India's Koneru Humpy grabs historic Rapid chess world title for the second time
New York (PTI): India’s Koneru Humpy bagged an epochal second World Rapid Chess Championship title, beating Irene Sukandar of Indonesia here on Sunday.
Humpy had won the event back in 2019 at Georgia and the Indian No 1 is only the second player after China’s Ju Wenjun to clinch the title more than once.
The 37-year-old Humpy finished the tournament with 8.5 out of 11 points.
“I’m very excited and I feel very happy. In fact, I expected it to be a very tough day, like some sort of tie-break. But when I finished the game, I only got to know when the arbitrator told me, and it was a tense moment for me,” said Humpy, who began with black pieces, after her victory.
“So, this is quite unexpected because the whole year I have been struggling a lot and I had very bad tournaments where I just ended up in last place. So, this came as a surprise,” she added.
Humpy’s achievement capped a sensational year for Indian chess after D Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren to emerge champion in the classical format World Championship recently in Singapore. In September, India had won its first-ever gold medals in Open and Women's categories in the Chess Olympiad in Budapest.
The seasoned Humpy admitted that she was not thinking about the title after her first-round defeat here.
“I think, after the first round loss, I was nowhere thinking about the title, but things turned out well, especially yesterday winning the four games in a row helped me,” she said.
However, Humpy faced some challenges off the board too as well because of the big time-gap between India and the USA.
“Yeah, off the board, it was very difficult for me because of the time difference. I was lacking sleep. Literally, I haven't slept properly since coming here. So, it wasn't easy to play restlessly, but I'm happy that I managed to do it,” she added.
Humpy has always excelled in the Rapid worlds as she had won a bronze medal in the 2012 edition of the event held in Moscow, while finished with a silver last year at Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Humpy said her victory will now prompt other Indians to take up chess.
“I think it's high time for India. We also have Gukesh as world champion and now I got the second world title in the rapid event. So, I think this will motivate a lot of youngsters to take up chess professionally,” she concluded.
Murzin wins men’s title
Later, the 18-year-old Volodar Murzin of Russia bagged the corresponding title in the men's section.
Murzin is the the second-youngest FIDE World Rapid Champion, after Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who claimed the title at 17.
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Delhi court sentences Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia, associate to life imprisonment
New Delhi (PTI): A Delhi court has sentenced Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia and his associate to life imprisonment under MCOCA provisions, but refused the death penalty saying the offences did not fall under the category of 'rarest of the rare cases'.
Additional Sessions Judge Vandana Jain sentenced Gulia and Dhirpal alias Kana to rigorous imprisonment for life under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In an order dated December 13, the judge said, "Death sentence can only be awarded in 'rarest of the rare cases' wherein the murder is committed in an extremely inhumane, barbarous, grotesque or dastardly manner as to arouse umbrage of the community at large."
The judge said that on weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, it could be concluded that the present case did not fall under the category, and so, the death penalty could not be imposed upon the convicts.
"Thus, both the convicts are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs 3 lakh each, for committing the offence under Section 3 of MCOCA," she said.
The public prosecutor, seeking the death penalty for both the accused, submitted that they were involved in several unlawful activities while they were on bail in other cases.
He argued that the accused had shown no respect for the law and acted without any fear of legal consequences, and therefore did not deserve any leniency from the court.
The court noted that both convicts were involved in offences of murder, attempt to murder, extortion, robbery, house trespass, and criminal intimidation. Besides, they had misused the liberty of interim bail granted to them by absconding.
It said, "The terror of the convicts was such that it created fear psychosis in the mind of the general public, and they lost complete faith in the law enforcement agencies and chose to accede to the illegal demands of convicts. Despite suffering losses, they could not gather the courage to depose against them."
The court noted that Gulia was involved in at least 18 criminal cases, while Dhirpal had links to 10 serious offences.
It underlined that MCOCA had been enacted "keeping in view the fact that organised crime had come up as a serious threat to society, as it knew no territorial boundaries and is fuelled by illegal wealth generated by committing the offence of extortion, contract killings, kidnapping for ransom, collection of protection money, murder, etc."
Both accused persons had been convicted on December 10 in a case registered at Najafgarh police station. The police filed a chargesheet under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) and 4 (punishment for possessing unaccountable wealth on behalf of member of organised crime syndicate) of MCOCA.
