Thane:

Maharashtra PWD Minister Dada Bhuse on Thursday said cracks that had developed on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway near Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar have been repaired.

Talking to reporters, Bhuse said instructions have been given to officials to find out if there are more cracks along the 600 kilometre route of the expressway currently operational.

Incidentally, a video went viral during the day of a crater on the expressway in Sahapur in neighbouring Thane district. Traffic on the stretch between Shere Bere and Shendrun villages was affected for several hours due to this development.

Cracks have appeared within a year on the expressway, which was built at a cost of Rs 55,000 crore, due to corruption, Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole told reporters on the Vidhan Bhavan premises.

Only powers-that-be have prospered due to the construction of the expressway, which is being dubbed the highway of death due to the large number of accidents taking place on it, Patole claimed.

“Like the Samruddhi Mahamarg, we exposed cracks in the Rs 18,000 crore Atal Setu connecting Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. Cracks on Samruddhi and Atal Setu are a sign of how unreliable Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantee is,” Patole quipped. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Thane (Maharashtra):

In a shocking incident, at least three youths allegedly pushed their friend,  who had hosted his birthday bash, from the fourth floor of a building after a brawl over beer and liquor at Ulhasnagar town in Thane district, the police said on Tuesday.

The victim, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday, fell to his instant death, while his friends panicked and ran away. However, after a sustained investigation, the police have managed to arrest the accused trio. “The accused have been remanded to police custody till July 3 by a court. Further investigation is underway,” Anil Padwal, Inspector of Vitthalwadi police station, told IANS.

The boy has been identified as Karthik Vayal, while the accused trio has been identified as Dheeraj Yadav, aged 23, Nilesh Kshirsagar, aged 23, and Sagar Kale, aged 24, Mr Padwal said.

The probe revealed that Karthik had invited his close friends for his birthday bash on the evening of June 27 at Nilesh’s house on the fourth floor of Arya Apartments in the Chinchpada area of Ulhasnagar.
As the party progressed, there were some arguments over beer and drinks, which soon degenerated into kicks and fisticuffs, in which Karthik reportedly hit Nilesh with a bottle on the head. Enraged by this, the others pounced on Karthik, brutally thrashing the birthday boy before allegedly flinging him outside the fourth-floor flat, resulting in his instant death.

Panicking, the friends quickly fled from the flat and kept low for some time, till the police confronted them. Initially, they maintained that they had taken the injured Nilesh to a hospital, and upon their return, they found Karthik lying dead in the building compound.

However, after Karthik’s family raised questions over their claims and even suspected their possible involvement in his death, the police lodged a murder case. Armed with other evidence and eyewitness accounts, the police arrested the accused trio on Sunday.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

At the heart of the tragic billboard collapse in Mumbai, which claimed 16 lives, was an advertising agency, Ego Media Pvt Ltd, that had installed the fateful structure. The owner of the company, Bhavesh Bhinde, managed to evade police for 3 days, but was finally arrested from Udaipur.

He was arrested after an extensive manhunt spanning three states.

The collapse of the 120 feet by 120 feet billboard claimed the lives of 16 and left 75 others injured. The catastrophic incident, which occurred amidst strong winds and unseasonal rains, prompted swift action from law enforcement agencies.

Video | 16 Seconds Of Horror, When Mumbai Billboard Crushed Petrol Pump

https://t.co/FM129UZb0epic.twitter.com/NYWMcu981X

— NDTV (@ndtv) May 16, 2024

Following his realization that the police were closing in on him, Bhavesh Bhinde fled, setting off a pursuit that led through various cities. To evade capture, he kept changing his location and assumed a false identity.

His flight led authorities to Lonavala, Thane, and Ahmedabad before finally ending in Udaipur, where he was found hiding in a hotel under an assumed name. He would be in a new city every time the cops closed in on him, and Mumbai Police had to deploy eight teams, which worked round the clock, to track Bhinde.

The team revealed that Bhavesh Bhinde, upon learning of the impending police action, initially fled to Lonavala before returning to Mumbai the next day. Subsequently, he traveled to Thane, but continued his elusive journey to Ahmedabad, ultimately seeking refuge in a hotel in Udaipur, where he was finally nabbed by the Crime Branch.

He was finally caught after the investigation team utilised a combination of technical expertise and human intelligence.

The Udaipur operation was so discreet that even the local police were not informed that a team was in town to catch Bhinde.

“The operation was a top secret, and even the Udaipur police did not know about it,” said an official on the investigating team.

The hoarding collapsed onto a nearby petrol pump in the Chhedanagar area in Ghatkopar during gusty winds and heavy unseasonal rains, killing 16 people and injuring 75 others.

This incident has highlighted severe lapses in the regulatory oversight of advertising installations in Mumbai, sparking calls for stricter enforcement of safety standards.

Mumbai:

Parents of students enrolled at a private school in Thane, near Mumbai, have alleged their wards were molested during a school excursion. A police case has been filed and following a nine-hour protest by the parents, the school has sacked three teachers who accompanied the students. The parents, though, are demanding that the school Principal step down and the management be named in the case.

The students had gone to a theme park in Mumbai on Thursday. During the bus journey, around 10 students had been molested by an employee of the company which had organised the vehicle, the parents have alleged.

The complaint filed with the police names Javed, an employee of Tours and Travels. It alleges the man had molested the students while serving food in the moving bus.

After returning home, a few of the girls had informed their family and the matter snowballed from there. Eight parents have lodged complaints with the police and Javed has been arrested.

There were 40 children and three teachers in the bus, and the tour was being managed by outsiders, one of the parents said.

“The parents were not told that outsiders, males, will be present, which is wrong. We thought they would be going in school buses with teachers. There was no CCTV in the bus,” a parent said, underscoring that this information would have affected their decision to allow the wards to go.

The teachers, she alleged, are denying there was any molestation and are even refusing to apologise for their negligence. “They said they kept watch and no such thing happened. But eight or 10 girls would not be lying,” she added.

In a statement, the school said it has started an internal inquiry and called off “all future excursions with the tour company”.

“We ensure full justice to the children who were traumatized due to this unfortunate incident,” the statement read.

Thane:

The police in Maharashtra’s Thane city have arrested two persons for their alleged role in a financial crime that involved breaching the system of a payment gateway service provider and siphoning off more than Rs 16,180 crore, an official said on Friday.

The police on Thursday arrested Anup Dubey (26) of Bhayander, and Mumbai resident Sanjay Namdeo Gaikwad (42), a partner in a firm, the official said.

According to the police, the fraud had been taking place for a long time, but it came to light after a complaint was lodged with the Srinagar police station about the hacking of the payment gateway system of the company in April 2023 and Rs 25 crore being siphoned off.

During the probe, the cyber cell team came across suspicious transactions of more than Rs 16,180 crore.

The Naupada police in the city on October 6 registered a case against five persons under sections 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 467, 468 (forgery), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) and provisions of the Information Technology Act.

As per the FIR, one of the accused, named Jitendra Pandey, earlier worked for 8 to 10 years with banks as a relationship and sales manager.

The police suspect there may be many players in this mega racket, which has been going on for long, and may have pan-India ramifications affecting several companies and individuals, the official said.

The police had earlier said that the accused allegedly set up several partnership firms on bogus documents to launder the amount.

As many as five partnership firms were set up by the accused, and transactions to the tune of Rs 16,180 crore were revealed after the inspection of 260 bank statements, police had said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Thane:

The death toll in the Dombivli building collapse incident in Thane district rose to two on Friday evening, Municipal Corporation officials said.

Meanwhile, the rescue and search operation is underway, said officials of Thane Municipal Corporation.

According to the information the building caved in around 5 pm.

Senior official rushed to the spot after receiving the information. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)