ACB arrests Central Excise official

MUMBAI, MARCH 17: The Anti Corruption Bureau ACB arrested a Central Excise inspector on Tuesday while accepting a bribe of Rs 10,000 fr...

MUMBAI, MARCH 17: The Anti Corruption Bureau ACB arrested a Central Excise inspector on Tuesday while accepting a bribe of Rs 10,000 from a businessman dealing in plastic items.

According to the remand application, the officer Prakash Vasant Ratnaparkhi 45 and three others had businessman Shrikant Jethalal Mehta8217;s factory at Poisar, Kandivli west on January 22 this year. After inspecting the account books, Ratnaparkhi demanded Rs 1.50 lakh from Mehta to avoid further inspection visits to the factory.

The factory owner was asked to keep Rs 10,000 ready on March 16. Mehta lodged a complaint with the ACB who laid a trap for Ratnaparkhi. After his arrest, the officer produced before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate A A Kidwai who remanded him to judicial custody till March 19.

HC order on medical fee hike

The division bench of Justice N J Pandya and Justice S S Parkar of the Bombay High Court today gave oral directions to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC not to press for the recovery of the increased medical fees from students of the Seth G S Medical College while the petition challenging the hike has been kept on March 19 Friday for admission.

Around eight students from various BMC-run medical colleges in the city today approached the high court challenging the hike in the medical fees by the BMC through a resolution dated January 12, 1999. Students in these medical colleges have a stiff hike of nearly 50 per cent staring at their faces as the present academic term nears to an end. The fees have been upped from Rs 3925 per term to a steep Rs 8150 per term.

What is worse, the hike has been made with retrospective effect so students will have to pay the difference in their fees since June 1998. While the last date for paying the arrears was March 15 for G S Medical College, Parel it is March 20 for Lokmanya Tilak Medical College in Sion, March 24 for the Topiwala College and February 11-25 for the Nair College, Mumbai Central.

Students Abhishek Raut, Swati Lohia, Rohan Kashyap, Gorakh Parulkar and other MBBS students through their counsel M P Vashi today filed a petition in the Bombay High Court challenging the hike in the fees in the colleges and invoked the Capitation Fee Act under which fees cannot be increased without the permission of the state government.

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In this case, the state government has not sanctioned the fee hike introduced by the BMC, argued Vashi. He also pointed out that the fees for corresponding courses in medical colleges was Rs 6,000 per month and Rs 4,000 in government dental colleges.

With BMC lawyers seeking time for getting instructions the matter has been posted for March 19 for admission.