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Tag: Mumbai

  • Premier League opens office in Mumbai

    Premier League opens office in Mumbai

    The English Premier League is expanding its global footprint with the opening of a new office in Mumbai, strengthening its commitment to one of football’s most passionate fan bases.

    The Mumbai hub will build on nearly two decades of Premier League engagement in India, where the League has run grassroots initiatives since 2007 through its Premier Skills programme, supporting thousands of coaches and young people in 18 states.

    At elite level, the Premier League has collaborated with the Indian Super League since 2014, sharing expertise in governance and development. Their joint Next Gen Cup youth tournament will feature its sixth edition in Mumbai next May, featuring ISL youth teams competing against Premier League Under-19 sides.

    Read Also: NFF threatens match manipulators with lengthy ban

    “We and our clubs have a fantastic and knowledgeable fanbase in India, and we know football continues to grow in popularity,” Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters said.

    “Opening this office marks a significant milestone for the Premier League. It will allow us to operate more effectively locally as we build on our existing work to establish more ways to strengthen our relationship with fans.”

    The Premier League established offices in Singapore (2019), New York (2023) and Beijing (2024) as part of its global strategy of strengthening local partnerships and combating content piracy.

  • Collapsed billboard leaves three dead, 59 injured after heavy rains in Mumbai

    Collapsed billboard leaves three dead, 59 injured after heavy rains in Mumbai

    A large billboard that collapsed amid raging thunderstorms in Mumbai killed at least 14 people and injured 75 others, according to reports.

    A rescue operation was continuing on Tuesday morning, and authorities told the Press Trust of India news agency that 89 people had been rescued since the incident occurred on Monday evening.

    The rains, accompanied by high winds, caused the 30 metre (100 foot) tall billboard to fall onto a gas station in the suburb of Ghatkopar.

    Videos on social media and television showed the billboard shaking amid heavy winds before giving way.

    It collapsed onto several cars parked in the gas station, flattening and crushing them to the ground.

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    On Monday night, rescuers were rummaging through the wreckage to look for bodies as they used heavy equipment to cut through the metal girders attached to the billboard.

    Rescue workers continued to clear the area on Tuesday, which still had mangled cars and debris.

    A city official told PTI that more than 125 rescuers were on site, including gas cutter teams, using cranes to clear the wreckage.

    Police are investigating the incident and say the billboard was illegally installed, officials told PTI.

    The officials said 32 of the injured people had been discharged from the hospital.

    India has heavy rain and severe floods during the monsoon season between June and September that brings most of its annual rainfall.

    The rain is crucial for agriculture but often causes extensive damage.

    Newsnow

  • Four days of heavy rains leave life disrupted in Mumbai

    Four straight days of torrential monsoon rains crippled India’s financial hub, Mumbai, and its suburbs, stalling trains and slowing traffic, local media reported on Tuesday.

    Schools in two of the suburbs where flooding was at its worst remained closed.

    According to Maharashtra state Education Minister Vinod Tawde, school heads in the city have been asked to make a decision about the situation in their localities.

    Mumbai, with a population of over 18 million, is capital of Maharashtra state.

    The city’s dabbawalas, famous for rarely failing to deliver daily hot lunches in Tiffin boxes from homes to offices, also suspended operations.

    “We did not collect the Tiffin today because of the water-logging. Our people find it hard to use their cycles in knee-deep water,’’ Mumbai Dabbawalas Association’s spokesperson Subhash Talekar said.

    “Food packets and water were distributed to thousands of passengers at railway stations,’’ Wester Railway spokesman G Mahapurkar said.

    A team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was rescuing residents of the flooded Vasai area in boats, while another was assisting passengers at Nallasopara railway station.

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    Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the Indian Navy was also on standby.

    Roads in Ghatkopar, Byculla, and Matunga, among other areas, were all under knee-deep water.

    “More than 100 additional pumps had been deployed to drain rainwater,’’ Fadnavis said in a Twitter post.
    The Meteorological Department has predicted further heavy showers until Thursday.

    Report says annual monsoon rains often wreak havoc with transport and infrastructure in Mumbai.

  • 12 die in Mumbai shop fire

    12 die in Mumbai shop fire

    Police said 12 people were killed in a fire in a wholesale snacks shop in India’s financial hub Mumbai on Monday.

    Local police officer Suresh Wagle said that 12 employees of a shop selling farsan, sweet and savoury snacks, in the Sakinaka area of Mumbai were trapped in the fire that broke out early Monday and died.

    He said four others were injured and are being treated in hospital.

    “The fire started at the ground floor-level and the people inside were sleeping on the loft.

    “They got trapped in the 60 feet by 30 feet structure (about nine by 18 metres) due to the intense heat and smoke and the loft subsequently collapsed,” Mumbai Fire Brigade officer PS Rahangdale was quoted as saying by the Hindu newspaper.

    The charred bodies were found later in the morning after cooling operations were completed and officials sifted through debris at the site.

    Police said the process of identifying them was on.

    “Clearing operations are still on at the site,” Wagle said.

    He did not rule out that other people could have been in the shop when it caught fire.

    The police were investigating the cause of the blaze and whether all required safety measures had been taken by the shop owner.

    Over 15,000 deaths occur due to accidental fires in India every year.

  • Nepal arrests human trafficker

    Nepal arrests human trafficker

    Police in Nepal have arrested a human trafficker 15 years after he was convicted by a court, an official said on Friday.

    Police Inspector Mira Chaudhary told newsmen Bijay Tamang, 44, was arrested on Tuesday in his rented room on the outskirts of Kathmandu, where he worked as a construction worker.

    “The arrest of a trafficker is rare in Nepal and came about through a court campaign to revive old cases of trafficking in the country,’’ she said.

    Tamang was convicted of trafficking a Nepali woman to a brothel in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2002.

    “He had promised the woman a job of travelling salesperson in New Delhi, but sold her to the brothel for 20,000 Nepali rupees (193 dollars).

    “The woman fled the brothel, returned to Nepal, and filed a case against him in a court in Kathmandu,’’ Chaudhary said.

    Report says Tamang will spend 10 years in jail.

    “The age or whereabouts of the woman was not known,’’ Chaudhary added.

    According to United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF), an estimated 7000 Nepali women are trafficked to India every year.

  • Heaviest woman, 500 kg leaves Egypt for treatment in Mumbai

    A 36-year-old Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed, reportedly the heaviest in the world, at 500 kilogrammes reached Mumbai on Saturday for surgery.

    She entered Mumbai in a cargo plane with hopes high that several rounds of surgery could help her reduce weight.

    Ahmed has gained weight since she was a child.

    She has already suffered a stroke that left her right arm and leg paralysed and affected her speech, according to the Save Eman online campaign page, which is raising money for her treatment.

    She cannot move from her bed.

    Ahmed has been admitted to Mumbai’s Saifee hospital, where a special facility with large doors and a fortified bed has been created for her, a hospital spokesperson said.

    She will undergo a series of tests before doctors proceed to carry out surgical procedures to reduce her weight.

    They may take six months or more.

    Ahmed left her home in Egypt’s Alexandria for the first time in 25 years to fly to Mumbai in a specially prepared Egypt air cargo aircraft, Egypt air head Safwat Musalam, said.

    Ahmed was lifted into the cargo plane by cranes, the head of the Egypt air Cargo Company, Bassem Gohar, said.

    At Mumbai, Ahmed was again lifted out of the aircraft by a crane onto a waiting truck.

    She was driven to the hospital accompanied by a police escort and an emergency ambulance.

    Ahmed has been admitted to the care of bariatric surgeon Muffazal Lakdawala and his team, a spokesperson for Saifee Hospital said.

    Lakdawala’s team has been treating Ahmed for the past three months.

    Two doctors from Saifee Hospital and Ahmed’s sister, Shaimaa, accompanied her on the flight.

    “We have big hopes that she will return home in good health,’’ Shaimaa said.

    She asked all Egyptians to pray for her sister’s recovery.

    Ahmed has severe lymphedema, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hypothyroidism, severe obstructive and restrictive lung disease, gout and is at a very high risk of pulmonary embolism, according to the Save Emaan online campaign. (dpa/NAN)

  • India’s Maharashtra state finds, reunites 12,000 missing children

    Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister, India’s Western State of Maharashtra, said it founded and reunited 12,000 largest number of missing children in the country with their families.

    He said on Friday in Mumbai that the development was part of the national Operation Smile and Muskaan, launched first in January last year.

    The minister said that the effort would help check trafficking in the state “because it is one of the largest destinations for trafficked children in the country.’’

    Fadnavis said that the data by the National Crime Records Bureau showed that a child was missing every eight minutes in India and 40 per cent of them remained untraced.

    “While some are kidnapped or trafficked and forced to work, some are abandoned by families who cannot afford to care for them.

    “Older boys may be runaways seeking better opportunities.

    “Maharashtra has shown good results in bringing back the children and connecting to their families,” he said.

    Fadnavis said that the state’s efforts had also boosted the conviction rate for perpetrators to 52 per cent from 9 per cent before the campaign.

    Brijesh Singh, State’s Inspector General of Police, said that most children were not even registered as missing and it made it very hard to trace them and return them to their families.

    He said that nationwide, almost 29,000 children were rescued in two month-long operations last year, while the national data for this year’s January campaign were not yet available.

    “In Maharashtra, 4,244 children were rescued in January, of whom only 665 had been recorded as missing.

    “Last July, 4,296 children were traced in the state, of which about 1,400 were girls, while a similar number were rescued in January 2015,’’ he said.

    Singh said that some children were found begging on the streets, and others had been forced to work, while some had been trafficked from the eastern states of Bihar and Orissa.

    The officer said that as part of the campaign, police stations in the state appointed child welfare officers, and the state’s 12 anti-human trafficking units worked closely with child welfare centres.

    Police also tapped NGOs for help with rehabilitation.

    Jyoti Nale, Head of the anti-Human Trafficking Programme at Save the Children India in Mumbai, said if the measures were sustained, it would also help check trafficking.

    She said that sustaining the momentum might be difficult as this was a concentrated effort.

    Nale said that the organisation had also shown that it could be done, and come up with good results with the measures.

  • Etihad extends flights to Mumbai, New Delhi

    Etihad extends flights to Mumbai, New Delhi

    Etihad Airways  has announced that Mumbai and New Delhi will become its first destinations in India to be served with triple-daily flights, strengthening its unparalleled offering with Jet Airways into and out of the country.

    Both cities will be upgraded from their current double-daily frequencies, with the third daily flight to Mumbai starting on February, 15  2015 and to New Delhi on May 1, 2015. The development will provide business and leisure travellers with more options throughout the day between the UAE and India, and enhance India’s connections with markets across Etihad Airways’ global network.

    Along with Jet Airways’ services, both airlines will connect Abu Dhabi to 14 Indian cities, with over 200 return flights each week. This includes five flights a day to Mumbai, four flights a day to New Delhi, three flights a day to Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi, two flights a day to Ahmedabad and Kozhikode, and daily flights to Jaipur and Trivandrum.

    Etihad Airways will also launch a daily service to Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, on 15 February 2015 to support its long-term development plan in India, and Jet Airways has announced it will soon launch daily services between Abu Dhabi and Goa, Lucknow and Pune.

    In addition to the airline’s network developments, Etihad Airways has upgraded its aircraft on a number of Indian routes, including the debut of three-class, wide-body aircraft on select flights. The airline will also operate its new Boeing 787-9 on Mumbai evening services in January 2015.

  • Mumbai gang rape: 4 men found guilty

    A court in Mumbai on Thursday found four men guilty of the gang rape of a photo journalist and another woman in 2013.

    Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali, Salim Ansari and Siraj Rehman ,convicted in both cases, attacked the 23-year-old photo journalist while on assignment at a deserted textile mill in August 2013.

    Days after the assault, another victim, a telephone operator, alleged the same group of men had raped her a month earlier.

    Arguments on sentencing are to be held on Friday and the convicted men face a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

    The fifth accused, a minor, was being tried in a juvenile court.

    The Mumbai attacks sparked renewed anger over rape in India, where the death of a student who was gang-raped in a bus in New Delhi in December 2012, led to weeks of protests.

    Laws against sexual violence were amended to make them stricter and the government promised swifter prosecution

  • Mumbai building collapse kills nine

    At least nine people have been killed in the collapse of a building on the outskirts of the Indian city of Mumbai.

    More people are trapped inside the three-storey building in Thane district, 35km (20 miles) from Mumbai. Rescue operations are continuing.

    The cause of the collapse in not known, but BBC says such incidents are common in India and often blamed on poor construction practices.

    In April, 74 people were killed in another building collapse in Thane.

    And earlier this month, four people were killed when a five-storey building collapsed in Mumbai.

    The latest incident happened early on Friday when the residential building caved in, officials said.

    The building was home to nine families and most people were asleep at the time of the collapse, Sandeep Malvi, spokesman for the Thane municipal corporation, told the BBC.

    It was not known what caused the collapse, but Mr. Malvi said it was an “old building” constructed in 1979 and that rains in the area over the past few days could have caused the incident.

    14 people who were injured in the incident have been admitted to hospital.

    “There are more trapped inside and rescue operations are in full swing,” Mr. Malvi said.