Customs dept arrest Afghan man at Delhi airport with 114 Kg coral

NEW DELHI: The customs department arrested an Afghan national at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), for allegedly trying to smuggle 114 kilograms of coral into India.

The Safi Airways passenger arrived in Delhi on Monday from Kabul, and was intercepted after a random search.

“On personal and baggage search, organ pipe coral species weighing 114 kgs were recovered from the passenger,” a press release issued by the customs department on Wednesday said.

Organ pipe corals are prohibited under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and under CITES — Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

The accused was hence in violation of the customs act, by having in possession a prohibited item. The large amount also raises questions of the purpose of trying to ship it into India.

“Further investigation is under process,” according to the official statement.

Corals are used for medicinal purposes and as gems and jewellery according to a senior customs official.

This is not the first time somebody has tried to smuggle coral into India. Last year, 80 kilograms of coral was seized by customs officials.

HTC & PTI

The data bring out the disparity between cost of healthcare in metros and rest of India.

Typically, the premium depends on treatments provided, the age of the customer and her claim history.

But the city where the customer resides has not been taken into account while fixing the premium.

Several companies such as Bajaj Allianz and Apollo Munich Health Insurance have started adopting differential pricing for health insurance premium.

Sources said ICICI Lombard and Reliance General Insurance too are looking into it.

“The rationale behind adopting differential pricing was to make sure that people living in high-cost zones do not crosssubsidise for their counterparts in low-cost zones by paying the

Though employed as a lowly ‘khalasi’ with the Indian Railways, the risks that Savitri, 35, takes are indeed high. Bastar is where Maoists are engaged in a conflict with the Indian state, targeting both government property and personnel. In the past one year alone, officials say Maoists engineered more than a dozen train derailments in the region, at times by removing fishplates or placing boulders on the track.

But Savitri is unfazed either by the dangers that she courts routinely, or her unique position as the railways’ only woman field staff in the Maoist stronghold where a railway official was abducted recently. “I simply do my job,” she says modestly.

But her superiors are impressed. “As the lone woman in the signal department here, the work she does is extremely dangerous and courageous,” points out Ramraju, the station master in the nearby district headquarters of Dantewada.

Top police officials agree protecting the railway tracks connecting Kirandul with Jagdalpur is extremely challenging. The stretch that Savitri guards is several kilometres from the last roadhead

Under affiliation bye laws, schools and publishers are liable for any action and have to take responsibility of the content prescribed by them. Schools also must disclose the books they publish, though, sources said, most don’t do so.

Schools that do not have a website can put the list up on their notice boards.

Schools are required to follow a syllabus based on the curriculum prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for the middle classes or exercise extreme care while selecting books of private publishers. The Union government is trying to ensure more NCERT books are available for India’s schools, although it is not mandatory for institutions to use those books alone.

Police seized the bogus notes. Rohit was left with a little above Rs 400 in his bank account after the incident, while sub-inspector Kumar lost Rs 2,000 as he didn’t believe the complainant initially.

A similar note was dished out by an SBI ATM in neighbouring Ghaziabad on January 24.

Journalists recording the incident on their cell phone were also attacked.

Members of the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) were among the marchers. They too were assaulted.

The genesis of Wednesday’s violence was the forced cancellation of a seminar organised by the college Literary Society, for which JNU students Khalid and Shehla Rashid were invited.

Khalid was arrested last year in a case of sedition over organising a rally on the JNU campus in which anti-India slogans were allegedly heard. Rashid was the then the JNU student union vice president.

Students owing allegiance to the ABVP were unhappy with the invite to Khalid and Rashid.

The ABVP justified their protest, alleging that anti-national slogans were shouted at Ramjas on Tuesday.

They claimed to have a video showing students shouting “Bastar Mange Azaadi” and “Kashmir Mange Azaadi”. The footage could not be independently verified.

“Slogans for Kashmir’s azaadi were heard in the college. We won’t let DU become JNU. Ours was an absolutely peaceful march and we only want action in this case. We were beaten up by students for being nationalistic,” said Satinder Awana, former DUSU president and ABVP member.

The ABVP denied charges that its members turned violent.

But Vinita Chandra, a teacher at Ramjas, said students shouted slogans for freedom of speech.

“I was there in yesterday’s march, which the ABVP is referring to. There were no such slogans. The ABVP just wants to twist the events because they have nothing to justify their violence,” she said.