As many as 550 fishermen in 33 trawlers went missing in the Bay of Bengal on Friday due to heavy rains triggered by a depression, prompting a search by a Coast Guard ship and a Dornier aircraft. The trawlers had set sail from Kakdwip and adjacent areas in South 24 Parganas district on Thursday and were reported missing in heavy rains following the depression lying 80 km east of Kolkata, said District Magistrate N S Nigam.
Eight people have been arrested for the brutal gangrape of four school girls in Pakur district, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren said on Tuesday.
Five Maoists, including a top aide of the outfit's senior leaders Kishenji and Telgu Dipak, were arrested from the outskirts of Kolkata on Tuesday. Acting on a tip-off, five Maoists were arrested from South 24 Parganas, adjoining the metropolis, said Inspector General of Police Neeraj Nayan. Of the arrested ultras, Madhusudhan Mondal alias Narayan, Rajesh Mondal, Sachin Ghosal were arrested from Amtala, while Siddhartha and Sanjay were arrested from Garia, he said.
A Karachi-bound cargo vessel from Bangladesh with heavy military supplies, including explosives, was on Friday detained by the police at Diamond Harbour in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, top police officials said.Director General of Police Bhupinder Singh said, "It is a consignment of heavy military supplies meant for a consignee in Karachi. Five tonnes of explosives and a huge quantity of arms and ammunition were found after the police detained the vessel."
West Bengal Sunderbans Development Minister Kanti Ganguly said 200 pilgrims from Uttar Pradesh were returning to Kakdwip on four motorised boats after offering pujas at Kapil Muni temple at Sagar Islands on the confluence of the Bay of Bengal and Hooghly river when one of the vessels sank.
National Disaster Response Force personnel left the spot, while State Disaster Management Department personnel continued their rescue work at the accident site with cranes, earth movers and drilling machines.
The districts have provided 64 days of jobs under the 100-day job scheme as against the state average of 45 days.
An eyewitness said some people in a minibus and private cars were trapped.
The death toll in the trawler capsize in Hooghly river shot up to 69 on Monday night with 28 bodies retrieved from the waters, even as search for 43 others missing was suspended for the night due to inclement weather and strong currents.
Eighteen people, 15 women and 3 girl children, were drowned and many were missing when an overcrowded trawler carrying about 100 pilgrims capsized in Hoogly river at Talpatti island in East Midnapore district on Saturday.
For states like West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, where migration is high, the return of workers could be as much an opportunity as a liability. All states have launched portals to register migrant workers; additional fields like nature of employment and remuneration in the past 2-3 years are being added to help in skill mapping.
The Karachi-bound cargo vessel from Bangladesh carrying military hardware and explosives was kept cordoned off on Saturday at Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas district with the captain disembarked and taken for questioning.
Has Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee created a situation with dangerous overtones in Bengal? In the six years that she has been in power, her detractors feel she has overplayed the politics of appeasement.
'It did not start as a Hindutva slogan.' 'It started to tease the TMC and slowly it got internalised and the BJP started countering with Jai Shri Ram slogans because Mamata was getting provoked.'
As a child, on her way back home from school near Diamond Harbour in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas, Minu would would often imagine herself sailing across unknown seas with an imaginary friend -- London, Paris and America -- being her places of interest. However, her dreams got shattered early in life.
Home tutor Puja Singh, who was caught on camera brutally beating up a three-year-old child at Lake Town in Barasat city of West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, was on Saturday remanded in police custody by a court in Salt Lake.
The alleged mastermind in the Kolkata techie kidnap case and his two other associates were arrested on Wednesday and Rs 1.90 lakh paid as ransom was also recovered by the police.
Clashes were reported from Kharagpur in West Midnapore district, Narayanpur in North 24 Parganas, and Alipurduar town in north Bengal, among others.
The family members of Partha Bag, one of the victims of the mysterious fire at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, have demanded a probe. Bag's relatives have said that the Central Bureau of Investigation should undertake the probe.Questioning the mysterious circumstances that led to the deaths of Bag and another research student, Bag's neighbours also accused BARC of not providing adequate security.
He is amazingly responsible for his age. At 10, Rahul Mir not only goes to school but also earns and contributes to his family.
According to senior Congress leader Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, "It will be a mistake to consider that it was the BJP that created the disturbance. The Communist Party of India-Marxist worked in collusion with the saffron brigade to throw life out of gear in Bengal."
An FIR was lodged by the Trinamool Congress after a car trailed Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee when she was returning home from a meeting in Kolkata, but it turned out that the 'pursuers' were television journalists seeking an interview with her.
At least seven pilgrims were killed and nine injured, four of them seriously, when a stampede broke out at the Gangasagar mela in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal early on Thursday.
A fresh terror alert has been issued, this time it is Kolkata. Based on the interrogation of some Indian Mujhaideen cadres who are in custody, the Intelligence Bureau has informed the Ministry of Home Affairs that the outfit is targeting the eastern city.
The CID had unearthed a child trafficking racket earlier this year under which babies and children were allegedly sold, some to foreigners, through illegal adoption deals.
Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday said that the demand for smaller states does not mean that new states would be created everywhere.
In the letter to the BJP, the West Bengal government said, "The areas proposed to be covered by the yatra are, because of publicity and propaganda, gradually turning into communally sensitive pockets. Intelligence reports indicate that public perception is that the religious overtones of the yatra will be turned into communal propaganda."
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was on Sunday gheraoed twice by relief seekers in the state's South 24 Parganas, the district worst-hit by cyclone Aila, even as the government prepared a memorandum seeking assistance of Rs 1,000 for submission to the Centre.The chief minister had gone to Gosaba in the Sunderbans to see the extent of the disaster and distribution of relief materials.
Results of the panchayat polls indicated a paradigm shift in state politics with the baton of main opposition party passing from the Left to the BJP.
The 10-day Ganesh festival began on Saturday under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, with devotees restricting celebrations to their homes and using online platforms to get 'darshan' of the Lord at temples, amid strict COVID-19 restrictions imposed by governments.
BJP protest outside Mamata Banerjee's residence over attack on BJP leader Roopa Ganguly's convoy
The elections are not only a means for TMC to prove its wide, unopposed mass allegiance but also a way to bargain for national leadership among regional political parties in the road to New Delhi.
Since September-October last year, when the real estate market was in deep recession, several developers had started offering gifts like a car or a parking space with flats. For example, Kolkata-based real estate developer RDB Group had decided to give a Nano car with flats at its residential project in Sonarpur, South 24-Parganas.
It is spring in Bengal, yet the scorching afternoon sun unleashed its unbearable heat as rediff.com decided to walk around Barrackpore, a sub-division under North 24 Parganas in West Bengal.
'Mamata is synonymous with Bengal, its culture, language, traditions.'
Trinamool Congress MP Kabir Suman said "his party is not doing anything for the people", and that he felt "suffocated and helpless" as an elected representative.
Exodus of people continued from the Cyclone Aila battered islands of Sundarbans, to escape inundation by full moon high tide 'Bhora Kotal', which is expected to hit the area on Sunday. The fear of heavy rains due to yet another low pressure area in the sea, however, receded with the weather office saying there was no weather warning for any cyclone and rain was expected in the next 24 hours.
In a repeat of Sunday's mob fury during West Bengal Chief Minister's visit to cyclone-hit Gosaba, hundreds of cyclone victims on Tuesday heckled and jeered at Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, as he came out of a relief camp in Hingalganj in North 24-Parganas district. "You are an inefficient chief minister. You deserve a garland of shoes. What have you done for the development of the Sunderbans in the last five years," the hungry victims shouted at Bhattacharjee.
A complaint has been lodged at the Barasat women's police station in North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal, where the 24-year-old Arjuna awardee has been booked under the IPC sections for rape, criminal conspiracy, causing miscarriage without the woman's consent and cheating, the police said.
Gateway of India, Andheri, Oberoi Hotel and Navi Mumbai were places where these militants had already carried out dry runs -- a chilling reminder of 2006 Mumbai serial blasts.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances