BHUBANESWAR l sunday l march 24, 2024 l `12.00 l PAGES 24 l LATE CITY EDITION cbi raids multiple premises of Moitra in cash-for-query scam The CBI conducted searches at various premises linked to Mahua Moitra, including her parents’ home in Kolkata, in the cash-for-query case trinamool calls the raid vendetta politics The CBI sleuths reached the Trinamool Congress leader’s home in Kolkata and other cities early in the morning and went to her party office in Krishnanagar in the evening. The TMC repeated her for the Lok Sabha poll from Krishnanagar. The party dubbed the raids as vendetta politics and a desperate attempt by the BJP to misuse central agencies ahead of the polls ■ 1st TIME CBI TO FILE REPORT WITHIN SIX MONTHS ■ A FIR was filed this week against Moitra on the directions of Lokpal, which has asked the CBI to file its report within six months Moitra has challenged her expulsion from Lok Sabha in the SC. She was expelled in December 2023 following the recommendation of Ethics Committee for sharing her login, password of NIC portal MAHUA MOITRA BECAME A LOK sABHA mp IN 2019 CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI 143 killed and counting in Moscow terror attack by IS group’s Afghanistan branch Y e s h i s e l i @ New Delhi Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwat Mann at an AAP protest condemning the arrest of his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal, in New Delhi on Saturday | PTI HC rejects urgent hearing. Holi-day for Kejri with ED Comment by German foreign office on full legal access to the Delhi CM angers MEA the liquor policy scam. Of the proceed of crimes, `45 crore was used in the Goa polls. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind In a related development, the Kejriwal on Saturday suffered Ministry of External Affairs a fresh setback after the Delhi (MEA) bristled at a comment High Court rejected his appeal on Kejriwal by a spokesperson for urgent listing and hearing of Germany’s foreign office. “Kejriwal is entitled to fair against his remand in the liqand impartial trial. uor scam case. He was This includes that he remanded in the Enmakes use of all availforcement Directoable legal avenues rate’s custody till without restriction. Thursday by a local The presumption of court on Friday . innocence is a central The legal team of element of the rule of Aam Aadmi Party ‘Will come law and must apply to (AAP) national conout soon’ him,” the spokespervenor Kejriwal menson said. tioned the matter be- “I will soon come The MEA reacted fore J u s t i c e out... Whether rather shar ply by Manmohan, Acting inside or outside, summoning German Chief Justice. The every moment of envoy Georg Enzweiljudge heard it though my life is er and voicing its disit was the court’s off dedicated to approval. “The Gerday but refused to list serving the , it for urgent hearing. country,” Kejriwal man Deputy Chief of Mission in New Delhi Since the Delhi High was quoted as Court will be closed saying by his wife was summoned and we conveyed India’s for two days on Mon- Sunita in a video strong protest on their day and Tuesday due to the Holi festival, the earliest foreign office spokesperson’s Kejriwal’s plea can be listing comments on our internal affairs. We see it as undermining for hearing is Wednesday . The ED had alleged on Fri- the independence of our judiciday that Kejriwal generated ary,’’ said MEA spokesperson over `100 crore in kickbacks in Randhir Jaiswal. S u c h i t r a K a lya n M o h a n t y a n d Y e s h i S e l i @ New Delhi express read BJP’s fifth list likely to be out today New Delhi: The BJP’s CEC met on Saturday to finalise candidates for the Lok Sabha seats. Sources said, the discussions were held on the candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal, and Bihar | P7 Hooch toll rises to 21 in Sangrur New Delhi/Chandigarh: With six more people succumbing on Saturday, the death toll due to suspected consumption of hooch in Punjab’s Sangrur district rose to 21. A four-member SIT will supervise the probe. So far, six arrests have been made in the case | P7 Putin rejected warnings about attack, says US At least 143 people were killed in a terrorist attack on a packed concert hall in western Moscow, Russian authorities said on Saturday. The Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch later claimed responsibility for the attack. Gunmen burst into Crocus City Hall in Moscow’s suburb of Krasnogorsk on Friday and randomly opened fire on people who had arrived to watch a concert by Russian band Picnic that was about to start. The attackers also set off a blaze that took firefighters hours to bring under control. Authorities said the toll could rise as investigators were combing through the charred wreck- Rescuers clear charred wreckage inside Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on Saturday | AP The US Embassy in Moscow said it had warned Russia on March 7 that extremists were planning to target large gatherings in the city. But Russian President Vladimir Putin had called it a “provocative” statement and “outright blackmail... to intimidate and destabilise our society by scaring Russian citizens” age of the hall for more victims. Over 100 people have been injured and the condition of 44 of them is said to be serious. The Russian interior ministry said all four suspected gunmen were foreign nationals. Sources with links to the security services said they were from Tajikistan. One of the detained suspects reportedly told Russian investi- Forest fires to rise Rescuer-YouTuber kept snakes illegally, held critically in state by 2030: Study E x p r e s s N e w s S e r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar H e m a n t K u m a r R o u t @ Bhubaneswar GLOBAL warming and climate change fuelling longer and more intense heatwaves, forest fire incidents are expected to rise significantly in Odisha by 2030 with severe impact on districts like Kandhamal, Koraput, Kalahandi and Rayagada having a sizeable tribal population, a new study has predicted. The study by a group of geographers and environmental scientists revealed the increase in temperature in districts with high susceptibility to forest fires compounded by local practices and over-exploitation of natural resources, including water, and clearing of forests for mining, industrial, and agricultural purposes may lead to increased temperatures and reduced relative humidity conditions conducive to forest fires. Central, southern, northwestern, northern, and northeastern parts of Odisha, including Angul, Kandhamal, Rayagada, Kalahandi, Koraput, Sundargarh, and Mayurbhanj have been identified as very high to high forest fire susceptibility zones. As per an analysis, the state recorded 85,307 forest fire incidents between 2001 and 2022, averaging 3,877 fires annually and showing a general upward trend in forest fire occurrences with a notable increase after 2015. Odisha is the fourth-largest state in terms of forest cover, boasting of 52,156 sq km of forest land. A total 28,286 forest fires were reported during 2001-2010, accounting for approximately 33.16 per cent of the total incidents. The number significantly escalated to 57,021 between 2011 and 2022, constituting 66.84 per cent of all recorded cases. Continued on P5 WITH THIS ISSUE Packing a Punch PLUS 12 PAGES n u m b e r c r u n chi n g Chennai link to data analysis in IPL S wa r o o p S wa m i n at h a n @ Chennai WHEN Gujarat Titans won the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the first time of asking in 2022, one person came in for special praise. Sandeep Raju, somebody who had played zero games for the franchise. Representational image But the role he played Sunday helped Hardik Pandya & Special data analysts to give Co. win the league. “I bathem that extra one per sically help the team with cent. What, though, links with performance analytics,” he had said in an in-house Raju with most of the other anvideo the franchise uploaded. alysts currently employed by “I help them look at data and various IPL teams is the city come up with performance and they call home? Chennai (or a strategies and I also help with place in Tamil Nadu). Mumbai Indians have in their ranks Varrecruiting talent.” Of course, none of this is un Narasimhan. Rajasthan Roynew. All sports teams — fran- als have Krishnan Seshadrichise, clubs, countries across a nathan. Sunrisers Hyderabad wide variety of sport — employ have Gaurav Sundararaman. gators he was recruited through Telegram and offered 5,00,000 rubles (`4.5 lakh) for his role. In his statement on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said 11 people have been detained. He also sought to link the attack to Ukraine, saying they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a ‘window’ prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border. But Ukraine denied any role in the carnage. Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined others in condemning the attack. “We strongly condemned the heinous terrorist attack.... India stands in solidarity with the government and the people of the Russian Federation in this hour of grief,” he P9 posted on X. Lakshmi Narayanan has been associated with Chennai Super Kings. Shrinivas Chandrasekaran (Lucknow Super Giants) and Sankar Rajagopal (former Punjab Kings, now with Jio) are other names. Why is this the case? There are multiple reasons but the most common answer is that the ‘companies that provide data analysts are headquartered in Chennai’, both within a 10km radius (SportsMechanics and Kadamba). In a way, this is what’s happening to the IPL teams. Because some teams still do not have separate data wings, what they essentially do is hire employees of these two companies for a fixed period every season. This year alone, there are at least seven Tamilspeaking analysts in IPL. Big team players Even the Indian men’s cricket team have on their roster somebody who is associated with Chennaibased company Sports Mechanics (Hari Mohan, who hails from Coimbatore). Seshadrinathan was at StatDNA, Arsenal’s analytics company when Arsene Wenger was the manager. In a major crackdown on illegal possession of scheduled wildlife species and their unlawful display on social media, the Wildlife Wing of the Forest department on Monday arrested a man from Bhadrak, with millions of followers on different digital platforms, for allegedly possessing two snakes and sharing the rescue videos of the reptile on internet in violation of Wildlife Protection Act - 1972. The accused Mirza Md Arif is from Kajimahala area of Purnunabazar in Bhadark and has over 2.82 million followers on YouTube and 1.44 lakh on Facebook. Forest officials said Arif, who claimed to be a trained snake res- cuer, illegally possessed two monocled cobras, a scheduled species protected under Wildlife Protection Act, during a raid by Bhadrak wildlife division. Besides, his regular posts on social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook also violated the Wildlife Protection Act, they Continued on P5 said.
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