Flood situation worsens in Karnataka, one dead
Bengaluru: One person was killed while scores of houses collapsed in parts of Karnataka as the flood situation worsened in the southern state on Tuesday. Schools were shut and bus and train services cancelled due to the heavy downpour, coupled with water released from dams in neighbouring Maharashtra, official sources said.
Belagavi bore the brunt as water from the Koyna dam in neighbouring Maharashtra gushed into the Krishna river.
According to police, a 25-year-old man was killed at Hoskote in Bylahongal taluk of Belagavi district when the wall of his house crashed on him. Besides the Krishna river, the Markandeya, Ghataprabha, Malaprabha and Bheema rivers are in spate, wreaking havoc in many parts of the state. Water from the Markandeya river gushed into Gokak and Hukkeri in Belagavi, reports said.
The districts hit due to the torrential rains and subsequent flooding are Belagavi, Vijayapura, Yadgiri, Raichur, Bagalkot, Hubballi-Dharwad, Shivamogga, Udupi, Dakshina Kananda, Kodagu and Uttara Kannada.
Landslips were reported from some affected districts, leading to disruption in the road and rail networks.
Many schools were shut in Hubballi-Dharwad, Shivamogga, Belagavi, Mangaluru, Udupi, Vijayapura, Yadgiri, Raichur and Kodagu, official sources said.
The gates of the barrages and the Almatti dam built across the Krishna river and its tributories in Karnataka were opened due to heavy inflows. While thousands of hectares of land have been submerged, the National Highway-4 from Pune to Bengaluru was cut off at Belagavi.
The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) cancelled many buses from Belagavi to Pune. The huge inflow into the Krishna river forced the Basava Sagara dam authorities in Vijayapura to open 21 of its 31 gates, official sources said.
Train services were also hit due to the floods. In a statement, the South Western Railway said services between Londa and Tinai Ghat stands suspended till the situation returns to normal.
A defence spokesperson said 15 Army columns from Dakshin Bharat area, each comprising 60 jawans, besides NDRF, SDRF, police and home guards have been deployed for rescue and rehabilitation work.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
2019 mud attack on engineer: Maharashtra court sentences BJP minister Nitesh Rane to one-month jail
Mumbai (PTI): A court in Sindhudurg on Monday convicted Maharashtra minister Nitesh Rane in a 2019 case of pouring mud on an NHAI engineer when he was in opposition, and sentenced him to one-month imprisonment, noting that lawmakers are not supposed to take the law into their hands.
Later, the court suspended Rane's sentence, allowing him time to appeal before a higher court, while acquitting 29 other accused in the case.
"Even though Rane's intention was to raise a voice against the poor quality of work and inconvenience faced by the people, he was not supposed to humiliate or insult a public servant in public," additional sessions court judge V S Deshmukh stated.
"If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the judge noted.
ALSO READ: 19-yr-old woman found hanging from tree in UP village; juvenile held
Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".
Rane, a son of former Union minister Narayan Rane, was among 30 people charged under various offences, including rioting, assault to deter a public servant, and criminal conspiracy. He was in Congress when the incident occurred.
All the accused, including Nitesh Rane, were acquitted of these offences, as the court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims.
However, the court found Nitesh Rane guilty of an offence under section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace) and sentenced him to one month's jail.
Rane, then a Congress MLA, had called the Sub-Divisional Engineer of the National Highway Authority, Prakash Shedekar, to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.
According to the prosecution, Nitesh Rane and his followers, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, confronted the engineer. They poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public.
The court, after perusing the evidence on record, noted that the informant (victim) was holding a high post in the National Highway Authority.
"Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the court remarked.
The judge held that Rane compelling Shedekar to walk through the muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and provocation which will cause him to break the public peace.
