Maharashtra News Updates: State logs 179 new coronavirus cases; it's 56 in Mumbai

The Mumbai Police on Tuesday claimed to have cracked the murder case of an 85-year-old man by arresting his 30-year-old caretaker from Ahmedabad within 12 hours of the crime, an official said. The body of Muralidhar Naik with his hands and feet tied with clothes was found in the bedroom of his flat in suburban Santacruz on Monday morning. (PTI)

Maharashtra on Tuesday recorded 179 fresh coronavirus cases, a jump of more than 100 infections from the previous day, while two more patients succumbed to the disease in the state, the health department said. With these additions, the state's overall Covid-19 tally rose to 81,67,793, while the toll increased to 1,48,540, a health department bulletin said. Mumbai recorded 56 cases during the day. The state had logged 76 cases and one fatality on Monday. Solapur and Sindhdurg districts recorded one fatality each, said the bulletin. The state's coronavirus recovery rate was 98.16 per cent, while the case fatality rate stood at 1.81 per cent. The bulletin said 137 patients recovered from the coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours, taking their cumulative count to 80,17,686 and leaving the state with 1,567 active cases. It said at present the dominant variant of Covid-19 was Omicron XBB.1.16 and a total of 1,241 cases of this strain have been found in the state. Also, 13 deaths were linked to this variant. The department said 8,518 coronavirus tests were carried out in the state in the last 24 hours, pushing up their total count to 8,70,58,765. (PTI)

Mumbai on Tuesday reported 56 new Covid-19 cases, taking the overall tally to 11,63,352, while no fresh death linked to the infection was registered in the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. A BMC bulletin said the death toll remained unchanged at 19,768. On Monday, the city had logged 28 cases and a single fatality. As per the bulletin, 1,515 coronavirus tests were conducted in the city in the last 24 hours, taking their cumulative total to 1,88,56,157. According to the BMC, the number of recoveries reached 11,43,155 after 47 more patients recuperated from the respiratory illness. Mumbai's coronavirus recovery rate stood at 98.3 per cent, while the growth rate of cases between May 2 and May 8 was 0.0054 per cent, it said. The case doubling rate was 14,089 days, said the bulletin. (PTI)

Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis watched the movie 'The Kerala Story' in Nagpur. (ANI)

A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrived in Nagpur on Tuesday to conduct a probe into threatening phone calls made to Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, a police official said. The calls were allegedly made by a murder convict, Jayesh Pujari alias Kantha, who was arrested from a jail in Belagavi, Karnataka, and booked under the anti-terror law UAPA. A senior official of the Nagpur police said the NIA had registered a case at Bengaluru and the Mumbai unit of the central agency was directed to conduct an investigation. A team of the NIA arrived in Nagpur from Mumbai and started collecting documents and crucial leads regarding the case, he said. Exploring the suspected role of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terror outfit, and the underworld in the episode are the main focus of the investigation, said the official. On January 14, Pujari made a threatening call to Gadkari's public relations office in Nagpur, demanding Rs 100 crore and claiming to be a member of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, according to the police. At that time, he was lodged in a jail in neighbouring Karnataka. He made another call on March 21, threatening to harm the BJP Lok Sabha MP from Nagpur if Rs 10 crore was not paid to him, the police said. Pujari was arrested and brought to Nagpur on March 28 from a jail in Belagavi city of Karnataka, and the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act was invoked against him. After receiving the green signal from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, NIA officials launched an investigation on terror angle as Pujari had relations with terrorists, including Lashkar-e-Taiba's South Division chief Captain Naseer, said the official. The murder convict had also taken arms training in the North-East, he added. (PTI)

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a chargesheet in Dapoli Sai resort case, wherein six people have been mentioned as the accused in the case and statements of 13 witnesses have been recorded. While Anil Parab’s statement has been recorded, he has not been mentioned as an accused in the case: ED (ANI)

A decision regarding the disqualification of MLAs is the prerogative of the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Maharashtra speaker Rahul Narwekar said on Tuesday. His comment came ahead of the Supreme Court's verdict on a plea seeking the disqualification of 16 MLAs of Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena which is expected in the next few days. "As per the rules of the legislature, the right to decide on disqualification of MLAs solely lies with the speaker of the House. I am sure that there would not be any breach of the constitutional discipline. We have a vibrant judiciary in this country," Narwekar told reporters. Narwekar, who is a lawyer by training, also said the judiciary is well aware of its responsibilities and duties. He said the Constitution has given equal rights to the legislative, judiciary, and executive and no one enjoys the right to superintend on others. Narwekar was elected as an MLA on BJP ticket from Mumbai. He took the oath as the Speaker for the first time in July 2022. (PTI)

Actor Rakhi Sawant's brother has been arrested in an old cheque bouncing case in Mumbai after a warrant was issued against him by a local court, police said on Tuesday. Rakesh Sawant was arrested on Sunday. He was produced before the metropolitan magistrate court in Andheri which remanded him to judicial custody till May 22, a police officer said. (PTI)

Thane’s pride

An international gold smuggler was intercepted by NCB at Nagpur airport. Gold worth Rs 1.8 crore was seized from him. Seven small white packets were found to be carefully stitched along the inner side of his jeans pants even as semi-liquid paste of golden colour was recovered from each packet. The case was handed over to Nagpur customs for detailed investigation: Amit Ghawate, IRS Zonal Director, NCB, Mumbai (ANI)

A special court in Pune on Tuesday extended till May 15 the police custody of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientist Pradeep Kurulkar, arrested by the Maharashtra police's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on charges of providing confidential information to a Pakistani agent. The scientist, a director at one of the DRDO labs in Pune, was arrested on May 3 and was in police custody. Kurulkar was produced before the additional sessions judge (Special Court) in the afternoon after the end of his police custody. (PTI)

A crew member of the controversial movie "The Kerala Story" has received a purported threat message on his mobile phone, prompting the Mumbai Police to provide security at his office in suburban Andheri, an official said on Tuesday. The movie's production head, Bhanjaya Sahu, received a message from an unknown number on his mobile phone on Saturday which read: "Don't step out alone, You didn't do good". Sahu approached the police on Saturday with a complaint, the official said, adding FIR is not registered yet. Based on the primary information, police have provided security at Sahu's office and further investigation is underway, he added. "The Kerala Story", which depicts the plight of a group of women in Kerala who are allegedly forced to convert and join ISIS, has kicked up a political storm. (PTI)

The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted searches against suspected bookie Anil Jaisinghani in a money laundering case linked to an alleged betting racket in the Indian Premier League (IPL) T-20 cricket tournament in 2015, official sources said. Jaisinghani and his daughter Aniksha were arrested by the Mumbai Police for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to bribe and blackmail Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's wife Amruta Fadnavis and using private messages to extort money from her when she refused to save Anil Jaisinghani from several FIRs lodged against him. He was subsequently arrested by the ED in April. (PTI)

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has sacked its superintendent Vishwa Vijay Singh, who was part of a team that raided Cordelia cruise and arrested actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan in 2021, for misconduct in another matter in which he was suspended earlier, officials said. The order about the termination of services of Singh was issued last month, an official said on Tuesday. Singh was part of the team which raided the Cordelia cruise and arrested Aryan Khan and others in the 'drugs-on-cruise' case in October 2021. "Vishwa Vijay Singh was removed from NCB's service in another case in which he was suspended last year and an inquiry was going on against him," the official said. He said the NCB found certain issues of misconduct during the inquiry, following which a decision was taken to remove Singh from service. (PTI)

Mumbai Police crime branch has arrested the caretaker, identified as Krishna Manbahadur, in the murder of 85-year-old man Muralidhar Purushottam Naik. He was planning to flee to Nepal but was arrested in Ahmedabad: Mumbai Police

Police have arrested two persons for allegedly trying to kill a man over a monetary dispute in Maharashtra's Palghar district, an official said on Tuesday. The man's uncle had taken a loan of Rs 800 from a friend of the accused, but it was not returned. (PTI)

A gas agency employee allegedly killed his colleague following a quarrel in Navi Mumbai township of Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Sunday in Rabale area when the accused allegedly hit the 45-year-old victim and attacked his private parts with a sharp weapon, senior police inspector Sudhir Patil from Rabale MIDC police station told PTI.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) on Tuesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah while referring to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data as per which nearly 40,000 women went missing in Gujarat in five years. This has brought to light the "dark side" of the state, an editorial in the Shiv Sena (UBT) mouthpiece Saamana said.The Marathi daily also attacked the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra over the disappearance several women in the state and said the police, that were being used to settle political scores, should rather be used to trace the missing women. (PTI)

Free hearing aids

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday questioned the "stature" of Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan in his own party after the latter targeted the NCP for fielding its candidates in the upcoming Karnataka Assembly polls. Chavan had earlier also expressed disagreement with Pawar's claim that the Congress leadership was stubborn during the talks for the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi in 2019. Pawar was in Satara where some reporters asked him about Chavan's reported comments that Nationalist Congress Party was the 'B' team of BJP in Karnataka, after the NCP fielded its candidates for the Assembly polls to be held there on Wednesday. In reply, Pawar said, "He should check what stature he has in his own party...whether it is A, B, C or D. Any colleague from his party would tell you in private." (PTI)

A group of citizens and organisations have claimed that communal and "hate spewing" speeches were made at a conclave organised by a right wing outfit in Maharashtra's Thane district last month and complained to police seeking action against the speakers. A memorandum dated May 5 and submitted by the group to the Thane police commissioner took a dim view of the event organised in Mumbra area here by the Sakal Hindu Samaj on April 30. (PTI)

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