What is the heritage status of Morena House, HC asks state

The Bombay high court on Friday directed the state government to determine whether Morena House, a Carmichael Road property brought by steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal, is a heritage structure and also whether it falls within the heritage precinct of the road, officially named ML Dahanukar Marg. The court has ordered the government to take a final call in two weeks.

“It is for the state government to take a final call whether it is a category A or category B heritage structure or not and whether the structure falls within the heritage precinct,” said a division bench of chief justice Manjula Chellur and justice Girish Kulkarni.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by a resident, Prakash Patel, challenging the validity of the decision of the BMC to grant permission to redevelop the bungalow.

The petitioner said the permission could not have been given without obtaining the same from the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC), as it was listed a Grade II-B heritage structure.

The developer and the BMC said that the list of heritage structures revised by the MHCC in 2012 did not specifically list Morena House as a Grade II-B heritage structure and was therefore not part of the list of proposed heritage structures. They said no permission of MHCC was required to be obtained before redeveloping the property.

The police recently arrested a 24-year-old Bandra resident for sending lewd messages to more than 20 women in Mumbai’s western suburbs.

Police said the man, Rohan D’souza, would find the numbers of random women from their Facebook profiles. He would then text them from his mother’s phone and ask them intimate questions, such as what they were wearing.

The accused admitted that he had been doing this for the past few months.

“D’souza initially started messaging girls from his locality, then moved on to random women,” said an officer from Mumbai crime branch unit 9. “Women have registered cases at police stations across the city,” he added.

The case came to light when the father of one of the women approached the crime branch, seeking help. Police got D’souza’s number and traced him to Mount Mary in Bandra.

He was nabbed from his house.

He was booked under sections 354 (D) (stalking) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Information Technology Act. The crime branch handed D’souza over to the Bandra police, who will investigate the case.

Earlier this year in March, the Vikhroli police had arrested Sandeep Pagare, a resident of Tagore Nagar, for harassing a girl who spurned his advances. He did not stop to harassing her even after she changed her phone number.

He also created a fake Facebook account of the victim.

Similarly on February 28 this year, a 30-year-old housewife from Parel registered a case with the Kalachowkie police after an unidentified person hacked her Facebook account and started to demand money from the people on her friend list The suspect is