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,...
In the first three months of this year, there have been 8,123 cases of overspeeding on the roads of Nagpur, with a staggering 7,968 cases registered against car drivers and just 61 cases against motorcycles, according to statistics from the City traffic police. The population of two-wheelers is around 15 lakh while the population of four-wheelers is around two lakhs. The disproportionate number of overspeeding cases against cars has led to concerns of bias in the enforcement of traffic laws. Experts have suggested that the traffic police may be focusing disproportionately on cars while neglecting to enforce laws against motorcyclists who are also speeding. Ravindra Kaskhedikar, Secretary of Janakrosh and member of National Road Safety Council, said that it is visible on the city streets that two-wheeler riders are indulged in overspeeding. “If they are not penalized by the police, the overspeeding on the streets would not stop,” he said. It is important for law enforcement agencies to ...