Maharashtra News Updates: Man 'kills' girlfriend after fight over marriage in Mumbai, arrested

A man has been arrested in Mumbai for allegedly killing his 20-year-old girlfriend after having a quarrel over the issue of marriage, police said on Friday.

New Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Friday said the party will work towards winning 45-plus Lok Sabha seats and more than 200 Assembly segments in the 2024 polls in the state in alliance with the Shiv Sena faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The famous art deco buildings on the seafront at Marine Drive in south Mumbai will be lit up in the colours of the national flag as part of the "Har Ghar Tiranga" campaign for the next three days, a civic official said on Friday. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will spend Rs 48 lakh to illuminate 28 art deco buildings lining the Queen's Necklace stretch from August 13 to 15, he said.

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked former party corporators to stay in constant touch with people as the crisis-hit outfit braces for the crucial elections to the Mumbai civic body.

The police in Maharashtra's Thane city have arrested a 31-year-old woman from Delhi for allegedly cheating a person of more than Rs 7 lakh in crypto currency fraud, an official said on Friday. Based on a tip-off, the police's economic offences wing (EOW) arrested the accused Babita Kishore Kumar from Delhi a couple of days ago, inspector Neelam Wavhal of the EOW's cyber crime branch said.

Maharashtra on Friday recorded 1,975 new coronavirus infections and five pandemic-related deaths, the health department said. The state's Covid-19 case tally rose to 80,68,218 and death toll reached 1,48,167.

A compound wall of a company collapsed amid heavy rains in Maharashtra's Thane city on Friday and no casualty was reported in the incident, an official said. The incident occurred in the Wagle Estate area of the city around 12 pm, said Avinash Sawant, the chief of the regional disaster management cell (RDMC).

The police have seized gutka and banned tobacco products worth Rs 55.4 lakh and arrested the driver of the vehicle transporting the contraband in Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Friday.

The BJP on Friday appointed Chandrashekhar Bawankule as its Maharashtra unit president and Ashish Shelar as Mumbai unit chief ahead of municipal polls in the city.

Maharashtra has been relegated to the third position in the country’s cadaver organ donation map with neighbouring Gujarat climbing to the second spot, helped by an aggressive programme driven by the public sector. While the state has a little over four months to reclaim its place, chances of toppling Gujarat, or the current leader in donations, Telangana, seem bleak at the current pace. In the eight months of 2022, Maharashtra has seen only 52 cadaver donations, most of which came from Pune (24), followed by Mumbai (22). Nagpur and Aurangabad contributed five and one, respectively. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, Maharashtra had carried out the highest donations in India—160 in 2019—raising hopes that the deceased donor programme had finally broken its inertia.

Commercial operations for Metro 3’s Phase I stretch (AareyBKC) is scheduled to commence in December next year. Before that, the Aarey car shed will be ready in April 2023. The entire corridor (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz) is expected to open by June 2024. “We are going to begin Phase I operations with nine rakes, for which facilities will be made ready by April 2023. In July, the Aarey depot will be able to handle operations for the entire corridor, even though some other works may continue,” said Ashwini Bhide, managing director, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL), on Thursday. The corporation claims that 29% of work on the depot stands completed, and the remaining work is expected to go smoothly now that political hurdles have been cleared.

Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 1,877 fresh coronavirus cases, while five more patients succumbed to the infection in the state, the health department said. With these additions, the state's overall Covid-19 tally reached 80,66,243, while the death toll increased to 1,48,162, the department said in a bulletin.