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No UAE visa stamping on passports: New process to reduce time, efforts to get Emirates ID Applicants won’t need to leave their passports behind at immigration offices for the visa stamping

New Delhi: Union Minister Smriti Irani was caught unawares today in a Delhi-Guwahati flight when questioned about the rise in fuel prices. Her interrogator was Netta D'Souza, the acting chief of Congress women's wing.
Ms D'Souza later tweeted the video where the minister is also seen recording the encounter on her cell phone.

The caption of her tweet, where the minster was also tagged, read, "Faced Modi Minister ji, enroute to Guwahati. When asked about Unbearable Rising Prices of LPG, she blamed Vaccines, Raashan & even the poor! Do watch the video excerpts, on how she reacted to common people's misery!"

Ms Irani initially said the Congress leader was "blocking the way". Asked about the shortage of cooking gas and "stoves without gas", the minister is heard saying "please don't lie".

Later, she is heard saying that she is being "accosted".

The price of petrol has been hiked 14 times in 16 days, pushing up prices by ₹ 10 a litre. There has been no hike in the last two days.

In Delhi, a litre of petrol is now being sold at ₹ 105.41, while diesel is being sold at ₹ 96.67 a litre.

Attributing the price rise to the Russia-Ukraine war, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has said the increase in India worked out to be only 5 per cent compared to countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Sri Lanka, where prices have gone up by 50 per cent.

The hike in petrol prices, he added, was very low in India in the aftermath of the war.

Four Nirbhaya convicts executed in Tihar Jail
Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya

Nirbhaya convicts
New Delhi: The four men convicted of the gang r**e and murder of a Delhi woman on December 16, 2012 were hanged in the darkness of pre-dawn on Friday, ending a horrific chapter in India’s long history of sexual assault that had seared the nation’s soul.

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.


This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.

The ex*****ons were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of ex*****on was set for January 22.

In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging.

In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea.

Finally, the four convicts were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goel said.

After the ex*****on, Nirbhaya’s mother told reporters that justice has finally been done and women will definitely feel safer now.

“We will request the Supreme Court to issue guidelines so that no one can adopt delaying tactics in such cases in future,” she said at her house.

“Our wait for justice was painful and agonising. We appeal for observing this day as Nirbhaya ‘Nyay Diwas’ (day of justice),” Nirbhaya’s father said.

After ra**ng and brutalising the woman, the men, one of whom was a juvenile at the time, dumped her on the road and left for dead on the cold winter night. Her friend who was with her was also severely beaten and thrown out along with her. She was so severely violated that her insides were spilling out when she was taken to hospital. She died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.

Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.

While Ram Singh allegedly committed su***de in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

The road to the gallows was a long and circuitous one, going through the lower courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president’s office before going back to the Supreme Court that heard and rejected various curative petitions.

The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.

On March 5, a trial court issued fresh death warrants for March 20 at 5.30 am as the final date for the ex*****on.

Cow urine party held to publicise cure for coronavirus.

New Delhi: Dozens of Hindu activists held a cow urine party in New Delhi on Saturday to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, as countries around the world struggle to control the deadly pandemic.

Members and supporters of the All India Hindu Mahasabha staged fire rituals and drank from earthen cups to fight the Covid-19 virus at the gathering in New Delhi dubbed a "gaumutra (cow urine)



"Whoever drinks cow urine will be cured and protected," Hari Shankar Kumar, a volunteer at the event, said as he served the remedy in brown clay cups.

Governments and scientists have said no medicine or vaccine is available to protect or cure people of the infection that has killed more than 5,400 people and infected nearly 150,000 across six continents.

Two people have died in India while more than 80 have fallen ill, and the government has ordered the closure of some land routes into the country and cancelled all visas to stop the spread of the virus in the world's second most populous country.

Members dr**ed in saffron clothes chanted Hindu hymns at the fire ritual as devotees sang paeans for the sacred animal.

"We have gathered here and prayed for world peace and we will make an offering to the corona (virus) to calm it," Chakrapani Maharaj, the group's leader, told reporters before gulping down a cup of urine.

He then offered a glass to a devil-shaped caricature of the virus to "pacify" it.

He urged people to adopt the "tried and tested" practice of drinking cow urine to ward off diseases, and desist from killing animals and eating meat.

"The coronavirus is also a bacteria and cow urine is effective against all forms of bacteria that harm us," claimed Om Prakash, a participant from the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

One legislator from the BJP last week suggested use of the urine as well as cow dung can cure the coronavirus.