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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday carried out multi-state raids in connection with its probe in Bengaluru's Rameshwaram Cafe blast case, officials said.

The raids were conducted based on suspects' links to those involved in the crime. Kumaraswamy Layout and Banashankari in Bengaluru were among the places that were raided, the officials said.

"Multi-states raids were underway in different locations," a senior NIA official said. Several customers and hotel staff members were injured, some of them grievously, in the blast that caused extensive damage to the cafe in the IT city on March 1.

The agency arrested two key accused, Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa and Mussavir Hussain Shazib, who were allegedly members of the Shivamogga-based Islamic State module.

The BJP on Tuesday accused the Aam Aadmi Party of indulging in "character assassination" of Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal instead of taking action against Bibhav Kumar, who is alleged to have assaulted her.

BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi asked Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal why no action had been taken against Kumar, despite his party's Rajya MP Sanjay Singh admitting that Maliwal was mistreated. "Such misbehaviour with a woman MP. Instead of addressing it, the AAP is indulging in her character assassination," Trivedi charged.

The BJP leader also slammed Kejriwal over his party alleging BJP's involvement in the matter, and asked him, "Did you set up any inquiry into the incident? If not, then on what grounds you are arriving at a conclusion."

The Jammu-Srinagar national highway was closed for traffic on Tuesday, officials said.

Though authorities did not give any specific reason for the closure, sources said the highway has been shut for repair and maintenance work.

The closure affected Jammu and other destinations like Chenani, Patnitop, Doda, Ramban, Gool, Banihal, and Srinagar. However, Mughal Road and Bhaderwah-Chamba Road remain operational, they said.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Home Minister Devendra Fadnavis have instructed for stringent action in a car accident allegedly involving a 17-year-old boy which resulted in the death of two people, Pune police chief said on Tuesday.

The Porsche car, allegedly driven by the juvenile, who police claim was drunk at the time, knocked down two motorbike riders in the Kalyani Nagar area of Pune city on Sunday. The police have detained the boy's father, a real estate developer, and arrested three executives of two hotels for serving liquor to the juvenile, they said.

Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar said, "The chief minister, the deputy chief minister and home minister (Fadnavis), and the (Pune) guardian minister (Deputy CM Ajit Pawar) have given clear instructions to the police to take stringent action in this case. The state Director General of Police has also instructed for strong action," he said. Addressing public concerns that the police were not taking adequate action in the case, he affirmed that both the government and police were committed to taking stringent measures against those responsible for the incident.

The police have been acting according to the law from the beginning, and there is no pressure on the cops from anyone, the official said.

Investigators have discovered that Sabith Nasar, a 30-year-old man arrested in Kochi last week on charges of trafficking Indians to Iran for organ harvesting, is employed at a hospital in Tehran.

Nasa, from Valapad in Thrissur, Kerala, was apprehended at Kochi International Airport on Saturday after arriving from Iran. On Monday, he was presented in court and subsequently remanded to judicial custody. Police plan to request his custody on Tuesday for further questioning. “We are looking into how many people were cheated as part of this racket. He had sent two persons from Hyderabad to Iran so their kidneys could be harvested. There are also victims from states such as Karnataka,” said an officer familiar with the investigation.

“They are people from poor families, desperate for money. They were paid just Rs 5 lakh and given flight tickets, while middlemen pocketed huge sums from the recipients,” added the officer. Police allege that Nasar deceived individuals into believing that donating organs for remuneration was legal.

“Whether he is a key figure in the racket can be ascertained only after unearthing who all were involved,” said an investigator.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's aide, Bibhav Kumar, is being taken to Mumbai for data retrieval from his formatted iPhone, police said on Tuesday.

Kumar is under five-day judicial custody in connection with the alleged assault on AAP MP Swati Maliwal.

Police said Kumar had formatted his phone before transferring the data to some person, or device in Mumbai. His mobile phone was seized after his arrest but was found formatted.

The Manipur Land Resources department has filed a FIR against the Kuki National Front (Military Council) for promoting enmity among different groups in the state.

The complaint was filed at Imphal Police Station by Under Secretary Mangoljao Kamei, who claimed the erection of a gate with the words Kuki National Front Military Council and the name of the site as Thanting indicates an unauthorised change of the original name of Thangjing. "It's a violation of Manipur Names of Places of Act 2024 and Manipur Ancient Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1976," it said.

The FIR registered at Imphal PS stated the offences included "criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between different groups to outrage religious feelings by insulting religious beliefs.

This is a developing story

The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday is carrying out searches at 11 locations across different states regarding a case of terror conspiracy which was registered in Bengaluru.

The owner and manager of a Pune bar have been arrested for serving liquor to a 17-year-old boy who killed two people with his father's Porsche car.

"City Police arrested the bar owner and the bar manager who served liquor to the minor accused on the night of the accident," Pune CP Amitesh Kumar said.

On Tuesday morning, the minor driver's father was arrested from Maharashtra's Sambhajinagar.

A day after the Juvenile Justice Board in Pune granted bail to a teenager involved in a car accident that killed two people by asking him to write a 300-word essay, the police on Monday said they will seek a higher court's permission to prosecute him as an adult accused.

The police have also registered a case against his father, a real estate developer, and detained him this morning. 

The Porsche allegedly driven by the 17-year-old, who the police claim was drunk at the time, knocked down two persons on a motorbike in Kalyani Nagar area at around 3.15 am on Sunday, causing their death.

Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM on Tuesday raised concerns about Indian students allegedly being targeted in Kyrgyzstan, urging external affairs minister S Jaishankar to intervene.

The issue emerged after Indian and Pakistani students in Kyrgyzstan were advised by their consulates to stay indoors to protect themselves from mob violence.

Owaisi shared a video of an Indian student in Kyrgyzstan making a phone call to the consulate inquiring about evacuation procedures and if security would be provided if they attempted to take a flight and return home. Sharing the call audio on X, Owaisi posted, “A student reached out to me saying that they have not eaten for the last five days. @drsjaishankar, please take strong steps to protect our people there. Arrangements must be made for their return if the situation does not improve.”

The situation escalated after a brawl between foreign students and Kyrgyz students on May 13. The locals saw the fight as a violation of hospitality by the foreign students, mainly from Pakistan, India, and Egypt.

There were no reports of injuries, but the Indian government advised Indian students to stay indoors until the violence cools down.

The Pune Police have arrested the father of the 17-year-old boy, who crashed his speeding Porsche into a bike and killed two people. India Today reports that Vishal Agrawal was arrested from Maharashtra's Aurangabad based on a case registered against him on Monday.

A real estate developer, Vishal Agrawal, was on the run. Thus the Pune Police had formed several teams for further probe and to nab him. He was eventually arrested early this morning from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar area.

25-year-old Ashwini Koshta’s family is still reeling in the shock of their daughter being mowed down by a drunk teen in Pune on a speeding Porsche.

Ashwini was one of the two persons hit by the vehicle at 2.15 am on Saturday. Her colleague Aneesh Awadhiya also died on the spot. Both were software engineers working in Pune. The teen who was driving is the son of a prominent realtor from the city and secured bail 15 hours after his arrest. He is just four months short of 18 years — the minimum age required to legally drive a car.

"We want his bail cancelled and he should remain in police custody. Because of him, an innocent girl, who has seen nothing of life, died," said one of the victim’s  uncles. 

AAP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal on Monday alleged that Delhi government ministers were "spreading lies" about her and threatened to take them to court.

Maliwal refuted AAP leaders' allegations that she filed an assault complaint against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's aide Bibhav Kumar at the BJP's behest as a corruption case was registered against her. She claimed that the FIR was registered in 2016 and that she was appointed the chief of the Delhi Commission for Women twice by both the chief minister and the Lt Governor.

"The case is completely fake and the Hon'ble High Court has imposed a stay for the last one-and-a-half years and has also accepted that there was no exchange of money," she said in a Hindi post on X. She accused Aam Aadmi Party leaders of unleashing a "troll army" against her to malign her image. "All the members of the party are receiving calls saying if there is any personal video of Swati, send it. It has to be leaked, she added.

"Well, lies don't last long. But in the intoxication of power and the obsession to bring someone down, it should not happen that when the truth comes out, you are not even able to look your family in the eye.

"I will take you to court for every lie you spread!" Maliwal said in her post.

Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk said on Monday a small clip from his recent interaction was “twisted” and “taken out of context” in a way to show that he was talking about Kashmir and giving an anti-national statement.

"Twisting statements is not right. I have said nothing on Kashmir," Wangchuk told PTI here, adding, "It is sad when statements are twisted and small clips circulated..."

The activist also alleged that his statement was twisted and he was quoted out of context. "A politician from Kargil said Ladakh should be re-merged with Kashmir. I objected to that and said it was ok if this was his personal view, but if all people of Kargil feel this way, they can do that. But Ladakh will continue to be a UT," he said.

"We are not interested in re-merging with Kashmir. That was the context. A small clip from that (interview) was shown in a way that it appeared I was talking about Kashmir and giving an anti-national statement," Wangchuk added.

The Enforcement Directorate has written to the Union Home Ministry alleging the Aam Aadmi Party has received over Rs 7 crore foreign funds in contravention of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, official sources said Monday.

The federal probe agency sent the communication after it recovered some documents and emails during a drugs-linked money laundering probe against former Punjab AAP MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira and some others. The probe was launched in 2021 and Khaira was arrested by the ED that year. He is now with the Congress party.

Official sources said the ED had sent a detailed communication to the Union Home Ministry in August last year, underlining the alleged violations by the AAP and categorising these instances as contravention of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and The Representation of the People Act.

It is understood that the ED recently shared some fresh inputs in this case with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). Sources said the ED found the AAP received overseas donations of about Rs 7.08 crore till now and they allegedly “mis-declared and manipulated” the identities and nationalities of the foreign donors apart from some other details.

The agency has also informed the MHA about the verified names of the donors, their nationalities, passport numbers, amount donated, mode of donation and bank account number of the receiver, billing name, address, phone numbers, email, time and the date of donation and payment gateway used, the sources said. Some fundraising events held by the AAP through its overseas wing volunteers in the USA and Canada between 2015 and 2016 are reported to have been made in alleged violation of the FCRA, the agency told the ministry.

Alleging violations in a particular instance, the ED also informed the MHA that the names of some Canada-based people and their nationalities had been "concealed" in the party's financial records to "hide" the foreign donations being made to the party into its Indian bank account. A senior official said cases of FCRA violations are probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the home ministry can write to it seeking an investigation into these charges made by the ED.

The ED on Monday sought an extension of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's judicial custody after he surrendered on June 2 in an excise policy-linked money-laundering case.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) moved the application before Special Judge for ED and CBI Kaveri Baweja, seeking 14-day judicial custody for Kejriwal when he surrenders on June 2, claiming that the period of judicial custody granted earlier ends on Monday. Kejriwal is out on interim bail till June 1 following an order of the Supreme Court, which has directed him to surrender on June 2.

The ED, meanwhile, told the court that there is sufficient evidence against Kejriwal and co-accused, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K Kavitha, to put them on trial in the case.

The Central probe agency made submission in support of its supplementary charge sheets filed against both the politicians. The judge will continue hearing the ED's arguments on the point of taking cognisance of the charge sheets on Tuesday.

The judge, meanwhile, also extended till June 2 Kavitha’s judicial custody in the money-laundering and corruption cases, lodged by the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation respectively, in connection with the scam.

The Delhi Police on Monday took Bibhav Kumar, who is allegedly involved in an assault on AAP MP Swati Maliwal, to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence for a recreation of the alleged crime scene, an officer said.

Kejriwal’s personal aide Kumar was arrested on Friday and was sent to a five-day police custody.

Maliwal had filed an FIR against Kumar for allegedly assaulting her when she had gone to meet Kejriwal at his residence located at the Civil Lines area on May 13. 

A one-day state mourning will be observed across India on Tuesday as a mark of respect for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash, the Union Home Ministry has announced.

The national flag will be flown at half-mast on all buildings where it is regularly flown across India and there will be no official entertainment during the period of state mourning. The Iranian president, the country's foreign minister and several other officials were found dead on Monday, hours after their helicopter crashed in a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest, Iran state media reported.

Trigger warning: Mention of sexual harassment
The Quint has found details of a report filed by the Kolkata Police to the West Bengal government pertaining to a complaint filed in October last year by an Odissi danseuse from the state who accused West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose of sexually harassing her at a hotel in Delhi in January 2023.

"He went in his private car, without his security, to meet her at a hotel. She alleged that he sexually assaulted her [at the hotel]," a Kolkata Police official told The Quint on the condition of anonymity after a second case of sexual harassment surfaced against Bose last week. This comes just weeks after a contractual staffer at the Raj Bhavan also accused Bose of sexual harassment. 

The police official told The Quint that the danseuse alleged Bose harassed her under the pretext of helping her sort out a “personal problem” regarding a visa-related issue by promising to introduce her to a Ministry of External Affairs official in Delhi. 

Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Dr Rajiv Bahl on Monday criticised a recently published study on the long-term safety analysis of Covaxin in adults and adolescents for its poor methodology and design.

Dr Bahl said the study had no control arm of unvaccinated individuals for comparing the rates of events between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. Hence, the reported events in the study cannot be linked or attributed to Covid-19 vaccination.

The ICMR is not associated with the study and has not provided any financial or technical support for the research, Dr Bahl said. The ICMR DG has written a letter to the authors of the paper and the Editor of the journal to immediately remove the acknowledgement to ICMR and publish an erratum.

A research paper, titled ‘Long-Term Safety Analysis of the BBVl52 Coronavirus Vaccine in Adolescents and Adults: Findings from a l-Year Prospective Study in North India’ stated that nearly one-third of the 926 participants in the study who received Bharat Biotech’s anti-Covid vaccine Covaxin reported ‘adverse events of special interest’, or AESI. Dr Bahl said that ICMR was acknowledged for research support without any prior approval or intimation to ICMR, which is inappropriate and unacceptable. He stated that ICMR cannot be associated with this poorly designed study which purports to present a “safety analysis” of Covaxin due to several critical flaws.

He said the study does not even provide background rates of observed events in the population, making it impossible to assess the change in incidence of observed events in the post-vaccination period. Baseline information of study participants is missing.

The study tool used is inconsistent with ‘Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI)’ as defined in the reference provided in the paper for AESI. The method of data collection has a high risk of bias, he said. Study participants were contacted telephonically one year after vaccination and their responses were recorded without any confirmation with clinical records or by physician examination, he pointed out.

Dr Bahl also noted that similar acknowledgements to ICMR have been made in previous papers without permission, raising concerns about the authors' practices.

"The authors have been urged to immediately rectify the acknowledgment to ICMR and publish an erratum. Additionally, they are asked to address the methodological concerns raised. Failure to do so may prompt ICMR to consider legal and administrative action," he said. The Editor has been asked to retract the paper which implicitly makes conclusions on vaccine safety which are not supported by evidence.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Banaras Hindu University from January 2022 to August 2023, stated that nearly 50% of 926 study participants in the study complained of infections during the follow-up period, predominated by viral upper respiratory tract infections.

A new audio clip shared multiple times online allegedly features Congress leader L R Shivarame Gowda purportedly trying to convince BJP’s Devaraje Gowda to distribute pen drives containing obscene videos involving Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna. 

When the BJP leader points out that it is not right to share the videos as it will affect the lives of the victims, the Congress leader is heard convincing him by pointing out that Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that Karnataka is not a safe place for women.

Relatives of former sarpanch Aijaz Ahmad Sheikh, a resident of Herpora village in Shopian, said gunmen barged into his house Saturday night and fired at him.

“We heard some gunshots but stayed inside out of fear…A few minutes later, his wife came wailing. She said Ajaz has been shot at. Sometime later, Army and police arrived and we took him to hospital. The doctors said that he was dead,” a relative told The Indian Express. The report in the Indian Express adds that the gunmen asked Sheikh for his identity and then opened fire from point blank range. “He was hit by eight bullets,” said a police officer. “The bullets hit him in his chest and abdomen.”

Terrorists struck at two places in Kashmir on Saturday night, killing Sheikh in Shopian and injuring a tourist couple from Rajasthan in Anantnag, two days ahead of Lok Sabha elections in Baramulla.

To manage the huge crowds in Char Dham Yatra, offline passes were issued on Sunday to 1,775 devotees from different states who have halted in Haridwar. These passes were offered to devotees who are currently staying in Haridwar for the last two to three days.

However, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has appealed to people to not come on the yatra without registering and also to make arrangements for accommodation in advance. He also asked the devotees to be informed about the weather forecast issued by the weather department before the yatra and during the yatra, the statement said. Dhami also appealed to them to take the health advisories issued seriously.

So far, over 6,40,000 pilgrims have been part of this year's Char Dham Yatra which began on May 10.

To manage the huge crowds in Char Dham Yatra, offline passes were issued on Sunday to 1,775 devotees from different states who have halted in Haridwar. These passes were offered to devotees who are currently staying in Haridwar for the last two to three days.

However, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has appealed to people to not come on the yatra without registering and also to make arrangements for accommodation in advance. He also asked the devotees to be informed about the weather forecast issued by the weather department before the yatra and during the yatra, the statement said. Dhami also appealed to them to take the health advisories issued seriously.

So far, over 6,40,000 pilgrims have been part of this year's Char Dham Yatra which began on May 10.

The Indian army’s Assam Rifles engaged in a fierce gunfight with suspected insurgents and rescued 75 women of a social and cultural institution in Manipur, according to a statement by the military on Sunday.

The incident reportedly occurred on May 16 when a group of people with arms began firing towards Uyok, which is at the foothills at around 10:45 pm.  The Assam Rifles in its social media post said soldiers "brought down heavy fire" on the unknown armed people, during which they also evacuated 75 Meira Paibis, a women-only social and cultural institution of the Meitei community.

The hill-dominant Kuki-Zo tribes have set up bunkers on most of the hills surrounding Manipur's valley areas, where the Meiteis live. The Meiteis have accused the Kuki-Zo tribes of shooting at anyone including farmers without provocation, while the Kuki-Zo tribes have accused the Meiteis of trying to take over hill areas with frequent attacks.