Murdered 42 people, Assam car thief Konwar says on TV
GUWAHATI: Bubu Konwar of central Assam is a known car thief and murder suspect. What was unknown until his arrest this weekend is that he is a contract killer, with 42 hits by his own admission.
The 38-year-old owned up in front of television cameras to his involvement in several sensational murders, including that of a popular physician in 2006 and a Congress leader two years later.
“He is a dreaded car thief and several murder cases are lodged against him. What surprised us was his boast that he has killed 42 people,” said Rishikesh Hazarika, in-charge of Pulibor police station in Jorhat district.
Konwar started his innings in crime early.
Beginning with petty thefts and robberies when he was 16, he graduated to car thefts, murders, kidnappings and extortion.
Money was the sole motive of this lynchpin of a gang involved in killing politicians, businessmen, taxi drivers and professionals nessmen with the help of girls and extort money from them,” officer Hazarika said.
Konwar has more than 50 cases — including seven murders and 27 car thefts — against him and was arrested several times before. But he always got bail because of botched investigations and continued his criminal activities.
He was released from Jorhat jail only a few days before his re-arrest on Sunday.
“My husband was used by politicians to murder their rivals. They used to pay him big sums,” Konwar’s wife, who was present in court on Monday, told news channels.
The murder of prominent doctor Mridul Baruah Congress nessman KL Ginoria in 2012 and school headmaster DN Gogoi in 2014 had grabbed headlines in Assam.
These were alleged victims of Konwar.
The shocked police want to verify Konwar’s boast of 42 murders, but their efforts suffered a setback as the district court sent him to 14 days judicial custody.
“The order will affect our investigation. We will apply again to seek police custody so that his involvement in the murders can be established with proof,” Hazarika said.
Konwar lost three fingers of his right hand eight years ago trying to make a crude bomb at home, but that didn’t deter the son of a former Nagaland police constable from continuing his crime run.
“He is from Amguri in Sivasagar district and he grew up in Nagaland. After a crime, he would flee to that state,” said Amguri police station in-charge Kiran Nath. Konwar came in touch with criminal elements early in life. His underworld links in Nagaland now helps him cool his heels in the hill
The cash coming in through the new scheme will be spent on infrastructure and irrigation projects, housing, and building toilets.
“The disclosures under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana will ensure that no questions are asked about the source of the fund. It would be immune to wealth tax, civil laws and other tax laws,” said revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia. But he added that the disclosures will not be immune to money laundering, narcotics, and foreign exchange violation acts.
A total disclosure of Rs 65,250 crore of unaccounted for wealth in the form of cash and other assets was made in the Income Disclose Scheme 2016 that closed on September 30. This fetched the government just a little under Rs 30,000 crore in taxes.
“Now we have to get into a model where we will recruit freshers, train them and gradually deploy them, and this will increase our costs,” he said, noting Infosys typically recruits 500-700 people each quarter in the US and Europe, around 80% of whom are locals.
Trump’s election win and Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union are headwinds for India’s IT sector, as clients such as big US and British banks and insurers hold off on spending while the dust settles.
In Bengaluru and Mumbai, executives expect a Trump administration to raise the minimum wage for foreign workers, pressuring already squeezed margins. Buying US companies would help Indian IT firms build their local headcount increase key markets and help counter any protectionist regulations.
Jatin Dalal, Wipro’s chief financial officer, said his growth strategy is to buy companies that offer something beyond what Wipro already does, or new, disruptive firms — such as Appirio, a US cloud services firm.
Since then, Mistry and Tata Sons have been involved in a war of words blaming each party for problems in the $100-billion saltto-software conglomerate.
After Mistry’s removal, group patriarch Ratan Tata, 78, came out of retirement to take charge of the business empire but said his role was temporary.
A Tata Sons spokesperson denied the possibility of bringing back old hands saying “these rumours seem to be intended at destabilising the Tata group”.
Efforts to contact Nerurkar and Chaukar did not yield any result as they did not respond to queries on the issue. Telang could not be reached.
However, the group has already tested waters in this direction when on November 3, it appointed former Tata Power MD and former Air Vistara chairman Prasad Menon, to steer the new management at Tata Sons.
“All the three companies (Tata Steel, Tata Industries and Tata Motors) are vital to the group. Apart from having steady hands, the thinking is that familiar and experienced leaders would be needed as it is likely the legal fight on leadership will take some time,” a source said.
Mintoo and another fugitive Kashmeer Singh were driven in Haryana, where the two hurriedly trimmed their beard in a sugarcane field with a pair of scissors they bought from a local farmer.
At the Nizamuddin railway station, Mintoo tried to buy a ticket to Panvel, near Mumbai, when Delhi Police assistant sub-inspector Harish Chander became suspicious by his “improper” appearance and “extra-cautious” behaviour.
In no time, Arvind Deep, special commissioner of Delhi Police (special cell) said, a police team swooped down on them. Mintoo was caught with a pistol which he tried to fire at the police. They also found Rs8,000 with him in old and new banknotes.
Deep said Mintoo chose Goa as his hideout because he lived there for 18 years between the mid-1980s and early 2000s with his family. His wife is from Goa. Another police officer said Mintoo’s plan was to get a passport and visa using his contacts in Goa and reach Nepal en route to Germany.
A Delhi court sent Mintoo to seven days’ police custody. The authorities announced a reward of Rs25 lakh for the capture of the militant, who is said to have visited Pakistan several times and been trained by Islamist jihadis. Police said his jail break was planned as part of efforts to revive Sikh militancy in Punjab.
Police said Mintoo told his interrogators that he planned his jail escape 15 days ago on the instructions of his handlers at Pakistani spy agency, ISI. He had apparently received Rs25,000 in the jail to help with his escape.
Deep also said Mintoo and Kashmeer Singh had been dropped off in Kaithal by Palwinder Singh a fugitive escape from the jail on Sunday. Palwinder was caught with arms and ammunition by the Uttar Pradesh police in Shamli within hours of the jail break.
“Teams were deployed at all interstate bus terminals, railways stations, Metro stations and border points to nab the two. The SHOS were asked to check hotels and guest houses in their respective territorial jurisdictions,” said Deep, the special CP. Hundreds of policemen had been deployed to trace Mintoo.
Deep said Mintoo and Kashmeer Singh hitched a ride from Kaithal to Kurukshetra and then took a bus to Panipat. A second bus ride brought them to Kashmere Gate bus terminus in Delhi.
“To avoid getting caught together, the two split at the bus terminal and Mintoo asked Kashmeer Singh to meet him at the railway station, as they together had to leave for Goa,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police PS Kushwah.
Mintoo was deported from Thailand in November, 2014. He was wanted in at least 10 terrorism-related offences, including the 2008 attack on Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.
The KLF is among a handful of Sikh militant groups founded after Indian army stormed the holiest of Sikh shrines, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, to flush out militants. The 1984 operation triggered widespread anger in the community, and is believed to have prompted the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who had ordered the military operation.
“The endeavours put in by our government to overcome challenges on various fronts have been endorsed by the people. The central and state governments have been relentlessly working in the interest of the poor and the middle class. Our impressive victory is the result of the faith reinforced in us by the voters,” Fadnavis said.
The victory of the BJP, which is being vilified from all quarters for the move to demonetise, will bring relief to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, whose position will be strengthened further, political observers believe.
Shiv Sena spokesperson Neelam Gorhe said the pattern was similar to what was observed in the Vidhan Sabha election. “We managed to increase our presence by 30 40% despite sev ance in certain areas, especially Konkan, could have been better We hope to improve in the Zilla Parishad elections now,” she said
“The BJP did get more seats but just like the assembly elec tions, these are mostly in their strongholds of Vidarbha. The Sena, on the other hand, man aged to post a good performance without sacrificing on its stand of ‘Akhanda Maharashtra’,” Gorhe told HT.
A total of 192 municipal coun cils and 20 nagar panchayats wil be going to polls in four phases In the first phase, elections to 147 municipal councils and 17 nagar panchayats have been completed Polls for the rest of civic bodies will be completed in three phases — December 14, 18 and January 8. As many as 15,826 candidates were in the fray for the 3,705 seats spread over 1,967 wards of the municipal councils and nagar panchayats. Around 658.49 lakh voters were expected to have cast their vote in the poll exercise held on Sunday.
Significantly, in the 195 munici pal council elections held during February 2009 and December 2013, the NCP was on top with 1,156 seats. The Congress was at second position with 1,089 seats pushing the BJP and the Shiv Sena at third and fourth position with 398 and 362 seats, according to figures from the state election commission.
Ashok Chavan, state Congress president alleged splurging of money and misuse of govern ment machinery by the BJP. “We could have done better than this I feel,” Chavan said. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray too taunted BJP saying, “It is not the victory of demonitisation but of old cur rency notes.” Thackeray. MNS leaders also claimed the BJP lead ers spent large amounts of old currency notes in the elections to secure their victory.
Investigations are on to check if the accused was involved in similar cases in the past and if there is any syndicate involved
On Friday, AIU arrested a flier with assorted gold jewel lery worth Rs1.99 crore and Rs7.5 lakh in cash, which included the new Rs2,000 notes. The accused Navratan Golechha, was arrested with 7.378kg of gold in the form of bars that had foreign mark ings, cut pieces of crude gold, gold coins and assorted gold jewellery He was also found carrying 350 new notes of Rs2,000 denomina tion worth Rs7 lakh and 500 notes