Amritsar, Feb 5: A US military aircraft carrying the first batch of 104 illegal Indian immigrants, with the highest number of 33 each from Haryana and Gujarat, reached Amritsar in Punjab on Wednesday.

A total of 30 deportees were residents of Punjab. The US military C-17 aircraft landed at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport amid tight security.

Three each from Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra while two from Chandigarh. The deportees include 25 women and 12 minors, with the youngest passenger being just four years old.

Forty-eight people are below the age of 25. The flight, which took off from Texas on Tuesday, also carried 11 crew members and 45 US officials overseeing the deportation process.

A senior Punjab official said that most deportees from the state belong to Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Jalandhar, Nawanshahr, Patiala, Mohali and Sangrur. Some of them had entered the US illegally, while others overstayed their visas.

They were deported on the C-17 plane that took off from San Antonio, Texas. This was the first round of deportation of illegal immigrants that coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington next week.

This will be PM Modi’s first visit after Donald Trump took over as US President for the second time. External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar had earlier said that New Delhi is open to the “legitimate return” of Indian nationals living illegally abroad, including in the US.

India has expressed readiness to accept these migrants, post-verification, EAM Jaishankar conveyed this to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month.

“For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came,” President Trump told reporters last month.

Punjab NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal has expressed disappointment over the US decision to deport the Indians, saying they have contributed to the US economy and should have been granted permanent residency, instead of being deported.

Approximately 7,25,000 illegal immigrants from India live in the US, making it the third-largest population of unauthorised immigrants after Mexico and El Salvador, according to data from the Pew Research Centre.

Many people from Punjab, who are now facing deportation, had entered the US through the “donkey route” or other illegal means by spending lakhs of rupees. The US administration has launched a crackdown against illegal immigrants after Trump became the President.

Mumbai: Tensions ran high at a prominent school in Bhandup on Tuesday February 4 after a 9-year-old girl was allegedly injected with an unknown substance by an unidentified individual in the NES High school premises. The incident, which reportedly occurred on January 31, sparked outrage among parents, who staged a protest demanding answers about their children’s safety.

According to the complaint, the girl was playing in the school ground when an unknown person allegedly approached her, took her to an isolated spot, and injected her with an unidentified substance. The girl later informed her teacher about the incident, after which her parents were notified. She was immediately rushed to Wadia Hospital, where she underwent medical tests.

Despite the seriousness of the allegations, neither the school administration nor the police have been able to identify the suspect after four days of investigation. The Bhandup Police have formed five special teams to probe the matter and have scrutinized CCTV footage from the school premises. However, no suspicious activity or presence of an outsider was detected. The footage only shows the girl playing and interacting with her classmates.

Medical examinations, including blood tests and X-rays, were conducted, with preliminary reports indicating no signs of health complications.

School Responds to Allegations

When contacted by media, the school issued an official statement denying that such an incident occurred on its premises. “Following the complaint, the police are conducting a thorough investigation, including scrutiny of CCTV footage from the past three days. We have also reviewed the footage and can firmly confirm that no such incident took place within the school premises. This can be verified with the police authorities,” the school’s statement read.

The school further stated that medical reports from the hospital have not substantiated the allegations. “Since the matter involves a juvenile, we are handling it with utmost sensitivity. Based on investigations by both the police and medical professionals, there is no evidence to suggest that the alleged incident occurred at our Bhandup school premises,” the statement added.

Parents, however, remain unconvinced, demanding increased security measures and transparency from the school management. The Bhandup Police continue their investigation, and further updates are awaited.

Kolkata, Feb 4: The five accused in the multi-crore financial irregularities case at state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, including the former and controversial principal of the institute Sandip Ghosh, on Tuesday, sought exemption from the case.

Besides Ghosh, four others who have sought similar exemption from the case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), are his assistant-cum- bodyguard Afsar Ali, private contractors Biplab Sinha and Suman Hazra and a junior doctor Ashish Pandey. All of them are in judicial custody now.

The hearing for framing of charge in the case is likely on Wednesday at a special court in Kolkata. It is learnt that the hearing on exemption petitions by the five accused will be conducted simultaneously with the hearing on charge-framing.

On January 28, the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh directed the CBI, which is investigating the case, to complete the process of framing charges against the five accused individuals by February 6.

Recently, Ghosh also approached the bench of Justice Ghosh with a plea seeking more time before the framing of the charges could begin. However, Justice Ghosh summarily rejected the petition.

As per the chargesheet filed by CBI in the financial irregularities case, the main charges are manipulations in the tendering process, getting infrastructure-related work at R.G. Kar done by private outsourced agencies bypassing the state Public Works Department, “smuggling” bio-medical wastes from the hospital and selling the organs of the unidentified bodies coming to the hospital morgue for autopsy.

In the charge sheet, the investigating officials also gave details on the skyrocketing increase in the quantum of assets and properties of the accused persons, especially Ghosh, during his tenure as the R.G. Kar principal.

In the chargesheet, Ghosh has been identified as the mastermind of the financial irregularities in the case.