MELBOURNE: An Indian man, who punched his estranged wife in the face and stabbed her at a pizza shop here, has been sentenced to eight months in jail, a media report said on Sunday.

The man, who was not named, jumped the counter of the pizza shop where his ex-wife works and tried to throttle her.

He told her that if she didn’t die, he’d come back, saying: “I’ll kill you. If you are safe today, next time I’ll kill you definitely.”

The Ringwood Magistrates’ Court was told last week that the man, an Indian national, punched his wife in the face and stabbed her in shoulder with a sauce spreader, Herald Sun reported.

The couple had separated this year after three years of marriage.

The woman had been granted an intervention order against her estranged husband in March. The attack took place last month.

The court heard the man was irate because he believed his wife had used him to secure Australian residency.

He claimed she had started seeing another man shortly after their wedding.

The court heard the man was high on synthetic cannabis at the time of the attack and claimed not to remember it.

Arguing he suffered a psychiatric illness, the man promised Magistrate Doug Bolster he would return to India to seek psychiatric treatment if he were released on a suspended sentence.

But the judge said there was no evidence the man was mentally ill, and even if he went to India, there was nothing to stop his returning to Australia.

“My concern is for the welfare of the victim,” he said, sentencing the man to eight months’ jail.

An Indian American beauty was crowned Miss Vermont 2014 at the first of the Miss America 2015 state beauty pageants, held April 26 at the Barre Opera House here.

Lucy Marion Edwards, 19, chosen the 70th Miss Vermont, is a sophomore in neuroscience at the University of Vermont, and is from Round Hill, Virginia, according to an article in beautypageantnews.com. She lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Edwards’ platform is the B+ Foundation, children helping children fight cancer.
“I’m a little in shock right now,” Edwards said, just after her crowning, adding that the Miss Vermont competition is the first pageant she has taken part in. “I just feel very blessed, and it’s about to be an amazing year. I can’t wait.”
Edwards told the Web site she felt “very Zen” during the day-long competition, in which she performed a contemporary musical theatre vocal of “I Am Changing.”
“I was really trying to breathe and just know that if it was my time, if I was to be Miss Vermont 2014, that I would be Miss Vermont 2014. I think that helped me, because I’m normally a little anxious, and I chilled out, so it seemed to work.”
The newly-crowned beauty queen said she has big plans when she heads to Atlantic City for the Miss America competition in September.

“I really want to shake the Miss Vermont top 15 curse at nationals, so I’m going to start working tomorrow,” she said, adding that she may first devour a pizza to cap the evening of her crowning.
When asked what she hopes to accomplish in her year of service, Edwards said, “So much.” Referring to the B+ Foundation, she said, “I can’t wait to work with the hospitals in the area, and with the children, and really get cracking on that.”
Edwards, who is of Indian American descent, said she plans to follow in the footsteps of Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri, and continue to break ground.
“Nina has been an amazing role model for me,” she told beautypageantnews.com. “I’m also studying neuroscience and want to be a physician. So, to have someone like that to look up to, and to know that girls like me can go up there and win is really inspirational.

Miss America is asking a Pennsylvania school district to reconsider the punishment of a high school senior who asked her to be his prom date during the question-and-answer portion of an assembly.

The York Dispatch newspaper reported on Sunday that Nina Davuluri posted a statement on the Miss America Organization’s Facebook page saying she contacted Central York High School to ask officials to rethink the three-day in-school suspension issued to 18-year-old Patrick Farves.

Davuluri says her travel schedule will prevent her from attending the dance with Farves.

School officials knew Farves intended to ask her to prom and warned him not to do it.

Fellow students cheered afterward, but Farves was suspended for misbehaving.

He apologised for disrupting Thursday’s event.

Davuluri was there to talk about the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths studies.

Rio Tinto is one of a number of companies, including GVK, seeking to sell equity in their coal mines to government-owned Coal India Ltd.

A report in the business newspaper Mint said Coal India Ltd has received at least 60 proposals from companies such as Rio and GVK, to sell it some of their global coal assets.
Coal India has an estimated $US6.65 billion to invest in coal mines over the next five years according to the report, as India prepares to import a rising volume of coal.

“There are a certain number of Indian firms as well who have approached us for their assets in Indonesia and Australia,” the report quoted a company executive as saying.
Coal India unit Coal Videsh was earlier involved in talks with global coal firms such as Peabody Energy Corp and Rio Tinto to form a strategic alliance to mine coal in Australia, the US, South Africa and Indonesia, the newspaper reported.

As the Australian Indian community is growing in numbers, so also are the Australian Indian businesses and employees in such businesses. Every couple of months a new grocery store or a new Indian Restaurant opens up for business as the suburbs grow in Sydney. In addition there are other businesses such as various Travel agencies, 7/11 Stores, Petrol Bunks etc. where Indian community members including International students work tirelessly and practically throughout the year and long hours day or night. The increasing vulnerability of such successful Australian Indian businesses to robberies or other types of crimes is evident from increasing number of incidents in the suburbs of Sydney.

Potential robbers seem to follow new methods of crime such as the recent robbery attempt made at the Sydney’s popular grocery store in the Easter suburbs MGM Spices located in Cleveland Street, Surry Hills on Sunday 20th April around 12.30PM. Two robbers, a male aged 32 and a female aged 27, apparently set their American Staffordshire terrier dog on Monika, daughter of Mr. Vikram Sharma, owner of MGM Spices when she accidentally entered the shop to visit her parents and witnessed the robbers opening the till and trying to take out the money. Monika was injured very badly as the dog bit her arms furiously. Fortunately, onlookers and good Samaritans chased and restrained the robbers and the dog till police arrived. Monika was attended to at St. Vincent’s hospital and subsequently operated upon at Sydney hospital requiring 40 stitches in her hand. This unfortunate robbery episode has left the entire Sharma family and the sales girl Manju who was inside the shop minding her duties, to shock and trauma on the Easter long week end. It was doubly unfortunate as both Vikram Sharma and his son Jagat Sharma were doing community service – just crossing each other minutes away to take turns to manage their community Radio 89.7FM very popularly known as Voice of India running over a very long number of years.

“The entire family still is in shock”. “Thanks to good Samaritans the robbers were caught and nothing worse happened” said Vikram Sharma speaking to The Indian Telegraph. “It was distressing to see Monika with 40 stitches in her hand” said his son Jagat Sharma who also added that “it was very shocking also for Manju, the sales girl on her second working day”. Friends and well-wishers of the Sharma family are extending full support to them to recover from this unfortunate trauma. Moving forward, “there is a strong need to keep an increased watch by the Police on suspected or potential robbers especially the repeat offenders” stated Vikram Sharma.

According to the Australian national media reports the two robbers appeared before court. Investigations are continuing by the Police, while the dog was seized by council authorities.

The Indian Telegraph poses to the readers following questions and leaving to their thoughts.

While common law applies to all communities, should there be more or additional protection for Indian businesses in hot spot areas in consultation with NSW Police?
Should Indian business owners need more support from the community and relevant NSW based agencies when exposed to unfortunate crimes?
How the Indian community organisations can assist the Indian businesses in such unfortunate times? Will establishing a community Trauma Counselling Service offered in Privacy by qualified community volunteers help?
Any other useful suggestions in the interest and welfare of International students working in their spare times in grocery shops, petrol bunks and 7/11 shops?

The son of a former AIIMS director has been arrested for allegedly duping an NRI by selling her a car that he had already mortgaged for a bank loan. Mukul Paul Taneja, who comes from a wealthy family, used to live a lavish life out of loans taken against his properties.

The crime branch arrested him after the NRI had filed a complaint with the help of a British MP. Taneja, she alleged, had sold her a Renault Duster with a VIP number from Uttarakhand. But Taneja started threatening her when she, after paying Rs 10.5 lakh, asked him to transfer the car in her name. The woman then checked the legal documents and found it had been mortgaged for Rs 9.99 lakh.

“We arrested him from Munirka and he confessed during interrogation,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner (crime).

Police said Taneja, who had a BBA degree, initially tried to get away by flaunting his high-profile connections with politicians. He said his mother, Nirmal Taneja, was the director of AIIMS in 1989 while his father had held a senior position at a private company. He also claimed to have gone to the UK on a scholarship.

In 1996, he started a garment export company, MGA Exports, after working with a private company from 1992 to 1995. In 1998, he got married to a girl from Dholpur in Rajasthan. Taneja also said he started a hotel with J&K Development Corporation in 2001 but incurred huge losses. He had also suffered a huge loss in commodity trading. Few Bollywood movies, financed by him, had also flopped, following which he started writing books posing as a management guru.

Taneja, cops said, owned several luxury cars-an Audi-A6, a Swift Dzire, a Suzuki Kizashi, a Renault Duster, a Volkswagen Polo and a Ford EcoSport-with finances from different banks. He then took loans against these cars and a Rs 70-lakh loan on his bungalow.

A case of cheating has been registered against Taneja.

PayPal, a company that allows web users to make monetary transactions on the web, fired senior executive Rakesh Agrawal after he made a series of insulting – and mostly incomprehensible – tweets against co-workers. Ironically, the announcement was made with a tweet.

“Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance,” the company tweeted on Saturday.

Agarwal had joined Paypal around two months ago as its global strategy head.
Earlier, he sent out a number of tweets, slamming his co-workers. The language and (lack of) grammar in the tweets hinted that he was probably drunk when he wrote them. The tweets were later deleted but not before some Twitter users took screenshots.
In one tweet, Agarwal said, “Christina Smedley is a useless. Piece of sh*t.” In another he noted, “Duck you Smedley you useless. Middle manager.”

Smedley is vice president of global communication at PayPal.
In one more tweet, he wanted someone named Don Christmas to be fired. “People who should be fire from Paypal Don Christmas a pool a kick”.

Agarwal was apparently at a jazz festival in New Orleans when he made these tweets. Later, he realised what happened and tried to do damage control. He blamed the tweets on a new phone he was testing.

“Last night I was using a new phone that I bought because I wanted to test experiences on android. Those messages were meant for a colleague,” tweeted Agarwal. “Note to self: don’t test a new phone when sleep deprived after working your ass off for 20 hours a day while on vacation.” ? According to Agarwal’s website, he “is a product and marketing strategist who has spent 15 years working in web and mobile media. His areas of expertise include social networks, local, commerce, payments and mobile technologies.”