Cops name dead Nigerian as an accused in rave party case

Around 300 youngsters, including the son of a film star, were caught at the rave party.

NAVI MUMBAI: There appears to be no end to police bungling. A Nigerian drug peddler, who was officially accused of being part of the June 26 rave party at Khalapur (near the Mumbai-Pune Expressway), has actually been dead since April.

This is eerily reminiscent of the fiasco, first exposed by TOI in May, surrounding India's most wanted list: among those the government said were hiding in Pakistan was one person who was living in plain sight in Thane, and another in Arthur Road jail. And the CBI's most wanted list included several who were dead.

Jerry Olukoya (47) had been listed by the Raigad police as 'suspected accused number 11'. However, it later transpired that Jerry (as he was popularly known on drugs circuit) had died of natural causes about four months ago. His name has now been hastily struck off the list. Of the remaining 10, six have been arrested, including Mumbai police inspector (anti-narcotics cell) Anil Jadhav.

Khalapur sub-divisional police officer Namrata Patil told TOI: "We have confirmed that Jerry died of natural causes. In fact, Jerry was arrested a few years back in Vashi by the Navi Mumbai police for drug peddling."

Another police official explained that Jerry's name had cropped up in the list of accused persons only because one of the men arrested from Mount View Club & Resort in Khalapur had tried to mislead the police by taking the Nigerian's name as the drug dealer at the party.

Along with various types of narcotic substances, cash of Rs 1.45 lakh was seized from the party venue.

When asked if the CCTV video footage of the rave party has been seen by the police, SDPO Patil said: "One of the wanted persons had tried to damage and take away the CCTV footage during the raid. However, we are hopeful of seizing this important video evidence, once the resort owner, Deepak Wadhwa, who is wanted, is also arrested."

At present, all the six arrested persons have been given judicial custody. However, they have reapplied for bail. Their application will be heard at the sessions court in Alibaug on July 13.

The four persons still wanted in the case are Deepak Wadhwa, Vikram Holmukhe, Ram Dharne, and Vikas Shah alias Vicky. Around 300 youngsters, including the son of a film star, were caught at the party.

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Kalmadi and Chavan not guilty: Digvijay Singh

PUNE/NEW DELHI: Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said scam-tainted party leaders Suresh Kalmadi and Ashok Chavan were innocent, raising eyebrows given the party campaign to claim zero tolerance on corruption by citing the sacking of these leaders from key positions.

Singh, addressing party workers, said he sympathized with the two leaders. "We feel sorry for Kalmadi who is suffering hardships and also for Ashok Chavan. In my personal opinion, both of them are innocent. But whenever any corruption charges are levelled, Sonia Gandhi has to take action," he said.

Singh said Congress had always fought corruption and added it was because of the Right to Information law brought by the party government that the recent scams had been exposed.

According to him, judiciary should consider granting bail to accused in cases where chargesheet was filed and investigations were complete, in what was seen as a reference to DMK MP Kanimozhi, who is in jail for the 2G scam.

Singh's remarks drew comments from Congress leaders who felt such views neutralized the high ground claimed by the party with action against tainted leaders. While Chavan was sacked as Maharashtra chief minister following Adarsh housing scam, Kalmadi was removed as secretary of Congress parliamentary party and is now cooling his heels in Tihar jail for irregularities in Commonwealth Games.

A party leader said attributing innocence to Kalmadi and Chavan undercut the party's efforts to be seen as aggressive against corruption and gave an impression that they were sacrificed because of political compulsion.

In the wake of rising dirt over scams, with an aggressive opposition at its throat, the government held up the dismissals as proof of its intent to fight graft. The clean-up was extended to telecom ministry where DMK minister A Raja was also given the boot, finally landing him in jail. At the AICC plenary session in December, Sonia spoke of these actions and even gave a five-point formula to rid the administration of graft.

Led by the party chief, Congress made a campaign of the sackings of central and state leaders to question rival BJP about its track record on the issue of probity. It has repeatedly tried to embarrass the BJP by asking about the inaction on Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa who is accused of helping family members including sons with land allotments and patronizing illegal mining.

While Singh himself questioned the BJP in Pune, the pattern was visible at the AICC briefing too where the party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi was asked about BJP's demand that ministers accused of corruption be dropped in the reshuffle. Singhvi told reporters that the opposition need not lecture it on the issue as it had failed to act in Karnataka while Congress had acted even on prima facie allegations.

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Politics makes Delhi-Howrah route corridor of death

NEW DELHI: Sunday's rail accident that killed at least 68 and injured 181 occurred on the Delhi-Howrah route — one of the busiest routes — thanks to successive ministers from the eastern part of the country.

The ministers — be it Ram Vilas Paswan, Lalu Prasad or Mamata Banerjee — pushed railway mandarins to run new trains at higher speed catering to their constituency despite the route being saturated.

In this route, where more than 70% of the sections are critical, 17 sections of this route are more than 120% utilized, 12 sections are more than 100% utilized and 11 are more than 80% utilized, according to calculations of 2007-08.

The route, a part of golden quadrilateral, was put under more strain after Banerjee took charge and went on to announce a slew of Kolkata-bound trains in quick succession. With technological advances, though railways manages to run more trains on this route, the situation turns worse during winter heightened by intense fog.

To make matters worse, the pressure on tracks have increased over the years due to increasing loading capacity per wagon, despite warning from several committees and experts that "overloading" has been damaging tracks, and consequently putting human lives at risk.

"The pressure has increased as the ministry could not lay new tracks or upgrade the existing one," an official admitted.

R K Singh, an ex-chairman of the railway board, put the inadequacies in perspective. "For the last three budgets, railways has depleted its depreciation reserve fund, which is used for renewal, security, upgrading of assets, and also capital fund spent for creating new assets," said Singh, during whose tenure a special safety fund of Rs 17, 500 was set up and used for renewal of 17,000km of rail tracks.

Figures show that within less than four months at least 125 people were killed in train accidents, excluding 38 deaths when a train rammed into a bus at an unmanned crossing in Uttar Pradesh.

According to latest data, there were 57 deaths between April and June, and the number of accidents stood at 24. Authorities claim to reduce the accidents by calculating it in terms of accidents per million train kilometer which was 0.17 in 2009-10 against 0.44 in 2003-04, but it disregards the fact that the number of people killed in train mishaps has increased in recent years. In 2009-10, 238 people were killed and between April 2010 and January 2011, the figure was 336.

While railways adopted corporate safety plan (2003-13) long ago, though a lot of announcements came from successive railway ministers, not much happened on the ground.

Passenger's safety could not find a place in the ministers' scheme of things, who were busy in pushing populist policies. They ignored recommendations of expert panels and the Planning Commission to undertake structure reforms and push zero-accident policy.

Railways attempt to fill around 1,22, 000 safety-related vacancies got mired in controversy after the central bureau of investigation raided the railway recruitment board over hiring scam.

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