News Wrap

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The Central Bureau of Investigation on the directions of the Calcutta High Court has begun its investigation into cases of murder, rape and unnatural deaths in the aftermath of the West Bengal Assembly poll results on 02 May 2021. On 23 Aug 2021, a CBI team visited the residence of Abhijit Sarkar at Kankurgachi, a BJP activist, who was murdered allegedly by Trinamool Congress goons. According to reports, Bharatya Janata Party activist Abhijit Sarkar was allegedly strangled to death by a wire after being assaulted allegedly by the goons under the aegis of the TMC, after the poll results were out on 02 May 2021. In a first time the CBI has appointed four joint teams, that will investigate cases of murder, rape and unnatural deaths, following orders from the Calcutta High Court. The CBI has formed teams comprising 25 high ranking officers. Each of the four teams is having two officers in the rank of Deputy Inspector General and three officers in the rank of Superintendent of Police.

Dams On Bengal’s Rivers
The Damodar Valley Corporation, under the union government of India, led by a Bharatya Janata Party government, is the overarching authority of the dams in Maithon, Panchet and Tenughat. The utility of dams and the annual recurrence of floods has cropped up again and has claimed 20 lives in West Bengal of 2021. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister and Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal’s chief minister have conversed over the telephone on 04 Aug 2021. Mamata Banerjee has this time called the disaster “man-made” by the central government. The embankments that collapses all too frequently, have not been strengthened. If the dams are barred from releasing the excess water that they store, the possibility of dam-burst and extensive flooding becomes dangerously real. Due to lack of dredging, the dams have lost their capacity to hold the water. Excessive water is now being released, thus aggravating floods in south Bengal. Maintenance is at the core of the annual scourge. Heavy release of water from the DVC dams led to man-made floods in West Bengal in 2015, 2017 and 2021. It is also imperative to clean and revamp the underground drainage system in Kolkata. The network was laid in the 19th century. In the first week of Aug 2021, torrential rain had rendered Kolkata city, in addition to peripheral districts of Howrah, Hooghly, Midnapore and Burdwan in South Bengal completely water logged.

Belarus And Lithuania
On 05 Aug 2021, authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus ordered the country’s security forces to tighten control over the border with Lithuania, which from beginning Aug 2021 had started turning away immigrants attempting to cross in from Belarus. A member of the European Union, Lithuania has faced a surge of mostly Iraqi migrant in the past few months. Belarus has retaliated after the European Union put sanctions on Belarus over diverting a plane to the capital of Minsk, and arresting a dissident aboard.

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Frontier
Vol. 54, No. 12, Sep 19 - 25, 2021