Mumbai reports 176 Covid-19 cases, 3 deaths, 264 recoveries

An unidentified woman was found murdered on the footpath of the Vidhan Bhavan Square in Nagpur Civil Lines area on Monday, a police official said. The corpse of the woman, who seemed to be in her 50s, was naked and had head injuries, he said. She was bludgeoned to death with a rod and efforts were on to nab the accused, the Sadar police station official said.

Four men were arrested in different cases of alleged molestations that they committed at — CSTM, Kurla, and Mumbai Central— between July 18 and 24. Police said among the four victims, two included minors. Police said in the two cases involving minors, the accused has been booked under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

A 46-year-old man riding pillion on a motorcycle died after the vehicle hit a pothole and he was run over by a dumper on Mumbai-Nashik Highway in Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Monday. The accident occurred at Rajnoli Naka in Bhiwandi on Saturday, when the victim Brijeshkumar Jaiswar was travelling towards Thane city, senior inspector Ganpat Pingle of Kongaon police station said.The motorcycle hit a pothole, causing the riders to fall. When the victim fell, a dumper coming from behind crushed him to death, he said.

A 25-year-old man from Delhi was attacked and killed with a paver block while he was sleeping at a bus stop in the western suburb of Versova here, police on Monday. The victim, Suraj Manoj Tiwari, was attacked at a bus stop in Seven Bungalows locality late on Saturday night, an official from Versova police station said.

Tiwari's body, bearing multiple head wounds, was found by passersby on Sunday morning and the police were informed, he said.Investigations revealed that Tiwari hailed from Palam area of Delhi and was a street musician, he said.

The Mumbai police on Monday beefed up deployment in the Aarey colony area and detained two protestors who reached the site despite being served notices under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), an official said.The police had on Sunday served notices under section 149 of the CrPC to Tabrez Sayyed and Jayesh Bhise prohibiting them from assembling unlawfully to protest the construction of the metro car shed in Aarey, the official from Vanrai police station said.

After its move to exchange land with a private builder to construct the Mahul pumping station hit a dead end, BMC has again asked the Centre’s salt department to give land for its station. With chief minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv SenaBJP government in power, BMC has asked the state government to get the land from the department. BMC will now float fresh tenders for the station on the salt department land. After waiting for nearly two years for a response from the department, BMC had decided to construct the station on private land and worked out an exchange deal with Ajmera Realty and Infrastructure India Ltd. But this failed after new maps published by National Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA) showed that the land swapped by BMC with the builder was affected by Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) and no construction could take place on it. This meant that while BMC can construct a station on CRZ land, the builder who gets BMC’s land parcel can’t carry out any construction on the land, making the entire swap unfeasible for him.

Even as the ‘Save Aarey’ demonstrations were held inside Aarey and across nine states and union territories on Sunday, the Mumbai police have started issuing CrPC notices under section 149 to some of the activists in order to discourage public from unlawful assembly. Undeterred though, the green activists said that they will continue to protest and demand that the state government shift the Metro-3 car shed out of Aarey Colony.

Maharashtra on Sunday reported 2,015 fresh Covid-19 cases and six fatalities, taking the tally to 80,34,261 and the toll to 1,48,062, an official said.