Want to know about some weird stuff happening in your backyard? Read on...
1) Chulbul and Singham land UP cops in trouble
Emulating their Bollywood avatars Chulbul Pandel and Bajirao Singham is causing a section of police officers in Uttar Pradesh great hardship.
Senior police officials have been directed to "take to task" policemen wearing skin tight clothes and aping the film stars with their shades dangling on their backs from with the collar.
So far disciplinary action has been taken on 427 policemen -- who were either suspended or taken off the roster for running errands as punishment -- for not adhering to the dress code as prescribed in the rules.
It is learnt that senior police officials are also cracking down on junior officers' activities on social networking sites like Facebook.
2) Ordered Samsung phone, received Vim soap
Last month, Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy had ordered a Samsung mobile on Snapdeal, an e-commerce website. However, the deal turned out to be 'the worst customer service ever' for Krishnamurthy who claimed he received a bar of soap instead of a mobile phone.
Krishnamurthy on October 24 uploaded a few photographs of the box Snapdeal had delivered to him, and explained how instead of a phone in the box, he got a 'Vim' bar.
His post went viral and was shared over 20,000 times on Facebook.
On October 31, Krishnamurthy published another status on Facebook asserting that Snapdeal had taken notice of the issue 'Thanks to the power of social media websites'. The online shopping site refunded the full amount, he had paid for the phone, to his account and the company also apologised to him over the phone.
However, the episode was yet to end. Krishnamurthy was in for a real surprise when Hindustan Unilever sent him a Samsung phone as a present, along with bottles of its dish-washing gel, he wrote on his Facebook page.
A seemingly excited Krishnamurthy wrote on his Facebook page: "I had been wanting to gift this mobile to my wife during the snapdeal diwali bumper sale.Cheers to the ?#snapdeal?#soapdeal issue which has been hitting the headlines across people who relate with this issue of ordinary people like us."
3) Sure, I will also stop ISIS, find cure for cancer: Sid Mallya on KF debts
So Siddharth “Kingfisher” Mallya has a talk show on YouTube where he does what he knows best to do -- flaunt his wealth and talk about himself.
Sitting on a red chair, dressed in a black track-suit, in the four-plus minute show, he comes across as funny to some ludicrous to others and pathetic to others -- all definitions he must truly enjoy.
Here's the problem -- he answers questions sent to him via twitter and Facebook. So the selection of stupidity and or humour is entirely his. So Sid Mallya answers questions a range of questions from how his rod is doing, and his d*** is, to why he watched cartoons.
Where the show is truly galling is when someone tweets to him and says, Shameless creature... Pay ur kingfisher debts... to this Sid Mallya replies... "... sure, why not... while I’m still at it, shall I also try and stop the ISIS, find a cure to cancer and several other things over which I have no control.”
Yes, it is ugly, Mr Mallya! No, not you! But your callous disregard for people who have suffered, someone who died...
They toiled so you can do your show. People who worked from dawn to dusk so you could do your calendar thing. If you want to be funny, be so, but if you want to be sarcastic about debts and death that has been incurred by Kingfisher (the wife of one employee who lost his job committed suicide), then there’s a word for it. In the interest of decency, we’ll let you guess what that word is.
4) A snake catcher so popular that he has a mobile app for people to reach him
“Generations have passed on granny stories about snakes. These stories that in many ways demonise snakes are hard to forget… and it is because of the fear created by these myths that people kill snakes. I am sure it will change,” says Vava Suresh, a snake catcher who has caught almost 38,000 snakes till now.
Forty-year-old Vava Suresh from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala first caught a snake when he was only twelve. That too a cobra! “I was walking to my school when I saw a snake. My instinct was to catch it and put it away from the road. I never thought that would become my profession,” Suresh says.
For the last twenty-eight years, Suresh has been catching snakes, and for fifteen years he has been doing it as a profession. His services have become so popular that he even has an android app called ‘King Cobra’. “More than 28000 people have downloaded the app and if anyone spots a snake, they can alert me with or without an image.”
Suresh gets distress calls almost everyday and as a practice he keeps the snakes at home, releases them once in two weeks. “My services are now being provided to 7 districts in Kerala and some districts of Tamil Nadu. I go with Forest department officials to release the snakes into the wild, but I like to ensure that the snakes are left only in such areas in which they will have enough food and water for to survive.”
Suresh proudly says that he has caught more than 38,000 snakes and has received 3,000 odd bites. “My focus now is not catching snakes, but it to make people aware about snakes. I have conducted numerous awareness classes, and I target the young.”
5) Rs 43.85 lakh spent on 1 government meeting on cleaning Ganga?
The government has spent Rs 43.85 lakh on just one meeting of the National Mission for Clean Ganga at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi according to information received under an RTI application, states a report in the Daily Mail.
The RTI revealed that around Rs 26.7 lakh was spent on the meeting and on the accommodation of the guests taking part in the meeting, Rs 8.8 lakh was spent on travel arrangements of officials, Rs 5.1 lakh was spent on advertising, Rs 75,000 on floral decorations and around Rs 2.3 lakh on other arrangements, adds the report.
The report, however, does not state the date of the meeting.
The Union government recently asked all government departments to check avoidable spending in areas like five-star hotel spending and first class air travel for officials.
6) Extravagant monkey wedding held in Bihar
Scores of villagers attended a fancy wedding arranged for two monkeys in Bihar on November 3.
Udesh Mahato, a daily wager, organized the wedding in Bettiah district of Ramu, a primate he considers like his own son.
According to a report in the online edition of Hindi daily Daily Bhaskar, Ramu and his bride Ramdulari were featured in a procession on top of a jeep decorated with flowers and ribbons with a brass band in tow playing popular tunes.
Dozens of villagers lined the streets, cheering and dancing while others took photographs on their mobile phones.
7) Anonymous tip off on Twitter helps Bengaluru police
Bengaluru police last week arrested five people on charges of trafficking after a twitter user tipped off a police officer by anonymously sending an image of an advertisement.
On their Facebook page last Wednesday, the Bengaluru City Police uploaded information about a raid they conducted on a massage parlour in the Indiranagar area of the city.
The advertisement titled: "Big Size Small hole Fun Unlimited Hot Massage 9xxxnumber" contained a mobile phone number which the police contacted.
The Facebook post said: “To our surprise, this number was working like a Call Center for Prostitution for many states.”
Police sent a decoy, to a particular spot near Shantisagar Hotel on CMH Road in Indiranagar. From there, one Dileep took the police decoy pretending to be a customer to this address and went away: 1st floor, 50, DT Court, 9th A main, Indiranagar, 1st stage.
Once the man went away, the police raided the place and rescued four women who were trafficked from West Bengal, and arrested five people.
Later, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central Crime Brank (Crime), Abshishek Goyal also tweeted thanking the informant, who had sent an image of an internet advertisement of a massage parlour to his official number 9480801016.
Text Courtesy: The News Minute