REPORT ON PAGE 5
Taman Jurong Food Centre
stall owner Palani Pandi.
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Hawkers in a fix:
Raise prices
or retain
customers?
SINGAPORE, WEEKEND OF FRIDAY,
JULY 7,
2
0
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MCI (P) 079/10/2022
NURSE HELPED
DELIVER
10,000 BABIES
PAGE 4
NEW ROMANTIC
HERO LIGHTS UP
BOLLYWOOD
PAGE 8
COMICS EXPLAIN
CYBERSECURITY
TO KIDS
PAGE 7
2022 World Cup winner
Argentina’s Emiliano Martinez
greeting fans in a street parade
in Kolkata on Wednesday.
“I am really excited, feeling
great. It was a dream. I had
promised to come to India, I
am happy to be here. India is a
beautiful country,” said the
goalkeeper who also plays for
Aston Villa.
He met local dignitaries and
school children at Santosh
Mitra Square and inaugurated
football club Mohun Bagan’s
Pele-Maradona-Sobers gate on
Tuesday.
Sports promoter and
business consultant Satadru
Dutta, who orchestrated the
Argentine’s visit, had in the
past arranged visits by Diego
Maradona, Pele and Cafu to
the football-crazy city.
BJP alliance boosted by rivals’
defection in Maharashtra
The ruling alliance in Maharshtra, led
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata Party, received a
boost on Sunday as a key opposition
leader and other lawmakers from his
party joined the state government.
Mr Ajit Pawar, a senior member of
the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP),
was soon named deputy chief minister.
Eight of the 53 NCP lawmakers also
took their oaths to become part of the
government.
The defections could help the BJP
win more parliamentary seats in
general elections due in the first-half of
next year.
Modi urges SCO to fight terrorism,
help Afghanistan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said
China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia
and central Asian countries should
work together to fight terrorism, help
Afghanistan and tackle global
challenges such as food, fuel and
fertiliser shortages.
He was hosting the virtual summit
of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) on Tuesday as the
Eurasian political and security group
seeks to expand its influence by
accepting Iran as a member.
Mr Modi said the world is
embroiled in disputes, tensions and the
impact of the pandemic and global
food, fuel and fertiliser crises are big
challenges for all countries.
Deadly rail crash caused by faulty
signal connections
Workers repairing a railroad barrier in
Odisha had made faulty connections in
the automated signalling system on the
network, an official probe into India’s
worst rail disaster in two decades has
found.
The June 2 crash at Bahanaga Bazar
station killed 288 people and injured
more than 1,000 others.
The disaster struck when a
passenger train hit a stationary freight
train, jumped off the tracks and hit
another passenger train coming from
the opposite direction.
In the probe report, the
Commission of Railway Safety
investigators said the first collision
occurred due to modifications that had
been done to the signalling circuit to
fix frequent problems at a nearby
railroad barrier.
The local railway staff did not have
a standard circuit diagram and the lack
of the visual guide led to a faulty
connection in the signalling system
when they tried to take the
boom-barrier circuit offline for repair.
The malfunctioning system
reportedly directed the passenger train
to get onto the path of the freight
train.
10 men sentenced to 10 years for
lynching Muslim man
A court in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on
Wednesday sentenced 10 men to 10
years in jail for the lynching of a
Muslim man.
Mr Tabrez Ansari, who was forced
to chant Hindu slogans, died after he
was tortured in 2019.
He had been mobbed by a group of
men who accused him of burglary.
Mr Ansari was tied to a pole and
tortured for 12 hours, his cries and
pleas ignored by the mob.
The police later detained Mr Ansari
for suspected theft while he was in
critical condition in hospital and he
died while in custody.
Following a public outcry, police
arrested 12 Hindu men, two of whom
were later acquitted due to lack of
evidence.
The remaining 10 were convicted
last week of culpable homicide not
amounting to murder, and each man
was handed a 10-year prison sentence
on Wednesday.
Mr Ansari’s widow Shaista Parveen
said she would be submitting an
appeal for the sentences to be
increased.
Schools remain shut in Manipur
despite reopening order
Nearly all schools remained shut in
violence-hit Manipur despite a
government order to reopen them on
Wednesday.
In a bid to restore normalcy after
two months of ethnic clashes that have
killed almost 120 people, the
government instructed the schools to
reopen and conduct lessons as per
normal.
But students, teachers and support
staff did not show up at schools, said a
state education department officer.
Four private schools opened but all
government-run schools were still
closed, he added.
“There is still a sense of fear and
insecurity among the people and
hence we decided against sending our
children to school,”said businessman
Ibotombi Singh, in the capital Imphal.
Ambani’s Reliance Jio launches
$16 4G phone
Reliance Jio said on Monday that it
would launch a 4G feature phone
priced at Rs999 ($16), the latest
attempt by billionaire Mukesh
Ambani’s telco arm to grab market
share in India’s massive and
under-penetrated rural areas.
Jio, which famously disrupted the
Indian telco sector in the last decade
by introducing cut-price tariffs, will
roll out entry-level phones that are
equipped with Internet services – such
as digital payment – in its push to
reach the market segment of people
who have not adopted the use of
smartphones.
“There are still 250 million mobile
phone users in India who remain
‘trapped’ in the 2G era, at a time when
the world stands at the cusp of a 5G
revolution,” said Mr Akash Ambani,
chairman of Reliance Jio.
Women wrestlers push for reforms
India’s top women wrestlers and their
families, who have accused the sport’s
chief of sexual harassment, are
pressing for reforms, ranging from
guardians accompanying contestants to
demands for more women officials in
senior ranks of the sport.
A trial court earlier this month
admitted a case of sexual harassment
and intimidation against India’s
Wrestling Federation chief Brij
Bhushan Sharan Singh, an influential
lawmaker.
But Mr Singh has denied the
charges that he sexually harassed the
six female wrestlers, who have
represented India internationally, with
an aide saying his innocence would be
proved by the judiciary. If convicted,
he faces up to three years in jail.
BCCI names Agarkar new
chairman of selectors
Former India fast bowler Ajit Agarkar
has been appointed chairman of India’s
selection committee, the country’s
cricket board (BCCI) said on Tuesday.
He replaces Chetan Sharma, who
resigned in February, following a sting
operation.
Agarkar was recently a coach with
Indian Premier League side Delhi
Capitals but parted ways after this
year’s tournament. He joins Shiv
Sundar Das, Subroto Banerjee, Salil
Ankola and Sridharan Sharath on the
selection committee.
Fantasy sports’ revenue rises 24%
during IPL 2023
The revenue of fantasy gaming
platforms during Indian Premier
League (IPL) cricket matches rose
24 per cent from a year earlier to over
Rs28 billion ($460 million) with over
61 million users participating, a report
by the Redseer consultancy said.
Fantasy gaming apps gained
popularity in India during the
pandemic.
“Playing fantasy sports is becoming
a craze in the country,” said Mr Saurav
Chachan, director of Redseer strategic
consultancy, noting that 35-50 per cent
of the revenue of fantasy sports
platforms was driven by IPL matches.
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World-Cup winning goalkeeper tours Kolkata
An SPH Media Limited publication
Editor-in-Chief
(English/Malay/Tamil Media group)
Wong Wei Kong
Editor
Jawharilal Rajendran
Contributing Editor
V.K. Santosh Kumar
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Page 2
July 7, 2023
tabla
!
INDIA
A 50-year-old man in a small town in
Chhattisgarh died earlier this week
after he choked on a half-cooked eye
of a goat.
The police said Mr Bagar Sai was at
a sacrificial feast with his friends at
Madanpur village when he died, The
Times of India reported.
The newspaper said investigations
showed that he and his friends went to
a temple where goats are sacrificed in
exchange for wish-fulfilment.
Mr Sai had prayed for a wish and
when it was fulfilled, he felt a sense of
gratitude towards the divine and be-
lieved he had to repay the favour.
He then decided to buy a goat to
sacrifice at a local temple.
Accompanied by his friends, Mr Sai
went to Khopa Dham to perform the
ritual.
They sacrificed the goat and offered
some of its meat to the deity. The
remaining meat they shared with the
locals.
Mr Sai already had too much to
drink when he picked up the goat’s
eye, even before it was fully cooked.
He swallowed the half-cooked eye –
which was about 5cm in diameter –
and choked on it.
His friends took him to a hospital
7km away, where the doctors declared
him dead on arrival.
“The half-cooked eyeball got stuck
in the respiratory pipe, choking the
respiratory system. It might be the
main reason behind the death,”
Dr Swapnil Gupta told the newspaper.
“Moreover, the man was drunk,
which leads to respiratory depression.
During respiratory depression, the like-
lihood of food getting choked in the
respiratory pipe is high if it is not
chewed properly.”
Dr Shailendra Gupta, associate pro-
fessor at Ambikapur Government Med-
ical College, said a goat’s eye has the
consistency of jelly and can easily stick
to the muscles of the respiratory pipe.
Various interpretations have
emerged regarding the incident.
While some considered it instant
karma for Mr Sai, others believed it
was the consequence of the man
committing a sin by killing an animal
in the name of sacrifice.
Many news outlets have even
dubbed the incident the “eye of
karma”.
A man accused of publicly urinating
on a member of a tribal community in
Madhya Pradesh had his home demol-
ished by the authorities on Wednesday
after footage of the incident sparked
public condemnation.
A viral video shows Pravesh Shukla
(left) urinating on his young victim in a
dark street while nonchalantly smok-
ing a cigarette. The incident took place
last year in Sidhi district, but came to
public attention only this week.
Local police said Shukla was ar-
rested and charged, and he can be
fined and jailed for a year.
The authorities also demolished his
home after it was “found to be ille-
gally constructed”, police officer Ravin-
der Verma told AFP.
Local media showed a bulldozer
clawing apart the roof and walls of
Shukla’s house.
India counts more than 100 million
people as belonging to its diverse
indigenous tribal communities, collec-
tively known as Adivasis.
The country has in recent years
recorded numerous instances of author-
ities punishing suspected criminals by
demolishing their homes with excava-
tors.
AFP
Man’s house razed after he urinated on tribal man
Screengrab
from the
video
showing
Pravesh
Shukla
urinating
on a young
man.
Man chokes on sacrificed goat’s eye
INDIA
tabla
!
July 7, 2023
Page 3
