1. Parents to Meet Education Minister
Guardians of students at a state-aided girls' school accused of extracting "confessions" from twelve class 12 students that they had indulged in indecent acts on the campus, have decided to meet Education Minister Partha Chatterjee.
The girls' parents want to narrate to the minister the "trauma" their daughters have been going through after being allegedly compelled to give "false" declarations. They will also appeal to Chatterjee to ensure that the girls are not subjected to "further harassment" by the school.
"My daughter has still not recovered from the trauma of being compelled to give a false statement in writing saying she was involved in encouraging indecent acts on campus," the father of one of the students told Metro after a meeting of the parents in front of the school on Thursday, 15 March.
(Source: The Telegraph)
2. Bank Fraud Case: Kaustuv Ray, Shivaji Panja Arrested By CBI
The Bank Security and Fraud Wing of the CBI on Thursday, 15 March, arrested Kaustuv Ray and Shivaji Panja, directors of RP Info Systems, after several rounds of questioning at its CGO complex office in Bidhannagar. The duo, CBI claimed, had allegedly siphoned off Rs 515.15 crore from a consortium of nationalised banks with forged documents and fabricated stocks.
Panja, who was arrested earlier in February 2015 by Delhi Police for allegedly duping a Delhi-based firm, had been questioned four times by the CBI in past one month. While both Panja and Ray claimed they were trying to return the loan they had taken from the bank consortium, the CBI officers interrogating them refused to believe that in absence of documents supporting their claims. They will be produced in court on Friday, 16 March.
(Source: The Times of India)
3. Md Shami Should Back Claims With Proof: Hasin Lawyer
India pacer Md Shami’s statements that his wife Hasin Jahan kept him in the dark about her earlier marriage to a Suri trader — and the subsequent separation — were on Thursday, 15 March, refuted by Hasin’s lawyer Zakir Hussain who claimed Shami should back his claims with evidence. “Unfounded allegations will cut no ice. Where is the proof? All our claims have been backed with proof which has led police to drawn up criminal charges against him,” Zakir said.
Zakir said Shami, whom Hasin married in 2014 after meeting him for the first time in 2012, was aware of her first marriage as he was a “regular” at her Suri home. Also debunking claims by Shami that he has spent Rs 1.5 crore on Hasin in the four years after they got married in 2014, Zakir said the cricketer has only booked an apartment in Hasin’s name in Suri.
(Source: The Times of India)
4. Ratna Drags Narada to Take on Sovan in Family Feud
The marital spat between Mayor Sovan Chatterjee and his estranged wife Ratna is slowly getting serious, having ramification for the Narada expose inquiry. Ratna, a prime witness to the Narada case in which Sovan is among the accused, has unwittingly given some leads on Thursday, 15 March, that may come in handy to the central investigating agencies probing the money-for-gain case against the mayor.
Responding to the “economic fraud” charge that the mayor has slapped on his wife as a ground for seeking divorce, Ratna said: “If I have squandered lakhs and crores of rupees from my husband’s earnings, the Enforcement Directorate can always ask for the source of such huge money.” The statement may make things worse for the mayor when read with the police complaint Ratna Chatterjee made around two years ago on 20 June 2016, alleging that the Narada tapes were timed to leak ahead of the 2016 assembly polls to malign her husband.
(Source: The Times of India)
5. Man Lived With Mother’s Body For Two Days
The initial post-mortem report of the unusual death of 72-year-old Vandana Bagchi — a resident of a threestorey building in the heart of Bansdroni at Vivekananda Sarani — has revealed that she might have died at least 48 hours before the death was reported. “This suggests that the youngest son was alone with his dead mother for around two days,” an investigating officer said.
Two of Vandana’s sons, who lived with her, are psychiatric patients. However, the other sibling had left the Bansdroni home a week before his her death. “The eldest son, Dibyendu, said he would take care of his youngest brother at his Garia residence,” the officer said.
(Source: The Times of India)
6. Blaze Guts 50 Shanties
Fifty shanties were gutted and several more damaged when chemicals stored outside a warehouse on Strand Bank Road caught fire on Thursday, 15 March.
A resident said the fire that broke out around noon spread to the warehouse to the west, near Aremenian Ghat, and damaged some stored products.
Twenty fire engines doused the flames by 1.20pm. "We checked the place for any remnant of fire and completed our work around 5pm," a fire officer said.
A resident said people would have died had East-West Metro workers not alerted them and sprayed water before the fire brigade arrived.
Paro Debi, 40, who lived in one of the gutted houses with her husband and daughter, said they had requested the owner to stow the chemicals inside the warehouse.
The flames grew tall and spread to shanties along the Circular Railway tracks.
Several of the residents asked why the owner had been allowed to keep the chemicals in the open.
(Source: The Telegraph)
7. Panel Targets ' Hidden' Hospital Costs
The regulatory commission for private health care is working on a plan to root out the "hidden charges" levied by many hospitals and nursing homes to allegedly inflate bills.
The commission has drawn up a list of charges that it feels private health care institutions "unethically" include in bills.
Charging extra for the service of resident medical officers in intensive care units, admission processing, nursing, laundry, delivery of medicines from the hospital pharmacy to the patient's bed and oxygen in the ICU have been identified by the West Bengal Clinical Establishments Regulatory Commission as hidden costs that need to be curbed.
"We will ask various hospitals what are the expenses they incur on these that they charge patients additionally," an official said.
The regulatory commission, set up by the Mamata Banerjee government last year, is collecting data from hospitals to arrive at a baseline.
(Source: The Telegraph)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)