I-PAC chief Pratik Jain’s family files police complaint alleging theft during ED raids at home
Kolkata (PTI): The family of Pratik Jain, chief of political consultancy firm I-PAC, on Thursday filed a police complaint against the Enforcement Directorate (ED), alleging theft of important documents during a raid at home, an officer said.
The search operation, which began at 6 am, continued for over nine hours, an official of the probe agency said, adding that ED officials left Jain's residence on Loudon Street in the southern part of the city around 3 pm.
"Shortly after that, Pratik Jain's wife filed a complaint at Shakespeare Sarani police station alleging theft by the ED. It is alleged in the complaint that essential documents were stolen from their home during the raid," the police officer told PTI.
"We have received a formal allegation of theft against the ED and are investigating the matter. Appropriate action will be taken based on the findings," he added.
The ED on Thursday conducted searches at the office of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) and the home of its director Pratik Jain, in Kolkata as part of a money laundering probe into an alleged multi-crore rupee coal pilferage scam, official sources said.
Apart from providing political consultancy to the TMC, the I-PAC also manages the party’s IT and media operations.
The firm's office in Salt Lake and Jain's residence on Loudon Street are among about 10 premises, including four in Delhi, being raided by the federal probe agency in the presence of central paramilitary teams.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dramatically turned up at Jain's residence first and then his office in Salt Lake amid an ongoing ED raid and alleged that the central agency was attempting to seize the TMC's internal documents, hard disks and sensitive data linked to its election strategy.
Assembly elections in West Bengal are due in the first half of this year.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
