Skip to main content

A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

  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,...

Nagpur cops fail to respond to ‘call’ of Home Minister

HOME Minister Anil Deshmukh’s ‘call’ to Nagpur Police for sharing details of police personnel who are deployed in the field for implementation of lockdown is going ‘unanswered’. The local police officers have not yet compiled information of the bandobast duty staff with Nagpur Police Commissionerate which prompted DCP Headquarters Vikram Sali to flash a reminder to the lethargic officers for immediate compilation of data.
Sources informed that office of Home Minister Deshmukh wrote a letter to Nagpur Police Commissionerate to share the information of police personnel who are on the bandobast duty, including their name, buckle no, wife’s name and mobile number.
The office of DCP HQ Napgur Police had then sent letters to in-charges of all police stations and other branches directing them to immediately furnish the information of 10 constabulary staff who are deployed for bandobast duties of lockdown. However, many Police Inspectors had not taken the instructions seriously which prompted DCP HQ Sali to issue another order on Tuesday. 
The order stated that the police personnel are performing duties to contain the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the city. “Home Minister Anil Deshmukh will contact families of these police personnel on telephone,” the order said. 
“This office had issued an order to Police Stations, Branch and Departments for compiling data of police personnel. However, the information has not been received by this office so far which is causing delay in sending the information to office of Home Minister,” stated DCP Sali in the circular. 
Sources informed that being Home Minister Anil Deshmukh is waiting for list for a long time as he wanted to give nmoral support to the police families from his home town. “It would send a positive message among the police personnel. However, lethargic approach on part of a section of police officers is delaying the good cause,” he said. In Mumbai, Deshmukh had distributed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), masks and sanitisers to Mumbai police personnel on Saturday.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Srivastava's report one sided, Collector not to write ACRs of Superintendent of Police: DGP

By Dheeraj Fartode Maharashtra's Director General of Police (DGP) Pravin Dixit has rejected the report into the spat between Collector and Superintendent of Police in Bhandara, that had stirred hornet’s nest among the Indian Police Service (IPS) cadre in State. Principal Secretary (Revenue) Manu Kumar Srivastava was appointed by State Government to probe the matter and he had submitted the report to Government and made certain recommendations. One of the recommendation which Srivastava made was to delegated powers of writing annual confidential records (ACRs) of SP's to District Collector. This particular recommendation had the IPS cadre seething with anger as they claimed it an unwarranted intrusion on their powers. DGP Pravin Dixit DGP Dixit when contacted by The Hitavada to ascertain his views said he had read the report and found it to be totally one sided. Further he disclosed that the particular recommendation about ACR was also summarily rejected. Dixit said ...

IGP Prasanna : The man who stopped Obama’s convoy

IGP Mallikarjuna Prasanna By Dheeraj Fartode  Published on Feb/17/2019 NOT many are aware of an episode during the then US President Barack Obama’s visit to India in 2010. The world’s most powerful man was made to wait for 11 minutes in his car while an Indian cop took on American officials for their unwarranted interference in the US President’s security. KM Mallikarjuna Prasanna, Special Inspector General of Police of Nagpur Range, still continues to work with the same pride, wearing his patriotism on the sleeve. “Had they (Americans) deployed their personnel for area security, then the message would have been Indians are unable to protect VIPs in their nation,” recounted Prasanna on the episode that is one of the highlights of his distinguished career of a skillful investigator. The story of the IPS officer of 2000 batch is worth a film. In fact, a movie (Nagarjun-starrer ‘Officer’) has already been made by Ram Gopal Verma last year. His real life script als...

UP ATS arrest a doctor from Yavatmal district under anti-conversion law

On 10-08-21 Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh police arrested a doctor from Pusad town of Yavatmal district in connectin with a case registered at Gomti Nagar police station under anti-conversion law. It may be mentioned that three persons were arrested by UP ATS from Nagpur and Gadchiroli on July 17 in the same case. The accused person was identified as Dr. Faraz Shah Karamat Shah (27), a resident of Vasant Nagar, Pusad. A police official informed that Faraz was working with Shah Hospital at Pusad with his relatives after completing MBBS course from Government Medical College Akola in 2012. As per the records of Yavatmal police, Faraz was not a member of any organisation. The UP ATS had arrested some persons last month in Delhi and had claimed that a nation-wide racket of religious conversions was busted. The police had recovered a register with details of over 1,000 persons, including their names and addresses, from Maharashtra, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi. So...