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Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
Tale of two passports: Nigerian national cleared of drug charge but convicted for illegal entry, stay in India
A special court in Mumbai sentenced a 34-year-old Nigerian national—arrested four years ago for staying in India without a valid passport and visa—to five years in jail. The man, who was initially arrested based on an alleged tip-off of drug possession, was acquitted of all charges under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. On October 8, 2021, Godwin Chukwu was arrested based on information that he was coming to Malad to sell cocaine. The Mumbai police claimed that Chukwu was caught with a plastic bag containing a 'white powder', found in the pocket of his pants, which they claimed was 151.5 grams of the banned drug. While searching his house as part of the probe, the police found two passports of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with Indian visas stamped on them. The investigators wrote to the High Commission of Nigeria, through the Ministry of External Affairs, seeking to check the validity of the passports and the visa. The High Commission responded stating that one of the passports was fake and one was with an expired validity. While the original passport expired in 2020, the fake one showed validity till 2023. The response also said that while one visa, which was a business visa with validity for three months issued in 2016, was real, the others were not issued by them. Based on this, the police also invoked the Foreigners Act against Chukwu, special public prosecutor S S Panjwani told the court. During the trial, Chukwu's lawyer Khushal Parmar submitted that the search and seizure of the accused was not done properly, and provisions of the NDPS Act, like the sample and bulk of the seized substance, was not produced before the magistrate. The court agreed with the contention of the accused that the mandatory provisions under the Act were not followed. It said that the 'casual approach' of the investigating team 'creates doubt about their activity of seizure and search'. While Chukwu also claimed that the fake passport was planted to falsely implicate him, the court said the onus was on him to show valid documents to prove his travel and stay in India was legal, which he had not done. 'The evidence on record clearly depicts that the accused is residing in India without a valid passport and visa. He was not having a valid visa and passport on the day of commission of offence,' special judge K G Joshi said in his order on May 28.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Business
- Time of India
34 digital courts inaugurated to deal with cases under Negotiable Instruments Act in Delhi
Delhi High Court chief justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya on Friday inaugurated 34 digital courts at the Rouse Avenue District Courts complex here to try cases under the Negotiable Instruments Act exclusively in the national capital. Justice Upadhyaya urged the judicial officers to work towards people's cause and said the "kind of infrastructure created here, the use of technology especially is laudable". He urged the judges to exercise their jurisdiction and the power vested in them by being "duty conscious" instead of being "power-charged". by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 20 Highest Paying Degrees For 2025 Best Paying Degrees | Search Ads Learn More Undo "If you (judges) work with a feeling that you are wielding some power, you won't be able to do justice to the person coming to you," he said. Delhi High Court judges -- Justice Vibhu Bakhru, Justice Subramonium Prasad, Justice Saurabh Banerjee, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma and Justice Ajay Digpaul -- were also present on the occasion. Live Events Principal District and Sessions Judge Kanwal Jeet Arora said that these courts would help clear the massive backlog of cheque bounce cases in Delhi. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories The Act regulates negotiable instruments, including promissory notes, bills of exchange and cheques.
Otago Daily Times
an hour ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Council rejects mobile sauna's trading permit
A plan to operate a mobile sauna next to Lake Dunstan in Cromwell has hit a bureaucratic brick wall. Businessman and sauna-fanatic John Ryan has failed to get the go-ahead from the Central Otago District Council or Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (Linz) to periodically park his travelling sauna on public land beside the lake. Mr Ryan's sauna is 2.5m by 3m, can fit 15 people and sits atop a trailer pulled by his Land Rover. "One side has a big open window, so you can look out to the lake," Mr Ryan said. Several weeks ago, Mr Ryan had a trial run of the sauna at Alpha Street Reserve, offering free use of it to members of the public. "I parked up near the swimming platform there, so people could have a sauna and have a dip," he said. "Seventeen people turned up and they all loved it." However, Mr Ryan's application to the district council for a mobile trading permit for the venture has been declined. "Their excuse was they want to protect the reserve", he said. He also took his idea to Linz, which administered some of the lakeside land in Cromwell, but staff there "knocked it back". "I don't think they fully understand what it is or how it runs." District council parks and recreation manager Gordon Bailey confirmed the reserve-land status of the spots Mr Ryan wished to park at was the reason his application was declined. The land in question was governed by the council's reserve management plan — which specified what could and could not go on reserves — as well as the Reserve Act 1977, he said. The commercial rather than recreational nature of Mr Ryan's activity meant it "was not consistent" with the plan, nor the Act. Meanwhile, although Linz had no official record of a conversation with Mr Ryan, head of Crown property Sonya Wikitera told the Otago Daily Times her staff received many inquiries about the use of Crown land for commercial businesses and were always available to talk through a person's plans before any official application to Linz was made. "When providing advice or assessing formal applications, Linz considers the potential impact on the Crown land, public use, impact on other businesses already operating in the area, other applications which may have already been made, feedback from other agencies and the public, as well as impacts on existing infrastructure like toilets, rubbish bins and carparking," Ms Wikitera said. Mr Ryan's sauna is wood-clad, has a chimney out the top and is heated by a "Sweaty Meg" — a custom-built wood burner sold through his other business, Roaring Meg Fires. "They're like traditional Finnish wood-fire heaters," he said. On the trial night, Mr Ryan had hand-held lanterns ready outside the sauna for people to take to guide them down to the lake in between stints in the sauna. He reckoned a one-hour session was about right — 15 minutes in the heat, five minutes for a cool dip, then back to the sauna and repeat times two. Mr Ryan is a sauna convert. "They're amazing; good for your health. I've 'sauna-ed' every night for, oh, I don't know how long," he said. "They help fight cardiovascular disease. They're good for sleep. There's so much research been done on saunas now." Mr Ryan's case is not the only one where a mobile sauna has faced consenting challenges. The Marlborough District Council has gone back and forth on its decision to reject a proposal to allow a similar set up on reserve land beside a beach in Picton. Mr Ryan has launched a petition in an attempt to persuade the Central Otago District Council to reconsider his proposal.
Hindustan Times
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
The peak before the fall: Jazz, glamour, Gatsby and a short-lived Golden Age
One of the most consequential figures of the Jazz Age, arguably, was a now-forgotten man named Wayne Bidwell Wheeler. He was the driving force behind the National Prohibition Act of 1919. When the consumption of alcohol was made illegal, prohibitionists argued this would help cure a host of ills ranging from domestic violence and political corruption to alcoholism itself. What the Act famously did was help shape crime in the United States, and create a new and profitable field of business: the covert distillation, transport and distribution of alcohol. The most famous of these bootlegger-millionaires was Al Capone, who controlled much of the illegal activity conducted in Chicago between the years of 1925 and '31. He ran breweries and brothels, but was also hailed as a modern-day Robin Hood for his charitable contributions. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, Capone organised one of the city's biggest soup kitchens, feeding about 2,200 people three times a day. Capone was unique among the mobsters of his era for a couple of other reasons too: he readily employed black people; and he was a fan of jazz. There is a story about how he once asked Johnny Dodds to play a song. When the clarinetist said he didn't know it, Capone reportedly tore a $100 bill in two, gave one half to Dodds, and said he would get the other half when he learnt to play it. Another time, a group of Capone's henchmen more-or-less kidnapped the jazz pianist and singer Fats Waller as a birthday present for their boss. Waller stayed with Capone for three days. He was given all the food he could eat, plied with endless glasses of champagne, and was reportedly paid $100 a song. Waller left Capone's company unharmed, and thousands of dollars richer. The eccentricities and the sense of excess and debauchery in F Scott Fitzgerald's classic, The Great Gatsby (1925), draws directly from this world. Fitzgerald was about 22, a young soldier on leave for the weekend, when he visited the Seelbach hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in the late-1910s. There he met a man named George Remus, who had started out as a criminal lawyer (in both senses of the phrase), and was now a millionaire bootlegger. Remus bought bonded liquor from before Prohibition and distributed it under the guise of medicinal use. His men then staged hijackings of their own delivery trucks, so they could resell the same alcohol at a much higher price. Remus also ran his own distilleries in Cincinnati, moving this booze around through tunnels. And he threw lavish parties, featuring scantily clad dancers and gifts of diamond stick pins and new cars for guests. In that other classic, Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather, one sees more of how Prohibition changed the face of organised crime in the US. Salvatore Maranzano organised the Italian-American mob into five families: the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano and Gagliano. He then declared himself 'the boss of all bosses'. He was promptly murdered in a hit ordered by Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, who then set up The Commission, a governing body made up of members of the five families of New York, and representatives from other parts of the country. Meanwhile, crime was merging with a new wave of music in New York City. The original bootlegger of the era wasn't Capone. It was likely a man named Arnold Rothstein. When Prohibition hit, he invested in speakeasies, and smuggled Scotch whisky into the country in his own fleet of freighters. The character Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby was based on Rothstein. The speakeasy was where one went to have a drink. Some of these establishments were seedy, others were fashionable. Some managed to be both. New York's 21 Club saw visitors such as Humphrey Bogart and Joan Crawford. It remained fashionable even after Prohibition ended, in 1933. Similarly, Harlem's Cotton Club started off as an outfit where the gangster Owney Madden could sell liquor to the people of Harlem and ended up being one of the most fashionable places in New York — and the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. New Yorkers, regardless of race, crowded there to see the likes of Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) perform. These fashionable clubs attracted a new kind of woman: the Flapper. She challenged ideas of what a woman should be — in her clothing, behaviour, attitudes to sex and liquor. She had her own slang in which a divorced woman was a fire alarm, and engagement rings were handcuffs. The Jazz Age may have come to an abrupt halt in 1929, with the great Wall Street crash and the onset of the Great Depression (which would drag on for 10 years, and be followed by World War 2). But by this time, culture had become a thing of the masses. Gender roles had been altered forever. So had art. Music. Movies. The world had changed. And would change again. (K Narayanan writes on films, videogames, books and occasionally technology)
The Hindu
4 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Back-to-back protests against the Waqf Act
Two major demonstrations are scheduled on consecutive days in Hyderabad to oppose the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025 The first protest, scheduled for May 31, is being organised by the Joint Action Committee (JAC), a collaborative effort of socio-religious groups such as Tehreek Muslim Shabban, and political figures including Amjed Ullah Khan, the spokesperson of the Majlis Bachao Tehreek. Members of the Congress party have also extended their support to the protest. According to JAC convenor Mushtaq Mallik, the group had earlier sought permission from the police to organise the protest but was denied on certain grounds. The JAC said that they would go ahead with the demonstration at Dharna Chowk from 2 pm to 5 pm. Memebers had previously led the city's anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests at the same location. Meanwhile, the second protest is scheduled for June 1 and will be led by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a pan-India body comprising Islamic scholars, legal experts, and professionals. As part of its nationwide outreach, the AIMPLB has been conducting public meetings to raise awareness about what it perceives as a negative ripple effect of the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025. In Hyderabad, the Board recently held a protest meeting at Darussalam, the headquarters of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). It also recently organised a Lights Off protest and a human chain, both symbolic protests against the new waqf legislation. Both the JAC and AIMPLB have expressed confidence in mobilising large crowds in opposition to the new Act. Both protests will take place at Dharna Chowk. However, there have been murmurs, that both groups are not on the same page. Efforts to organise a single protest on one day have not been successful. There are indications that this could be due to disagreements of a political nature. The AIMPLB team, speaking to the media, pointed out that that their demonstration is scheduled for June 1. Both groups have urged the public to attend the demonstration in large numbers. The Waqf legislation has drawn criticism from various Muslim organisations and INDIA alliance leaders who maintained that it is likely that the Bharatiya Janata Party would snatch waqf properties from the control of Muslims. The Act undermines the purpose and spirit of waqf .
