The City Diary

Man falls sick on flight, dies
A 70-year-old passenger died after falling ill on board a Chennai-bound flight from Calcutta on Monday afternoon. N. Krishnamurthy, a resident of Jorasanko and manager of a factory at Chitpur, took the Jet Airways flight on Monday to visit his ancestral home in Chennai. The flight took off at 3.45pm but returned to Calcutta at 5pm after Krishnamurthy fell ill, airport officials said. Krishnamurthy was rushed to a hospital in New Town, where doctors declared him dead. The flight again took off for Chennai at 5.45pm.

Social film festival
The 11th International Social Communication Cinema Conference, which will screen 32 documentaries, 12 short films and six feature films, will start on March 14, the government announced on Monday. he three-day festival is a joint venture of Roopkala Kendro and Nandan and will have two inaugural screenings — Narir Kotha and Runway by Bangladeshi film director Tareque Masud. In the second phase of the festival, some of the selected films will be screened in the districts.

AMRI directors
The anticipatory bail plea of three AMRI directors could not be heard in full on Monday as the public prosecutor sought two days to prepare his submission. Anindya Bhattacharjee, the district and sessions judge of Alipore court, heard the plea of the lawyers representing directors Priti Sureka, Rahul Todi and Aditya Agarwal. Shakti Bhattacharjee, the public prosecutor, prayed for time as he was preoccupied with other cases in Calcutta High Court. The judge deferred the hearing till Wednesday.

Fraud arrest
Haradhan Chandra, 40, was arrested at Chatterjee Haat in Howrah late on Sunday on charges of fraud. A resident of Sreemohan Lane in Tollygunge , where Chandra too lived till a few months ago, lodged a complaint that Chandra had fled with Rs 7.5 lakh. Chandra and his wife had struck up a rapport with the complainant and borrowed money from him to start a business. But he disappeared from his Tollygunge home a month ago. Cops are looking for Chandra’s wife.

Trader held
Basant Lal Gupta, the owner of Swastil Enterprise — manufacturers of flour-grinding machines — was arrested on Monday for selling machines with the trademark of another company. Gupta was picked up from his factory in Dasnagar, Howrah.

Duped
Two men duped a retired schoolteacher in Jadavpur on Monday. The men approached Ratna Majumdar, 70, of Jadavpur Central Road, and told her it was unsafe to wear gold jewellery. They made her take off her ornaments and wrapped them in paper and put it in her bag for her. On reaching home, Majumdar found imitation jewellery in the package.

Factory trouble
A labour manager of a cotton mill in Shyamnagar, on the northern fringes, was injured after he tried to stop two groups of warring workers on Monday. Krishna Kumar suffered injuries in his chest and face. The clash broke out between the groups over wage hike.

Fire
A fire broke out in a glass factory on Gobinda Khatik Road in Tangra early on Monday. One tender controlled the blaze in 30 minutes.

Suicide
Abhijit Das, 45, a resident of Canal Circular Road, was found hanging in his room late on Sunday. No suicide note was found.

Thumbs Up

TO Ladies Circle India and Vasan Eye Care for organising a free eye camp for 150 underprivileged children at Gandhi Mahavidyalaya

The City Diary

Student suicide
Suman Chatterjee, a Class XII student of Oxford Mission School in Behala, was found hanging in his Parnasree home on Sunday morning. Police said Chatterjee was taking the CBSE exams. No suicide note was found.

Fake passport
Shakeel Ahmed, 22, was arrested at the city airport on Sunday for allegedly carrying a fake passport. Police said immigration authorities in Dubai spotted the fake passport as Ahmed was flying to London from Calcutta by a private airline on Friday. He was detained and sent back to Calcutta.

Robbery
A gang of five bike-borne robbers tied up and gagged the guard of an ATM and robbed ornaments and cash worth around Rs 6 lakh from an adjacent jewellery shop near New Garia Metro station early on Sunday. Neighbours alerted the shop owner.

The City Diary

Burglars arrested
Six men were arrested on Friday for two robberies at Mathpara in Khardah last Sunday. Four of the arrested were picked up from near Sodepur and the rest from Barrackpore. A gold chain, six silver utensils and Rs 12,500, a part of the Rs 80,000 booty the gang had taken from the homes of two traders, were recovered. A 9mm pistol and some ammunition were also found on them.

AMRI bail
The bail petition of Satyabrata Upadhyay, senior vice-president (projects) and head of the safety committee of AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, could not be heard on Friday at a district and sessions court in Alipore as defence counsel Milan Mukherjee was out of station. Judge Anindya Bhattacharjee has fixed March 16 as the next date of hearing .

Civic budget
Mayor Sovan Chatterjee will place the Trinamul Congress-run civic board’s third budget on Saturday. The focus, civic officials said, will be on the beautification of the city.

Accident
A school bus ran over a pedestrian on AJC Bose Road around 1.30pm on Friday. The injured, Sahabuddin, 50, was taken to SSKM Hospital in an unconscious state.

The City Diary

Probe into 1993 police firing
The state government on Tuesday appointed former high court judge, Justice Sushanta Chatterjee, to inquire into the firing by police on Youth Congress supporters, led by Mamata Banerjee, while they were marching to Writers’ Buildings on July 21, 1993. Thirteen people had died. According to the notification announcing the probe, the commission would identify the people involved or responsible for the firing. It would also find out the condition of the victims’ families and recommend compensation for them.

Attack with razor
A 30-year-old woman and her 15-year-old niece were injured after being attacked with a razor by some youths near their home on Salkia School Road in Howrah on Tuesday afternoon. Police said the youths were teasing the two while they were watching a religious procession and slashed them after they protested. They were administered first-aid at TL Jaiswal Hospital. No one was arrested.

Fall from balcony
Jayasree Soni, 20, fell from a balcony of her fourth-floor home in Hanspukuria Lane in Posta police station area on Tuesday while hanging clothes out to dry. She was admitted to Bisuddhananda Hospital in a critical condition.

Mishaps
Ten people were injured in two accidents in the city. Seven people were injured when a car collided with a goods vehicle at the Harish Mukherjee Road-Sambhunath Pandit Street crossing on Monday night. On Tuesday afternoon, three persons were injured when a lorry ferrying iron rods collided with another lorry carrying vegetables on Park Circus bridge No. 4.

Two arrested
Dilip Singh, 25, and Sanat Sarkar, 38, were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly withdrawing the pension of a Baranagar resident, under the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, but not handing over the money to her since 2004. The woman’s son had lodged a complaint last April. According to cops, the accused were close to the local Congress councillor, Suman Singh. Suman Singh has obtained anticipatory bail.

Army drive
The army will hold a recruitment rally at the RCTC ground on Friday. Registration for the tests will be from 5am to 7am.

The City Diary

Negligence cry over baby death

four-month-old baby suffering from pneumonia died at BC Roy hospital on Sunday, allegedly because of delay in replacing an oxygen cylinder. oumik Halder was admitted to the general ward on Saturday evening and put on oxygen support. The baby’s mother, Sumita, noticed him suffering from respiratory distress on Sunday. “She was told the oxygen cylinder was empty and it would take time for another cylinder to arrive. The nurse said one shouldn’t expect better service for a free patient,” said Biswanath, Soumik’s father and a resident of Nadia. “By the time the cylinder was brought, my son had died.” We have received the complaint and are conducting a probe,” said medical superintendent Dilip Kumar Paul.

Water supply: Water supply may be disrupted in the Kalighat, Chetla, Ranikuthi and Garfa areas on Tuesday because of repairs from Monday. Households in the affected areas will get filtered water early on Tuesday but not after that. Normal supply is likely to resume on Wednesday.

Power supply: Power supply may be disrupted in the Anandapur, EM Bypass, East Topsia Road, Picnic Garden, VIP Nagar Colony, Tagore Park, Chowbhaga, Maheswartala and south Tangra areas between 11am and 3pm on Monday because of maintenance.

Couple suicide: A 65-year-old asthma patient, Ram Lakhan Shaw, and his wife hanged themselves from a fan in their Chetla home on Sunday.

The City Diary

Varsity bill
Governor M.K. Narayanan, the chancellor of state universities, on Monday signed the university ordinance bill, which was passed in the winter session of the Assembly. Raj Bhavan sources said the bill had been sent to the government for issuing gazette notification. Once the notification is issued, the universities would start setting up decision-making bodies such as senate.

Polytechnic admission
Polytechnic colleges under the department of technical education would no longer admit students on the basis of secondary examination results. Technical education minister Rabiranjan Chattopadhyay said students would be admitted on the basis of an entrance test known as JEXPO. The age limit for admission has also been lifted.

Teacher protest
College and University Teachers Association of Bengal, an association of part-time teachers, protested on the fifth floor of Bikash Bhavan on Tuesday, in violation of Section 144, for not getting their salary.

Train services hit
Train services in the Sealdah South section were disrupted for nearly two hours from 9am on Tuesday as some passengers blocked the tracks near Mallickpur station to protest trains running late.

ATM thief held
A person was arrested for theft and misuse of ATM cards. Dinesh Agarwal of Dum Dum had stolen a bag containing Rs 1.7 lakh and a debit card from a businessman in Posta last year. He used the card to buy three mobiles worth Rs 48,000. A few days later, Agarwal stole the bag of a government employee in Alipore and withdrew Rs 17,000 with her ATM card.

Lost & found
A nine-year-old boy with hearing and speech impairment who got lost near Tollygunge on Tuesday was reunited with his parents by police. Since Mohit Das could not tell cops his address, they found out the shop where his school uniform had been stitched with the help of a tag.

Bravehearts
Bharat Sevashram Sangha and industrialist S.K. Birla, with the help of various trusts under him, have proposed to reward 16 youths who rescued patients during the AMRI fire.

The City Diary

CAT score grievance

A parent of a Common Admission Test (CAT) examinee has alleged a discrepancy in the score. An RTI application has been filed with IIM Calcutta, which was in charge of CAT this year, asking for the answer sheets, the raw scores, the converted scores and the percentile of the candidate.

Fire: A fire broke out near a staircase window on the fourth floor of New Empire cinema late on Thursday. The staff doused the flames before fire brigade reached the hall. n Serampore, four computers were damaged in a fire that broke out in the library of William Carey College on Thursday evening. Three tenders doused the flames in an hour. A short circuit had led to the blaze. nother fire broke out at Arati Cotton Mills in Dasnagar, Howrah, around 2pm on Thursday. Two tenders put out the fire in an hour.

Accident: Three men were injured after a Matador hit a rickshaw on Bantala Road near Calcutta Leather Complex on Wednesday night. The rickshawpuller and his passengers were admitted to hospital.

The City Diary

Special trains
Eastern Railway will run a pair of special trains between Namkhana and Gorakhpur to cope with the heavy rush of Gangasagar pilgrims. Railway officials said the train from Gorakhpur will leave on January 12 at 6.25am and reach Namkhana at 3.30am the next day. The train from Namkhana will leave on January 15 at 11.30pm and reach Gorakhpur at 6.45pm the next day.

College row
Tension simmered on the City College (South) campus on Tuesday evening after the SFI claimed its union room was ransacked by Trinamul Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) members. TMCP denied the charge. Officers from the Lake police station rushed to the campus to bring the situation under control.

Roadblock
Traffic between Howrah and Calcutta was affected when hundreds of hawkers blocked Bankim Setu on Tuesday morning to protest their forcible eviction from Mangalahat a couple of months back. The roadblock, which lasted from 6.30am to 7.30am, was removed after police arrived.

Fake notes
Four men — Uttam Mandal, Dukhu Mandal, Mahammad Hakim and Sheikh Asadul — were arrested from Watgunge Street on Tuesday for possessing fake Indian currency of face value of Rs 5.5 lakh.

Fur arrest
Amarnath Bhattacharji, 60, was arrested from Park Street on Tuesday evening for possessing mongoose fur worth Rs 2.5 lakh.

The City Diary

Turtles and gharials rescued

our gharials, about 20 days old, and 394 star turtles were found at a shop in Ashokenagar market, in North 24-Parganas, on Sunday. “Mir Amin, a trader, was raising the critically endangered animals in a reservoir in the backyard of his shop,” a forest official said. min had fled by the time forest officials reached his home. “The trader had probably planned to sell the turtles for meat and the gharials for their skin,” the official added. he skin of a full-grown gharial fetches not less than Rs 3,000 in the grey market and body parts such as claws, teeth and spinal cord are also sold for their supposed medicinal value, said an official. he gharials were released in the Hooghly with the district court’s permission and the turtles sent to an animal rescue centre in Salt Lake.

Traffickers held: Five traffickers were arrested during raids in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, following a complaint by Afroza Bibi from South 24-Parganas that she had been forced into prostitution in Delhi after being promised a job.

Metro suicide bid: Metro Railway services were disrupted on Sunday after a 40-year-old woman jumped in front of a train at Central station at 5.19pm. The driver applied emergency brakes just in time to save the woman.

Belur Math special: Eastern Railway will run three pairs of special local trains between Howrah and Belur Math on January 12 and 15 to tackle passenger rush on the occasion of Swami Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary. The trains will leave Howrah at 6.10am, 11.55am and 1.10pm, respectively and, Belur Math station at 6.50am, 12.30pm and 3.10pm.

Infant found: An infant was found in a vat in Narkeldanga on Sunday. Police said a man had informed them about the child over the phone around 4.20pm. The baby was taken to NRS Hospital and then handed over to an NGO.