Punjab: Beant Singh’s assassin nabbed a decade after jailbreak
Following a tip-off from the Punjab police, Jagtar Singh Tara – a Khalistani militant implicated in the assassination of former Chief Minister Beant Singh – was arrested in Thailand on Tuesday morning, and will be extradited to Punjab. Tara had escaped with three others from a jail in Chandigarh in 2004. Officials said that a special team that had gone to Thailand in September 2014 to track down some terrorists had spotted Tara, but he had evaded them. Beant Singh was killed on August 31, 1995, in a suicide blast planned by Tara.
Maharashtra: BJP appoints new party chief
Raosaheb Danve Patil was appointed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s new state chief on Tuesday. Patil, a Lok Sabha MP, will succeed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to the post, giving the party a much-sought-after Maratha representative. Patil is a four-term MP from Jalna in Marathwada and has won 22 of the 23 elections he has contested. He was a loyalist of the late Union minister Gopinath Munde, who also belonged to the dominant Maratha community. Pail said he plans to recruit one crore new members for the party in Maharashtra.
Telengana: Six new cases spark swine flu scare
Six new cases of swine flu were reported in Hyderabad on Tuesday, according to a nodal officer for swine flu. Of the six, three are children. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telengana have been hotbeds of the viral disease in 2014, with 88 cases reported between them – and 22 reported in the last week of December alone – with 11 fatalities. Telengana sustained the trend in the first week of 2015, having reported 21 cases.
Assam: Nine NDFB(S) cadres arrested
As of Tuesday, security forces said they had apprehended nine cadres of the militant National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit), following their attacks in the Kokhrajar and Sonitpur districts. The director of the National Investigation Agency is also in the state, and is set to visit violence-hit areas on Wednesday even as the centre ramped up security arrangements in the state. Including the December attacks by militant Bodos, followed by retaliation by the Adivasis and police firing on violent protesters, the total death toll is 81 while the unrest has displaced over 2.7 lakh people.
New Delhi: PM calls for legal action against Ganga’s polluters
While chairing a high-level meeting on cleaning the Ganga River, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for legal action against industries that have polluted the river, held by many Hindus to be sacred. He also asked for time-bound measures to be implemented that would check pollution at the sources. At the same time, he did not insist on new legislation but said that polluters would be given a chance to rectify their actions and recycle their wastewater, failing which they would be prosecuted under existing laws.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
Following a tip-off from the Punjab police, Jagtar Singh Tara – a Khalistani militant implicated in the assassination of former Chief Minister Beant Singh – was arrested in Thailand on Tuesday morning, and will be extradited to Punjab. Tara had escaped with three others from a jail in Chandigarh in 2004. Officials said that a special team that had gone to Thailand in September 2014 to track down some terrorists had spotted Tara, but he had evaded them. Beant Singh was killed on August 31, 1995, in a suicide blast planned by Tara.
Maharashtra: BJP appoints new party chief
Raosaheb Danve Patil was appointed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s new state chief on Tuesday. Patil, a Lok Sabha MP, will succeed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to the post, giving the party a much-sought-after Maratha representative. Patil is a four-term MP from Jalna in Marathwada and has won 22 of the 23 elections he has contested. He was a loyalist of the late Union minister Gopinath Munde, who also belonged to the dominant Maratha community. Pail said he plans to recruit one crore new members for the party in Maharashtra.
Telengana: Six new cases spark swine flu scare
Six new cases of swine flu were reported in Hyderabad on Tuesday, according to a nodal officer for swine flu. Of the six, three are children. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telengana have been hotbeds of the viral disease in 2014, with 88 cases reported between them – and 22 reported in the last week of December alone – with 11 fatalities. Telengana sustained the trend in the first week of 2015, having reported 21 cases.
Assam: Nine NDFB(S) cadres arrested
As of Tuesday, security forces said they had apprehended nine cadres of the militant National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit), following their attacks in the Kokhrajar and Sonitpur districts. The director of the National Investigation Agency is also in the state, and is set to visit violence-hit areas on Wednesday even as the centre ramped up security arrangements in the state. Including the December attacks by militant Bodos, followed by retaliation by the Adivasis and police firing on violent protesters, the total death toll is 81 while the unrest has displaced over 2.7 lakh people.
New Delhi: PM calls for legal action against Ganga’s polluters
While chairing a high-level meeting on cleaning the Ganga River, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for legal action against industries that have polluted the river, held by many Hindus to be sacred. He also asked for time-bound measures to be implemented that would check pollution at the sources. At the same time, he did not insist on new legislation but said that polluters would be given a chance to rectify their actions and recycle their wastewater, failing which they would be prosecuted under existing laws.
