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Pirate attack: Kin of kidnapped Indian sailor in distress, prays for safe return

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Pirate-attack

Family members of the missing Indian sailor Pankaj Kumar believed to be kidnapped by sea pirates from the ship MV Tampen anchored in West African nation Gabon are distressed.

Pankaj Kumar, aged 30, hailing from the Gurdaspur district in Punjab was the Second Engineer of MV Tampen.

“Only last year he got married. We are all distressed a lot. There is no information about his whereabouts in Gabon. The shipping company officials are saying that my brother is missing and beyond that there is no information,” Sandeep Kumar, the younger brother of sailor Pankaj Kumar, told IANS over phone.

According to Sandeep Kumar, the family consists of younger sister, their parents and wife of Pankaj Kumar.

“We have sent an email to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We are yet to hear anything from his office,” Sandeep Kumar added.

He said requests have been made to the shipping company the Mumbai based Proactive Shipping Management to do the needful to trace his elder brother.

According to him, aerial search operations were carried out by Gabon authorities on Monday and after that it was stopped.

The ship, with 17 Indian crew, was sailing from Cameroon to the UAE when it developed some propulsion problems and was anchored just two kilometres away from Gabon’s Owendo anchorage when pirates boarded the ship on Sunday morning.

While the pirates threw Pankaj Kumar overboard, they also shot and injured Cook Sunil Ghosh and Chief Officer Naurial Vikas who were later admitted to a local hospital.

“Ghosh (from West Bengal) is doing fine in the hospital. Family members-wife and others- had spoken to him. There is no information about his discharge from the hospital,” a relative told IANS.

“All the sailors on the ship are distressed and would want to come back home,” Nithin Suresh Kuttipravan, a friend of one of the sailors Deepak Udayaraj told IANS.

Kuttipravan is reaching out to various official agencies so that the Indian sailors are brought back at the earliest.

“An official of the Indian Embassy in Congo is trying to reach out to the sailors. The ship captain is under a lot of stress and is answering the officials from the Gabon government,” Kuttipravan said.

He said as per the information from the sailors on board of MV Tampen, the ship’s satellite phone was not working for the past one month.

“They were communicating using email. Now they are using Whatsapp using their Indian SIM cards. We have requested the Indian Embassy to provide the sailors local SIM cards so that they can stay in touch with their family members,” Kuttipravan added.

The Honorary Consulate of India in Gabon is John Rupchandani.

According to Kuttipravan, all the sailors are ready to sign off and reach India at the earliest.

“It seems the shipping company wants the sailors to sail to Dubai after setting right the ship,” he said.

“As per my information, the pirates wanted to kidnap about three/four sailors. While resisting the kidnap attempt, the pirates had shot two Indian sailors,” Kuttipravan said.

According to him, the ship was sailing at a speed of four knots powered by one propulsion and the ship dropped anchor just two kilometres away from Gabon’s Owendo anchorage.

The ship is owned by Prince Marine Transport Service Pvt Ltd, Mumbai and the sailors were provided by Proactive Ship Management.

The ship sailing from Cameroon to the UAE has been facing technical problems enroute. Both its propulsion systems had stopped several times.

The vessel was diverted to Owendo for repairs as it was the nearest port.

On Sunday, six pirates attacked the ship and kidnapped Pankaj Kumar and shot two sailors.

“The marine and local police in Gabon are questioning three persons who had boarded the ship two days before the attack. We hope to know some information about the attackers and the missing crew today (Wednesday),” Captain Sunil Kumar, Security Officer of Proactive Ship Management, told IANS on Wednesday.

“One garbage cleaner and two technicians had boarded the ship as per the information conveyed to us by our agent there,” he had said.

Officials of Prince Marine Transport and Proactive Ship Management were not available for an update when contacted by Mumbaipress.

Crime

CBI books ex-SBI branch manager in Assam for illegal assets of Rs 80 lakh

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CBI

New Delhi, June 30: The CBI has booked a former manager of the State Bank of India branch in Assam for possessing allegedly illegal assets worth over Rs 80 lakh, an official said on Monday.

Pinku Kumar, former Branch Manager, SBI, Ramkrishnanagar Branch, Karimganj, is also facing a separate investigation over his alleged collusion in a multi-crore scam involving sanction of loans using forged documents, the official said.

CBI’s Shillong-based Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) registered the latest Disproportionate Assets case against Pinku Kumar on June 27 after receiving a complaint from a preliminary investigator.

The complaint alleged commission of criminal misconduct by Pinku Kumar while intentionally enriching himself illicitly, during the check period from April 1, 2019 to March 27, 2025.

During this period, he was found in possession of pecuniary resources/property, disproportionate to his known sources of income which he cannot satisfactorily account for, to the tune of Rs 99.20 lakh -(81.84 per cent DA), said the CBI FIR filed against the former bank manager.

Taking note of the preliminary probe conducted in the matter of criminal misconduct, the CBI’s FIR said, “The facts mentioned in the aforesaid complaint, prima facie, reveal commission of congnizable offences, punishable under Section 13(2) read with 13(1)(b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended 2018) on the part of Pinku Kumar.”

Section 13 of the Act defines various forms of criminal misconduct by public servants. These include actions like abusing their position, misappropriating property, or possessing assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.

Earlier in March, the CBI booked Pinku Kumar twice in separate corruption cases naming two brokers Sumen Paul and Jadab Paul, along with the former, in each of the cases.

Raids conducted by the federal agency in these two cases led to seizure of 481 grams of gold, 11.11 gram of diamond-studded jewellery and 1,092 gram silver.

The CBI investigation showed that the former bank manager conspired with the two brokers and allegedly approved loans base on forged papers, leading to a loss of crores of rupees to the SBI.

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Crime

Kolkata law college rape case: College ignored criminal antecedents of accused

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Kolkata, June 30: As the investigation into the rape of a law student within her college premises at Kasba in South Kolkata, West Bengal, continues, information has surfaced that the said college authorities allegedly ignored criminal antecedents of one of the three prime accused, Monojit Mishra, while giving him contractual employment.

Sources said Mishra originally got admission for the LLB course in the same college in 2012.

In 2013, he was booked in a police case on charges of hooliganism in the Kalighat area in South Kolkata, in which he chopped off the finger of an individual.

Thereafter, his admission at the same college was cancelled, and he remained absconding and away from the state for over three years. He returned to Kolkata after the case against him was settled and got re-admission at the same college in 2017.

Again in March 2018, two female students of the same college accused him of sexual harassment, following which he was partially suspended for some time from attending the college, except for appearing for examinations. However, somehow the matter against him did not proceed for a long time, and he started attending the college regularly.

In March 2023, he was again accused of sexual harassment by a female student of the college. In December 2023, some students filed a complaint at the local police station, accusing Mishra of entering the college with outsider anti-social elements and beating them up.

Now, questions are being raised about how the college authorities gave him a contractual appointment, ignoring his criminal antecedents.

College insiders said that Mishra happened to be an extremely close confidant of the ruling party MLA, who is also in the governing body of the same college, whom the accused used to address as “uncle”.

Questions have started surfacing on why just “initials” of the three persons accused of raping a law college student in Kolkata were mentioned in the FIR instead of full names.

The names of the three accused are Monojit Mishra, Jaib Ahmed, and Pramit Mukhopadhyay, all linked to the Trinamool Congress’ student wing, Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP).

However, in the FIR registered in the case, the three accused persons were referred to as “M”, “J” and “P”.

While the leaders of the opposition parties claim that this mention of just the initials of the three accused in the FIR was done deliberately by the cops to conceal the fact that the accused persons were linked to TMCP, even legal experts feel that in this case, there was no reason for the police to mention just the initials instead of the names.

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Crime

Human rights body condemns rape of Hindu woman by local politician in Bangladesh

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Dhaka, June 30: In yet another disturbing incident of violence on minorities and the atrocities against women in Bangladesh, a Hindu woman was brutally gang raped in her own home in the Cumilla district, while her attackers filmed the assault and circulated the footage, a human rights body said on Monday.

So far, five accused have been arrested, including the main accused, Fajar Ali, who is a politician of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

The Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM) said that the culprits circulated the video of the brutal assault “like a war trophy.”

“On the night of June 26, 2025, a Hindu woman in Muradnagar, Cumilla District, endured one of the most brutal forms of violence imaginable: her home was forcibly invaded, her dignity shattered, and her trauma recorded and circulated like a war trophy. She was gang raped by multiple assailants, her cries echoing through the silence of a country that has, for decades, looked away from the suffering of its most vulnerable,” read a statement issued by the HRCBM.

The human rights organisation also mentioned that the law enforcement officials failed to arrange a mandatory medical examination, delayed filing her First Information Report (FIR) until June 29, and later deflected blame by claiming it was “up to her” to pursue medical treatment.

The HRCBM mentioned that the critical delays in filing the FIR, failure to conduct a medical examination within the first 24 hours, and a dismissive attitude toward the survivor’s rights point to “systemic negligence,” adding that suggesting the survivor should arrange her own medical exam represented a “gross violation of procedural and ethical standards.”

The human rights body also said that despite public pressure and “media manipulation by Islamist groups portraying the crime as consensual,” one primary perpetrator and several accomplices involved in the distribution of the assault video were eventually arrested. However, several others remain at large.

The HRCBM asserted that in video statements received by the organisation from members of the local Muslim community, some of them were attempting to “downplay” the incident and “protect” the primary accused, Fajar Ali, and his gang — despite the “brutal nature of the assault.”

Such actions by community actors, it further stated, “obstruct justice and enable the normalisation of gender-based violence against minorities.”

“This incident is not isolated. It is a horrific example of an entrenched pattern in Bangladesh where minority women are routinely targeted, raped, abducted, forcibly converted, and shamed into silence,” it said.

According to the HRCBM, since April 2025 alone, 13 gang rape cases have been recorded in Cumilla District involving Hindu women. Additionally, across the country, reports of headless bodies, mass abductions, and forced conversions of young minority girls are rising at an alarming pace.

“Families now contact HRCBM regularly, pleading to rescue their daughters,” said the human rights organisation.

The HRCBM also criticised the mainstream Bangladeshi media for its largely silent response. They noted that the Muradnagar case, similar to many others, would likely have been “buried under layers of political denial and communal pressure” if it weren’t for the viral circulation of the assault video, which compelled public and institutional attention.

The HRCBM is preparing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) demanding a judicial inquiry into the condition of minority women and girls in Bangladesh.

At the same time, it called upon the international community — UN agencies, human rights defenders, and global civil society — to support its efforts, pressure the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government, and push for accountability mechanisms.

Condemning the horrific incident, Bangladesh Students League President Saddam Hussain said that in a country that increasingly resembles a “fascist Islamist regime,” the cries of women and Hindu minorities in Bangladesh continue to go unheard.

He stressed that each passing day brings another chilling tale of “temples desecrated, families displaced, and daughters brutalised.”

“The latest horror comes from Cumilla, where a young Hindu mother of two was raped at knifepoint by Fazar Ali and others. He is reported to be an active member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a party which has a long and controversial history regarding its treatment of religious minorities,” he said in a post on X.

“Her ordeal didn’t end there; they filmed the assault and continued to beat her mercilessly. The video, too disturbing to share, stands as a grim testament to the escalating violence and persecution faced by Hindu women and minorities in Bangladesh,” he said in a post on X.

“Her only crime: being a Hindu woman in a land where religious identity has become a target. As the nation turns a blind eye and justice remains elusive, the question lingers: How long will the Hindu community and women in Bangladesh be forced to live in fear? How much more must they endure before the world pays attention?” the post added.

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