Mumbai, May 21 (IANS) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has questioned why “preferential treatment” was meted out to a wealthy, 17-year-old drunken boy who killed two persons zooming in his Porsche car, sparking an uproar in public and political circles, here on Tuesday.

In a video statement, Rahul Gandhi said that when any autorickshaw drivers and cabbies or Ola or Uber drivers or bus drivers or truckers kill anybody unintentionally, they are dumped in jail for 10 years and the (jail) keys are thrown away.

“However, when a teenage kid from a rich family consumes alcohol and kills two people in his Porsche, he is told to pen an ‘essay’. Why are the other bus, truck autorickshaw drivers or cabbies not asked to write such essays,” said Rahul Gandhi sharply.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was questioned about dividing the country into two ‘Hindustans’ – one of the poor and the other of billionaires, he responded by asking whether all should be made poor.

“The question is of justice – the poor and the prosperous. All should be entitled to equal justice. That’s why we are fighting. We are fighting for equality of justice and against injustice,” declared Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress leader’s statement came amid a massive public outcry following the tragic incident in which two techies from Madhya Pradesh were killed in a speeding Porsche driven by the teenage son of a prominent Pune builder, Vishal Agarwal early on Sunday morning.

While Vishal has been arrested, along with the owner and managers of a Mundhwa hotel and pub, the minor boy was let off on bail by the Juvenile Justice Board which asked him to write a 300-word essay on the accident, serve with the Yerawada Traffic Police department for two weeks and undergo counselling and medical treatment to give up alcohol.

The issue snowballed into a major political row with the Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders like Congress’ Vijay Wadettiwar and Pune MLA Ravindra Dhangekar, and Shiv Sena (UBT)’s MP Sanjay Raut demanding a judicial probe and removing Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar, slamming the police for serving pizzas to the accused while two dead bodies were lying on the road, among other things.

While the builder Agarwal is being interrogated by the Pune Police, three other accused – Prahlad Bhutada, manager Sachin Katkar and bartender Sandeep Sangle – have been sent to police custody till April 24 for allegedly serving alcohol illegally to a minor customer and his friends, and the premises were raided and sealed by the State Excise Department on Tuesday.

Rattled by the public outcry, Deputy CM and Home Minister Devendra Fadnavis rushed unannounced to the Pune Police Commissionerate and held detailed discussions with the top brass, and said that the police was proceeding on the right track.

However, activists and lawyers including Asim Sarode have accused the police of wilfully invoking mild charges and have intervened in the case seeking justice for the two techies who lost their lives.

–IANS

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Agartala, May 21 (IANS) Five days after Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha announced that the state government would implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the opposition Congress urged the BJP government not to implement the new law as it would change the demography of the state.

A delegation of the Congress tribal wing Tripura Pradesh Congress Adivasi Committee (TPCAC) on Tuesday met Tripura Chief Secretary J. K. Sinha and urged him not to implement the CAA.

The TPCAC Chairman Sabda Kumar Jamatia, who led the five-member delegation, told the Chief Secretary that if more foreigners take shelter in Tripura, it would add additional hardship to the people of the bordering state in terms of economy and other issues.

The TPCAC urged the state government not to implement the CAA in Tripura as it would jeopardise the interest of the indigenous people.

The Congress’ tribal wing said that before passing the CAA in 2019 in the parliament, 1971 was the cut-off year of residence in India for obtaining Indian citizenship by any foreigner through an accepted procedure and for that, any foreigner entering Tripura from Bangladesh after 1971 cannot be provided Indian Citizenship.

Meanwhile, Congress working committee member Sudip Roy Barman criticised Tipra Motha Party (TMP) supremo Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma and alleged that he cheated the tribals by raising many demands and now backtracked from his earlier stand.

“Earlier Debbarma strongly opposed the CAA and now after becoming an ally of the BJP since March, changed his position on the issue. TMP Chief was talking against the BJP before March, but now he has changed colours and joined the BJP to serve his personal interest,” said Roy Barman, also a Congress MLA.

The former minister urged the people especially the tribals not to trust Debbarma anymore and to teach him a lesson befittingly in future elections.

Reacting to the criticism of Roy Barman, the TMP head said that he was always with the tribals and that in future he would fight for the cause of the tribals, who according to him were majority in Tripura and now become minority.

Debbarma said that Roy Barman has no integrity for the people of Tripura and joined Trinamool Congress and BJP to gain personal interest but later quit both parties and again returned to Congress.

Tripura Chief Minister last week said that after directions from the Centre, the state government is preparing to implement CAA in the state.

Following the advice of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), a six-member state-level empowered committee with the Director of Census Operations as its chairman was formed in Tripura recently to grant citizenship under the CAA.

Rabindra Reang, Director of Census Operations, Tripura, said that after the advice of the MHA, like other states and Union Territories in the country, a state-level empowered committee was constituted in Tripura for granting Indian citizenship under the CAA.

District-level committees headed by the District Magistrates of all the eight districts were also formed accordingly, Reang told IANS.

Meanwhile, on March 11, the Centre notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules 2024, thus paving the way for enforcing the CAA, which seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians who came to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before December 31, 2014.

–IANS

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Bhubaneswar, May 21 (IANS) The Congress on Tuesday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to expel BJP spokesperson and Puri Lok Sabha candidate Sambit Patra from the party for his controversial remark on Lord Jagannath.

Patra found himself in the middle of a political storm after he suggested on Monday that Lord Jagannath is a devotee of PM Modi, drawing sharp criticisms from different quarters. Patra later apologised for his comment, saying he “will observe a three-day fast as penance”.

Speaking to media persons in Puri, senior Congress leader Pawan Khera said, “PM Modi should show courage and sack Sambit Patra from the party to show respect to the faith of the devotees. The Prime Minister should have apologised to the devotees of Lord Jagannath across the world.”

He also said that had Patra been in Congress, he would have been expelled from the party immediately for insulting Lord Jagannath.

–IANS

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Mumbai, May 21 (IANS) In an unusual turn of events on Tuesday, an IndiGo flight operating from Mumbai to Varanasi was forced to return to the aerobridge at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) after the crew spotted an overbooked passenger in the flight just before take-off.

As the aircraft prepared to take off at around 7:50 a.m. on Tuesday, a crew member on flight 6E 6543 noticed a male passenger standing at the rear of the plane.

“There was an error in the passenger boarding process from Mumbai to Varanasi, wherein a standby passenger was allotted a seat reserved for a confirmed passenger,” the airline said in a statement.

“The error was noticed before departure, and the standby passenger was de-boarded. This led to a slight delay. IndiGo will take all measures to strengthen its operational processes. It regrets the inconvenience caused to the customers,” the statement added.

–IANS

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Chennai, May 21 (IANS) The police in Chennai are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the hope of cracking a missing girl child’s case.

The girl, Kavitha, had gone missing 13 years ago and the police are now using AI to determine how she would look now.

A composite image of Kavitha when she was two years old and a new picture of how she would look now has been generated using AI.

The police have printed pamphlets containing the pictures which will be distributed among the public to gather information on the missing girl.

Kavitha had gone missing while playing outside her home near the Valampuri Vinayagar temple at Saligramam on September 19, 2011.

–IANS

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