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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western...

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western India (HRAWI) spokesperson Pradeep Shetty.   “We are in continuous touch with the concerned authorities, but the situation is very gloomy. There is no response from the Centre or the Ministry of Petroleum on when the situation will ease. We fear that more than 50 pc of all eateries in Mumbai will soon down the shutters. The same will apply to the rest of the state and many other parts of India,” Shetty told  ‘ The Perfect Voice’ .   The shortage of commercial LPG has badly affected multiple sectors, including the hospitality and food industries, mass private or commercial kitchens and even the laundry businesses, industry players said.   At their wits' ends, many restaurateurs resorted to the reliable old iron ‘chulhas’ (stoves) fired by either coal or wood - the prices of which have also shot up and result in pollution - besides delaying the cooking.   Anticipating a larger crisis, even domestic LPG consumers besieged retail dealers in Mumbai, Pune, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Akola, Nagpur to book their second cylinder, with snaky queues in many cities. The stark reality of the 12-days old Gulf war with the disturbed supplies has hit the people and industries in the food supply chains that feed crores daily.   “The ordinary folks leave home in the morning after breakfast, then they rely on the others in the food chain for their lunch or dinner. Many street retailers have also shut down temporarily,” said Shetty.   Dry Snacks A quick survey of some suburban ‘khau gullies’ today revealed that the available items were mostly cold sandwiches, fruit or vegetable salads, cold desserts or ice-creams, cold beverages and packed snacks. Few offered the regular ‘piping hot’ foods that need elaborate cooking, or charging higher than normal menu rates, and even the app-based food delivery system was impacted.   Many people were seen gloomily munching on colorful packets of dry snacks like chips, chivda, sev, gathiya, samosas, etc. for lunch, the usually cheerful ‘chai ki dukaans’ suddenly disappeared from their corners, though soft drinks and tetrapaks were available.   Delay, Scarcity  Maharashtra LPG Dealers Association President Deepak Singh yesterday conceded to “some delays due to supply shortages” of commercial cylinders, but assured that there is no scarcity of domestic cylinders.   “We are adhering to the Centre’s guidelines for a 25 days booking period between 2 cylinders (domestic). The issue is with commercial cylinders but even those are available though less in numbers,” said Singh, adding that guidelines to prioritise educational institutions, hospitals, and defence, are being followed, but others are also getting their supplies.   Despite the assurances, Shetty said that the current status is extremely serious since the past week and the intermittent disruptions have escalated into a near-total halt in supplies in many regions since Monday.   Adding to the dismal picture is the likelihood of local hoteliers associations in different cities like Pune, Palghar, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and more resorting to tough measures from Thursday, including temporary shutdown of their outlets, which have run out of gas stocks.

Twice-convicted, Saquib Nachan back into limelight

Mumbai: Convicted twice for various terror activities, shady links and unholy anti-national plots, Thane’s most infamous baddie, Saquib A. Nachan has again shot to attention, for mostly similar reasons.

 

A permanent fixture on the radars of the Maharashtra Police and state and central intelligence and security agencies, this time the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) swooped on Nachan and his associates in the twin villages of Borivali-Padgha in Thane. 

 

Nabbed multiple times by different agencies, Nachan, 66, is currently cooling heels in a New Delhi jail in a two-year-old case related to the global terror group ISIS and his purported links with it.

 

Sources in Bhiwandi said that from his collegian days in the 1980s, Nachan – using several aliases - displayed rebellious tendencies and joined the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), now banned.

 

Over the years, he grew in SIMI, came in contact with Chenaparambil Abdulkader Muhammed Basheer, alias CAM Basheer, an extreme radical hailing from Kerala.

 

Nachan went ahead to forge ties with some Khalistani terror outfits, Pakistan’s ISI and lately with the much-dreaded ISIS, of which he was a self-appointed Maharashtra head.

 

The ATS raids on June 2 (yesterday, Monday) were prompted after the agencies tightened their vigil on potential mischief-mongers following the April 22 Pahalgam terror strikes on tourists.

 

Post-raids on Monday, the ATS said that Nachan had delivered fiery and provocative speeches to sway the local populace towards planning anti-national actions/attacks.

 

On getting reliable intel of such possibilities, the ATS moved a local Magistrate for search warrants and raided more than 20 locations yesterday, besides detaining a dozen suspects for planning violent disturbances.

 

For Nachan, there was a sudden break in 1992 when he and a Khalistani extremist Lal Singh – entrusted with implementing Operation K2 (Kashmir-Khalistan) – were nabbed and convicted. Nachan spent 10 years in jail.

 

After completing his sentence in 2001, he was again suspected and arrested for the three bomb blasts that rocked Mumbai between Dec. 2002-March 2003 at Mumbai Central’s McDonalds outlet (Dec. 6, 2002), the Vile Parle station market (Jan. 17, 2003) and in a local train compartment in Mulund (March 30, 2003) - totally claiming 13 lives and injuring more than 130 people.

 

The Mumbai Police had clubbed the three terror strikes and in its combined chargesheet, had accused Nachan and others of criminal conspiracy to wage a war against India. He was convicted and sentenced to jail for 10 years, after which he was set free in 2017.

 

Earlier, he was also arrested as the prime suspect in the murder of a Bajrang Dal activist Lalit Jain in Bhiwandi, but was acquitted in 2006 for lack of sufficient evidence.

 

Nachan was nabbed again in Aug. 2012 for a murder attempt on a Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary Manoj Raicha, and was subsequently enlarged on bail in Aug. 2014.

 

In 2023, when the country was limping back from the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdowns, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) knocked on Nachan’s door and picked him up for the ISIS-related case.

 

Among other things, he had proclaimed the Padgha village as ‘Al Sham’ (liberated), and administered the ‘Bayath’ (oath of allegiance) to the Khalifa of ISIS to new recruits, etc.

 

Kindred souls – Nachans, Bhatkals, Memons and Kaskars

A B.Com. graduate with a sharp legal acumen that dazes even top lawyers, Saquib A. Nachan admitted in the past that he visited Dubai, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more countries, ostensibly to build ties with extremist outfits based/functioning from there and casting an evil eye on India.

 

Once in the 1980s, he joined the Afghanistan Mujahideen groups to wage war against the Soviet Union, which brought him in contact with more merchants of terror.

 

Given his inglorious track record, Nachan and his kin, along with the Karnataka-based Bhatkal kin, Yasin and Riyaz who founded the much-feared Indian Mujahideen (IM) in 2007, remain among the 'most-watched persons' in the country.

 

The Nachans (Thane), the Bhatkals (Karnataka) and earlier the Memon clan, as also the absconder Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar families (both from Mumbai), are rank as the most notorious domestic terror pot-stirrers, though many still await their date with the law.

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