Odisha: Taxi driver arrested for looting visitors from Bengaluru
Jajpur (Odisha), Oct 17: A taxi driver was arrested in Odisha's Jajpur district on Thursday for allegedly looting two people from Bengaluru of their gold and diamond jewellery and Rs 2,000 in cash, police said.
The arrested taxi driver has been identified as Prakash Chandra Barala, a resident of Kalapathar area in Khurda district.
The passengers, Tushar Priyadarshi and his wife, had come from Bengaluru and had hired a taxi in Bhubaneswar to visit Joda in Keonjhar district on Wednesday.
When the taxi reached near Panikoili on NH-16 on Wednesday night, Tushar asked the driver to stop the vehicle near a hotel for dinner.
After the couple returned to the vehicle post-dinner and left the hotel, they found their gold jewellery including a chain, three pairs of earrings, a diamond ring and Rs 2,000 in cash missing from their bag, a police officer said.
Priyadarshi asked the driver to take them back to the hotel, where they narrated the ordeal to the hotel owner.
As the driver saw the owner checking the footage of a CCTV camera installed in front of the hotel, he dumped the luggage of the passengers and sped away with the vehicle towards Chandikhole on NH-16, the officer said.
"We have arrested the driver and registered a case under sections of BNS and seized his taxi," Panikoili police station inspector-in-charge Ranjan Kumar Pradhan said.
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Nitish Kumar's son Nishant among 32 to take oath as Bihar ministers
Patna (PTI): In a major expansion of the Cabinet of Bihar's first BJP-led government, JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar's son Nishant Kumar and 31 others took oath as ministers on Thursday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Altogether 32 leaders, drawn from all constituents of the five-party NDA in the state, were administered the oath of office by Governor Lt Gen (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain at a grand ceremony that was also attended by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Union Health Minister J P Nadda and BJP president Nitin Nabin.
Prominent inductees included Nishant Kumar, the son of JD(U) president Nitish Kumar, who stepped down as chief minister last month to enter the Rajya Sabha.
The BJP, which is the single largest party in the 243-member assembly with 89 MLAs, has 15 ministers, who took oath on Thursday.
Most of the inductees were those who were part of the Nitish Kumar cabinet formed in November last year after the NDA stormed back to power in the assembly polls.
The JD(U) is represented by a total of 15 ministers, 13 of whom took the oath at the Gandhi Maidan on Thursday. Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav had taken oath in April along with Samrat Choudhary and were designated as deputy chief ministers.
Sanjay Kumar Singh and Sanjay Kumar Paswan, both from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) headed by Union minister Chirag Paswan, are back as ministers, and so are Santosh Kumar Suman and Deepak Prakash, sons of Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustani Awam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha of the Rashtriya Lok Morcha, respectively.
