11 booked for brutally assaulting youth, urinating on him in Ahilyanagar district
Mumbai (PTI): A group of 11 persons allegedly kidnapped and brutally thrashed a 22-year-old man, urinated on him, and abused him over his caste in Maharashtra’s Ahilyanagar district, officials said on Friday.
A case has been registered against the alleged attackers in connection with the incident on the evening of October 19, while three of them, including the main accused, have been arrested so far, they said.
The incident took place at Sonai village in Newasa tehsil, when the victim and his friend were standing near a hospital.
Main accused Sambhaji Lande, who had a past rivalry with the victim, arrived at the spot with his group, and they allegedly started raining kicks and punches on him. The man was assaulted with sticks, an official said.
Lande and his accomplices also hit the victim’s friend when he tried to intervene. They then bundled the victim into a black Scorpio and drove to an unidentified place, where they again thrashed him, the official said, citing the FIR.
The accused persons also allegedly urinated on the victim and hurled casteist remarks, he said.
After assaulting the victim for an hour, the accused threw him out of the vehicle near a college ground and fled, said the police.
The victim’s parents subsequently rushed him to a local hospital, where doctors referred him to the Civil Hospital in the district headquarters.
The accused persons have been booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections concerning voluntarily causing hurt, injury by dangerous weapon and kidnapping and under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the official said.
Three of the accused persons have been taken into custody, and a search is underway to track down the others, he added.
Meanwhile, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi chief Prakash Ambedkar has demanded action against the accused under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In a post on X on Thursday, the Dalit leader said he spoke to the victim’s father over the phone and assured his family of full support. “Our demand is that action be taken against the accused under MCOCA. I will soon meet the victim’s family,” he added.
The village and areas under Newasa tehsil have previously been in the news over caste-related crimes.
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Indigo cancels 67 flights from multiple airports due to bad weather, operational issues
Mumbai (PTI): Domestic carrier IndiGo on Thursday cancelled 67 flights from multiple airports due to "forecasted" bad weather and operational reasons, according to the airline's website.
Of the 67 cancelled flights, only four were for operational reasons, and the rest were due to "forecasted" bad weather at various airports, including Agartala, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Varanasi, Bengaluru, among others, as per the website.
Aviation regulator, DGCA, has announced the period between December 10 and February 10 next year as the official fog window this winter.
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As part of the DGCA fog operations (CAT-IIIB) norms, airlines have to mandatorily roster pilots who are trained to operate in low-visibility conditions, as well as deploy a CAT-IIIB-compliant aircraft fleet for such operations.
Category-III is an advanced navigation system that empowers an aircraft to land under foggy conditions.
Category-III-A is a precision instrument approach and landing that enables a plane to land with a runway visual range (RVR) of 200 metres, while Category-III-B helps in landing with an RVR of under 50 metres.
IndiGo, whose operations are under DGCA monitoring after the cancellations of thousands of flights early this month, is already operating a curtailed schedule in compliance with the government's order.
Under its original winter flight schedule, the airline was permitted to operate 15,014 domestic flights per week, or about 2,144 flights per day, roughly six per cent higher than the 14,158 weekly flights it operated during the summer schedule of 2025.
However, after the massive disruptions, which saw the airline cancelling 1,600 flights on a single day on account of new rest norms for pilots, which allow more rest to the pilots, the government cut down the airline's domestic flight schedule by 10 per cent or 214 flights per day.
As a result of that, IndiGo can't operate more than 1,930 flights per day on domestic routes under its current winter schedule.
The Rahul Bhatia-controlled airline cancelled thousands of flights between December 1 and December 9 on account of a lack of proper planning, and crew shortage in implementing the new set of regulations for pilots' duty period and rest, which were put in place from November 1, thereby causing severe hardships to lakhs of air travellers.
Following this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) formed a four-member panel, comprising Joint DG Sanjay Brahamane, Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, senior Flight Operations Inspector Kapil Manglik, and FOI Lokesh Rampal, with a mandate to identify the root causes of widespread operational disruptions at the Rahul Bhatia-controlled domestic carrier.
The panel, which has already grilled IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras as part of its probe, is expected to submit its report by this week.
Meanwhile, IndiGo, in a travel advisory on X, said, "Low visibility and fog over Bangalore has impacted flight schedule. We are keeping a close watch on the weather and doing our best where you need to be safely, smoothly".
Reacting to the advisory, an aggrieved passenger, in an X post, said, "My flight on December 20 from Bhubaneswar to Ahmedabad got delayed for more than five hours, and today my return flight from Ahmedabad to Bhubaneswar also got delayed more than three hours with the same excuse as bad weather. I am travelling with my senior citizen parents, and this delay is not acceptable. Need proper explanation, along with compensation".
