Case filed as video shows men smoking hookah, cooking non-veg food during Ganga boat ride
Prayagraj, Sep 1: Police have registered a case after a video clip surfaced on the internet purportedly showing six people cooking a non-vegetarian meal and smoking a hookah on a boat on the Ganga near the holy Sangam.
Police said they have identified two of the six men, but they are absconding.
In the FIR lodged on Wednesday, the six people are accused of hurting religious sentiments and defiling a place of worship, police said.
The 30-second video purportedly caught the scene on a moving boat close to Prayagraj's Daraganj. The men appeared to be cooking chicken on skewers.
Circle Officer Aastha Jaiswal said Daraganj is a pilgrimage area and people are expected not to do anything that could hurt the sentiments of the devotees.
"Cooking meat on a boat on the Ganga river can hurt the religious sentiments of the people who come here," the CO said.
The FIR was registered against two named and four unknown people on the complaint of Bakshi outpost in-charge Diwakar Singh after the video surfaced on Tuesday.
Two of the men seen in the video have been identified as Ajaf and Hassan, against whom an FIR was registered under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race) and 295 (defiling place of worship) of the IPC.
The two are residents of Bakshi Khurd in Daraganj. They are absconding, police said, adding efforts are being made to identify the remaining four.
Party at the shr!ne, sm0king hookah and cooking ch!cken on a boat at Sangam Ganga, #PRAYAGRAJ .#JusticeForAnkita#TeJran #KRKArrested #NationalSportsDay#DahanOnHotstar pic.twitter.com/PWkZh16szC
— Satish Singh (@satishsingh05) August 30, 2022
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Melinda French Gates resigns as Gates Foundation co-chair, 3 years after her divorce from Bill Gates
New York, May 13: Melinda French Gates will step down as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nonprofit she and her ex-husband Bill Gates founded and built into one of the world's largest philanthropic organisations over the past 20 years.
“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” French Gates posted on the X platform on Monday. “I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world.”
She praised the foundation's CEO, Mark Suzman, and the foundation's board of trustees, which was significantly expanded after the couple announced their divorce in May 2021.
“The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy,” French Gates wrote in her statement. She organises some of her investments and philanthropic gifts through her organisation, Pivotal Ventures, which is not a nonprofit.
Bill Gates thanked French Gates for her “critical” contributions to the foundations in a statement, saying, “I am sorry to see her leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work.”
French Gates will receive $12.5 billion as part of her agreement with Gates, which she said would commit to future work focused on women and families.
The Gates Foundation did not immediately return a request for comment about whether those assets would come from the foundation itself. In an emailed statement, the foundation said that Suzman announced the decision to employees on Monday.
“After a difficult few years watching women's rights rolled back in the US and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory,” Suzman said of French Gates.
Suzman said he knew many had joined the foundation in part because of their admiration for her advocacy, especially around gender equity.
“I know how beloved Melinda is here,” Suzman wrote.
The Gates Foundation holds $75.2 billion in its endowment as of December 2023, and announced in January, it planned to spend $8.6 billion through the course of its work in 2024.
The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce from Pivotal Ventures.
