Latest news with #Shubha
Time of India
13-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
BCC Issues final notice to Vega Funmobile over Rs 7.3 crore property tax dues
Belagavi: The Belagavi City Corporation (BCC) issued a final notice to Vega Funmobile Private Limited, demanding the payment of Rs 7,33,66,476 in overdue property tax, pending from 2004–05 to 2025–26. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The notice follows allegations of tax evasion and serious violations of building construction norms by the company. According to the breakdown provided in the notice, the total due includes: Property tax Rs 1,99,49,156, cesses Rs 50,76,836, penalty Rs 4,82,33,084, and solid waste management tax of Rs 1,07,400. The notice, issued under the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (KMC) Act, 1976, mandates the company to pay the dues within seven days of receipt. Failure to do so will lead to strict recovery action, including distraint and sale of movable assets, and attachment of immovable properties. Speaking to the TOI, BCC commissioner Shubha B said: "This is the final warning issued to the company. If the dues are not cleared, legal proceedings will be initiated." She clarified that the outstanding amount was calculated after adjusting previously paid amounts. Significantly, the 24,000 sq ft commercial structure operated by Vega Funmobile is entirely unauthorised, built without a valid building permit. Despite this, the company was paying property tax under the commercial category through the Self-Assessment Scheme (SAS) since 2004, without proper verification. BCC sources revealed that a detailed inquiry led to the penalty after detecting mismatches between the declared and actual built-up area. The company is said to have admitted to the violations during the proceedings. As a result, action was taken under Section 112(C) of the KMC Act, 1976. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Commissioner Shubha conducted a comprehensive investigation, including spot inspections, review of electricity records, construction timelines, and satellite imagery analysis. Following this, she conducted three hearings on Jan 31, April 15, and April 21, 2025. The office issued a final order on April 25, and the final notice was served on Tuesday.
News18
12-06-2025
- News18
2 Women, 2 Killings: A Murder Like Raja Raghuvanshi's Shook Bengaluru 22 Years Ago
Last Updated: Raja Raghuvanshi's murder in Shillong, allegedly plotted by his wife Sonam and her lover, mirrors the 2003 Bengaluru case where Shubha killed her partner with her lover's help The gruesome murder of Indore man Raja Raghuvanshi during what was supposed to be a romantic honeymoon in Shillong, Meghalaya, sent shockwaves across the country. As police unspooled the chilling plot involving his newlywed wife Sonam and her alleged lover, Raj Kushwaha, many were reminded of a hauntingly similar crime that unfolded over two decades ago in Bengaluru – one that remains etched in public memory for its cold calculation and betrayal. On November 30, 2003, 27-year-old software engineer Girish was engaged to Shubha Shankarnarayan, a seemingly well-mannered and soft-spoken 21-year-old woman. Their families, long-time neighbours in Bengaluru's Banashankari area, had known each other for years. What should have been a happy union took a sinister turn within just four days. On the night of December 3, Shubha invited Girish for dinner near the HAL Airport. After their meal, she suggested they stay back to watch planes land, a romantic setting with deadly intent. As Girish gazed skyward, he was suddenly attacked from behind with a blunt weapon. Shubha rushed him to Manipal Hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries before help could arrive. Initially, Shubha told police that a stranger had ambushed them. But the investigators weren't convinced. Something about her story didn't add up. Digging into her phone records, detectives discovered she had exchanged 74 calls and messages that night with a man named Arun, her alleged lover. Further investigation revealed a deadly conspiracy of Shubha being in love with Arun and resenting her family's decision to marry her off to Girish. With the help of three accomplices – Arun, Venkatesh, and Dinkar – Subha orchestrated the murder. All four were arrested and, in 2010, sentenced to life imprisonment by a Sessions Court. The Karnataka High Court upheld the verdict, but in 2014, the Supreme Court granted Shubha bail. The story later inspired a Kannada film, Ring Road Shubha, notably produced by an all-women crew. Fast forward to May 2024, newlyweds Raja and Sonam Raghuvanshi had travelled from Indore to Meghalaya for their honeymoon, seemingly beginning a new chapter in life. After checking out of a guest house in Shillong on May 22, the couple headed toward Sohra (Cherrapunji), famous for its rain-drenched cliffs and deep valleys. They never returned. Days later, Raja's rented scooter was found abandoned on the edge of a forest trail. On June 2, his mutilated body was recovered from a deep gorge near Weisadong Falls. Scattered near the body were torn clothes, broken mobile phone parts, and a blood-stained raincoat – signs that this was no hiking mishap. While Sonam was initially presumed missing, she resurfaced on June 8 in a shocking twist. She walked into a police station in Uttar Pradesh and confessed that she had, indeed, plotted Raja's murder. According to police, Sonam revealed she had never wanted to marry Raja, but family pressure left her with few choices. Her heart, she said, belonged to Raj Kushwaha, an accountant at her father's textile firm. Sonam and Raj, in collusion with three hired killers, lured Raja to a secluded area in Sohra. There, as per her confession, he was ambushed, brutally assaulted, and thrown into the gorge to erase all traces. What was meant to be a scenic honeymoon had instead been the staging ground for a calculated murder. In both crimes, the thread of betrayal runs deep. Women engaged or newly married against their will, chose to eliminate their partners with the help of lovers rather than confront societal or familial pressure. The use of secluded locations, fabricated stories, and digital footprints that ultimately unraveled the truth – each detail underscores the chilling similarities.
Time of India
11-06-2025
- Time of India
Meghalaya honeymoon horror: 21 years on, same script of love, lies, and betrayal echoes 2003 Bengaluru techie murder
Image source X NEW DELHI: It began as a love story — a young woman engaged to a software engineer in Bengaluru in 2003. Four days after the engagement, the fiancé was bludgeoned to death on a quiet stretch near HAL Airport. Two decades later, in 2025, in the misty valleys of Meghalaya, a newlywed from Indore was hacked to death and dumped in a gorge by contract killers hired by his wife — the woman he had married just days earlier. Two murders. Separated by 21 years. But bound by chilling parallels — betrayal in love, the manipulation of trust, and an orchestrated kill in a desolate location. As investigators dig deeper into the murder of 29-year-old Raja Raghuvanshi in Sohra (Cherrapunji), Meghalaya, the case has brought back sharp memories of the infamous 2003 'Ring Road Murder' in Bengaluru, where 27-year-old Girish was killed in cold blood by his fiancée Shubha Shankaranarayan. Then a final-year law student, Shubha plotted the murder with her lover and college junior, Arun Verma, days after getting engaged to Girish against her will. THE 2003 MURDER THAT SHOCKED BENGALURU Girish, a software engineer with Intel, got engaged to Shubha, 21, on November 30, 2003. The families, neighbours in Banashankari II Stage, had known each other for over a decade. On the night of December 3, under the guise of a dinner outing, Shubha led Girish to a dark stretch near the HAL Airport, claiming she wanted to watch planes take off. Moments later, a hired killer struck from behind with a blunt weapon while Girish watched an aircraft. Shubha rushed Girish to Manipal Hospital, where he died. She claimed an unknown assailant had attacked him, but call records revealed dozens of calls to Arun Verma — her boyfriend. Bengaluru Police soon arrested four people: Shubha, Arun, and two others — Venkatesh and Dinakar — all found guilty of conspiracy and murder. A sessions court sentenced them to life in 2010. The Karnataka High Court upheld the verdict, saying the behaviour of the accused was 'compatible with guilt and incompatible with innocence.' Shubha, in 2014, was granted bail by the Supreme Court years later after having spent over four years in prison, while her co-accused were also released on bail. Her case even inspired a Kannada film, Ring Road Shubha, with an all-woman crew. 2025: ANOTHER LOVE STORY, ANOTHER DEATH Fast forward to May 2025 — Raja Raghuvanshi and Sonam, married just nine days earlier, arrived in Meghalaya for their honeymoon. On May 22, they were last seen checking out of a Shillong guesthouse, heading towards Sohra. A day later, they vanished. Raja's rented scooter was found abandoned. On June 2, his decomposed body was recovered from a gorge near Weisawdong Falls. A freshly bought dao (machete), raincoat, phone parts, and blood-stained clothing were found nearby. Police confirmed it was a planned killing. The shock only deepened when Sonam, initially believed to be missing, surrendered at a UP police station on June 8. Far from being a victim, she was named the mastermind. According to Meghalaya Police, she conspired with her lover Raj Kushwaha — an accountant in her father's firm — and hired three others to carry out the murder. Posters at Raja's funeral in Indore read: 'I did not die... I was killed.' His family, devastated and demanding a CBI probe, said the location where the body was found was so remote that only someone familiar with the terrain could reach it. STRIKING SIMILARITIES Both murders were committed by individuals who had pledged love but were secretly aligned with another partner. Both cases involved carefully planned attacks in secluded areas — one by an airport runway, the other deep in a forested gorge. In both, the victim was lured to the location under a false pretext. The Shubha-Girish case became one of the most sensational murder trials in Karnataka. With Raja's murder now unravelling by the day, public memory has turned to that haunting December night in 2003. Different names, different timelines. But the playbook of betrayal hasn't changed.
NDTV
11-06-2025
- NDTV
Different Victim, Similar Story, Same Pain: Raja Raghuvanshi's Case Reminds Of 2003 "Ring Road Murder"
Quick Read Summary is AI generated, newsroom reviewed. Raja Raghuvanshi was allegedly murdered by his wife, Sonam, during their honeymoon in Meghalaya. His decomposing body was found in a gorge, prompting a massive search and subsequent investigation. Sonam surrendered in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, after being implicated in the murder plot. Raja Raghuvanshi's murder has left his family grieving and the entire nation in shock, with case details being too disturbing to believe. Raja was allegedly killed by his wife, Sonam Raghuvanshi, on their honeymoon trip to Meghalaya. The case resembles Bengaluru's "Ring Road Murder" case that happened more than two decades ago when a bride-to-be killed her husband brutally. 2003 Ring Road Murder case in Bengaluru In 2003, Shubha Shankaranarayan, a 21-year-old law student, got engaged to 27-year-old software engineer BV Girish, who was reportedly earning Rs 1 lakh per month at that time. Girish was a well-behaved and simple man who seemed happy after the engagement ceremony. The wedding was set for the next year. Shubha also belonged to an affluent family as her father was a well-known lawyer. Just three days after their engagement on November 30, Girish was killed. It was a well-planned plot by Shubha. Shubha asked him to take her to a restaurant for dinner to understand each other better. While returning, she told Girish that she wanted to see the airplanes taking off and landing near the HAL airport. When they reached there, a group of men attacked Girish and beat him up, with Shubha screaming for help - an act to show herself innocent. Girish was admitted to the hospital after receiving severe head injuries. The next day, he was declared dead. Girish's family filed a police complaint, but there was no concrete evidence. The police remained clueless for days as the victim had no enemies or conflicts. The police then decided to re-watch engagement ceremony videos in which they found Shubha dull, upset and uninterested. The police treated it as a clue and started reviewing statements given by Shubha. The police investigation revealed that Subha's story didn't add up, and further scrutiny showed she had made 73 calls and sent numerous messages to her college junior, Arun Verma, on the day of Girish's death. This raised suspicions about Subha's involvement. The police enquired about Arun, who initially said he was out of town, and checked his phone's location, which was exactly the same as where Girish was murdered. This was also one of the initial cases in which phone location and call records were submitted to the Court as digital evidence. The police grilled both of them during interrogation and finally confessed that they had murdered Girish because Shuba was in love with Arun, and her father didn't approve of the relationship. Shubha and Arun hired two people to kill Girish. All four were sentenced to life imprisonment, with Shubha also convicted of destruction of evidence. The Supreme Court granted her bail in 2014. What hapened in Meghalaya? Raja and Sonam went on a honeymoon trip but went missing after a few days. The families informed the police, and a massive search operation was launched, which turned into a murder mystery after the recovery of Raja's decomposing body in a gorge near a waterfall in the Sohra area of the East Khasi Hills district. A few days later, Sonam surrendered in Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh, but the police said they already knew about Sonam's involvement in the case. Sonam has been accused of murdering her husband by allegedly hiring killers. The exact motive is still not clear, with some sources claiming it was because of a love affair with a man named Raj Kushwaha, who was also arrested along with Sonam and other alleged conspirators. The police are currently investigating all possible angles of the case.
The Hindu
29-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Remembering Shubha Singh: Foreign Affairs Journalist and Unlikely Admirer of Prince Charles
Published : May 29, 2025 15:43 IST - 5 MINS READ In the mid-1990s, the only person in the world who thought highly of Prince Charles (now King Charles III) was Shubha Singh, my colleague at The Pioneer. Charles's then-wife, Princess Diana, was globally beloved, and this was even before her fatal car crash in Paris in 1997. Prince Charles was much reviled: on seeing Camilla on TV, various acquaintances would seethe about the 'horsey-faced woman'. Shubha, however, had a different view, and part of the reason was that she was our Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) correspondent. Besides dealing with India's mandarins in South Block and networking with the embassies in New Delhi, she was invited to state banquets for visiting dignitaries, including princes. A perk of the MEA beat was that it was almost daily that one embassy or another held a reception. Our art writer Juliet Reynolds, an English expatriate with a caustic style, once whispered that a senior editor from the paper (and wife) did not miss a single embassy cocktail party, 'gobbling up all the food'. Also Read | Daniel Ellsberg (1931-2023): 'Pentagon Papers' whistle-blower leaves a legacy of courage Shubha, however, was not a glutton for hors d'oeuvres. She was tall and thin, among the seniormost of our political bureau. The bureau was headed by the late Padmanand Jha (Paddy), and we had been hired by the legendary Vinod Mehta when he launched a New Delhi edition of The Pioneer in 1991, the old Lucknow paper started by the English in the 19th century, famously counting Rudyard Kipling among its sub-editors. It had fallen on hard times, however, and now looked drab and small-town. Industrialist Lalit Mohan Thapar bought it, and Vinod produced a beautifully designed newspaper with interesting stories that was the rage in Delhi for the three years he led it. Shubha was full of grace. She never talked of her pedigree to her rag-tag bunch of colleagues. Her brother Ajay did a stint as Minister of State for Railways in V. P. Singh's short-lived (but momentous) government. I was unaware of this connection until our deputy bureau chief and resident quipster, KV Ramesh, referred to Ajay as the 'jeans-clad Jat'. Even Shubha laughed, though she never wore jeans; her daily wear was a nondescript salwar kameez and Rajasthani Bundi waistcoat. Woman of vast knowledge Shubha spoke often about the Pacific Island nation of Fiji, and her depth of knowledge about it puzzled me until she revealed that she had lived and taught at a school there. Her father, Captain Bhagwan Singh, was posted as High Commissioner (1971-1976) soon after Fiji's independence. He had served in the King's army during the Second World War and was India's first Jat IAS officer. He was also the grandson of an indentured worker, Ram Chander, taken from their ancestral village in Agra to Fiji in 1917. (Ajay represented Agra in the Lok Sabha, 1989-1991, and followed his father's footsteps as high commissioner to Fiji in 2005.) Shubha was 38 when she joined The Pioneer from the Telegraph (I was 27). She was thin-faced, wore glasses that hid her shrewd eyes, and had thinning hair that she kept short. Her smile revealed full upper teeth, but when she was tickled her upper gums showed. In a newspaper newsroom, activity is concentrated in the evening. The Pioneer bureau was a zany place, though we were steps from Vinod's door (and he had a habit of quietly strolling up from behind). Two of our colleagues in their mid-30s, Prakash Patra and the late GK Singh, would finish their copy first (our department had three computers) and then spend the evening with Patra ragging GK. Shubha would laugh the loudest. She never spoke in anger. In KV's words, she had a 'sardonic sense of humour' and not 'a bad bone in her body'. She generously passed news tips to those of us on other beats. She broke the news of India's recognition of Israel (under then Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao). Like the rest of us, she was politically left-of-centre. She was part of the gang that started the Indian Women's Press Corps in 1994. Shubha was unflappable, even when one of our political correspondents, Faraz Ahmed, habitually made the filthiest of remarks that cannot be reproduced here. However, she did raise an eyebrow at KV's occasional double entendre, and this kept the quipster in check. She and I chatted as I was the Home Ministry correspondent and used to regularly report from Kashmir (for which I am eternally grateful to Paddy and Vinod). Her network of foreign diplomats was, during those turbulent and violent years, always keen to hear the latest from Kashmir; so, she and I routinely exchanged notes. One day, our conversation drifted to Prince Charles, who in the 1990s visited India more than once. I casually. disdained his neglect of the beautiful Diana. 'She's nothing but a melodramatic bimbo,' Shubha hissed, much to my surprise because she rarely used such strong words. Also Read | Veteran journalist M.S. Prabhakara passes away 'What!' I exclaimed. 'Charles is no better.' Shubha countered by revealing that Charles was a deep and sensitive man. 'How do you know this?' I asked, incredulously. She had sat next to him during a Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet that she was invited to as the MEA correspondent, and she had conversed with him throughout. So what, I said. She looked me in the eye. 'When you sit and talk to someone for a length of time, you get to know the person,' she said, with a mix of seriousness and passion. I could offer no reply. Shubha passed away on May 25, weeks after turning 72. She had spent two years in agony, due to doctors' negligence at a corporate hospital. In 2023, after a routine gum cancer procedure, a tracheostomy mishap sent fire from her mouth down her airway. She was in and out of hospital since. Hopefully death was a merciful release. Though many of my former colleagues have passed away over the years, this one hit me hard, even though we hadn't spoken in decades. Possibly that's because of recent bereavements. I wish I had kept in touch. Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.
