India

Barasat (WB), Oct 29 (PTI) A man has been arrested for allegedly selling off his twin daughters to two childless couples in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, police said Monday.

Ratan Brahma(38) of Bahaduria village had allegedly sold his two-month-old twin daughters to a rice trader for Rs 1 lakh and to a couple of Ramchandrapur village for Rs 80,000, they said.

Brahma and his wife also have a 10-year-old daughter.

Ghaziabad/Dehradun, Oct 29 (PTI) The Editor-in-Chief and CEO of a news channel in Uttarakhand was arrested from his Ghaziabad residence on Sunday for allegedly putting pressure on one of his employees to do a sting operation on prominent politicians including the state chief minister with an intent to blackmail them, police said.

Samachar Plus CEO Umesh Kumar Sharma was arrested from his Ghaziabad residence after raids were conducted at his office in Noida and residence in Ghaziabad, ADG (law and order) Ashok Kumar said.

KANPUR: As many as 30,637 candidates appeared at the Uttar Pradesh Civil Services (Pre) examinations.

Giving this information, Sanjay Chauhan, Nodal Officer (examination) said that a total of 58,368 examinees had to appear at the competitive examination in both the shifts at 124 centres here on Sunday.

In his address to an audience at the Bengaluru Literature Festival, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, “Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shivling, you can't remove him with your hand & you cannot hit it with a chappal either”.

According to The Indian Express, Tharoor was quoting an unnamed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) source to compare Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a “scorpion sitting on a Shivling”.

New Delhi, Oct 28 (PTI) The Supreme Court is likely to hear Monday a batch of pleas challenging the Allahabad High Court's 2010 verdict by which the disputed land on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid area in Ayodhya was divided into three parts.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K M Joseph would hear the appeals filed in the matter.

By Murtuza Merchant

Mumbai, Oct 28 (PTI) The United States is not going to put pressure on India to buy F-16 fighter jets or any other defence system, a senior US diplomat has said here.

United States Consul General in Mumbai Edgard Kagan said India has purchased more than USD 15 billion worth of American defence materials and the US is "very proud" of the expanding defence ties between the two countries.

New Delhi, Oct 28 (PTI) Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu has said India and the US have exchanged offers for a possible trade deal with a view to resolving issues related to bilateral commerce.

"The negotiations are ongoing. Of course, at this stage they have given an offer and we have also given a counter-offer and we are working on it," he said at an event here Saturday.

The statement assumes significance as India has deferred a notification for hiking import duties on as many as 29 US products.

By Sanjeev Chopra

New Delhi, Oct 28 (PTI) Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said Narendra Modi could have succeeded as prime minister because he often got his diagnosis right but "failed" on account of poor prescriptions.

It is time for Modi to go, he said, highlighting a range of contradictions in the prime minister's style of working over the last four and a half years.

Banda (UP), Oct 28 (PTI) A 37-year-old man allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Tindwari Police Station premises here, police said Sunday.

Bablu Singh went inside a room in the police station premises on Saturday night and hanged himself from the ceiling, police official Bharat Lal Kumar Pal said.

Singh and others were called at the police station on a complaint of power theft.

The victim's father Ram Asrey Singh alleged that his son was harassed in the police station due to which he died.

KANPUR: There is a clear indication of rising in the dengue patients. Out of 157 samples tested in the medical college microbiology laboratory, as many as 63 cases were identified positively. Thus, the figure of dengue patients has reached beyond the number of 500.

This was a quite distressing situation in view of the effective drive launched to minimise the larvae through spraying in the changing season by the Health Department here.