The NCB DG said that the remaining 14 accused were chargesheeted as corroborative evidence was found against them. (ANI)Mumbai News Live Updates: Addressing a press conference Friday after giving a clean chit to Aryan Khan in the Cordelia cruise drugs case in October last year, S N Pradhan, Director General of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), said there was no sufficient evidence against him and he is not a part of any international drug cartel nor is there any conspiracy. Pradhan added action will be taken against the Mumbai NCB team that arrested him as serious irregularities have been found in the investigation done by the team.
At least 15 persons were injured, five of them seriously, when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a 25-feet deep gorge at Wagobha Khind in Palghar district of Maharashtra on Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway early on Friday, police told PTI. The incident occurred around 6 am when the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus was travelling from Bhusawal in north Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district to Boisar in Palghar, a police official said.
Mumbai on Thursday recorded 350 new coronavirus positive cases, its highest single-day count since February 11 this year, although nobody died due to the infection during the day, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. This is for the 10th day in a row that the metropolis has witnessed more than 150 Covid-19 cases. Except four days, the city has recorded daily infection cases in three digits so far this month. With this addition, Mumbai’s infection tally climbed to 10, 63,921, but the death toll remained unchanged at 19,566, the civic body said in its bulletin.
The overall state performance of Maharashtra was ranked higher in language, Mathematics and EVS subjects, than the national average in most cases. (File photo)
Ahead of the monsoon, landslide-prone areas dotting Mumbai have once against endangered the lives of thousands of families. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) activists personally visited some of these vulnerable spots and according to them, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has no plans to tackle landslides during the monsoon.
In a statement issued Friday, the AAP said, “As per the RTI replies secured by RTI activist Anil Galgali, there are 327 landslide-prone areas while the BMC claims there are 291. Galgali says 22,483 families are at risk in the monsoons.”
“In 2021, more than 30 people died in the dual landslides of Bharat Nagar in Chembur and Suryanagar in Vikhroli. State environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray had allotted a fund of Rs 61.48 crore to secure these flood-prone areas but sadly, nothing has happened to safeguard the people, probably because they are the poorest of the poor,” AAP said. (Read more)
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) seized amphetamine, ecstasy tablets, paper blots of LSD and cocaine worth around Rs 1 crore in recent operations in Mumbai and arrested one person, an official said on Friday.
A team from the NCB's Mumbai zonal unit on Monday seized 970 gm of amphetamine (commercial quantity), valued at Rs 80 lakh, in Andheri (east), a release issued by the probe agency stated.
The contraband was concealed in four brown-coloured wooden ashtrays, which were part of a shipment destined to New Zealand, it added. In a separate operation, the agency recovered 104 gm of ecstasy tablets, 100 paper blots of LSD weighing 2 gm (all commercial quantity) and 25 gm of cocaine at Foreign Post Office here on Wednesday, the release said. (PTI)
The delay in reconstruction of the nearly 50-year-old Gopal Krishna Gokhale flyover – a crucial connector between Andheri East and West, a part of which had collapsed in 2018 – is costing Andheri residents and commuters an enormous amount of time that they end up spending in traffic jams, especially during peak hours. (Read the full article by Omkar Gokhale)
Maharashtra on Friday recorded 536 new coronavirus infections -- the highest one-day rise in cases since March 3 -- but zero pandemic-related fatalities, the health department said.
The tally of active cases crossed the 2,500-mark, it said. On March 3, the state had recorded 544 new infections. The state's COVID-19 caseload rose to 78,84,865 while death toll stood unchanged at 1,47,858.
The case fatality rate in Maharashtra is 1.87 per cent. On Thursday, the state had recorded 511 new cases and one death. State capital Mumbai alone recorded 351 new coronavirus cases on Friday. The number of active cases rose to 2,568. (PTI)
Former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who is currently in judicial custody, has been admitted to a hospital after he complained of high blood pressure and chest pain, his aide said on Friday.
Deshmukh was suffering from "uncontrolled high blood pressure and chest pain," and was admitted to an ICU at the civic-run KEM Hospital here for Stress Thallium Heart Test on May 25, he said. The 72-year-old former minister was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged money laundering case in November 2021.
Earlier this month, a court had rejected Deshmukh's plea seeking permission to undergo a shoulder surgery at a private hospital. He could get the medical procedure done at the state-run JJ Hospital in the city, it said. (PTI)
The Navi Mumbai police busted a fake call centre operating at a business park and arrested three persons involved in running the establishment, an official said on Friday.
Based on a complaint, officials of the crime branch's cyber cell raided the premises on Wednesday and arrested Harit Sudhama Prasad (32), Pravin Patil (41) and Ashish Shukla (30), assistant commissioner of police (Crime) Vinayak Vast said. The trio allegedly illegally obtained confidential data of US citizens and called them through VoIP, by posing as representatives of a renowned pharma company, he said. (PTI)
The government has asked the Finance Ministry to take action against former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede for his alleged “shoddy work” while probing a ‘drugs-on-cruise’ case in which film star Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan was arrested last year, official sources said.
Appropriate action is also being initiated against Wankhede for allegedly providing a fake caste certificate, they added. Aryan Khan was given a clean chit by the Narcotics Control Bureau in the October 2021 ‘drugs-on-cruise’ case on Friday.
Wankhede is an Indian Revenue Service officer and the finance ministry is the nodal authority to take the action against him. The government has asked the competent authority to take appropriate action against Wankhede for his alleged shoddy investigation in the ‘drugs-on-cruise’ case, sources said. (Read more)
Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik on Friday asked if the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) will take action against IRS official Sameer Wankhede and "his private army" now that it has given a clean chit to Aryan Khan in an alleged drug seizure case.
While Malik is in prison in an alleged money laundering case, his comment was published through the Twitter account `Office of Nawab Malik.' "Now that Aryan Khan and 5 others get a clean chit. Will NCB take action against Sameer Wankhede his team and the private army? Or will it shield the culprits? " said the tweet, accompanied by hashtags `Farziwada exposed' and `Truth prevails.' Malik, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, was the first to question the raid conducted by Wankhede, then zonal director of the NCB in Mumbai, on a cruise ship last October during which Aryan and others were arrested. (PTI)
Addressing a press conference Friday after giving a clean chit to Aryan Khan in the Cordelia cruise drugs case in October last year, S N Pradhan, Director General of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), said there was no sufficient evidence against him and he is not a part of any international drug cartel nor is there any conspiracy. Pradhan added action will be taken against the Mumbai NCB team that arrested him as serious irregularities have been found in the investigation done by the team.
Pradhan said, “The SIT formed to look into the probe done by our Mumbai NCB team found irregularities in the investigation. Out of 20 accused, six were not chargesheeted as physical and circumstantial evidence was not found against them. The remaining 14 accused were chargesheeted as corroborative evidence was found against them. As per Supreme Court, there has to be evidence ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ which was found in the case of the 14 accused but not in case of the remaining six accused (including Aryan Khan). So, the principle of ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ of the Supreme Court was followed by us.” (Read more)
Hailing the clean chit given by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, in the 'drugs on cruise' case, the ruling NCP in Maharashtra on Friday asked who would be held responsible for the trauma he suffered. It also said that the then zonal director of the NCB, Sameer Wankhede, was answerable to the people of this country.
Ally Congress alleged that the entire case was part of a 'larger conspiracy' to topple the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, in which it shares power with the Shiv Sena and NCP. The NCB on Friday gave a clean chit to Aryan Khan in the October 2021 'drugs on cruise' case in which he was arrested last year. Officials of the NCB, which filed its chargesheet in a Mumbai court, said Aryan Khan and five others had not been named due to 'lack of sufficient evidence'. (PTI)
Sambhaji Chhatrapati, a descendant of Shivaji Maharaj and prominent Maratha leader, on Friday pulled out of the race for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls, days after he announced that he would contest the election as an independent candidate.
Speaking to reporters here, he claimed that his decision to not contest the election was aimed at preventing "horse-trading", and accused Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray of breaking his promise on providing Shiv Sena's support for his second term in the Upper House of Parliament. Sambhaji Chhatrapati had announced that he would contest the Rajya Sabha polls as an independent candidate and sought the Sena's help, but the party insisted that he contest as its official candidate, which he did not agree to. (PTI)
Union Minister Narayan Rane underwent an angioplasty on Friday morning at Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital and is now in recovery, his doctors confirmed. The BJP leader requires two stents, of which one was inserted today another will be tackled at a later date, the hospital said.
A coronary angiography, or an X-ray of the heart's blood vessels, was first carried out before the surgery. The angioplasty was conducted by Dr Kalarickal Mathew, the hospital told The Indian Express.
This is not the first time Rane has had an angioplasty. In 2009, the BJP leader underwent the procedure after he complained of chest pain due to a blockage in his arteries. Then too, he was admitted to Lilavati Hospital in Bandra.
At least 15 persons were injured, five of them seriously, when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a 25-feet deep gorge at Wagobha Khind in Palghar district of Maharashtra on Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway early on Friday, police told PTI. The incident occurred around 6 am when the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus was travelling from Bhusawal in north Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district to Boisar in Palghar, a police official said.