NRI sets up India's 1st gay marriage bureau

Gay people now have an avenue to find their soulmate. An NRI has set up India's first marriage bureau for homosexuals to help them find the right match, both within and outside the country. The general belief is that most homosexuals tend to identify their own partners and settle with them. But Benhur Samson, who used to help gays with surrogacy in India till 2013, was surprised when he received requests from them regarding prospective life partners. Samson started the arranged gay marriage service to cater to such persons. He has also roped in the gay prince of Rajpipla, Manvendrasingh Gohil, as a consultant, along with lawyers to look into the legal aspects of the marriages, including immigration if an Indian marries a person abroad. Top Comment a step in the right direction. equality to allValent Mascarenhas "Several people wanting an arranged marriage were looking for partners from India. The reason seems to that arranged marriages are common in India. Also, Indians are known for their commitment, their loyalty to partners and hard-working nature," said Samson. He added that issues like drug abuse were also less common among Indians. Samson said the marriage bureau has been operational for around three months now. "We have received around 250 inquiries and around 24 people are enrolled with us. We are in the process of identifying the right match for them," he said. Those who sign up have to undergo counselling under experts. "We take a couple of months to know the person and only then begin the process," Samson said. He added that to ensure that only serious candidates came forward the bureau charges $5,000, which is refundable if the person does not find a match.

SC grants conditional bail to Sahara chief Subrata Roy

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Sahara group chief Subrata Roy to deposit Rs 10,000 crore with the market regulator Sebi for his release on interim bail from judicial custody. The apex court bench of Justice KS Radhakrishnan and Justice JS Khehar said that of the Rs 10,000 crore, Rs 5,000 crore would be deposited in cash, and the balance Rs 5,000 crore will be furnished through a bank guarantee. The SC has also agreed to defreeze bank accounts of Sahara companies to raise the Rs 10,000 crore and adjourned the case for tomorrow asking the group to give details of the bank account numbers which are to be defreezed. The court declined to water down its orders as the Sahara group counsel expressed inability to raise such a huge amount while Subrata Roy is in jail. Sahara group on Tuesday had submitted a new proposal for refunding Rs 20,000 crore of investors money before the Supreme Court. Roy was sent to jail on March 4 by the top court in connection with contempt proceedings over two group companies' failure to pay Rs 20,000 crore by way of dues to market regulator Sebi.

old shame: 17-year-old raped by two in Delhi on December 31 night

Just hours before Nirbhaya's ashes were immersed in the Ganga, a 17-year-old girl studying in class XI of a prominent south Delhi school was allegedly sedated and raped by two men at a New Year's party in the upscale Safdarjung Enclave area of south Delhi, police sources told TOI on Tuesday. The two accused, who work in leading IT companies, were arrested late at night after the girl approached the police. They live in Sarojini Nagar with their families. Both are in their late 20s. While one is a computer engineer with an IT company, the other works in the HR department of a blue-chip tech and consulting multinational, an officer said. The accused were produced in Saket court on Tuesday afternoon and later sent to Tihar jail. The whole operation was kept under wraps by the police. TOI attempted to call senior police officers to confirm the report and also sent text messages but got no response. Sources in Delhi Police revealed that the girl had said in her statement that one of the accused had befriended her on a social networking site a few months ago. The accused had expressed his wish to meet the victim several times and use to chat with her online.

Results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly polls are to be announced today.

Hip Hip Hurray ayare Modi

Rajiv Gandhi assassination video suppressed, claims book

The chief investigating officer of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, K Ragothaman, has alleged that the then IB chief, M K Narayanan, had "suppressed a vital piece of evidence": a video tape showing "human bomb" Dhanu at the Sriperumbudur venue prior to the former prime minister's arrival. In a book authored by him, Ragothaman said that although a "preliminary enquiry" had been conducted in connection with the missing video, Narayanan, who is now West Bengal governor, had been "allowed to go scot-free" by the chief of the special investigation team (SIT), D R Karthikeyan. The just-published book, "Conspiracy to kill Rajiv Gandhi - From CBI files", claims that the tape, which had been taken from the videographer by IB the day after Rajiv Gandhi had been blown by Dhanu on May 21, 1991, was never shared with SIT in the investigation of the assassination. Ragothaman wrote, "The assassin gang as per our investigation was very much in the sterile zone for more than two and half hours waiting for its target." The suppression of the video evidence helped the Tamil Nadu police get away with the claim that Dhanu had sneaked into the sterile zone after Rajiv Gandhi's arrival at the venue around 10 pm. The tape recovered by the Tamil Nadu police was found to have interpolations in the form of Doordarshan's news bulletins about the assassination. Ragothaman therefore asserted that the tape taken by the IB officials was "the original one and that the video given to the local police was a substituted one". The alleged manipulation, according to Ragothaman, was meant to erase video evidence of the kind of people Dhanu had interacted with at the venue, thereby sparing embarrassment to the Congress party in the middle of the 1991 Lok Sabha election. He asked: would Narayanan have dared "to damage the goal of the Congress party, irrespective of his personal affiliation to Rajiv Gandhi's family?" Though he was formally in charge of the investigation and was therefore in the witness box for 67 days, Ragothaman wrote that he had not been taken into confidence by his superior Karthikeyan about the recovery of the tape by IB. He came to know about it later through the report of the Justice J S Verma Commission which had probed the security lapses leading to the assassination. Besides recording "this unusual feature" of the SIT-produced tape containing news bulletins along with visuals of the venue, the commission's report reproduced a letter written by Narayanan on May 22, 1991 to the then Prime Minister, Chandrashekhar, stating that the video of the meeting was being "scanned to try and IDENTIFY THE LADY". The lady referred to in capital letters by Narayanan was of course the assassin. In a sequel to the commission's report, the Narasimha Rao government directed SIT to hold the preliminary enquiry, case no. 1 of 1995, against Narayanan along with the then cabinet secretary and home secretary, according to the book. The case was later "buried at the behest of the chief of SIT" despite the admission made by Narayanan in his May 22 letter. While the public got to see only the two still pictures of Dhanu taken by an LTTE-hired photographer who had died in the blast, Ragothaman's book raises questions about the whereabouts of the video in which Narayanan admitted to have seen the assassin. Why did the SIT chief not collect the video seen by the IB chief? Or, why did the IB chief not share the tape in which Dhanu was visible with him? Had there been such questions about anybody else, the book says "he would have been booked under Section 201 IPC for concealing the evidence and screening the offender".