Month: September 2024

The controversy surrounding the Tirupati Laddoo has made everyone shocked and people are questioning the temple authorities for the use of animal fat in making laddoo given as prasadam at Sri Venkateswara Temple Andhra Pradesh. Citing a laboratory report from Gujarat, the Andhra government said that the samples of ghee used in Tirupati laddoo contained traces of beef fat, fish oil and lard.The Tirupati temple is dedicated to Lord Venkateswara, who is an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, and is believed to have come to earth to liberate humanity from the sufferings and tribulations of Kali Yuga.
The history
The Tirupati laddoo, which is available as prasadam of Lord Venkateswara, is very famous for its unique taste and texture. This prasad of laddoo was first made 300 years ago. It was prepared by the temple officials at the hill temple of Lord Venkateswara. As per the information available on the Internet, the laddoo that we see today got its current taste, shape and flavour around 1940 after going through about six different modifications, under the Madras government. According to ancient inscriptions, the existence of laddoo dates back to 1480, when it was first properly recorded. It was then called ‘Manoharam’. If reports are to be believed then it was ‘Kalyanam Iyengar’, who is believed to have been the architect of the laddoo prasadam. He was the brain behind making laddoo synonymous with Tirupati. He was the ‘ultimate king’ who even donated his thali, wedding chain, and wedding clothes to the people in need.
Who was Kalyanam Iyengar?
As per news reports, Iyengar was a philanthropist and worked for the welfare of the poor and the downtrodden. As a connoisseur and patron of fine arts, he started music and dance festivals in Tirumala, which are being followed even today. Iyengar handed over the great legacy of this laddoo empire to his son, brother, brother-in-law and so on. Political wizard Chakravarti Rajagopalachari BR gave him the name Kalyanam Iyengar as a symbol of many good qualities and humility. He even created the ‘Mirasidari System’ which was, aimed at making sweets. The people responsible for preparing laddoo in the kitchen were called Gemkar Mirasidar. They also got a share from the batch till 2001. Before 2001 and even after that, the employees of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) used to prepare the laddoo themselves. However, with time, as the influx of devotees increased, the number of laddoos prepared every day had to be increased.

NEW DELHI: At first glance, they appeared to be a quintessential family, enthusiastically embarking on a vacation, their affable smiles and nonchalant laughter seamlessly blending into the bustling railway station throng. During their sojourn to their destination, they would frequently open their tiffins and share food with fellow passengers, projecting an image of ordinary travellers.
Their luggage, comprising trolley bags and backpacks, seemed to hold the promise of a tranquil getaway.However, beneath the veneer of normalcy, a sinister truth lurked. Anita, aka Mano, 45, Aman Rana, 26, and a 16-year-old girl were not who they seemed to be. Their innocuous demeanour allegedly concealed their ruse of drug trafficking.

Their behaviour and communal eating habits were meticulously orchestrated to deflect suspicion, enabling them to transport their illicit cargo undetected.
However, their frequent travel plans between Odisha and Delhi were thwarted as Delhi Police‘s crime branch cracked down on the network. Police not only apprehended them but also four other members of the network with a staggering 400kg of drugs in successive operations.
The modules were busted as part of an operation codenamed Kavach, spearheaded by special commissioner of police Devesh Srivastava. A team comprising additional CP Sanjay Bhatia and DCP Satish Kumar assiduously studied the modus operandi of the traffickers, the routes they traversed, and the source supplying them with the contraband. The end users of this supply chain were college and school students.
The first breakthrough came after crime branch received intelligence on the travel plans of the suspect family they had been tracking. A tip-off led ACP Narender Beniwal and inspector Sandeep Tushir from Crime Branch’s NR-II unit to lay a trap near Shakur Basti railway station.
The operation unfolded like a thriller, with the accused caught off guard. When police busted the fake family module, they seized 41.5kg of fine quality ganja, valued at around Rs 50 lakh in the international market.
As police delved deeper, Anita’s alleged shady past unraveled. Previous run-ins with the law for illicit liquor and drug trafficking, coupled with her husband’s checkered history, exposed a hardened delinquent. Aman, a school dropout from Class VIII, had succumbed to the allure of easy money, while the minor girl was drawn into the web of crime.
Interestingly, they were not the only ones adopting this modus operandi. It turned out that the cartels often employed such “families”. Their modus operandi – posing as a family – had nearly perfected the art of deception. Travelling together, they avoided raising suspicion, exploiting the trust and security typically associated with family units.
Digging deeper into this network, crime branch subsequently arrested four more traffickers and seized 357kg of fine-quality cannabis worth around Rs 1.78 crore in the international market.
The accused were identified as Sandeep Kumar, Joginder, Naveen Kumar and Rajesh Adikathia. According to police, they were caught transporting the contraband from Andhra-Orissa border to Delhi and NCR.
The second team, comprising inspector Sandeep Yadav and others, acted on field and used technical intelligence to nab the accused. Investigation revealed that the accused were lured by easy money and had previous connections with drug suppliers.
This network specialised in trafficking a highly sought-after strain of cannabis known as Sheelavathi, originating from Odisha, which has gained immense popularity among youths in Delhi-NCR, fetching a staggering Rs 1 lakh per kg in black market.
To cater to this demand, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh-based cartels employ various mules to transport drugs via trains and modified trucks with hidden cavities. Other coveted strains, such as Idukki Gold and Mysore Mango, are also in high demand, predominantly among college and school students, as well as young working professionals, who unknowingly fuel the illicit trade.

NAGPUR: The 1,200-page chargesheet in the spurious drugs supply case, submitted by rural police on September 20, has revealed startling facts. The antibiotics distributed to the govt hospitals were nothing but talcum powder mixed with starch, made in a Haridwar-based laboratory of veterinary medicines.
Apart from the shocking supply of fake drugs to govt hospitals, the racketeers also rampantly used hawala channels to transfer crores of rupees from Mumbai to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.The cash was transferred to the racketeers to procure fake medicines, which were supplied across India, including to hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra.
The shocking case had surfaced in December last year after drug inspector Nitin Bhandarkar found that the antibiotics supplied to the rural hospital at Kalmeshwar were fake. The drug inspector of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had registered an offence against the suppliers and distributors at Kalmeshwar police station last year. The firms were also blacklisted by the civil surgeon’s office in follow-up action. TOI had then highlighted the action taken by the FDA officials.
The case was taken up for special probe by Rural SP Harssh A Poddar, who handed investigation over to IPS officer Anil Mhaske, posted as SDPO Saoner. After Nagpur rural police investigation started revealing shocking facts, similar cases were registered at Wardha, Nanded, Thane, and elsewhere in Maharashtra against the racketeers.
Mhaske said the offences were initially registered against Hemant Muley, who had participated in the tender to supply medicines to govt hospitals at Nagpur. Apart from Muley, offences were also registered against Mihir Trivedi and Vijay Chaudhury. It is learnt that Chaudhury was already in jail in another similar fraud case when he was taken into custody by the rural police.
Chaudhury’s interrogation prompted rural police to undertake an operation in Haryana, after he named one Gagansingh as the supplier of the spurious drugs. “We had gone to Haryana to raid the location and found a salon there,” said Mhaske, adding that Chaudhury later also named Saharanpur-based Robin Taneja alias Himanshu and Raman Taneja.
“We reached the Haridwar veterinary laboratory of Amit Dhiman after the Taneja brothers named him. Dhiman was in jail after being arrested by Uttarakhand STF. He was later arrested in our case too,” said Mhaske, adding that the racketeers’ bank details and transactions showed multi-crore dealings.

AYODHYA: An FIR has been registered against Samajwadi Party’s Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad’s son Ajit Prasad for allegedly kidnapping, threatening, and assaulting a man. Ajit Prasad is the Samajwadi Party candidate for the Milkipur assembly by-election.
According to the complainant, Ravi Tiwari, a local property dealer, Ajit Prasad, one Raju Yadav, and 15-20 unidentified individuals met him near SBI branch in Faizabad on Saturday afternoon, dragged him into their car, and drove him towards Raqaabganj while thrashing him all this while.He alleged that they snatched Rs 1 lakh from him, recorded a video of the incident and threatened to kill him before letting him out.
According to Tiwari, he was brokering a land deal between Ajit Prasad and Sheetla Prasad, a local landowner.
Tiwari later submitted a complaint at the Kotwali police station.
Ashwini Pandey, in-charge of city Kotwali, said that initial investigations found the allegations to be true. Based on investigation, a case has been registered against three named individuals—Ajit Prasad, Raju Yadav, and police constable Shashikant Rai—along with 15 others.
BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya posted on social media that Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad, whom Akhilesh Yadav is currently promoting, has a son, Ajit Prasad, who kidnapped and beat Ravi Tiwari. Malviya added that after winning a few seats, the SP’s “series of rapes and hooliganism continues”.
Meanwhile, the sitting SP MP from Faizabad, Awadhesh Prasad, said that the allegations are baseless and politically motivated. He mentioned that the SP is “winning in Milkipur, which is making BJP restless”.
Claiming this to be a fake case, Prasad said that the BJP is trying to shift the public focus away from “a movement against police atrocities in the Raunahi police station area, which led to the death of a person named Dukhiram”.

INDORE/KANPUR: In what seems to be yet more attempts to sabotage railway operations, it has come to light that railway ‘detonators‘ were placed on tracks in Madhya Pradesh‘s Ratlam on September 18 when an Army special train was passing through. The revelation came on a day when an empty gas cylinder was found on the tracks at Prempur station near Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur.
Since Aug this year, at least six alleged attempts have been made in UP to sabotage railway operations.
In MP’s Burhanpur district, the 10 ‘railway detonators’ were found placed at intervals of a metre each. The railways called it an “attempt at mischief”. The Army has requested custody of certain key railway personnel, including signalmen and trackmen, for questioning as part of the probe.

Read also: Another train sabotage? Iron pole placed across railway track in Uttarakhand
Cops: Train was carrying Army personnel and weapons
Sources said a gangman has been detained but there is no official confirmation. He is alleged to have done this in a drunken rage.
The train, headed for Thiruvananthapuram, was carrying Army personnel and weapons, police sources said. A couple of the detonators — more like firecrackers — exploded when the train passed over them. The loco pilot pulled the brakes the moment he heard the first explosion. The train was halted for half an hour at Sagphata station, while the area was inspected.
“Ten railway detonators were placed over a 10m distance on the Mumbai rail route between Sagphata and Dongargaon railway stations,” Dr Swapnil Nila, chief public relations officer of Central Railway, told TOI.
In the incident near Kanpur, the 5-litre cylinder was removed from the tracks by police after a thorough examination. “Around 5.50am, locopilots Dev Anand Gupta and C B Singh of the Jorhat-bound freight train spotted an empty cylinder on the tracks ahead of the signal. The crew promptly applied emergency brakes to avert a potential catastrophe,” read a statement issued by North Central Railway (NCR). Two empty beer cans and a snack wrapper were also found on the scene.
“The cylinder was placed a mere 30m from the signal. Kanpur Police, RPF and GRP are investigating,” said Om Narayan Singh, SHO of Kanpur Central GRP. “Though the probability of derailment was minuscule as the train’s momentum would have likely propelled the cylinder away, the deliberate placement of the gas cylinder on the track indicates sabotage,” Kanpur police said.
However, the incident near Ratlam in MP rang the alarm bells . Officers from NIA , the Army, anti-terrorism squad, railways and police inspected the site. “While it seems this was done without reason, an inquiry is being conducted by RPF,” said CPRO.