4 Naxals, cop killed in firing in Chhattisgarh

RAIPUR: Four wanted Naxals, who all carried rewards on their heads, and a police official were killed in an exchange of fire in Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh, police said on Saturday.

Terming the killings as huge success for the police, an officer said they managed to eliminate the “high-value targets” who were active on Chhattisgarh-maharashtra border.

The incident took place on Friday night at Pardhauni village under Manpur police station limits, located over 150 kms from Raipur, when a team of security forces was out on a counter-insurgency operation, Inspector General of Police (Durg range)

Vivekanand Sinha said.

“We got input at 7 pm on Friday that a group of 7-8 armed cadres were camping and cooking food at Pardhauni village, located around six kms away from Manpur police station,” Rajnandgaon SP Jitendra Shukla told PTI.

Based on the tip-off, a police team of 28, led by Madanwada police station SHO Shyam Kishore Sharma and Kohka police station SHO Pravin Dwivedi, launched the operation, he said.

“During search of encounter site, bodies of four ultras, were recovered. Police also found an AK-47 rifle, an SLR rifle and two 12-bore guns,” Shukla said.

Sub Inspector Shyam Kishore Sharma (36), who sustained bullet injuries, died while being shifted to hospital, he added.

The latest 10,000 infections were recorded in three days, the same time that it took for the tally to go from about 40,000 to 50,000. It took five days for the cases to climb from 30,000 to 40,000 and seven days to reach 20,000 to 30,000 cases. India recorded its first 10,000 Covid-19 cases in nearly 43 days, with a wave of infections beginning in March after three isolated cases were first reported in Kerala in January.

The Union government has maintained that the country is on the right path in controlling the infections. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday said that there is no need to anticipate worst case situation in India like in developed countries.

“We do not anticipate a very worst type of situation in our country like many other developed countries but still we have prepared the whole country for the worst situation,” said Vardhan interacting with health ministers and senior officials of North-east state.

He said India is improving its battle against Covid-19. “Our fatality rate in the country continues to be around 3.3% and the recovery rate has climbed up to 29.9%, these are very good indicators. The doubling rate for the last three days has been about 11 days, for last seven days it has been 9.9 days,” he said.

The disease’s doubling rate, which is defined as the average period it takes for a twofold rise, decreased from 11.5 days on May 3 – the cases hit 40,000 on that day – to 10.3 on May 6, the first time the figure has significantly reduced during the lockdown. The doubling rate -- which is calculated over a period of last seven days -- was four days at the beginning of April. Experts say the peak of the outbreak is yet to come.

The health minister said that data evaluated on Friday from various states found that only 0.38% of the patients were on the ventilators, 1.88% required oxygen support and 2.21% were on ICU beds.

Cases in Maharashtra looked set to cross 20,000 on Saturday after it reported 19,063 till Friday evening. Of these, 12,154 cases – about a fifth of the national tally – have been reported in Mumbai alone. The state also reported 731 deaths, the most in India.

Gujarat continued to reel in the virus with the state recording 7,403 confirmed cases till 7.30 pm on Saturday. Drones hovered over the pandemic-stricken Ahmedabad on Saturday spraying disinfectant on the streets. Ahmedabad accounts for 343 of the almost 2,000 deaths reported nationwide and just under 10% percent of cases registered.

Experts fear India’s tally may increase as the government plans to bring back a large number of Indians stranded abroad. In the first week of a massive air operation that began on Friday, 64 flights will bring 15,000 Indian citizens home from 12 countries.

Experts say that while the impact of the lockdown appeared to have relatively controlled the spread, the gains could get undermined if clusters were not contained effectively, and people not tested widely. The next few weeks will determine the country’s trajectory in managing the outbreak and preventing the health care infrastructure from being overrun.

Across the world, the United States continued to be the worsthit country with over 1.3 million cases and at least 80,000 deaths. The UK, which is now the epicentre of Europe, has over 31,000 Covid-19 infections. number of workers returning home on Shramik trains.west Bengal, senior officials said, has received only two special trains so far and hasn’t cleared any more trains. Until Friday, more than 250,000 migrants had been sent home on 251 Shramik trains. The TMC hit back at Shah. “Amit Shah’s letter is full of outright lies. Two trains have already reached and eight more are expected to reach Bengal in the coming three days. Overall, 80,000 people have been brought back using various means of transport. Amit Shah just woke up from his 40-day sleep but when one writes a letter still in his sleep, the person gets the facts all wrong,” TMC Rajya Sabha leader and national spokesperson Derek O’brien said on Saturday.

O’brien presented a document showing two trains each from Punjab and Tamil Nadu and three from Karnataka are in the draft schedule of special trains, as of May 8, for reaching seven districts of Bengal between May 10 and 12, carrying 12,714 passengers altogether. Another train is scheduled to arrive in Malda district on May 10, carrying 1,7 21 passengers from Telangana.

“We have a seven-stage plan to bring back the migrants. We are doing it in a staggered manner. We did not announce a lockdown without an iota of planning. We don’t want to bring the migrant workers without a proper plan as we are considering all possible implications to find the best way to do it,” O’brien said.

The issue of migrant workers is the latest flashpoint between the Centre and the West Bengal government amid a row over the state’s efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). The two sides have clashed over a visit by interministerial central teams (IMCTS) for an assessment of the situation in seven West Bengal districts. While the teams claimed that they didn’t get any support from the state government in assessing measures put in place to control Covid-19, the state government accused the Centre of politicising a public health crisis.

Union home secretary Ajay Bhall a a l s o o n Thursday slammed the West Bengal government for a low rate of testing and high rate of mortality – 13.2%, - by far the highest for any state. The Centre has also accused the Trinamool Congress government of not allowing cross-border movement of goods trucks to Bangladesh, potentially jeoparadising trade commitments made to the neighbour..

Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC youth wing chief Abhishek Banerjee wrote on Twitter that the Union home minister should apologise if he failed to substantiate the charges in his letter with facts. The Congress added another political twist.

“The chief minister has given permission to eight more trains after Shah wrote to the state,” alleged Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who is an MP from Berhampore in West Bengal. O’brien denied the allegation

The issue of migrant workers is the latest flashpoint between the Centre and the West Bengal government amid a row over the state’s efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). The two sides have clashed over a visit by interministerial central teams (IMCTS) for an assessment of the situation in seven West Bengal districts. While the teams claimed that they didn’t get any support from the state government in assessing measures put in place to control Covid-19, the state government accused the Centre of politicising a public health crisis.

Bengal has reported 1,678 Covid-19 positive cases and 160 deaths until Saturday morning. from Surat, a Covid-19 hotspot in Gujarat. They’ve been lodged at a makeshift isolation centre, an under-construction jail, in Nagar Uttari. Though 20 have tested Coivid-19 positive, the rest 31 passengers haven’t been infected,” said Kamleshwar Narayan, subdivisional officer (SDO), Nagar Uttari.

The SDO said the return of migrant workers from other states had added a new dimension to the viral outbreak in Jharkhand.

“Batches of migrant labourers had arrived on Wednesday and Thursday and 158 of them have been quarantined at the makeshift isolation centre. The test results of swab samples, collected on Wednesday and Thursday, are still pending. We’ve shifted the 20 Covid-19 positive patients to the district hospital,” he said.

Koderma district, which had been declared a green zone after its lone Covid-19 patient recovered, is back in the orange zone after the two new cases were detected on Friday evening. The two migrants workers had come back from Surat and Varanasi.; The district had last reported a Covid-19 case on April 11. 25. The lockdown is scheduled to end on May 17.

Other industry associations have also asked for a large stimulus package to bring the economy back on track. While the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has asked for a ~10 lakh crore package, the PHD Chambers of Commerce and Industry has demanded ~16 lakh crore.

Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) president Niranjan Hiranandani stressed on an urgent need for a stimulus package. “NITI Aayog has proposed a ~10 lakh crore stimulus package and we suggested a package for ~14 lakh crore,” he said.

Whil e industry bodies endorsed the government’s initial response under the Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), they are unanimous about a large stimulus package to save both lives and livelihood. The government on March 26 announced a ~1.7 lakh crore package under PMGKY, about 0.8% of GDP. The welfare package was aimed at providing immediate relief to the poor by providing them three-month ration and cooking gas for free and direct cash transfer to underprivileged women, elderly people and disabled people. Since then, there have been reports of a soon-to-be-announced fiscal package for industry, but none has been.

An immediate substantive stimulus is required from the government for both the poor and the industry, especially micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMES), CII said.

“Clearly, time is running out for a fiscal stimulus package to rescue the economy. Delayed fiscal relief for enterprises reeling under the lockdown will make it harder for them to recover,” CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee said.

It proposed direct cash transfers of ~2 lakh crore to the poor having bank accounts linked through the JAM trinity (JanDhan, Aadhaar and mobile) in addition to the ~1.7 lakh PMGKY package.

It should be ensured that the migrant labourers are kept within the purview of the proposed cash transfers, Banerjee said.

CII also sought ~2 lakh crore immediate support in the form of additional working capital to enterprises to pay salaries and prevent job losses. The additional working capital provided by banks for the April-june wage bill should be backed by a government guarantee at 4-5% interest, it added.

CBI, Enforcement Directorate and Directorate of Revenue and Intelligence (DRI), are currently pursuing around 50 fugitives – mostly economic offenders – living abroad, through red notices, extradition requests and look out circulars. Some of them include Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Neeshal Modi, Mehul Choksi, Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, Lalit Modi and European mi d d l e men Gui d o Ra l p h Haschke and Carlo Gerosa.

The government had informed Parliament last year t hat at l east 16 extradition requests were pending in the UAE, the UK, Belgium, Italy, Egypt, the United States, and Antigua and Barbuda against various accused persons.

According to the CBI’S first i nformation r eport ( FIR), reviewed by HT, RDIL was engaged in the export of basmati rice to countries in the MiddleEast and Europe from its three mills in Karnal, Haryana. It has a registered office in Delhi and branch offices in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Dubai (UAE) as well.

The company’s loan account turned NPA (non-performing asset) in January 2016 after which a joint inspection of properties was conducted in August and October that year. It was found that “the entire machinery installed in the old unit was removed by the borrowers. Borrowers were not available at the time of joint inspection and Haryana Police security guards were found deployed there”, according to SBI’S complaint, which is now part of the CBI FIR.

“On inquiry, it has come to know that the borrowers are absconding and have left the country,” it added. The FIR states that the accused promoters falsified the accounts, fudged the balance sheet in order to gain unlawfully at the cost of bank funds, and illegally removed the plants and machinery from the factory premises without the consent of lenders. members of the Gandhi family. The group runs the National Herald newspaper.

The nine-floor building has two basements and a total built-up area of 15,000 sq metres, it said, adding its total value is Rs120 crore.

The building is located at plot no 2, survey no 341, near Kala Nagar, EPF office, Bandra (East).

The agency alleged that the accused in this case, that includes former Haryana chief minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Vora, “used the proceeds of crime” in the form of a plot allotted “illegally” to AJL in Panchkula and pledged it to avail loan from the Syndicate Bank branch on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi to construct this building in Bandra.

“Thus, the said asset at Mumbai that germinated out of the proceeds of crime has been attached to the extent of Rs16.38 crore. Further investigation is going on,” the agency said.

The Panchkula plot has already been attached by the ED, and Hooda and Vora have been questioned by it in the case.