Maharashtra

Palghar, Aug1 (PTI) A nine-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an unidentified person near here in Maharashtra, police said on Thursday.

The incident took place at Virar in the intervening night of July 30-31, they said.

The girl was sleeping in her house when the unidentified person came there. He took the minor to an adjoining room in the house, where he gagged and raped her before fleeing, the police said.

Thane, Aug 1 (PTI) A special Thane court has sentenced a 28-year-old private tutor to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a minor girl in 2013.

Special judge for Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act cases, S P Gondhalekar, also imposed a fine of Rs 22,000 on convict Prashant Sankatprasad Tripathi, a resident of Digha in Navi Mumbai, last week.

Additional Public Prosecutor Ujjwala Moholkar told the court Tripathi raped the girl on February 12, 2013.

Mumbai, Aug 1 (PTI) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday sought in-camera trial of the 2008 Malegaon blast case in which BJP MP Pragya Thakur is one of the accused.

In in-camera hearings, general public as well as the press are not allowed to be present.

The NIA filed an application before special judge V S Padalkar here, seeking in-camera proceedings. The judge posted the matter for hearing on Friday.

Mumbai, Aug 1 (PTI) In order to reach out to young voters, the Maharashtra Youth Congress on Thursday announced a 45-day `Wake up Maharashtra' campaign.

It is aiming to reach out to four to five crore youngsters in the state before the party comes out with a `youth manifesto' for coming Assembly elections.

Mumbai, Jul 31 (PTI) The wife of a sessions court judge in Maharashtra has written to the chief justice of the Bombay High Court complaining that her husband and in-laws were "harassing" her.

After receiving the letter on July 29, Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog forwarded it to the registry of the high court for preliminary inquiry, the woman's lawyer said on Wednesday.

In the letter, the 37-year-old woman has demanded an inquiry against her husband.

Mumbai, Jul 31 (PTI) On the eve of the launch of his mass outreach programme aimed at building a momentum ahead of the assembly elections, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday reiterated the BJP and the Shiv Sena would contest together unlike 2014.

Speaking at a function after inducting four MLAs of the Congress and the NCP into the BJP, the chief minister said the BJP, the Sena and allies parties would like to "break the record of winning maximum number of seats in the state polls".

Mumbai, Jul 30 (PTI) A special POCSO court here has awarded 20 years' rigorous imprisonment to a 19-year-old man for sexually assaulting a minor school girl.

Siddhesh Kamble, alias Sunny, was found guilty under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO) and section 376(2) (rape) of the Indian Penal Code by judge S J Gharat on Monday.

Thane, Jul 30(PTI) A 54-year-old security guard was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly molesting his 32-year-old woman colleague at a resort here in Maharashtra, police said.

The alleged incident occurred on July 25 when the accused, Ranveer Singh Sanmeda, touched the woman inappropriately when she resisted his demand for physical relations, a police officer said.

The woman narrated the incident to the security contractor who approached police.

Sanmeda has been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Mumbai, Jul 30 (PTI) Four opposition Congress-NCP legislators in Maharashtra resigned from the State Assembly on Tuesday, amid talk of their joining the ruling BJP.

NCP MLAs Shivendrasinhraje Bhosale (Satara), Vaibhav Pichad (Akole) and Sandeep Naik (Airoli) and Congress MLA Kalidas Kolambkar (Naigaon) handed over their resignation letters separately to Speaker Haribhau Bagade at the state legislature building Vidhan Bhawan in south Mumbai.

Nagpur, Jul 29 (PTI) A woman naxal was killed on Monday in an encounter with elite C-60 commandos in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, police said, adding that the number of Maoist fatalities might rise.

As per preliminary information, the gun-battle broke out around 12 noon when a commando team was on an anti-naxal operation in the Kothami forest in Ettapalli taluka of the district, around 170 km from Nagpur.