Mohali (Punjab): Punjab police on Saturday said that they had busted an inter-state gang of vehicle thieves, arresting four people and recovering 27 vehicles from their possession. Working on a secret tip-off, Mohali district police arrested these four from Kharar town February 1. "We have recovered 27 vehicles worth Rs 1.46 crore. This gang was active in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh for the last many months," Mohali police chief Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said. The arrested accused were identified as Surjit Singh, 42, his son Pawan Kumar, 19, Devinder Singh, 26, and Gurmit Singh, 27. "The accused used to steal vehicles from different parts of this region and were selling them after making forged registration certificates and other documents. Nearly 31 cases of vehicle thefts were registered against them in different parts of Punjab and Haryana," he added. Mohali town is around 10 km away from Chandigarh. ...

Bijnor: A 12-year-old boy was thrashed and beaten up by an Uttar Pradesh politician in the Bijnor district of the state on Saturday. RLD leader and former UP minister for sugarcane, Swami Omesh, claims he caught the child red handed when he was attempting to pick his pocket. The child had come to the leaders rally and was later detained by the police. He was let off and handed over to his parents. The boy was thrashed and the minister twisted his ears to extract a confession. The incident took place when the rally being led by Swami Omwesh was crossing the district magistrate's office in Bijnor. The minister was not available for comment. For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook

david.hayes77 has added a photo to the pool: She may be taking water but loco 798 of the Darjeeling Hill Railway is none too happy. Pictured at Sukna, and not yet into the serious business of climbing the hill, 798 receives attention and eventually limps on only to fail half way up the climb. Taken on 22 November 1983

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Paper Planes from the Aerie has added a photo to the pool: Kutch, India. Please press L

Madurai, Feb. 4: The headmasters of the recently upgraded government high schools in the state now double up as head masons also. Under the Rashtriya Madyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), a central government scheme being implemented in collaboration with the state government to provide universal access for students to secondary education, headmasters have been vested with the task of supervising construction works of the buildings for the high schools.Last March, the state government announced upgradation of 200 middle schools into high schools and funds for buildings at an estimated cost of `49.67 lakh each too were sanctioned later.As per the guidelines of the RMSA, though a school management development committee comprising the HM, assistant HM, a member of the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA), ward member and a social worker was formed, only the HM and the PTA member are authorised to release funds.It is a noble scheme but problematic for the school heads. Some ward and PTA m...

east med wanderer has added a photo to the pool: For more information see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranakpur

Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa today announced a special fund to encourage litterateurs and setting up of an Rs 25 crore idol with potential to become a Bangalore landmark. Yeddyurappa said he would set aside Rs ten crore in the annual budget, to be unveiled this month, for the benefit of litterateurs in financial need and also encourage authors to publish their first book. The scheme would be implemented through the Kannada Sahitya Parishath, he said, addressing the inaugural function of the 77th "Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelana" (All India Kannada Literary Conference). The Chief Minister also said a mega idol of "Thayi Bhuvaneshwari", the native goddess of Karnataka, would be established here at a cost of Rs 25 crore and work on it would begin in April. This idol would be built on a grand scale similar to the "Statue of Liberty" in New York and the Budhha statue in Lumbini park in ...

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Thrissur: One person was arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a 23-year-old woman passenger of a local train, who was seriously injured in the incident and continues to battle for her life. Govindaswamy, a hardened criminal hailing from Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu had admitted to the crime. He has been charged under IPC sections 307 (attempt to murder) and 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), police said. The accused, which does not have the left arm, was taken into custody from Palakkad district in Kerala, they said. The woman was pushed out of train by the accused after she resisted his attempt to snatch her bag. He also jumped out of the Ernakulam-Shornur passenger train, along with her and raped the severely injured woman. Meanwhile, Thrissur Medical College Hospital Superintendent, V K Mohanan said the woman's condition showed no signs of improvement and she was still on the ventilator. The w...

Akash-Too foggy to shoot in New Delhi! has added a photo to the pool: Its only now that Indian women are speaking up from themselves and what matters to them... but for the hundreds of years they have been forced to be silent - they have learnt the art of expressing themselves through their eyes. If it's said that Indian women have very expressive eyes - then there is a good reason for that! ;-)

Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan: Jhunjhunu, a sleepy district in Rajasthan, has stood up to protest the transfer of its Collector, Mugdha Sinha. The residents claim that she was doing good work, but was transferred in barely four months due to pressure from a local MLA of the ruling Congress Shrawan Kumar who, they say, instigated Mugdha's transfer as she was taking action against the mining mafia in the area. Jhunjhunu residents want the Collector's transfer revoked. "This Collector was doing good work. But shady politicians of our area have got her transferred and the way her transfer was managed for political reasons is totally wrong," said Phool Chand Dhewa, Secretary, Farmers Union , Jhunjhunu. The concerned MLA is now silent but the government claims Mugdha's transfer was a routine matter as 14 IAS officers were transferred along with her on January 30. But sources say Mugdha was pro-active in checking illegal mining and corrupti...

Bernardo Johannsen has added a photo to the pool: Varanasi (aka Benares). Uttar Pradesh. India.

Feb. 3: With more families showing up to get the Aadhaar/unique identification number, officials have decided to increase the number of enrollment centres from the present 80 to 112.Most of the families turning up at the centres are white ration card holders as the government has decided to give ration to only those who have Aadhaar-based smart cards in coming months. The chief rationing officer, Mr D.S. Lokesh Kumar, said the department would procure 200 more kits that record biometric data to speed up the process. Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, Smart Chip Limited, Infronics and Techsmart India are the four firms executing the project in AP.Aadhaar enrollment was launched in the state in seven districts, including Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, East Godavari, Srikakulam, Chittoor, Anantapur, and Adilabad in the first phase. &nbsp

bogenvolia has added a photo to the pool: He is the priest at one of the many famous 'Terracotta' temple in Bishnupur, West Bengal. One can see the terracotta works on the temple wall. Most of these excellent art works in most of these temples are on the verge of extinction due to lack of maintenance . A place deserve to be a World heritage site, but who cares !!! [ Bishnupur , West Bengal, India. ]

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Mumbai: As recovery agents come to assume Shylock-like proportions for those defaulting on their loans, Wednesday night saw a family being made homeless, allegedly because of persecution by the agents for being unable to make loan payments on time. The harassment has driven them to the extent of threatening to commit suicide. The residence of Diliprao Patil, who lives in Empire Building in Sher-e-Punjab society in Andheri (E) with wife and two kids, got caught in the recovery agents' crosshairs, after he skipped a few months' payment on a business loan of Rs 44 lakh. Patil said, "I had taken a loan of Rs 44 lakh in February 2009 and I had been paying the installments. But I skipped some months' payments." But things threatened to spin out of control when the finance company's goons broke in an entry in the Patil residence yesterday in their absence, shoving their elder son out of the house. On Wednesday morning at about ...

SharathMBhat has added a photo to the pool: Location : Nelligudde lake Bangalore, India. Gears : Nikon D90, 18-105mm lens, 8 stop ND filter, Polarizer It's a self portrait taken with self timer. Please feel free to criticize.

Gulfu has added a photo to the pool: I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.-Luis Barragan One of my fav ,Shot @ Cherai Bridge,Kerala,India

New Delhi: Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday ordered termination of a senior resident doctor of premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) who allegedly molested an eight-year-old brain tumour patient. This is for the first time in the history of the 54-year-old institute that a senior resident doctor has been terminated on the charges of molesting a patient, official sources said. The Health Minister in his capacity as the President of the premier institute issued the order after receiving initial reports from the officials in this regard, they said. The Minister has also ordered withdrawing the registration of the accused doctor in the super-speciality MCh course in surgical sciences at the institute, sources said. The doctor with the Neurology Department had molested the boy on January 23, a day before he was to be discharged from the hospital, the family of the victim had alleged. The boy, a resident of north-east Del...

Paper Planes from the Aerie has added a photo to the pool: Ahmedabad, India.

Hyderabad, Feb. 2: A division bench comprising Chief Justice Nisar Ahmad Kakru and Justice Vilas V. Afzulpurkar of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Wednesday directed the state government, all Bar Associations in the state and the police to strictly adhere to the orders of the Supreme Court and the High Court for smoother functioning of the courts in the state.The Bench was dealing with a motion moved by one Mr Syed Yasar Mamoon seeking a direction to provide security for smoother functioning of the courts and to take steps to allow advocates and parties to enter the courts without any hindrance.The petitioner told the court that at Ranga Reddy courts some advocates had threatened some parties and their advocates who wanted to enter the court premises on February 2. He also said that at most of the courts in Telangana, advocates were on relay hunger strikes. He brought to the notice of the court that there were not enough cops at the lower courts to protect the advocates and t...

Hyderabad, Feb. 2: The Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, on Wednesday condemned the senior Congress leader, Mr G. Venkataswamys comment that the party was losing heavily under the leadership of Mrs Sonia Gandhi.Speaking to mediapersons here, the Chief Minister said he was deeply pained over the remarks made by such a senior party leader.One should not forget that the party regained the lost glory after Mrs Gandhi took over, he said. We came back to power and also won several states under her leadership. The Chief Minister also ridiculed the Telugu Desam president, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidus criticism of Mrs Gandhi. A person who cheated his father-in-law for the Chief Ministers post has no moral right to talk about a person who sacrificed the Prime Ministers post not once but twice, he said.The Chief Minister found nothing wrong in the Union minister, Mr A.K. Antony, meeting the Praja Rajyam chief, Mr K. Chiranjeevi. After all we are not enemies, he said. When asked wheth...

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Cishore has added a photo to the pool: ...but it was costly :P 5DMK2 + 17-40 f4L ISO2500

Tomorrow, yet another meeting will be held by the IPL governing council to decide whether Sourav Ganguly and few others who were left without any takers in the IPL auction can be given another chance or not. Surely, Ganguly would have never dreamt hed face a day when all his glorious contributions would be sidelined and hed be considered unworthy to be a part of a cricket team. His performance in the three IPL seasons hasnt been that bad, yet, he finds no takers.However, the cricketing world is abuzz that although hes a great player, he comes with a major attitude. KKR management is unwilling to go on record, but sources say that for three years now, players and support staff have been complaining about Gangulys behaviour. While the coaches felt he did not take them seriously, foreign players thought of him to have a superiority complex. Even the juniors found his aggression very annoying. His attitude was touted to be the reason when the team began to falter. This definitely...

Handheld-Films has added a photo to the pool: ...the national tree of India - this one stands alone on farmland in northern Rajasthan ( Handheld Films 2011)

Pune: If you are an MBA student, be careful the next time you get a job offer by email. It might be a fake offer designed to lighten your pocket. Bogus offer letters from reputed Indian companies are landing in the inboxes of MBA students in the city. More than a dozen of MBA students from Sinhagad Institute have got such fake mails from companies like Tata Motors, Maruti, Videocon among others. The fake offer letters have the company logos mentioning fake names of persons claiming to be head of the HR department. The letters also claim to have selected the resume online and arranging the interviews on Feb 5, 2011. Speaking to MiD-DAY, Priya Mehta (name changed), one of the student from Sinhagad Institute said, "I received an fake email on Jan 20 claiming to be from Tata Motors and saying that I have been short listed for a particular job. I was very excited for a moment and told my dad about the offer. Since the letter said that I needed to...

Pune: Their relationship began with chatting. Soon the man, a 26-year-old techie, popped the question and she, a 26-year-old front office executive, was on top of the world. And then she got the jolt of her life when she stumbled upon a sex clip of hers uploaded on a website by her fiance. According to the police, Sandip Ramlal Patil forced the woman to appear in the video clip saying he wanted to show her how beautiful she was. They said he shot the obscene clips on four occasions and uploaded them on a website. The Yerwada police arrested Patil, a resident of Vinod Residency in Pashan who came to the city from Nimkhedigaon in Jalgaon, for sexually exploiting the front office executive by promising marriage and later cheating her by uploading her obscene clips on the Internet. The police said Patil, who was earlier working with a reputable bank, had first seen the woman somewhere on a road and after that he began chasing her on her way to office...

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Michael Foley Photography has added a photo to the pool: Near Nasik, Maharashtra. Across the road from the women washing clothes. Best on black.

Nashik: An Army helicopter crashed in a residential area of Nashik in Maharashtra on Wednesday morning, killing two people. Those killed were both Army Majors. There is an Army aviation training school in the vicinity of site where the Cheetah helicopter crashed. The helicopter was on a routine flight from Nashik to Goa when it crashed minutes after takeoff around 9.15 am. More details are awaited. For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook

Hyderabad, Feb. 1: The fatal illness known as Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) claimed another life in Ahmedabad on Tuesday taking the overall toll to four in Gujarat. The deceased has been identified as Shabbir Ali Umatiya, an intern doctor. In a unique development, three among the four who succumbed were medical practitioners two doctors and the nurse who treated a patient afflicted by the illness. However, even a fortnight after the outbreak of CCHF in Gujarat, the AP health department seems to be uninformed about any guidelines for the treatment of the disease. Local doctors are assuring people that theres no need to panic since the disease is not as quick-spreading as swine flu. But considering the regular influx of people from Ahmedabad to Hyderabad, it may just be a matter of days before the killer disease strikes the city. CCHF is a viral disease characterised by high fever, severe abdominal pain, head ache, body pain and nausea. Absolute isolation of the pati...

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Tirupati, Feb. 1: Panic gripped about 50 villages in Kuppam division in Chittoor district, bordering Karnataka, as a herd of 21 elephants trampled across their fields, destroying crops in the early hours of Tuesday.The villagers of Lakshmipuram, 2 km away from Kuppam town, woke up to the trumpeting of the tuskers around 3 am.A big herd of elephants was seen splashing about in the village tank. The elephants would emerge only briefly from the water to graze in the jungle adjacent to the tank. To scare away the animals, the villagers turned up the volume of their television sets while others began shouting. Women offered camphor harathis to the animals from a distance.The Chittoor DFO, Mr G.V. Subba Reddy, monitored the situation and dispatched forest officials to alert the villages between Kuppam and the forests along the Karnataka border.Mr Reddy said that around 7 pm the elephants emerged from the tank and started moving back in the direction from where they had come.It is a ...

New Delhi: An 11-year-old girl was repeatedly raped allegedly by two men for about a month in the national Capital. Police today said they have arrested Anil Kumar and Mohammed Umar. The incident was reported from Patel Nagar in Central Delhi and the victim, a class IV student, was living in their neighbourhood. "Umar has been allegedly raping the girl for the past one month while his friend Anil too raped her a few days ago," a senior police official said. The incident came to light when the victim told her sister and later her uncle about it and they approached the police. After a medical examination confirmed rape, the duo were arrested. For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook

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Jaipur: In a case of honour killing, a married woman who had eloped with her paramour was murdered by her brother in Sriganganagar district, police said today. "The accused Radheyshyam was unhappy over his sister Santosh's extra-marital affair and slit her throat yesterday with some sharp-edged weapon in Sadulshahar area," they said. "Santosh, a mother of three kids, allegedly abducted with her paramour a fortnight ago from her husband's house in Khatwa village, but Radheyshayam located her in some other area and brought her back home. She was not ready to live with her husband so his brother killed her," they said. The victim's father lodged an FIR against his son after he found the body of his daughter at the home. A local court today sent Radheyshyam to judicial custody. For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook

Night Sky Glow has added a photo to the pool: The chaos that is the older part of Udaipur, Rajasthan. And of course, its not just Udaipur, it's a scene that repeats in every Indian small town. What made these parts of India so half-hazard and unorganized over the years?

Patna: He is called the 'MBA sabziwalla' and wants to make Bihar India's vegetable hub. Kaushlendra, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), is now working towards pre-paid cards for buying vegetables but complains of irritating hurdles that discourage budding entrepreneurs. Kaushlendra, who refused to join a multinational company like his peers as he wanted to work towards making Bihar a better place, says something as simple as encashing a cheque can take days. "There are many small things that impede the growth of an entrepreneur in Bihar. We cannot compete with entrepreneurs of other states because other support services come at huge indirect and direct costs," Kaushlendra, a topper of the IIM-A's 2007 batch, told IANS in an interview. His earlier project of selling vegetables through ice-cooled push-carts became a hit in Bihar and Kaushlendra, in his 20s, now is working hard on his Organi...

Bangalore: Refusing a man's sexual advances cost a woman more than just her life. Not only did the accused kill Pavithra (30), but he also murdered her 10-year-old niece Aishwarya. Pavithra's five-year-old nephew Charla, however, survived the assault on the family. Pavithra, who had come to Bangalore a month ago, was staying on the terrace of an old building in Kaveri Nagar, KHB Main Road. She was taking care of the children on her aunt's behalf. According to the police, Raju came to Bangalore a little before Pavithra and was living on the same terrace. "He started liking Pavithra and made sexual advances, but she consistently refused," said a police officer. Things took a turn for the worse on Monday night at around 10.30 pm, when Pavithra again turned down Raju's advances. "In a fit of rage, Raju stabbed her. Her screams woke up the two kids who were sleeping nearby, so Raju attacked them as well. The elder of the...