bhati are named as accused in the FIR. (PTI)
The cyber cell of Mumbai Police on Saturday summoned CBI director and former Maharashtra DGP Subodh Kumar Jaiswal in a phone-tapping and data leak case, a senior official said here.
Jaiswal has been asked to be present to record his statement on October 14, the police official said.
The case relates to the ‘leak’ of a report prepared by IPS officer Rashmi Shukla about alleged corruption in police transfers in Maharashtra when she headed the state intelligence department. Jaiswal was the director general of police during this period. Read More
If the pension scheme for freedom fighters and their dependents was introduced with a desire to help and honour such persons, then it ill behoves the Maharashtra government to reject claims due to lack of documents or late applications, the Bombay High Court has said.
A division bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Madhav Jamdar said that the state government should reach out to freedom fighters and their dependents and give them the benefits of the scheme, instead of making such people file applications.
The court on Thursday directed the Maharashtra government to start paying pension to the 90-year-old widow of a freedom fighter under the 'Swatantrata Sainik Samman Pension Scheme, 1980' from October 2021.
The order was passed on a plea filed by Shalini Chavan, a resident of Raigad district, who sought that benefits of the scheme be accorded to her, as her late husband Laxman Chavan was a freedom fighter. (PTI)
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday said all the allegations levelled against the agency in connection with the cruise ship raid and alleged recovery of drugs, in which Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan was arrested, are "baseless, motivated afterthoughts and prejudicial".
NCB Director, Mumbai Zone, Sameer Wankhede said the anti-drugs agency works professionally. "We do not see any political party and religion. We do our job professionally," he added.
Based on a tip-off, an NCB team raided the Goa-bound cruise ship last Saturday and claimed to have recovered banned drugs. A total of 18 persons have been arrested in the case, including Aryan Khan.
The incident took a political turn when Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik on Wednesday claimed that the raid was "fake" and that "outsiders" were involved in it.
On Saturday, Malik alleged that the NCB had initially detained 11 persons from the Goa-bound cruise ship, but let off three of them, including the brother-in-law of BJP leader Mohit Bharatiya, a couple of hours later. (PTI)
Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Mumbai Zonal informed that it recovered 25.45 kgs of heroin on October 5 from a container that arrived at Nhava Sheva Port in Navi Mumbai from Afghanistan's Kandahar via Iran's Chabahar port. A person has been arrested in the case. (ANI)
Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut on Saturday said his party will participate with full force in the October 11 bandh in Maharashtra to protest against the killing of farmers in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri.
Addressing a press conference along with NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik and state Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant, Raut said it was necessary to wake people up against the anti farmer policies of the Central government. Farmers are not alone in this fight and the process of showing solidarity with them must begin from Maharashtra, Raut asserted.
The Shiv Sena leader said he had discussed the need for a joint opposition strategy with NCP's Sharad Pawar and Congress' Rahul Gandhi, adding that other states must follow Maharashtra's lead to express solidarity with farmers.
Eight people, including four farmers, had died in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3. The farmers died after being knocked down by vehicles reportedly carrying BJP workers, after which an angry mob allegedly lynched some people in these vehicles. (PTI)
The Maharashtra government Saturday announced a special incentive of Rs 1.21 lakhs each for resident doctors treating Covid-19 patients in all government and municipal medical colleges. (ANI)
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With Opposition mounting to the proposal to build a cycling track around Powai lake, the BMC on Friday said that a committee of environmental experts has been set up “to discuss the lake’s development and carry out any mitigation measures required to not just alleviate but also enhance the lake and its surroundings”.
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The experts on the committee are Dr Rakesh Kumar, environmental scientist at National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI); Dr Deepak Apte, environment specialist and marine biologist from BNHS; Dr Pramod Salaskar, environment specialist on Powai lake; Dr Kedar Bhide, herpetologist and IIT-Bombay professor DN Singh.
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The Powai police, who recently cracked a burglary case at the flat of a retired Naval officer, said that one of the accused arrested by them is a serial burglar with 215 cases against him in four states.
The burglary took place sometime between September 18 and 19 at a flat in Jalvayu Vihar in Powai. The Navy officer had gone to Agartala with his wife on September 10. The couple had handed over their house keys to their domestic help Shaila Shirke (45), who stays in Vikhroli. On September 19 afternoon, when she reached the house, she found that the lock of the door was broken.
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A 55-year-old man was arrested for allegedly murdering his brother over property dispute at their residence in Santacruz (east) in early hours of Friday. The victim is identified as Ramesh Lal Bahadur Singh, 42, a driver by profession. The accused is Suresh Lal Bahadur Singh, 55, who works in a private company.
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The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Friday laid a trap and caught an assistant commissioner of police (ACP) while accepting a bribe of Rs 40,000 in her office in Mumbai. The officer, Sujata Patil, is posted as ACP of Meghwadi division in the western suburbs.
In his complaint, the complainant has said that he owns a 220 sq ft shop at Subhash Nagar in Jogeshwari. The shop was on rent, and as per his direction, a woman tenant vacated it on October 5. However, on October 6, the woman, with the help of others, broke the lock and occupied the shop again, he claimed.
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The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) on Friday presented a deficit budget of Rs 2,236 crore which is higher than the previous fiscal year. The BEST, however, provided an outlay of Rs 695 crore for capital expenditure for the fiscal year of 2021-22. While BEST earned Rs 4,997.04 crore, it spent Rs 7,233.52 crore in 2020-21.
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The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is searching the residence and office of film producer Imtiyaz Khatri in Bandra in connection with the cruise ship drugs case in which Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan has been arrested, an official said on Saturday. He added that Khatri’s name had come up during the investigation.
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