Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
Truth can be stranger than the fiction. A City girl, barely 18, took her one-sided affair, rather too seriously and did something unimaginable. Mad in love with a boy, this girl took the extreme step of abducting the youth with the help of friends, bashed him up when he refused to reciprocate and finally shaved his head in a saloon to teach him a lesson for turning down her proposal. This unusual and violent one-sided love story surprised even the cops, who initially disbelieved the episode. Shital (18), a resident of Rachna Gokul Apartment, was ex-polio worker with Nagpur Municipal Corporation and Sachin (22), a resident of Tandapeth was driver with NMC’s vehicle. During polio vaccination drive, love blossomed in heart of Shital. It was one sided love, but Sachin never reciprocated her gestures. During past three to four months, the girl tried to come quite close to Sachin. But, Sachin maintained safe distance from this girl. According to boy, Shital tried many a t...