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,...
Family members of a builder were held hostage by a youth using a toy gun in their Pipala residence for a ransom of Rs 50 lakh, on Friday. It took a two-hour long, well-thought, filmy-style operation by the police to rescue the family members of builder Raju Vaidya. The shocking day-light incident has sent shockwaves across the city. The accused was identified as Jitendra Tulshiram Bisen (19), a resident of Hudkeshwar Khurd. Jitendra was in the catering business. He was unemployed after enforcement of the lockdown. His younger brother is a history-sheeter, a police official said. As Bisen was facing financial crunch, he decided to commit the robbery in the bungalow belonging to Vaidya in Pipala area. He had done a recce of the area and finalised Vaidya family as his target. At 2 pm on Friday, Bisen barged into the one-storey house with a gun and a sharp-weapon. A total of six persons were present in the house. Vaidya’s mother and two ladies were at ground floor while three persons were ...