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,...
Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar The fresh surge of novel coronavirus cases has forced the government to enforce lockdown to break the chain of the ‘super-spreader’ virus. While the medicos are fighting to save the precious lives in the hospitals, the men in ‘khaki’ are guarding the streets round the clock for enforcement of the lockdown and stop the further spread of the virus. Commissioner of Police (CP) Amitesh Kumar has himself hit the streets and supervised the bandobast across the state. When ‘The Hitavada’ talked to the young and dynamic Police Commissioner, he was very much confident about containing the soaring graph of the virus and said that the cases would be decreased by the end of the April if people will help the police by staying at home. The CP also warned that any misadventure of people like unnecessarily roaming on the streets would be dealt firmly and they will liable for legal action. In a freewheeling chat, CP Amitesh Kumar shared his plans and experiences of ...