By Umaima Shafiq
Five medical colleges barred from admissions
The Medical Council of India has barred five private colleges in Tamil Nadu from admitting students because they did not have required faculty, infrastructure and research. The ban was imposed by the federal Health Minister Harsh Vardhan along with 45 other colleges across the country.
This will reduce 750 seats in the federal medical counselling pool. The tainted colleges are the Chennai-based Madha Medical College at Thandalam, Tagore Medical College at Vandalur and Muthukumaran Medical College at Kundrathur besides SRM in Trichy and Annapurna Medical College in Salem.
Ex-bank manager arrested for fraud
The Chennai police have arrested Parasuramamoorthy, 57, a former manager of the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) at Adambakkam, for siphoning off Rs6.1mn from a savings account last week.
Police found that Parasuramamoorthy was guilty of similar embezzlement at his previous IOB posting at Rajapalayam in southern Virudhunagar district.
He retired from IOB and the fraud came to light during a recent audit. The complaint was filed by the current IOB management.
Bomb threat to Meenakshi temple
A prank call threatening to blow up the heritage Meenakshi temple in Madurai city kept police searching for several hours before confirming the hoax last week.
Police added that their control room had traced the call to Theni about 50km from Madurai and would soon arrest the prankster. The Meenakshi temple received two similar calls in April and May this year.
This 15th century temple has 14 ornately carved gateways, or gopurams, that guard several acres of halls, shrines, water tanks, museums and shopping complexes. It gets about 20,000 visitors daily and annual revenue of Rs60bn.
Man-eating leopard caught in a trap
A leopard that had killed two persons in the past month was caught in a trap laid by forest personnel at the Thimbam hill road in the jungles near Erode about 300km from Chennai last week.
The forest department took precautions by banning all vehicular traffic in that section, installing surveillance cameras and putting up three huge cages with goats as bait to trap the animal.
The two-year-old leopard was tranquilized as it had hurt itself by hitting against the metal cage. It was then transported to the Vandalur Zoological Park in Chennai in a special van.
Rambha, family in dowry case
Leading South Indian film actress Rambha and her family have been accused of dowry harassment by her elder brother’s wife, Pallavi, at a Hyderabad-based court last week.
Pallavi claimed that her husband Srinivasa had become an alcoholic and mortgaged her jewels for his failed businesses. She accused of him of having girlfriends and harassing her family for more dowry with the help of Rambha and his parents.
Rambha has acted in 50 Tamil films and is now married to Canada-based Indian businessman Indran Padmanathan.