Hot shot cop to be reinstated
Encounter specialist police officer Pradeep Sharma may soon return to Mumbai police. Sharma was dismissed in 2008 for his alleged involvement in the fake encounter of Lakhan Bhaiya. Sharma had earlier challenged his dismissal in the court which ruled in his favour and declared him not guilty in the case. He hoped to be reinstated to the force, but there was no move in this regard. Sharma soon rushed to the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal, which, too, has ruled that he should resume his duty. Mumbai police's Crime Branch, when it was at its peak, boasted of hot shot police officers like Pradeep Sharma, Vijay Salaskar, Daya Nayak, Sachin Waze and Praful Bhosle. It is an open secret that these investigators soon became trigger happy encounter specialists and began competing with each other over 'number of kills' during police encounters, both genuine and 'fake'. That was the beginning of their downfall.
Salaskar and Bhosle stayed low profile and out of the race. Salaskar died a valiant death in the terrorist attack on 26 November 2008. Bhosle is now an Assistant Commissioner of Police in crime branch. But Sharma, Nayak and Waze, who were all part of one crime branch unit, appeared to have become larger than life. The encounter specialist essayed so beautifully by Nana Patekar in Ram Gopal Varma's film Ab Tak Chhappan is said to have been inspired from Sharma and Nayak. Both Sharma and Nayak were dismissed from police force in 2008. Nayak was reinstated last year and is now posted at one of the many police stations in Mumbai. If the home department does not challenge the MAT order, Sharma too will be back in Mumbai police. His glory days are long over as Sharma too may have to accept a police station posting.
'Indians knew about gravity before Newton'
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently claimed in Pune that Indians knew about theory of gravity much before Sir Isaac Newton. Fadnavis made the statement at a science exhibition in Pune, according to a Marathi newspaper. “Indians had mastery in many sciences like mathematics, metallurgy, geography, astronomy etc. but we could not claim the credit for the same. The 'ruchas' in Veda tell us how old the earth is, before Newton discovered gravity, we had the knowledge of it,” Fadnavis is reported to have said. Fadnavis was speaking during the release of the book titled Bharatiya Jnanacha Khajina (The Treasure of Indian Knowledge) authored by Prashant Pol. RSS Chief Mohanrao Bhagawat has written the foreword for the book. Fadnavis isn't the first one who made this claim. A couple of years ago, former ISRO chief G. Madhavan Nair, too, had said that Indian mathematicians knew about gravity much before Newton.
But more important was Fadnavis's statement that we must learn from our ancient history. One wonders whether he and his party colleagues cared to read the scholarly work The Myth Of The Holy Cow. Had they read it, beef would have remained on the menu cards of restaurants in Maharastra, like it is in Goa, another BJP-ruled state.
Damania vs Bhujbals
RTI activist Anjali Damania's latest round of allegations against jailed NCP leader and former deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal appear to have hit the Bhujbals very hard. Damania, in a letter to Special IGP B.K. Upadhyay, who heads Maharashtra's prison administration, had claimed that Bhujbal and his nephew Sameer were receiving VIP treatment inside the prison. They have a television set, are served fruits every two hours, get chicken masala for lunch and dinner and Sameer even gets Vodka inside the prison, claimed Damania in her letter. Crime reporters soon got their hands on the letter and newspapers published the story. Bhujbal senior, who was very upset after the newsreports, issued a denial through his lawyers. He now plans to take on Damania and has sent a Rs 50 crore defamation notice to the RTI activist.
When Baba met Thackeray
The meeting between Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev and Raj Thackeray raised many an eyebrows in Mumbai. Ramdev met MNS chief on Wednesday morning and the two had a discussion for nearly an hour. The media was later informed that Baba Ramdev was in Mumbai and it was just a courtesy visit to Raj Thackeray at his residence in Shivaji Park and that they did not discuss anything political. Before he met Raj Thackeray, Ramdev had been to Varsha, to meet Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. No prizes for guessing that this too was just a courtesy visit. A birdie, however, speculates that Raj Thackeray and Baba Ramdev discussed the health of Raj's son Amit who is undergoing treatment and during the course of discussion the Yoga Guru recommended yoga training for Amit to help him de-stress himself.
BJP popular amongst Malegaon Muslims?
Making an aggressive move in the Malegaon Municipal Corporation election, the BJP is fielding 77 candidates, of which 45 are Muslims. This is for the first time that BJP has given tickets to Muslims in such large numbers in any election in the state. No surprise, as Malegaon is a Muslim majority town and any party wanting to be a serious contender will have to give tickets to Muslim candidates. The BJP leadership, meanwhile, was happy that Muslims were keen to contest on BJP ticket. Apparently, 248 Muslims had applied for BJP tickets and 45 were chosen after careful scrutiny. The election to Malegaon Municipal Corporation will be held on May 24 and the results will be declared on May 26th. The BJP is treating this election as a test for its popularity among minority community in Maharashtra.
