Tomorrow, September 8, happens to be E-Waste Day. To commemorate the occasion, Saahas, an NGO, is organising a doorstep collection of e-waste in Sector 5. If you have bulkier items, you can call their hotline number (73497-37586).
The three collection spots are as follows. Please pay attention to the timings at each point:
* 12th Main, 7th Cross (10-am-11am)
* End of 6th Cross (11am-12pm)
* 12th Main, 4th Cross (12pm-1pm)
Be an e-responsible citizen. Discard, the eco-friendly way!
Chain snatchers are striking it rich at the many exhibitions happening on BBMP Grounds in Sector 2 abutting 19th Main and 17th Cross. Two women learnt this the hard way when they found their gold necklaces missing the moment they had stepped out of the open space. Two similar incidents were registered on August 25 and 26.
FIRST INCIDENT
MJ Sharada, a 72-year-old women and a resident of Sector 2 was the first victim on August 25. She lost her plain gold chain and mangalsutra. On August 24 at 7pm, she had been to Srinivasa Kalyanotsava celebrations on BBMP Grounds. When she came out of the venue at 10pm, she found the 20 gram gold necklace on her neck missing.
In addition, her friend Shankari G Bhat also found her 24 gram mangalsutra missing as well. Alleging that someone had stolen their necklaces during the programme and taking advantage of the teeming crowd, the two victims have urged the cops to trace the culprits and recover their goods. The police have registered two theft cases and are investigating.
SECOND INCIDENT
The next day, on August 26 at 9pm, 67-year-old Gowramma fell victim at the same venue. The Sector 3 resident lost a 50 gram gold chain at the same Srinivasa Kalyanotsava celebrations on BBMP Grounds. The cops have registered a case of theft and are investigating the role of one gang being part of both the incidents.
A Sector 1 resident has alleged harassment for dowry between May 28, 2015 and February 15, 2019 at her inlaws place in Anekal. However, the complaint was lodged only on August 24, 2019.
Housewife Silpi (name changed), a 24-year-old married to Shivakumar (32), has alleged harassment for dowry from her husband and his family. The accused are Nagaratnamma and Motappa (residents of Anekal), Shivashankar and Manjula (residents of Kudlu).
According to Silpi’s complaint, she was married on August 28, 2015 where her parents spent Rs 12 lakh on the wedding and gave Rs 4 lakh as dowry. She lived happily only for three months after her marriage. Both her mother-in-law Nagaratna and father-in-law Motappa began harassing her for dowry, both mentally and physically – they used to even hit with their hands.
Silpi put up with all of this for four years in the hope that her husband would come around. However, in February this year, she and her daughter were thrown out of her husband’s house in Anekal. She was told by her husband and in-laws to only re-enter the house with Rs 5 lakh dowry.
Silpi is staying with her mother in HSR Layout ever since. One day, her husband’s co-brother and his wife visited her home. On the pretext of talking to her kid, they allegedly kidnapped her daughter on his two-wheeler and handed her over to Silpi’s husband on February 15, 2019. When Silpi confronted her husband to give back her child, he mouthed expletives and allegedly threatened her with life.
The cops have registered a case of dowry, harassment, criminal intimidation and intentional insult.
Software engineer Ananth (42) is relieved to find that his father who went missing on the evening of August 27 was found the next night. He is indeed fortunate as several missing persons vanish for days before being found or never found at all.
His father Selvadurai left his home in Sector 2 to go for a walk and never returned last Tuesday. A missing complaint was lodged the next day. The same day, an auto driver found him lying on the footpath near Forum mall in Koramangala. He later admitted him to St John’s hospital where he is being treated.
However, Selvadurai has no recollection of the incident and how he came to be at Forum. “The CCTV footage showed five people surrounding my father on the footpath. The auto driver said that the people asked him to take my father to the hospital. We have to go by his word as my father is unable to remember anything about it,” Ananth told Residents Watch.
Six persons in their 20s were allegedly caught redhanded by the cops for selling narcotics near NIFT College in Sector 1, off 27th Main.
The cops unearthed the racket under the leadership of inspector Raghavendra SR. Three mobile phones, Rs 1000 cash, and ganja (cannabis) weighing 10 kilos worth Rs 45000 were seized during the raid. The accused include Lakshman Cherudu (22) and Sai Charan (24) both from Andhra Pradesh, and Sujeeth (26) and Dominic (22) both from Kerala.
The incident occurred at 12.30pm on August 23, 2019. The cops received a tip off that two persons were selling drugs to the general public. Taking permission from the higher-ups, the local cops took eye witnesses and got Lakshman and Charan body searched by a gazetted officer to recover two mobile phones, 2kg ganja and Rs 1000 cash. Based on the information given by these two people, two more youngsters were arrested to recover the rest of the haul.
The cops have arrested the accused under the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. If convicted, they could spend their time in jail for six months to ten years and also pay a hefty fine.
A firm housed in NR Tower on 17th Cross, 19th Main in Sector 4 shut shop within months of its operations. The company has allegedly cheated over 60 people who were given work-from-home jobs but never got paid.
Dipreeth was one such victim. This 23-year-old resident of BTM Layout posted his resume on online sites like Naukri, Indeed and LinkedIn. Later, one firm named Mac Infotech Company based in HSR Layout reached out to him.
When he reported to work, the officials allegedly asked him to work from home and the work will be assigned to them online. Dipreeth worked on the assignments given by the firm for three months. When the payments never came, he went to enquire with the firm only to realise that the establishment had evacuated the co-working space they were operating from.
When Dipreeth looked around the coworking space, he also realised that he was not the only one allegedly cheated by the firm. There was Shamsuddin (23) and around 60 other employees who had a similar complaint.
The cops have registered a case of cheating and are investigating.
A recent Karnataka High Court on 107 pubs and bars in Indiranagar for violating various rules has given the much-needed respite to all other neighbourhoods reeling under commercialisation, including HSR Layout. With this order, no pub or bar can play live or recorded music without police permission. And the cops can only permit if the establishment has all the requisite approvals to run a pub or restaurant from various authorities. In January this year, the Supreme Court upheld a 13-year-old law that banned live music, which led to the crackdown on pubs and bars. This latest judgement will hopefully bring down the noise levels in neighbourhoods.
I Change Indiranagar, a collective of several resident welfare associations, won this case by arguing that the neighbourhood pubs and bars were violating several norms relating to noise, building bylaws, fire safety, parking, excise, and public nuisance, among others.
The licensing procedure is fairly elaborate and many establishments were seen functioning without licences, which led to their shutdown by the cops. For the police permission to play music, the joints need to submit the following documents to the authorities: BBMP’s building plan sanction, lease or title deed, partnership deed, occupancy certificate and no-objection certificates from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services and an electrical contractor.
If you find any pub or bar playing live music in violation of Licensing and Controlling of Places of Public Entertainment (Bangalore City) Order, 2005, take a video recording of it and complain to the cops. The establishment owners will be booked under Section 294 (sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place to the annoyance of others) of the Indian Penal Code.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is getting down to brass tacks. Special BBMP Commissioner (Solid Waste Management) Randeep D has stated that the single-use plastic ban implementation is going to be even more stricly implemented from September 1.
From October 1, the central government is banning plastic in the entire country. These include plastic bags, cups, plates, small bottles, straws and certain types of sachets. Officials insist that this ban is comprehensive and will cover the manufacturing, usage and import of such plastic items.
Not only will repeat offences lead to cancellation of trade licences but also seizure of equipment. The street vendors will be fined Rs 2000 for using banned plastic. The next time, they are found guilty again, their pushcarts will also be seized.
“The BBMP is fully serious about implementing the plastic ban,” said one BBMP health official. “The shopkeepers will be fined Rs 5000 for first-time offense. Even those who carry plastic bags will be fined Rs 500.”
The harmful effects of plastic are well-known. Since it’s non-biodegradable, the creation and sale of thermocol and microbeads was banned across the state from 2016. However, the implementation was lacklustre as the other states had not banned it. However, with the nationwide ban coming into effect from October, we will get to see better results. But please note that the ban does not apply on water bottles, milk and oil sachets, and the plastic used in nurseries, and hospitals (IV fluids).
Last year, BBMP had seized 1.2 lakh kg of plastic and collected Rs 73 lakh in fines. This year, as of May 31, the civic body had confiscated nearly 4000 kg of plastic and fined Rs 16 lakh. The moral of the story is not to buy or use plastic items like covers, cups, spoons, plates, flags, banners, buntings, flex, cling films, items made of thermocol (polystyrene), and non-woven polypropylene bags.
Every ban wasn’t so successful as the implementation was lax. And that was because, there is no systematic methodology that tracks the continuous implementation of the ban. Says HSR’s prominent civic activist Shanthi Tummala: “We want a monitoring committee to be there for proper implementation as the plastic ban includes coordination between other agencies like police, commercial taxes and food safety departments. Right now, these departments are not monitoring or penalising the offenders.”
Shanthi also says that the focus should not only be on the amount of penalty collected but also on the number of offenders caught in the raids. “We have carved out a system where the joint commissioner of Bommanahalli regularly monitors all the junior and senior health inspectors in Bommanahalli by setting up a common WhatsApp group with the JC and all the inspectors of the zone. There is a reporting format they have to follow and submit it every day on WhatsApp, be it garbage segregation or plastic ban.They have to compile a report every 15 days and the person who targets the most offenders should be rewarded by the BBMP.”
THE FINES
Manufacturing; Rs 2 lakh & Rs 5 lakh (repeat offences).Storing: Rs 1 lakh & Rs 2 lakh (repeat).
Trading/Retailing/Selling: Rs 50,000 & Rs 1 lakh (repeat).
Domestic users: Rs 500 & Rs 1,000 (repeat).
Commercial users: Rs 25,000 & Rs 50,000 (repeat).
The police has begun recruiting traffic wardens across Bangalore. “You cannot be more than 60 years old. It’s a voluntary service; there is no salary,” says HSR’s traffic warden Sukesh Nayak. “You should be a graduate and put in 16 hours of duty every month on the minimum and should not have any police record.”
All you need to do is fill this application form, attach two passport size photos in addition to the requisite degree certificate to substantiate your educational credentials and courier them to the address given below:
SR Nayak
Mahalsa, 693/C 21st main, 21st cross, Sector 2, HSR Layout, Bangalore 560 102.
For more information on how you can manage traffic in your area, you can go through this link of the traffic warden organization.
If you have any clarifications, you can contact Sukesh Nayak at 98457-93594.
Hurry. The last date to register is September 7. There is no time to enroll like now.
Victims falling prey to the various identity thefts in Bangalore has doubled from last year. If there were 5036 cyber crime cases registered all of last year, it’s 7101 already this year; there are four more months to go by which time the number will cross 10,000 complaints in 2019. In February this year, Bangalore even got the notorious title of ‘cybercrime capital of India’.
The latest such victim in this neighbourhood was a 37-year-old woman resident of an apartment complex in Bellandur. She lost Rs 20100 to Roshan Sharma, the accused in this case of identity theft on August 20 at 11am. In another incident registered on August 21, a 24-year-old resident of JP Nagar lost Rs 3.99 lakh to three conmen in an online transaction of identity theft.
The cybercrime police is continuously educating the public on the do’s and dont’s to be followed while answering SMSes, Whatsapp messages, emails, phone calls or using the internet. The pictures shared above and the text below were given by them on their Twitter handle. Stay aware, stay safe!
On August 20 at 8.45am, 24-year-old Chinta Ravindra, a resident of Singasandra, rented a bike and took the Harlur Road from the side of Sobha apartments and proceeded towards Sarjapur Road. He was a Denzo delivery boy on the job. However, another unknown vehicle driven allegedly by a rash driver rammed into the right … Read more
On August 20, between 1pm and 5pm, a curious incident occurred in Sector 1, HSR Layout. An 18-year-old daughter of a 45-year-old software engineer went missing.
The missing person, a resident of 14th Cross, 25th B Main, took her mother’s Honda Jazz car (KA03HW9167) on the pretense of taking it for a spin. However, she never returned.
To add to the worries of parents, her phone was switched off whenever they called. After enquiring with friends and relatives, the girl’s father decided to file an FIR.
The cops have registered a missing person’s complaint and are investigating. In such cases, while some people return home, others never come back. We have seen cases where people go missing on purpose to avoid financiers, while others do it to elope with lovers or spend time with friends.