7 arrested in Telangana honour killing case
Hyderabad/Patna, Sep 18: Telangana Police on Tuesday said that they have arrested seven accused over the killing of a Dalit youth, who was hacked to death last week in a case of honour killing. The accused include a hired killer from Bihar.
The police revealed that T. Maruthi Rao, the main accused, struck the deal to kill his son-in-law Pranay Kumar for Rs 1 crore.
The accused include Asgar Ali and Mohammed Abul Bari, who were earlier arrested and acquitted in the murder of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya.
Pranay Kumar, 23, was hacked to death on Friday as he was coming out of a hospital in Miryalaguda town of Nalgonda district along with his wife Amrutha Varshini, with whom he had an inter-caste marriage.
Nalgonda Superintendent of Police A.V. Ranganath told reporters that they have cracked the sensational case, which evoked huge public outrage.
Amrutha and Pranay, who were in love since their school days, had married in January this year against the wishes of her father Maruthi Rao, a businessman who comes from an upper caste.
According to the police, Maruthi Rao hatched the plot to eliminate Pranay with the help of Asgar Ali, Bari and Abdul Karim. Maruthi Rao's brother T. Shravan and driver S. Shiva are the other accused.
The police chief said the conspiracy was hatched in July. The deal was struck for Rs 1 crore though Asgar and Bari had demanded Rs 2.5 crore. Maruthi Rao had paid Rs 15 lakh advance.
"In the meantime, when Amrutha became pregnant, his father tried to pressurise her to abort because he was afraid that if Pranay is killed and a child is born to her daughter, it will lead to more problems. She, however, refused to abort," the SP said.
The investigations revealed that the gang failed to execute the plot on couple of occasions.
As the couple was sensing danger to their lives, the police had suggested them to install CCTVs around their house. On August 17, they hosted a wedding reception, which further angered Maruthi Rao and he speeded up his efforts to get Pranay killed.
On September 14, when Pranay was coming out of a hospital along with his wife following a regular pregnancy check-up, an unidentified armed with axe attacked him from behind. Pranay died on the spot even as his wife ran into hospital screaming for help. The horrific images were captured in CCTV.
After questioning Maruthi Rao and others, the police identified the killer as Subhash Sharma, a native of Bihar, whom Bari had met in Rajahmundry Central Jail.
Sharma was taken into custody from Jagatsinghpur in Samastipur district of Bihar. A Samastipur police officer Paritish Kumar said Sharma was arrested by a team of Telangana Police along with the local police. He was produced in a court and handed over to the Telangana Police on transit remand.
Both Asgar Ali of Nalgonda and Bari of Hyderabad were arrested in 2003 for their alleged involvement in the killing of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya. The police had claimed that they underwent terrorist training.
An anti-terror court in Gujarat had sentenced them along with seven others to life imprisonment in 2007. However, Gujarat High Court later acquitted them.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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