India

New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi used three popular Hindi idioms on Thursday to hit out at the government and accuse it of carrying out raids against those who are pro-farmers.

A day after income-tax raids at the homes and offices of Bollywood actor Taapsee Pannu, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and others, Gandhi used the hashtag 'ModiRaidsProFarmers' with his tweet in Hindi to take a dig at the government.

Thane, Mar 3 (PTI) A 25-year-old forest guard has been arrested for allegedly raping a tribal woman at a village in Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Wednesday.

The police on Monday nabbed Rakesh Patil, a forest guard posted at the forest check post in Washind, an official from Washind police station said.

According to the police, the incident took place on February 27, when the accused accosted the victim, forcibly entered her home when her family was away and raped her.

Hardoi (UP), Mar 3 (PTI) A man allegedly beheaded his 17-year-old daughter in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district on Wednesday evening and then went to a police station with her severed head, officials said.

Ranchi, Mar 4 (PTI) Three security personnel were killed and two injured in a Naxal-triggered IED blast in the forests of Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district on Thursday, officials said.

Three men of the special unit of the state police, Jharkhand Jaguars, were killed in the improvised explosive device (IED) blast that took place around 8:45 AM in Hoyahatu village under Toklo police station area of the district.

A jawan of the Jharkhand Jaguars and a Central Reserve Police Force personnel from its 197th battalion were injured in the blast, they said.

Kolkata, Mar 4 (PTI) After the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party (SP), the Shiv Sena on Thursday extended its support to TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, and said it would not contest assembly elections in Bengal.

Hailing Banerjee as the "real Bengal tigress", the party, which had earlier said that it would join the electoral battle in the state, vowed to "stand in solidarity" with the TMC camp.

Lucknow, Mar 4 (PTI) The Uttar Pradesh Assembly was adjourned sine die on Thursday, a week ahead of the schedule, after the House passed the annual budget for 2021-22, the largest budget so far in the history of the state.

The government presented the last budget of its current tenure last week with an outlay of Rs 5,50,270.78 crore.

The first paperless budget of Uttar Pradesh, which intends to make the state "aatmanirbhar" (self-reliant) as Finance Minister Suresh Khanna put it, includes new schemes worth Rs 27,598.40 crore.

New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to forthwith appoint a regular CBI director.

The petition, filed by NGO Common Cause, has alleged that the government has failed to appoint a regular CBI director as per section 4A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, on the expiry of term of Rishi Kumar Shukla on February 2 and instead appointed Praveen Sinha as an interim director of the premier investigating agency.

Mahoba (UP), Mar 4 (PTI) A 20-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by three youths in City area here, police said on Thursday.

An FIR was registered on Wednesday by the victim against the three men, all residents of Gandhi Nagar locality. She has alleged that the three youths gang-raped her five months ago and also made a video of the act that was used to blackmail her, the police said.

NEW DELHI, Mar 3 (NNN-PTI) – India’s COVID-19 tally rose to 11,139,516 today, as 14,989 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours, said the latest data from the federal health ministry.

According to the data, the death toll mounted to 157,346 with 98 new deaths.

There are still 170,126 active cases in the country, while 10,812,044 people have been discharged from hospitals after medical treatment. There was an increase of 1,768 active cases during the previous 24 hours.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few days.

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 2 (PTI) Attacking the Centre, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said unemployment is high in the country and its informal sector is in shambles following the "ill considered demonetisation decision" taken by the BJP-led government in 2016.

He also criticised the central government for not holding regular consultations with the states.