City court lets off 3 convicts with community service

In a rare case, three of five people convicted for rioting and assaulting a director of Bombay Hospital, were asked by a metropolitan magistrate to do community service for two months instead of any jail time.

Additional chief metropolitan magistrate BU Chaudhari convicted Susil Dicholkar, 45, Jitendra Pawar 46, Ankush Roke, 66, Preeti Mane, 56 and Edueppa Bajrang, 46, for rioting, voluntarily causing hurt, mischief causing damage, intentionally insulting a person and criminal intimidation. Most of the charges attract up to two years in jail or a fine, whereas punishment for criminal intimidation is up to seven years or a fine. The judge declined to send the five to jail considering their advanced ages.

Chaudhari said, “Instead of sentencing the accused, they are released on due admonition that they shall not repeat any act of criminal nature and shall render social services of suitable nature at their workplace for an hour in a week after their working hours till June 18, 2017.”

The water you drink every day could be making you sick, especially if you live in South Mumbai. A report of water samples collected by the BMC from across the city between April 2016 and March 2017 shows south Mumbai gets the most contaminated water at 8.53%.

The report also reveals the BMC supplies 3.10% of contaminated water — a slight improvement from the past three years. Water contamination levels in 2015-16, 2014-15 and 2013-14 were 4.6%, 4.5% and 10.84% respectively.

The latest findings of water testing by the BMC revealed even though contamination levels in the water that surrounds the city have fallen to an all-year low, there continues to exist cases of E. coli contamination in the water.

Of the 36,833 samples collected around the year, 186 samples have tested positive for E.coli.

Of the 24 wards, A-ward, which includes areas like CST, Colaba, Churchgate, Cuffe Parade and houses several ministerial bungalows, has shown the highest level of contamination at 8.53%, followed by Mulund and Parel with 7.02%

Aand 6.09% respectively of water found unfit for drinking.

E coli, which is a type of bacteria that causes severe infection like diarrhoea, was found highest in A-ward with 38 out of 1,560 samples testing positive.

The bacteria concentration was also high in Mulund with 23 samples out of 1,082 showed presence of E coli followed by Parel with 17 samples out of 1084 tested positive.