Mumbai: In a decision that could impact educational trusts running multiple institutions, the University of Mumbai’s Management Council has decided to withhold no objection certificates (NOCs) to colleges if any institution under the same management has outstanding fees, fines or other financial dues payable to the university.Universities grant NOCs for everything from faculty appointments in aided sections, or for seeking autonomy, university status, to increasing student intake, starting new programmes or even obtaining clearances from regulatory authorities. The decision has not gone down well with academics, who claimed that affiliated colleges should be treated as independent units. They said that no institution should be penalised for the default of another institution, even if it is run by the same management.Speaking to TOI, one of the management council members questioned how a college which has full potential to become autonomous or even has the capacity to increase intake within its permissible limit could be penalised for another defaulting college under the same management. University officials did not comment on the matter.A university official, however, said the measures were necessary as repeated reminders and follow-ups had failed to ensure compliance. “Regular non-compliance has compelled the university to take such a measure. There is no intention to trouble any institution,” the official said. Citing an example of law colleges, the official said the university had been pursuing them for two years to appoint approved faculty. “They gave us an undertaking last year to comply with the norms but failed to do so. The absence of approved faculty also creates other problems, including the lack of qualified teachers on boards of studies, which can lead to errors in question papers,” the official said.A college principal criticised the decision, asking, “Can NOCs be linked to fees and financial dues? Have regulatory guidelines been defined for this? How can such arbitrary decisions be taken by the council?” He said that if a college has fulfilled all the criteria for increasing its intake, appointing a faculty member or starting a new programme, the financial dues of another institution should not affect its eligibility for an NOC.Another principal said that such a decision cannot have any legal standing and will be struck down if any affected college moves court. “If a family member commits a crime, the entire family cannot be penalised. There could be cases of one stray due pending for any affiliated colleges due to some oversight,” said the principal.Over the past year, the university has tightened its scrutiny over colleges on several fronts. Even autonomous colleges are now being asked to seek ratification from the university’s academic council before introducing new courses. The examination department has also sought examination audit reports and imposed a condition that evaluation patterns must be aligned with university norms.Recently, the university has imposed hefty fines on colleges for failing to comply with norms regarding appointment of approved faculty members prescribed by regulatory bodies. Fines have also been levied on students and colleges over errors in enrolment forms, which subsequently led to discrepancies and confusion in student records. Fines were imposed in the past for not having NAAC accreditation.

Mumbai: One trains with his body. The other trains with her mind. Vir Gahrotra (17) spends hours working on strength, flexibility and choreography for aerial-silk routines performed nearly 30ft above the ground. His sister Viha (14) can spend eight hours at a bridge table, calculating bids, reading opponents and trying to work out what they are holding before they reveal it.The Worli siblings are competing at the top of two very different disciplines. Vir won India’s first-ever gold at the Pole and Aerial Sports World Championship in Hungary last December. Last Wednesday, Viha won a world title of her own, taking gold in the Under-16 Final B at the 9th World Youth Transnational Championship in Hefei, China.Their routes into the sports were equally unexpected. Vir took up aerial silk as physiotherapy for underdeveloped thigh muscles. He was eight when his mother signed him up after seeing a festival performance. Viha picked up bridge after a family friend, himself a three-time Under-16 world champion, conducted a boot camp at her school.Neither was deliberately steered towards an unusual sport. “It just happened organically. It was not a conscious decision,” says their mother, Kaushal Sanghvi.Aerial silk combines strength, flexibility, balance and artistic performance, with athletes climbing, wrapping and dropping through lengths of fabric while suspended high above the ground. Vir trains against the physical demands of the sport as well as an infrastructure gap: while European competitors can train in facilities with ceilings of around 30ft, finding even 18ft of clearance in India can be difficult.He is used to explaining the sport to classmates, who question whether it counts as one or is similar to mallakhamb. Aerial silk is still awaiting recognition from the Indian Olympic Association.The siblings’ training looks nothing alike. Vir works on strength, flexibility and control in the air; Viha trains strategy, memory and anticipation, much of it through online coaching. She trains for up to nine hours a day during her monthly camps.Bridge is an established mind sport, but finding coaching in India remains a challenge. “If she would’ve said ‘I want to play badminton,’ it would have been easier to find a badminton coach,” says Sanghvi. “Bridge, that was our main struggle.”Viha’s classmates also question whether cards can count as a sport. She describes bridge as “a mix between cards and maths” involving bidding systems, covert signalling and reading an opponent’s hand.“If you consider chess a sport, then you have to consider bridge a sport,” she says. “Bridge actually has three different parts.” Also, she says, “It’s recognised by the International Olympic Committee.”At Hefei, Viha competed in the open format, which allows multinational teams. She teamed up with India’s Ananya Mehta and players from Norway and England whom she first met at a bridge event in Poland two years ago. The title comes a year after she reached the final four representing India at the Junior Bridge World Championship, narrowly missing a medal.

Mumbai: Powai police arrested four men, aged between 25 and 30, from Haryana for allegedly trying to communicate outside an examination centre using Bluetooth buds connected to a mobile phone to get answers for an exam they appeared for on Sunday. The modified handset seized from the four was just two and a half inches. Police are also investigating whether the four intentionally chose Mumbai as the exam centre, hoping to cheat without knowing that jammers were installed in the exam rooms. A total of 324 candidates appeared for the exam at the Mumbai centre.Police identified the accused as Devendra Singh, Bhoop Singh, Ravi Singh, and Ravindra Singh. The men allegedly carried the modified phone past the security check before entering the examination hall at Kendriya Vidyalaya in IIT-Bombay, Powai, on Sunday. Devendra Singh, who was found with the Bluetooth device, tried to escape from the hall and flee the campus before security caught him after an invigilator raised an alarm.The exam was conducted across four metro cities, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. Central Sanskrit University (CSU) conducted its non-teaching written examinations, including those for the Multi-Tasking Staff (MTS/Group D) post for the guard/peon position, on Aug 9.DCP (West Zone-3) Datta Nalawade confirmed the arrest of the four candidates from Haryana. He said Powai police were probing whether they communicated outside or were caught before they could cheat.Police booked the four under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections for common intention, cheating, and criminal conspiracy. They produced them before the Andheri Court on Monday and were remanded in custody. Police were probing whether more people were involved in the cheating.Police said the candidates who appeared for the exams were not dummy candidates, and their Aadhaar card details matched the hall ticket.The police team was gathering details of the SIM and extracting data to find out whether the four dialled any number after the exam began. Police said the probe focused on how they cleared security and carried the modified mobile.“The mobile cost is worth Rs700 which has just calling features and was assembled after getting the parts. There is no data found in the handset. The team is also finding out who helped them get the modified gadget that is connected to a ear bluetooth bud,” said a police officer of Powai police station.Invigilators grew suspicious after observing the men, who were seated in separate rooms, and found their behaviour amiss. In the complaint, Kendriya Vidyalaya principal Vinod Wankhede said: “The four were caught after invigilator Rakesh Kumar said he found some suspicious with a candidate’s body language in room no 69. On inspection, Devendra Singh was caught with a mobile handset in his pant pocket. He pushed and managed to escape from the exam hall. Singh was caught by security guard in the campus before he could have escaped from the campus. Later, the team inspected the entire candidates and found three more with such device. The police were called then.”

Mumbai’s thieves reinvent codes

“Chacha ne salaam diya”“Aaj mausam kaisa hai?”To an outsider, these may sound like harmless banter. But as MIDC police in Andheri found out last week, these phrases carried a very different message for the ‘Dhakka gang’ of pickpockets who ran a carefully orchestrated operation and were arrested recently. It was their code language to know if everyone was safe, if anyone had been caught or if they could go ahead with the day’s planning.Cracking the gang’s communications offered police a glimpse of how secret gang communication has entered the smartphone age.DCP (west zone 3) Datta Nalawade, who led the investigations, said the communication was less about planning the theft than checking whether it was safe to proceed. “The purpose wasn’t to discuss the theft. It was to find out whether anyone had been picked up by police,” he said.For as long as criminals have worked in groups, they have needed a way to communicate without alerting the people around them—or police. Mumbai’s thieves have, over the years, used special languages, hand signals, eye blinks, towels and fake names. Today, some have moved to coded WhatsApp calls and social media messages.The leader of the Dhakka gang, whose members had specialised job titles and role assignments to execute thefts, reportedly contacted members every morning on WhatsApp using a code that changed daily. Only after the check would the gang decide where to meet and which bus route to target. After two members were arrested, the others shifted from Andheri to Juinagar in Navi Mumbai.Former police commissioner D Sivanandhan recalls gangs operating in Mumbai in the early 1990s using “special languages”. Among them were ‘Kepmari gangs’ from Tamil Nadu, who worked in groups of three or four on buses and trains. “They used a particular language to communicate and handed over the stolen booty to others. Like a relay race, the purse or bag or chain would change hands and vanish from the scene. They communicated through hand signals or special language or signs,” Sivanandhan told TOI.Over time, the signals became simpler. A blink could mean danger. A towel waved casually could signal a plainclothes policeman nearby. A particular name shouted aloud could mean abort the operation.“There was a time when gangs would meet at gardens, railway stations, bus stops or small hotels,” said Vanrai police senior inspector Abdul Rauf Shaikh, who was then assistant inspector with Mumbai crime branch’s unit-10. That was where they shared the day’s loot, decided the next day’s targets and fixed the code—be it blinking eyes after spotting danger or cops in civil dress, or flagging a towel cautioning gang members to take a back step.Shaikh said several such gangs were busted in 2017. Their members came from different parts of Mumbai Metropolitan Region and targeted commuters in BEST buses but ensured they all got off at different stops.“When I was posted with the crime branch and Trombay police station early in my career, there were gangs that used different code signs to communicate and escape. But the common feature was that they called their art of stealing ‘jaadu’ or ‘jhatka’,” said ACP (Ghatkopar division) Shailesh Pasalwar.Even in 2022, eye contact remained more useful than mobile phones for some gangs.Deputy superintendent of police (Mangaon-Raigad) Shashikant Pawar, who was then with the Mumbai crime branch, recalls gangs travelling in groups of four or five on BEST buses without speaking. Once a target was identified, two or three members created a distraction while “the machine” stole the target’s phone or wallet. They then got off at different stops. The Dhakka gang followed the same pattern.DCP Nalawade said the team that busted the gang—senior inspector Ghanshyam Nair, inspector Sunil Karande, SI Kiran Nawle and staff—found out that members stole at least five high-end phones a day and police recovered 135 phones valued between Rs 90,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh. The thieves reportedly avoided iPhones because they were harder to unlock and had limited resale value in their intended markets in Bangladesh and Nepal.

Mumbai: The classic WhatsApp display picture scam, where fraudsters impersonate corporate leaders to trick employees into making unauthorized fund transfers, has taken a dangerous leap in sophistication. Moving beyond messaging apps, scammers are now using professional collaboration platforms for deception.In a recent case, scammers created a fraudulent group chat on Microsoft Teams using the names of two directors of an industrial company. They faked a discussion about a contract and manipulated an employee into transferring Rs 2.3 crore of company funds to them. An FIR was registered by the south Cyber Police and investigations are on.The incident occurred on July 31. A senior VP (finance) working with the industrial company found himself added to a group chat on Microsoft Teams. It was titled ‘work group’. Two individuals, with the same names as the company’s directors, were already a part of the group chat and were discussing a contract. As the company typically held meetings over Microsoft Teams, the victim did not suspect anything.During the discussion, one of the ‘directors’ quizzed the senior VP about the company’s bank balance. The senior VP disclosed the figure. Subsequently, the ‘director’ instructed that Rs 2.3 crore be transferred to a rubber firm in West Bengal for business. He provided the rubber firm’s bank details. Accordingly, the senior VP asked his subordinate to make the payment via RTGS and shared a copy over the group chat.Later that day, another employee who was checking daily transactions made through the company’s bank account raised a query about that particular payment. The senior VP was questioned as to whether the directors had spoken to him on the phone about making the payment. He denied. The employee then verified with the directors and found out that they were never a part of any group chat with the senior VP.The company management immediately approached the Cyber Police, who were able to block the money in the beneficiary’s account before it could be withdrawn by the scammers.Cyber Police have cautioned people against making any monetary transfers of company funds without making a direct phone call and verifying the demand. Experts said organisations should build a culture where employees do not hesitate to verify unusual requests involving money, sensitive data or access privileges, irrespective of who appears to be making the request.