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,...
IGP Chandra Kishore Mina By Dheeraj Fartode Chandra Kishore Mina, an IPS officer of the 2006 batch, has been awarded the President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service . Currently serving as Special Inspector General of Police (IGP) for the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Mina has held several important positions in Nagpur and the Vidarbha region . While serving as ASP in Gadchiroli , Mina led a successful anti-Naxal operation in 2009, which resulted in the Petha encounter, weakening the Naxal movement. This operation earned him the DG Insignia . As SP in Akola and Nanded , Mina used innovative methods to maintain communal harmony and resolve tensions effectively. He uncovered a state-wide kidney transplant racket in Akola and, as DCP in Nagpur , dismantled organized crime syndicates through MCOCA and MPDA cases. In Nanded, Mina detected a recruitment scam that affected the entire state. His technological skills were evident when he implemented the court monitoring system in Akola. As...