‘Brutally attacked, left on road to die’: BJP Yuva Morcha leader accused of trying to mow down girlfriend with car

News Network
December 16, 2023

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Mumbai, Dec 16: A woman was severely injured after her boyfriend, a leader of Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and the son of a senior bureaucrat, allegedly tried to run her over with his car in Maharashtra Thane. 

The victim has been identified as Priya Singh, a 26-year-old model and a social media influencer. She described the harrowing ordeal of how an argument resulted in her boyfriend allegedly beating her, trying to strangle her, and then asking his driver to mow her down.

The incident took place last Monday near a hotel in Thane and police have registered a case against Ashwajit Gaikwad, who is the president of BJYM, Thane division, and the son of Anil Gaikwad, Managing Director at the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.

Priya says she received a call from Ashwajit, who she has been in a relationship with for nearly 5 years, at 4 am on Tuesday asking her to join him at a family function.

"Upon reaching there I met some friends and found that my boyfriend was behaving strangely. So I asked him if everything was fine and insisted him for us to talk in private," she said.

Priya stepped out of the function and waited for Ashwajit hoping to talk to him and defuse the tension. But he came out with his friends who started abusing her.

"My boyfriend and his friend used abusive language to which I asked my boyfriend to defend me and not abuse which led to the start of something beyond my imagination. My boyfriend slapped me, tried to strangle my neck, I tried to push him away he bit my hand, beat me, pulled my hair, and his friend out of nowhere pushed me to the ground," she wrote on her Instagram.

But it did not end there. When she tried to collect her phone and other belongings from his car, Ashwajit asked his driver to mow her down, police said.

"The incident took place around 4.30 am on Monday near a hotel on Ghodbunder Road, where the woman had gone to meet Ashwajit Gaikwad. An argument broke out between the two. Later, when the victim collected her belongings from his car and started leaving, the one who was driving the vehicle tried to mow her down, due to which she fell down and suffered serious injuries," a police official said.

Priya claims she was lying on the road, in pain, for nearly half an hour before a passerby stopped and called for help, which she had been unable to do as Ashwajit hadn't returned her phone.

She was taken to a nearby hospital where she is currently undergoing treatment.

"My right leg is broken and I had to undergo surgery, had to put a rod in my right leg. I have bruises all over my body, my arms, my back, and my stomach area are deeply scrapped. I will be bedridden for a minimum of 3-4 months and after that, I will have to take support to walk for another 6 months," Priya Singh told police in the hospital.

Following the incident, a case was registered against him and two others under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 279 (rash driving), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and others of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

A Maharashtra police official said that a probe into the incident is underway and no arrest has been made so far.

He tells a different story

Gaikwad has, however, refuted all the allegations made by Priya Singh and also dubbed the entire incident an attempt to "extort money".

In the initial investigation, Gaikwad, told the police that he and Priya were just "friends".

"Whatever has been portrayed is untrue. She (Priya Singh) is just a friend of mine," sources quoted him as saying.

"She came in a drunken condition to a hotel where I was involved in a family function and forced me to talk to her. When I refused, she started abusing me. She also assaulted my friends when they tried to intervene in the matter. When my driver, Shelke, started my car so that she would step aside, she fell. The accident was not intentional," he said.

Gaikwad said, "This is nothing, but a way to extort money from me. I have also given her money in the past and I have all the records".

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon has warned that the “picture of life in Lebanon remains grim,” highlighting an "alarming" level of human suffering and significant humanitarian consequences due to the ongoing Israeli carnage.

Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), provided a stark overview of the Arab country's dire circumstances in a statement released on Monday.

“The current picture of life in Lebanon remains grim. Yesterday, airstrikes reportedly killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Aalmat in Mount Lebanon,” Riza said on X.

An airstrike in the city of Tyre on the same day resulted in the tragic deaths of five siblings from a single family, all of whom had special needs, according to his statement.

He added that in the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 241 individuals and left 642 others injured in Lebanon, as reported by the Ministry of Health.

“In the past month, more than 185,000 people have fled their homes in their search for safety within the country, bringing the total to over 870,000 people internally displaced,” Riza said

The UN official highlighted that numerous individuals, including the elderly and those with health issues, are staying behind while witnessing the ruins of their ancestral homes.

He urged for the swift safeguarding of civilian people and infrastructure, emphasizing the necessity to uphold international humanitarian law and end the ongoing violence.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli forces bombed a house in the town of Maydoun in Bekaa on Monday night, killing three people and destroying the house.

Earlier, Israel bombed the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, killing at least 14 people.

The killings came as Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon, bombing shops selling electrical appliances in the southern city of Tyre and carrying out air raids on the towns of Shamshtar in eastern Baalbek and Roumine in southern Nabatieh.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed at least 54 people across the country on Monday.

Israel’s merciless attacks continue despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

In Lebanon, at least 3,243 people have been killed and 14,134 others wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah opened a support front for Palestinians in Gaza only a day after the Israeli regime unleashed its genocidal war on the besieged territory.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Bengaluru: An estimated overall 10.14 per cent voter turnout was recorded during the first two hours, since the voting began for bypolls to three Assembly segments in Karnataka on Wednesday, election officials said.

The voting began at 7 am and will go on till 6 pm.

More than seven lakh voters are eligible to cast their votes in about 770 polling stations in Shiggaon, Sandur and Channapatna, where a total of 45 candidates are in the fray.

While Channapatna recorded 10.34 per cent voter turnout till 9 am, it was 10.08 per cent in Shiggaon, and 9.99 per cent in Sandur, election officials said.

Voters, including women and elderly were seen queuing up in front of polling booths in these segments.

By-polls for Sandur, Shiggaon, and Channapatna are necessitated, as the seats fell vacant following the election of their respective representatives -- E Tukaram of Congress, former CM Basavaraj Bommai of BJP, and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy of JD(S) -- to Lok Sabha in May elections.

As many as 31 candidates are in the fray from Channapatna, while Sandur and Shiggaon have six and eight contenders, respectively.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made in the three segments for the smooth conduct of the polls.

The by-polls will witness a straight fight between the ruling Congress and BJP in Sandur and Shiggaon segments, while in Channapatna, JD(S) which is part of the NDA alliance is in contest against the grand old party.

Among the three segments, Channapatna is considered to be a "high profile", where the contest is between C P Yogeeshwara, a five time MLA from the segment and former Minister, who joined the Congress quitting BJP ahead of nomination, and actor-turned -politician Nikhil Kumaraswamy, who is Kumaraswamy’s son and former PM H D Deve Gowda's grandson.

BJP's Bharath Bommai, son of Basavaraj Bommai, is fighting Congress Yasir Ahmed Khan Pathan, who had faced defeat against the former Chief Minister in the 2023 Assembly polls, in Shiggaon.

Bharath Bommai and his father cast their vote at a polling booth in Shiggaon segment.

In Sandur, Bellary MP Tukaram's wife E Annapurna of Congress is contesting from the seat vacated by her husband, against, BJP ST Morcha president Bangaru Hanumanthu, who is considered close to party leader and former mining barron G Janardhan Reddy.

Annapurna, Tukaram and other family members cast their votes at a booth in the segment.

With Nikhil Kumaraswamy and Bharath Bommai contesting, the third generation of Gowda and Bommai families are in the fray in this by-poll. Both their fathers and grandfathers have served as Karnataka's Chief Ministers in the past.

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