mrityunjaybose

Nov 24, 2005 Dons are not tough nuts to crack BY MRITYUNJAY BOSE MUMBAI: Name a don and its chills the spine of many. But dons actuallyare not tough nuts to crack. The issue of interrogation and torturehas come into focus once again with extradited underworld don and 1993serial blast accused Abu Salem expressing apprehensions that theMumbai Police may torture him in their custody. "Yeh saab log chuha (rats) hai….bahut darte hai," a senior servingIPS officer, who has tackled the menace of organised crime told theHerald yesterday. "Marne ki zarurat hi nahi padti. One slap is enoughto make dons speak. They not only speak they startsinging…third-degree ka to sawal hi nahin utha," the high-profileofficer -- whose character was essayed in a film -- said wishinganonymity. The reasons are one too many: these mafia dons have most of the timesescaped the police barring for some cases – when they are arrested forpetty crime. "Most of the times they are in AC c

Telgi's rise and fall June 29, 2007 MRITYUNJAY BOSE For Abdul Karim Laadsaab Telgi, it may be the proverbial rags to riches story, but his mercurial rise in the murky and shady world had been cut short by the Indian prosecution and judicial system. Today, the 47-year-old Telgi, who suffers from a life-threatening disease, is languishing in jail – not in one case, but in several cases. He worked up the ladder – but has always been on the wrong side of the law. Born in 1961, Telgi was a street smart by and is proficient in Hindi, English, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu and Telgu. Born in Karnataka's Bijapur district, he hailed from Telgi village and hence his surname. He started his education in Telgi, but later shifted to Belgaum. His father was a railway employee and the family had gone through difficult times. After his father died, the responsibility of the family fell on him. He passed his matriculation, however, to support his family, he used to sell fruits at the Khanapur railway

Gandhi's assassins loved spy books BY MRITYUNJAY BOSE MUMBAI: That Mahatma Gandhi's assassins loved detective novels is a little known fact. A book on the plot to kill the Father of the Nation unravels different aspect of the psyche of the two main conspirators – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte. The book 'The Men Who Killed Gandhi' penned by Manohar Malgonkar – which also contains several unpublished documents and photographs, puts the whole story together that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. "Nathuram Godse was an avid reader of detective novels, his favourite author being Erle Stanley Gardner. Apte, on the other hand, showed a marked preference for Agatha Christie. But their familiarity with crime in fiction had taught them nothing of the ways of criminals in real life. To the end, they remained rank amateurs, shockingly incompetent in almost everything they did. Nathuram even kept an account book in which he meticulously put down

January 30, 2007 From: Mrityunjay Bose Gandhiji's autobiography still attracts rich and poor MUMBAI: Sixty years after his death, Mahatma Gandhi's 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth' is still catching young and old, rich and poor and till date nearly 40 lakh copies have been sold – which in itself is a record. "It is a bestseller by all means. Till December last year more than 35.52 lakh copies had been sold," says veteran Gandhian TRK Somaiya of Gandhi Book Centre and Mumbai Sarvodaya Mandal. "The message in the autobiography is unique," he said pointing out that at the annual exhibition of books on Gandhiji held at Hutatma Chowk, it is still attracting crowd and on Tuesday several hundred copies had been sold. The 'My Experiments with Truth' – as the book is also known is originally published by Ahmedabad-based Navajivan Trust and nearly 35 lakh copies of it has been sold, besides some lakhs in foreign languages. The autobiography is a

Women find smokers unattractive: Survey Mrityunjay Bose 20 February , 2008 Mumbai: Three out of four youngsters are not interested in marrying a smoker. Nearly nine out of ten girls said that they did not find smokers or tobacco users attractive and almost half the youngsters interviewed said that they are never comfortable in the company of smokers. 'Every child has the right to a tobacco-free childhood' is the cry of the times. Salaam Bombay Foundation, the NGO involved in creating awareness on the ill-effects of tobacco and working to give children a healthy tobacco-free future released the results of its research conducted by Ormax Consultants, a leading qualitative market research company at the Kala Ghoda festival this year. The results of the dipstick study on the "Attitude of the youth on smoking and tobacco usage amongst themselves and their partners" revealed that 8 out of 10 girls surveyed did not find a smoker attractive and 67% girls would not date a smok

New species of lizard found in Satara BY MRITYUNJAY BOSE MUMBAI: In a major achievement for nature lovers, a new species of lizard was found in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra's Satara district. The distinctive new species of ground-dwelling lizard (gecko) of the genus Hemidactylus is described from the plateaus of the Satara district, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) said. It is a member of a group of chiefly terrestrial Indian Hemidactylus species that have undivided, or only partly divided subdigital lamellae. This new species has been discovered by Mr. Varad B. Giri of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Mumbai and Dr Aaron M. Bauer of Villanova University, USA. Their paper was published in the Journal "Zootaxa" in February 2008, the BNHS said. At present this species is only known from the type locality, which lies in the south-central part of the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. This region is unique in the presence of large laterite or basaltic plat

Rare Indus dolphins spotted Jan 16, 2008 MUMBAI: The rediscovery and sighting of the highly endangered Indus dolphin, Platanista minor at Harike Wildlife Sanctuary in Punjab recently has enthused WWF-India which has recommended a detailed long-term action plan for the protection of the species. The endangered mammals were first sighted and reported by Basanta Rajkumar, Divisional Forest Officer and sanctuary in charge, during a routine visit of the sanctuary in early December 2007. After the report of the officer, the Forest Department approached the WWF-India to confirm this rare sighting, WWF-India officials said here. A team of WWF-India officials led by Dr Sandeep Behera, Dolphin Coordinator at the WWF-India under the wetland programme and Dr. Asghar Nawab, expert on aquatic mammals, travelled to the Harike sanctuary and conducted extensive surveys with the support of the Forest Department staff. After three days of extensive river-patrolling in chilly northern Indian winter, the r