A boy age 12, who was a student of Banga Manna High School of Bandwan near Purulia, was punished and beaten in class by his teacher for not being able to answer a question. The boy fell ill after he returned home and was rushed to hospital where he died.

A post mortem was conducted and showed the boy had bruise marks on his back, made by the stick his teacher had used. The family has now lodged a complaint against the teacher.

School authorities have not yet commented on the incident.

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On a Bangkok-Delhi flight with 166 passengers on board, two Air India pilots took a 40-minute break and got two flight attendants to operate the plane as they slept. The move almost ended in disaster after one flight attendant accidentally turned off the auto pilot.

The Airbus plane was flying at 33,000 feet at the time First Officer Ravindra Nath took a bathroom break and got flight attendant J Bhatt to occupy his seat. Minutes after Captain B K Soni called in flight attendant Kanika Kala and asked her to take his seat, and he spent a few minutes teaching the two attendants how to operate the aircraft.

He then left the cockpit after putting the plane on auto-pilot leaving the flight attendants in the 'driving seat' while he and his co-pilot took a nap. Then, the sleeping pilots were forced to rush back to the cockpit after one of the attendants accidentally switched off the auto-pilot.

A senior cabin crew member witnessed the entire episode and reported it to the airline's management.

All four were de-rostered and later suspended for the violation. An inquiry is being conducted by the DGCA. A member of a government appointed aviation safety panel blamed the lackadaisical attitude of the DGCA for the increase in air safety violations.

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Harihar Mallick, a widower age 72 has married Renuka Mallick his daughter-in-law age 24 in Sapur village, Jagatsinghpur.

Disapproving villagers recently ostracised the couple and ordered them to leave for breaking an age-old tradition. They also informed police who went to the village and detained Harihar.

Harihar's wife died five years ago, and there is no news of his son Bichitra Mallick since he went to Bangalore to work as a mason four years ago.

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Rajkumar Pandian who has spent the last six months in jail in Mumbai was in Ahmedabad for a court hearing when a local news channel filmed him being allowed to use a private car from the railway station to his family's home.

The footage reveals what many in Gujarat allege - that a select group of senior police officers, arrested for shooting civilians on the pretext they were a security threat, are not treated as criminals but rather as VIPs by government departments.

Pandian is among a ring of former police officers accused of fake encounters. In 2005 Sorabuddin Sheikh a small-time criminal was killed by Gujarat Police, and a year later the only witness to the murder Tulsiram Prajapati was also shot dead by cops.

Pandian and other senior cops accused of the killings were moved to a jail in Mumbai this year after the Supreme Court ordered the trial of those cases be moved out of Gujarat to ensure they were free and fair.

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West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee coyly suggested people smoke more to provide compensation to victims of a chit fund scam, saying let there be a tax on it.

Her party criticised her statement and the opposition did likewise when Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Kabir Suman said the 10 percent additional tax on cigarettes announced by the Banerjee government was not a 'valid political argument'. This after Benerjee announced the constitution of a Rs.500 crore relief fund to compensate depositors who lost money in the chit fund scam run by Sudipta Sen's Saradha Group.

Shocked Congress MP and spokesperson Renuka Chowdhury said Banerjee's suggestion is 'alarming and destructive'.

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