分类： bharat

Senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Wednesday claimed that former prime minister Indira Gandhi used to come to meet yesteryear don Karim Lala in Mumbai. Recalling days of the underworld in Mumbai, Raut, who was earlier a journalist, said gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel and Sharad Shetty used to have control over the metropolis and adjoining areas. They used to decide who will be the police commissioner, who will sit in ‘Mantralaya’ (secretariat), Raut said in an interview to a media group during its award function here.

“When Haji Mastan used to come to ‘Mantralaya’, the entire ‘Mantralaya’ would come down to see him. Indira Gandhi used to come to meet Karim Lala in Pydhonie (in south Mumbai),” claimed Raut, whose party formed a coalition government with the NCP and Congress in Maharashtra last year. 

More than two months after India pulled out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has suggested New Delhi could rethink its decision.
“We haven’t closed the door on [the RCEP]. The ball is in the court of the countries concerned and whether they make it worth our while,” he told the Raisina Dialogue, a three-day conference in the Indian capital organised by the government and the Observer Research Foundation think tank.
The RCEP is a free-trade agreement between 15 nations – the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
India had previously been expected to sign up but walked out of negotiations in a shock move in November last year, when the outline of the deal was agreed. At the time New Delhi cited concerns that its economy would suffer from an influx of overseas goods, especially from China.
The minister’s comments could breathe new life into the pact, which has been plagued by doubts since India walked out.
However, Jaishankar said the pact in its present form still did not make economic sense to India.
“The RCEP is, after all, a free-trade agreement and it has to be evaluated on its trade merits, its costs and its benefits. The bottom line was that the offers on the table did not match our requirements.”

Bollywood star Neha Bhasin has lashed out against top music composer Anu Malik, alleging that she found herself in a “sticky situation” with him as a young artist and branding him an “ugly pervert” in a series of angry tweets.
Bhasin was responding to tweets posted by fellow singer Sona Mohapatra, who was complaining that Malik had been rehired by Sony TV as a judge on Indian Idol – after being fired over accusations of sexual assault, including by her, only a year ago.
The singer-songwriter blasted Malik as a “predator” and said she had “run away from his strange moves” when she was 21. “I didn’t let myself get into a sticky situation beyond him lying on a sofa in front of me talking about my eyes in a studio,” she said, adding that she had fled the uncomfortable situation with the “ugly pervert” by telling him that her mother was waiting for her.