Q1. Name the district of Chhattisgarh  in which ten police personnel and a driver were killed in a blast carried out by Naxalites on  Apr 26 ?

1. Dantewada
2. Bastar
3. Bijapur   
4. Sukma
5. None of These

Q2. A high-powered committee, constituted by the Tripura High Court and chaired by Justice (retd) Deepak Verma, has recommended transfer of 23 elephants from Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura to animal rescue centre in

1. Madhya Pradesh
2. Uttarakhand
3. Gujarat
4. Chhattisgarh
5. None of These

Q3. Name the former Punjab Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali dal patriarch who passed away at 95 years of age recently ?

1. Surjit Singh Barnala
2. Harcharan Singh Brar
3. Charanjit Singh Channi
4. Parkash Singh Badal
5. None of These

Q4. Name the former New Zealand Prime Minister  who led her country through a devastating mass shooting and  will be temporarily joining Harvard University later this year ?

1. Jenny Shipley
2. Jacinda Ardern
3. Helen Clark
4. Chris Hipkins
5. None of These

Q5. Name the FMCG giant has now overtaken the market capitalisation of Infosys to become India’s sixth most valuable company on the stock exchanges ?

1. Dabur India
2. Colgate Palmolive
3. ITC
4. Britannia Industries
5. None of These

Answers

1-------------------1   Dantewada

2-------------------3    Gujarat

3-------------------4   Parkash Singh Badal

4--------------------2  Jacinda Ardern

5---------------------3   ITC

Pankaj Singh, the BJP MLA from Noida and son of Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, has been elected unopposed as Cycling Federation of India (CFI) president in the Annual General Body meeting in Nainital.

Maninder Pal Singh was elected as secretary general for the second consecutive term while Sudeesh Kumar of Kerala was elected as the treasurer.

Twenty-six states and boards affiliated to CFI participated in the AGM.

Former Bihar MP Anand Mohan, who is serving a life sentence in the killing of IAS officer G Krishnaiah, is to be set free along with 26 others who have been lodged in different prisons of the state for more than 14 years.

A notification to the effect was issued  when, incidentally, Mohan, who has been on parole, was celebrating the engagement of his son Chetan Anand, who is a sitting MLA of the ruling RJD in the state.

Mohan expressed his gratitude towards Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who along with his deputy Tejashwi Yadav, was among the attendees at the gala function organised on the outskirts of Patna.

The Telangana-born Dalit IAS officer, who was then the district magistrate of Gopalganj, was beaten to death by a mob in 1994, while his vehicle was passing through Muzaffarpur district.

Anand Mohan was present on the spot at the time of the killing, where he was part of the funeral procession of Chhotan Shukla, a dreaded gangster who was pumped with bullets in Muzaffarpur town.

The sensational killing had acquired caste overtones in an era when Bihar was stirred by the Mandal wave.

While Shukla was an upper caste Bhumihar and Mohan, his sympathiser, is a Rajput, the alleged killers were said to be sympathisers of Brij Bihari Prasad, an OBC strongman who went on to become a minister in the Rabri Devi government but ultimately fell to attackers' bullets while undergoing treatment at a Patna hospital a few years later.

Besides Mohan, those whose release has been ordered include former RJD MLA Raj Ballabh Yadav, who has been convicted of raping a minor girl, and Awadhesh Mandal, an ex-legislator of JD(U), named in many criminal cases, whose wife Bima Bharti is an ex-minister.

Meanwhile, Maha Nand Singh, an MLA of the CPI(ML) Liberation which supports the 'Mahagathbandhan' government from the outside, demanded that the amnesty be extended to those who had been booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, (TADA) in the 1990s when the state was in the throes of Naxal uprising.

The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has got the custody of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi in connection with a case of cross-border smuggling of drugs.

A Delhi court on Apr 24  granted the transit remand of Bishnoi, who is lodged in Tihar jail, to the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Apr 24  attached a house and two kanals of land belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahudeen's two sons in Jammu and Kashmir's Budgam and Srinagar districts.

A team of NIA officials first attached a house in Ram Bagh area  registered in the name of Syed Ahmed Shakeel, son of designated terrorist Salahudeen.

Later, the team went to Soibugh in Budgam district, the ancestral place of one of the most wanted terrorists in India, and attached a plot of agricultural land measuring two kanals (10,880 square feet).

The land is registered in the name of Salahudeen's another son, Shahid Yusuf.

Besides, the NIA also seized six shops in Awantipora area of Pulwama district in a case relating to a 2018 attack on CRPF Group Centre at Lethpora, J&K.

Both Shahid Yusuf and Syed Ahmed Shakeel are lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail since their arrests in October 2017 and August 2018.

They were chargesheeted on April 20, 2018 and November 20, 2018, respectively.

The duo had been receiving funds from abroad from the associates of their father and overground workers of HM, it added.

Salahudeen, who had fled to Pakistan in 1993, was designated as an individual terrorist by India in October 2020.

He continues to operate from Pakistan, from where he is guiding and instructing Hizbul cadres as well as activists of UJC, also known as Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC) which is a conglomerate of around 13 Pakistan-based Kashmir-centric terror outfits.

Besides instigating and operationalising militant activities in India, primarily in Kashmir valley, Salahudeen has been raising funds and routing finances to India through hawala channels and international money transfer channels for furthering the terrorist activities of HM cadres.

The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) will challenge before the Gujarat High Court the recent acquittal of all 67 accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam riot case by a special court.

Ahmedabad-based court of S K Baxi, special judge for Special Investigation Team cases, on April 20 acquitted all 67 accused, including former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani and ex-Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi, more than two decades after 11 Muslims were killed during post-Godhra riots in Ahmedabad's Naroda Gam area.

The massacre at Naroda Gam was one of the nine major 2002 communal riots cases investigated by the SC-appointed SIT and heard by special courts.

The SIT took over the probe from the Gujarat Police in 2008 and arrested more than 30 persons.

Apart from Kodnani (67) and Bajrangi, former VHP leader Jaydeep Patel was also acquitted in the case by the special court.

There were a total of 86 accused in the case, of which 18 died during the pendency of the trial, while one was discharged by the court earlier under section 169 of the CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) due to insufficient evidence against him.

Riots broke out in the Naroda Gam area of Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, during a bandh called to protest the torching of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express by a mob near Godhra station a day earlier.

As many as 58 train passengers, mostly karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were charred to death.

The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), and 153 (provocation for riots), among others The then-BJP president Amit Shah, now Union Home Minister, had in September 2017 appeared in the trial court as a defence witness for Kodnani.

She had requested the court to summon Shah to prove her alibi that she was present in the Gujarat Assembly and later at Ahmedabad's Sola Civil Hospital, and not at Naroda Gam, where the massacre took place.

Six different judges have presided over the case since the trial started in 2010.

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Apr 25  urged Myanmar’s ruling military to take the initiative in finding a way out of the country’s violent political crisis, including releasing political detainees, after a surprise meeting with the army leader who seized power two years ago.

Ban met on Apr 24  in the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw with the leader of the military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, and other top officials. His mission was made on behalf of a group of elder statesmen that engages in peacemaking and human rights initiatives around the world.

Sri Lanka Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena unveiled a special commemorative cover for Sita Temple near the historic town of Nuwara Eliya on Apr 23  and laid the foundation stone for the meditation centre at Ramayana fame Ashoka Vatika site to boost tourism in the cash-strapped country.

Prime Minister Gunawardena was accompanied by Indian High Commissioner Gopal Bagalay and other dignitaries for the gala event.