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CBI interrogates gutkha baron 'Joshi'

     New Delhi: The owner of Goa Gutka, Jagdish Joshi, appeared before the CBI in New Delhi on Thursday in connection with his alleged nexus with the underworld and agreed for a lie detector test. Joshi was questioned at the CBI office in South Delhi by the sleuths of Special Crime Branch of the agency. He denied that he had ever visited Karachi or met underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who has been declared by the US State Department as 'global terrorist', informed CBI sources. On the other hand, the Bombay High Court today adjourned to March 16 a petition filed by Joshi urging quashing of non-bailable warrants against him. The High Court was today informed by the CBI that a warrant against Joshi had been executed and they had also questioned him for his alleged links with the underworld. The Gutkha kingpin has been grilled by the CBI on four occasions earlier, since his return from UAE on February 25. Earlier, CBI sources said that Joshi might be booked under MCOCA after this round of interrogation.

     The sources said that Joshi has admitted of having links with Dubai based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim but also alleged that Manikchand Gutkha baron Rasiklal Dhariwal had much deeper relations with the underworld don. The High Court had ruled that CBI was free to take any action against him as it may deem fit. The MCOCA court hearing the case had earlier issued a non- bailable warrant against J M Joshi, the owner of the Goa gutkha group for his failure to appear before the court. A similar warrant was issued against Rasiklal Dhariwal, the head of the Manikchand gutkha company. The CBI took over the case from Maharashtra police and is now probing into the nexus case. The investigating agency had earlier asked Interpol to arrest Dhariwal and his former associate JM Joshi, both of whom were believed to have fled to the UAE after non-bailable warrants were issued against them in Mumbai. After the return of Joshi, the red alert is sounded for Dhariwal who is still in UAE and has indicated to come back only after March. Last October, the police arrested Jamiruddin Ghulam Rasul Ansari alias Jumbo and his associate Rajesh alias Rajaram Panchariya, on the charges that they helped Dawood Ibrahim and his brother Anis Ibrahim Kaskar set up gutka companies in Pakistan, which has now grown up into a 150 crore empire. The case dates back to early 1990s when the duo was business partners but fell out after a bitter row. They are alleged to have approached Dawood Ibrahim to mediate in the settlement of dues in exchange of setting up a `Gutka' business for his younger brother Anees in Pakistan.

Munabao-Kokhrapar rail link in a month: Pak rail minister (Go To Top)

     Islamabad: Pakistan's Minister for Railways Mian Shamim Haider has said that the Munabao-Khokhropar rail link between India and Pakistan would be launched within a month. He said that India and Pakistan have carefully surveyed the train route and was expecting it to start functioning soon. "The train service will fulfil a longstanding desire of the people on both sides of the India-Pakistan border," the Daily Times quoted Haider as saying. He further said that the service would greatly improve ties between India and Pakistan and increase more people to people contact between the two countries. It may recalled that talks for the start of this railway link were started in September last year. Foreign Ministers of Pakistan and India then agreed that October 2005 would be an appropriate time to activate the rail link. Further discussions followed between railway officials of the two countries. Foreign Ministers Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri (Pakistan) and K.Natwar Singh (India) then met agin on February 16 to take stock of the bilateral deliberations, and it was then decided that bus services and the trains service would be activated within the next six months. Before independence from British colonial rule, people going by rail from Karachi to Mumbai had to change trains twice. They first had to change at Hyderabad from the broad-gauge N. W. Railway train to the metre-gauge Jodhpur Railway and then at Ahmedabad to the broad-gauge train again of the Bombay-Baroda and Central India Railway. This journey now would involve the same two changes at Mirpurkhas at Munabao because the track has been altered in both Pakistan and India. The change of gauge in India only made for easy access to the Pakistan border. The distance between Mirpur Khas in Pakistan's Sindh province from where the service will operate to Munabao in Rajashtan is 128 km, of which 10 km has no track at all while the remaining line is not only in a dilapidated state but is in the narrow gauge. the train with a capacity of 500 people would initially run once a week and would be extended on passenger demand.

Afghanistan gets its first female governor (Go To Top)

     Kabul: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appointed the country's first female provincial governor. In a major boost for women in the country's male-dominated Islamic society, Karzai's spokesman, Jawed Ludin, said today that former minister Habiba Surabi had been appointed as the Governor of the central province of Bamiyan.

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