A jackfruit-laden truck in Malkangiri used to transport ganja
KORAPUT: Excise officers arrested a police constable on charges of smuggling ganja and seized eight quintals of the banned drug worth Rs 40 lakh and a SUV used in transporting it from him in Malkangiri district on Thursday.
The constable is identified as Sanjeev Kumar Heera, said Ashok Kumar Seth, excise superintendent, Malkangiri. He said they were tipped-off about the consignment and intercepted the four-wheeler near Korkunda on Wednesday night. “The ganja was loaded at Khadikajodi village and three teams were formed to intercept the vehicle as there are three possible routes from the village,” said Seth. During interrogation, the constable has identified three persons, including a government employee, involved in the ganja smuggling racket, he added.
File photo of Plus II exam
BHUBANESWAR: The plus-II board exams will begin on May 18 and end on June 12, the government announced on Wednesday, while exams for vocational stream will start from May 28.
The exams, conducted by the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE), will be held following Covid protocols. “Usually the exam begins with the English paper, but this year science students will appear in physics first in the wake of various national level entrance examinations,” school and mass education minister Samir Ranjan Dash said. The students of humanities and commerce will continue to sit for the English exam, Dash added.
A frontline worker gets the jab
BHUBANESWAR: The government on Wednesday came out with the operational strategy for the next phase of the vaccination drive for the elderly persons and those with co-morbidities. It said the next phase (III) of inoculation will begin in March.
In view of the anticipated high number of beneficiaries to be vaccinated, the public health facilities right from the tertiary-level medical colleges and hospitals, the district headquarters hospitals, subdivisional hospitals to community health centres (CHCs), primary health centres (PHCs), health and wellness centres and subcentres should be prepared to offer the vaccination services, the health department said.
DGP Abhay felicitates the team of police officers, including Bhubaneswar-Cuttack police commissioner Sudhanshu Sarangi, who were part of operation Silent Viper that led to the main accused’s arrest after 22 years.
BHUBANESWAR: Even as mystery surrounded the circumstances that helped Bibekananda Biswal, the prime accused in 1999 Baranga gang-rape case, to evade arrest for over two decades, police have come to know that he had hidden himself for 15 days on the Mahanadi riverbed, on the outskirts of Cuttack after committing the offence on January 9, 1999.
Though the case is being probed by the CBI, the commissionerate police traced Biswal to Lonavala in Maharashtra after 22 years and handed him over to the Central probe agency on Monday.
Law finally caught up with Baranga gang rape accused (file photo)
BHUBANESWAR: Even as mystery surrounds the circumstances that helped Bibekananda Biswal, the prime accused in 1999 Baranga gang-rape case, to evade arrest for over two decades, police have come to know that he hid himself for 15 days on the Mahanadi riverbed, on the outskirts of Cuttack after committing the offence on January 9, 1999.
“How he managed to evade the arrest for 22 years and the places where he hid is still a mystery and subject to investigation by the CBI. But he told us that he had taken shelter under a tree along an isolated stretch of Mahanadi riverbed for a fortnight from January 10, 1999 to January 25,” a senior police officer said.