RPT-India’s Reliance Comm, GTL Infra sign $11 bln deal

June 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

June 27 (Reuters) – Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO), India’s No. 2 cellphone carrier, said on Sunday its unit Reliance Infratel Ltd has agreed to a $11 billion deal to sell its telecom tower assets to independent telecom tower company GTL Infrastructure Ltd (GTLI.BO).

Telecommuncations Services

Debt-laden Reliance Communications, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, earlier this month announced a plan to create an independent tower unit.

It had previously planned to spin-off its 95 percent-owned telecoms infrastructure arm, Reliance Infratel, through an initial public offering. (Reporting by Aniruddha Basu and Rajesh Kurup; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

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UPDATE 1-Reliance Comm, GTL Infra near tower deal-sources

June 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

June 27 (Reuters) – Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO), India’s No. 2 cellphone carrier, was close to a deal to sell its tower operations to GTL Infrastructure (GTLI.BO), people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

A deal could be announced as soon as Sunday, they said.

Debt-laden Reliance Communications, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, earlier this month announced a plan to create an independent tower unit. It had previously planned to spin-off its 95 percent-owned telecoms infrastructure arm, Reliance Infratel, through an initial public offering.

Under terms of the proposed deal, GTL Infrastructure Chairman Manoj Tirodkar would own 30 to 35 percent of the combined tower business and Ambani would own 26 percent, with shareholders in the two firms holding the remainder, two of the sources said.

Newspapers have reported that Reliance Communications could combine its tower business with India’s GTL Infrastructure, and shares in GTL Infrastructure rose nearly 6 percent on Friday.

Shares in Reliance Comm, which has also said it is looking to sell as much as a 26 percent stake in itself, have risen 33 percent in June.

Reliance Comm and GTL Infrastructure both declined to comment. (Reporting by Rajesh Kurup and Pratish Narayanan; Writing by Tony Munroe, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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Fujitsu, Toshiba say to merge mobile businesses

June 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd (6702.T) and Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said on Thursday they plan to merge their mobile phone businesses in October, creating Japan’s No. 2 cellphone maker.

Deals | Inflows Outflows

Sources told Reuters last week that the two companies were in talks to combine their cell phone operations.

Fujitsu will take a majority stake in a joint venture, the companies said in a statement.

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Fujitsu, Toshiba say to merge mobile businesses

June 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

June 17 (Reuters) – Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd (6702.T) and Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said on Thursday they plan to merge their mobile phone businesses in October, creating Japan’s No. 2 cellphone maker.

Stocks | Global Markets

Sources told Reuters last week that the two companies were in talks to combine their cell phone operations. [ID:nSGE6590KI]

Fujitsu will take a majority stake in a joint venture, the companies said in a statement.

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Pak Army Major arrested over alleged links with failed Times Square bomber

May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Los Angeles, May 19 (ANI): Pakistani security agencies have reportedly arrested an Army major, who is said to have had contacts with Faisal Shahzad, the US civilian of Pakistan origin accused of plotting the botched Times Square bombing.

It is for the first time that a Pakistan Army official has been linked directly in the failed bombing plot, however, authorities are mum on the major’s links with Shahzad.

Sources privy to the arrest said that the military official had met Shahzad and that both had frequent chats over the cellphone also, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Meanwhile, US and Pakistani agencies continue to investigate Shahzad’s terror trail, and the truth behind his claims that he had met the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP) chieftain Hakimullah Mehsud during one of his many visits to the extremist stronghold North Waziristan.

Shahzad, who appeared in a court in New York on Tuesday, has told U.S. investigators that he had gone to North Waziristan, where he met with Taliban leaders and got training in bombmaking.

According to Pakistani and US officials briefed about the investigations, Shahzad had likely visited Mohmand, a lawless tribal region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which is considered as the hub of the Taliban and other extremist outfits. (ANI)

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Missing Indian youngster ‘probably dead’: New Zealand police

May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Wellington, May 10 (ANI): Police are yet to trace Srikanth Rayadurgam, an Indian youngster who has been missing since October 1st, leading them to conclude that he is probably dead.

Much to the chagrin of his brother-in-law, Nagesh Kakanoor, who says that it took the police nearly a week to send divers to search the area, a delay that, Kakanoor believes might have cost Srikanth his life.

Rayadurgam walked out of the Mt Albert home of his sister Padam and Kakanoor and out of their lives on Thursday, October 1.

Later that day he took $250 out of a Queen St money machine and that night tried to call his uncle in India on his cellphone.

The following day his wallet and some personal items were found at the Westhaven Marina, stuff.co.nz reports

Kakanoor says the family is still hoping Srikanth would resurface. Speaking about the family’s predicament, Kakanoor told stuff.co.nz, “There is no closure, it is the biggest thing which is happening in our life.”

The aggrieved family is still hoping Srikanth would resurface. (ANI)

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Entertainment needs make Indians come up with innovative cellphone uses

April 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 17 (ANI): Entertainment seeking Indian mobile phone users can devise new and innovative uses for them, if they have sufficient motivation, say researchers.

Researchers also found that entertainment could be seen as a necessity for the media-consuming public and not merely a desire.

Last summer, Thomas Smyth, Ph.D. student in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, was working at Microsoft in Banglaore, India, when he was struck with an idea.

“As you might expect, Microsoft employs a lot of people to maintain the building, so one day we called a couple of them into a room and asked them, ‘What do you do with your phones,’” said Smyth.

After a few interviews, the researchers set out to the lower-income neighbourhoods and interviewed about 30 people on how they used their mobile phones.

They found that most people, in addition to calling and texting, used their phones for transferring media files via Bluetooth.

“To send a text message on your phone, for instance, it takes three or four steps. If you’ve ever transferred something on your phone with Bluetooth, you know it takes 15 to 20 steps. So for people whom you might not expect to have a lot of expertise in this area, the motivation to transfer music and video files to be entertained seems to be enough to turn these complicated user-interface obstacles into mere speed bumps,” said Smyth.

Some people watched films on their phone, listened to music and recorded lecture notes in school.

“Of course, there’s the one where the guys would use Bluetooth to transfer data with the phone in their pockets while they were doing side-by-side work on a construction site,” said Smyth.

Others removed their microSD chips and use them to transfer files.

“Some people would swap those around, or they would have several microSD chips in their wallet, because that’s a faster way to transfer stuff. There was no end to the kinds of things people would do,” said Smyth.

The researchers discovered that their interview subjects had constructed elaborate systems to obtain, view and share their entertainment content.

However, other types of content related to areas that are typically identified as “needs” by researchers and aid practitioners, such as healthcare or education, did not show up in Smyth’s study.

And the multimedia-capable phones aren’t cheap in India—they often cost more than a month’s salary, yet people said they save for long periods to buy one.

“Maybe we’re putting too much weight on these usability barriers and it’s just more a question of motivation,” said Smyth.

The study will be presented at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, being held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. (ANI)

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Soon, operate your cellphone without touching it

March 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 23 (ANI): You could soon operate your cellphone just at the point of a finger, without even having to touch the display—thanks to touchless control made of printable polymer sensors.

The sensors, just like human skin, react to the tiniest fluctuations in temperature and differences in pressure and recognize the finger as it approaches.

And the feat has been achieved, owing to the efforts of the research scientists involved in the EU project 3Plast, which stands for ‘Printable pyroelectrical and piezoelectrical large area sensor technology’.

The companies and institutes involved from industry and research have set themselves the goal of mass producing pressure and temperature sensors which can be cheaply printed onto plastic film and flexibly affixed to a wide range of everyday objects, such as electronic equipment.

“The sensor consists of pyroelectrical and piezoelectrical polymers which can now be processed in high volumes by screen printing, for example. The sensor is combined with an organic transistor, which strengthens the sensor signal. It”s strongest where the finger is. The special thing about our sensor is that the transistor can also be printed,” explained Gerhard Domann, who is in charge of the project.

The production of polymer sensors still poses a number of challenges.

To produce printable transistors, the insulation materials have to be very thin.

However, the experts at the ISC have succeeded in producing an insulator, which is only 100 nanometers thick.

The first sensors have already been printed onto film.

The research scientists are currently working on optimised transistors, which can amplify rapid changes in temperature and pressure.

“By providing everyday objects with information about their environment – for example whether a person is approaching – by means of pressure and temperature sensors, we can create and market new devices that can be controlled just by pointing a finger,” said Domann. (ANI)

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Naomi Campbell driver apologizes over assault claim

March 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

New York, March 5 (ANI): The driver who accused supermodel Naomi Campbell of assaulting him has apologized to her.

In a statement through his lawyer Earl Ward, Miodrag Mejdina said that he ”got angry and overreacted” when he told police the catwalk queen had attacked him with a cellphone from the back seat of a car while driving around Midtown.

The 27-year-old regrets calling the cops and has said it was a misunderstanding that was “blown out of proportion.”

“This whole thing has been blown out of proportion and I apologize to Ms. Campbell for causing that to happen,” the New York Post quoted him as saying.

In a statement, Campbell said, “On Tuesday, March 2nd I was accused of unacceptable behavior towards a driver in New York. I have worked very hard on correcting my previous wrongdoings and I will not be held hostage to my past. I try to treat everyone with respect and I am pleased the driver has apologized. I would like to put the last few days behind me and move on.” (ANI)

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Lip-reading cellphone allows for soundless communication

March 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 5 (ANI): Karlsruhe Institute of Technology researchers have developed the phone of the future, a lip-reading cell that allows for soundless communication.

The software by German researchers enables people to move their mouths silently and to have the motion be picked up and translated into sound for people on the other end of the call, reports Fox News.

The process is based on the principle of electromyography – the acquisition and recording of electrical potentials generated by muscle activity.

The research will be presented at the Hanover CeBIT tradeshow. (ANI)

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‘Invisibility cloak’ metamaterials could shrink cellphones antennas

August 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, Aug 22 (ANI): An international team of physicists have revealed that metamaterials, which are currently being used to make real-life invisibility cloaks, may soon shrink cellphone antennas, leading to smaller gadgets.

The new metamaterial antennas could be tuned to a range of different frequencies as required.

It could be tuned to work efficiently across a small frequency range, and retuned to a different band for roaming.

Tom Driscoll at the University of California, San Diego along with Dimitri Basov and collaboraters from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and ETRI in the Republic of Korea developed the new “frequency-agile” design by attaching a thin film of vanadium dioxide to a gold metamaterial structure.

They found that applying a voltage to the film alters the frequency at which the gold metamaterial interferes with light waves, tuning it to a new “setting”.

This occurs because voltage causes nanoscale “puddles” of conducting vanadium metal to form within the insulating vanadium dioxide.

They interact with the design’s electrical properties and alter the metamaterial’s tuning.

“The effect continues after the electrical current is gone because the metal puddles, once formed, will not readily disappear without some cause,” New Scientist quoted Driscoll as saying

He added that there is evidence to suggest the effect should last for months or more.

“Metamaterials are often narrowband, but at least with this scheme one could adapt the material to new frequencies,” said Ulf Leonhardt, a metamaterial researcher at the University of St Andrews in the UK.

That removes an obstacle to the wider use of metamaterial antennas. Such antennas would be attractive because they could help to shrink the size of cellphones.

Driscoll said that a tunable metamaterial antenna would allow a wireless gadget to work “outstandingly well” at the frequencies used in one country, but also carry the option of retuning for use abroad.

The findings appear in journal Science Express. (ANI)

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Your cellphone can tell who your friends are

August 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, Aug 18 (ANI): The cellphone in your pocket can reveal who are your real friends, and how you interact with them, according to a five-year-long study.

The study has opened new possibilities for social scientists, epidemiologists, and other researchers to understand how people connect and interact socially.

Nathan Eagle of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and his colleagues Sandy Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David Lazer of Northeastern University in Boston handed out cellphones to 94 volunteers at MIT.

The phones were modified with software that logged the volunteers’ calls, and used Bluetooth to detect when another of the phones was close by.

They looked for simple patterns in the logs of calls and times when phones were close together, and found that it was possible to predict who the volunteers would identify as their friends with 95 per cent accuracy.

For example, being nearby on campus during work hours meant little, but if two phones were close together for several hours on a Saturday evening their owners were likely to be friends.

“You can think of it as a behavioural signature,” New Scientist quoted Eagle as saying.

The scientists could also link the phone data to the volunteers’ satisfaction at work.

They found that people who reported themselves to be less satisfied were less likely to have friends in close proximity, and more likely to call friends during work hours.

The phones proved more accurate than the volunteers themselves at measuring how much time they spent physically near to others.

It was found that people typically overestimated how much time they spent close to friends, and underestimated how much time they spent with more casual contacts.

Although some of these findings may sound obvious, the study has offered an important proof of principle – the gadgets we carry day-to-day can accurately record the nuances of our relationships.

Using cellphones for social science research could replace interviews, which are laborious and sometimes unreliable, to find out about people’s lives.

The cellphone approach may also have immediately practical applications such as helping epidemiologists predict how swine flu will spread from person to person.

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Now, a phone that expresses users’ moods via ‘light messaging’

May 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, May 20 (ANI): If you feel that texting does not express your mood while you type an SMS, then new “light messaging” by Nokia of Finland might just do the trick for you.

The company has filed a patent on a new breed of cellphone capable of “light messaging”, which could enable users to send a text with a background colour that clearly expresses their mood.

According to New Scientist magazine, the phone’s software allows one to choose a colour that represents his or her mood-red for raging angry, perhaps, blue for sad, or yellow for mellow.

The colour is encoded with the message, and is used to illuminate an LED array on top of the recipient’s similarly equipped light-messaging phone.

Nokia’s Teppo Jokinen, the inventor of the system said that light messaging would “enrich and improve user experiences”, according to US patent application. (ANI)

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Nikkei gains 1.7 pct as banks, high-techs lead

April 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Banks climb amid growing hope US lenders stabilising

* High-tech exporters up on industry hopes after Google, Nokia

* Nippon Steel surges on smaller-than-expected price cut

TOKYO, April 17 (Reuters) – Japan’s Nikkei average rose 1.7 percent on Friday as financial stocks such as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (8306.T) climbed after reassuring earnings results from JPMorgan (JPM.N) fuelled hopes that the banking sector is stabilising.

Sony Corp (6758.T) and other high-tech shares gained after Google Inc’s (GOOG.O) quarterly profit topped expectations, while the world’s top cellphone maker Nokia (NOK1V.HE) said it saw signs of stabilising demand in the handset market. [ID:nN16272680] [ID:nLG183354]

Nippon Steel Corp (5401.T) surged after a newspaper said the steelmaker and its peers had agreed with Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) to cut steel prices by more than 10 percent this business year, a smaller-than-expected price cut. [ID:nT286976]

“Investors are beginning to harbour hopes that the high-tech industry may be bottoming out. Although demand hasn’t exactly turned positive, there are signs that contractions are slowing,” said Takahiko Murai, general manager at Nozomi Securities.

“At least until the announcement of the results of (bank) ‘stress tests’ on May 4, the market probably won’t sell off bank shares. Also, considering what we have seen so far about U.S. banks earnings, the market doesn’t expect Citigroup to post surprisingly bad figures.”

Citigroup (C.N) is due to post quarterly results on Friday.

A U.S. Federal Reserve official said on Thursday that results of “stress tests” designed to see how the 19 largest U.S. banks would fare should the recession prove unexpectedly severe, would be made public on May 4. [ID:nN16267186]

The benchmark Nikkei .N225 climbed 146.70 points to 8,901.96, while the broader Topix .TOPIX added 1.5 percent to 844.53.

On Wall Street on Thursday, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index .SPX climbed 1.6 percent after JPMorgan’s results beat analysts’ expectations as debt trading and underwriting revenue surged. [ID:nN16542451]

That added to a string of encouraging results from other banks, including Wells Fargo’s (WFC.N) strong preliminary figures last week.

Japan’s banking shares gained, with top lender Mitsubishi UFJ advancing 2 percent to 515 yen and No.2 Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T) rising 1 percent to 194 yen.

Nomura Holdings (8604.T), the top brokerage, added 1.7 percent to 592 yen.

Exporters gained after Google’s (GOOG.O) results, though Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the economic environment remains tough with users still searching but buying less.

Sony Corp (6758.T) jumped 4.5 percent to 2,555 yen, after Google’s YouTube said it had reached a deal to post Sony films and TV shows and was talking with other big studios to ramp up content and attract more advertising. [ID:nN16520771]

Canon Inc (7751.T) advanced 2.2 percent to 3,050 yen, while Panasonic Corp (6752.T) gained 2.4 percent to 1,343 yen.

Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) gained 3 percent to 3,820 yen and Honda Motor Co (7267.T) also rose 3 percent to 2,780 yen.

Shares of Nippon Steel shot up 8 percent to 338 yen. (Reporting by Aiko Hayashi)

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Verizon plans app mart for Hub Web phone

April 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Verizon Hub, a new kind of home phone with some Web add-ons like weather and traffic reports, will soon come with an applications market, following a trend among cellphone makers such as Apple to open up to third-party apps.

Verizon Communications has been selling the Hub to its wireless customers since February 1 as it looks for new ways to keep growing while U.S. consumers rapidly disconnect their traditional home phones to save money in the weak economy.

Two-and-a-half months after the launch of the product — targeted at families looking to use a phone and access limited Internet services on their kitchen counter — the company is revealing plans aimed at broadening its market.

Besides opening the device to new applications, it is also promising to take away a condition that Hub buyers have to be Verizon Wireless customers.

“We’re in the process of getting rid of that restriction,” said John Gravel, a Verizon product manager on Wednesday. “Why would you limit anyone from using this?”

Gravel sees the applications market attracting new types of customers with an array of software suited to their own interests, such as Internet radio.

Application stores have become a hot topic in telecommunications since Apple launched one for iPhone last summer. Google Inc and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion have followed with their own application stores for cellphones.

Gravel said the launch date for the Hub app market has not been set but it should be ready to go live sometime this year.

TOUGH SELL IN WEAK ECONOMY

The executive also showed a prototype of a smaller, sleeker Hub product that looks like a digital picture frame and comes with a much skinnier cordless phone handset.

Verizon is also working on multi-touch controls for future devices, another trend popularized by Apple’s iPhone. For example, Verizon’s multi-touch could allow users to rotate a photograph on the Hub screen by dragging a finger around.

While analysts see the Hub as an interesting new category, Verizon will have to work very hard to convince consumers, who already feel they don’t need a home phone, to pay $199 for the Hub and $34.99 a month in service fees.

“Its a tough time to be marketing a device and service like this,” said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin, adding that it needed to expand beyond Verizon cell customers.

“The first order challenge is to explain to consumers why this is an improvement over a home phone … why its worth paying $35 a month on top of their broadband bill,” he said.

Gravel said demand for the device was “tracking with expectations,” but declined to give specific numbers.

One big drawback for customers of rival wireless services, which include AT and T Inc or Sprint Nextel, could be a restriction that prevents non-Verizon customers from exchanging text messages between the Hub and their cellphones.

Gravel said Verizon is working with industry groups to end the restriction — originally aimed at protecting cell users from being sent spam messages from non-mobile devices.

Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Richard Chang)

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CORRECTED – AT and T in talks to extend iPhone deal to 2011-WSJ

April 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Corrects to show iPhone sales were worldwide in the third paragraph, not just in the United States)

LOS ANGELES, April 14 (Reuters) – AT and T Inc (T.N) is in talks with Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to extend its exclusive U.S. agreement to sell the iPhone from 2010 to 2011, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

AT and T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in an interview that he plans to shift the company’s focus away from the U.S. landline phone business into wireless.

Apple’s iPhone has sold 17 million units worldwide since it was launched in June of 2007.

AT and T declined to comment on the report and repeated its previous statement that it had a multi-year agreement with Apple. An Apple spokeswoman also had no comment on the Journal report.

Apple has a number of relationships with other wireless carriers who service the iPhone in 80 countries. Those carriers include 02 in the United Kingdom, Softbank in Japan, Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany.

The Journal also said Stephenson spent several months in 2008 evaluating potential acquisitions in India, including a deal with Indian cellphone giant Reliance Communications Ltd.

Stephenson ultimately decided that the potential price of as much as $30 billion, was too high, the Journal said, quoting people familiar with the discussions. (Reporting by Gina Keating; editing by Richard Chang)

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Maoists destroy two cellphone towers in Orissa

April 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Malkangiri (Orissa), Apr 4 (ANI): Maoists have bombed two signal towers of a mobile phone service provider in Orissa’s Malkangiri District, police said on Saturday.

The incident took place yesterday when Maoists blew up the Kangrukunda and MPV-22 under Kalimela police station located about 30 kilometres from here.

The police officials claimed that they were aware of the attack even before any formal complaints about the incident were registered.

According to the police, the Maoists also destroyed huge quantities of cables kept near the structure as they are against spread of telephone network in the region.

The Maoists believe that telephones, including mobile phones help the police informers in spying on the activities of the ultras and facilitates sharing of information with the police (ANI)

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Pawar fails to attend BJD-NCP-Left rally in Orissa

April 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Bhubaneswar, Apr 3 (ANI): Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Friday failed to join a Biju Janata Dal- Left-Nationalist Congress Party rally here.

According to NCP officials, Pawar could not attend the gathering due to a problem with the aircraft that he was due to travel in.

“I would have liked to address the rally, but could not because of a technical snag in the aircraft,” Pawar said.

Thereafter, NCP State President Prasanta Nanda held a cellphone near the microphone as Pawar was heard saying that he could not attend the gathering due to a problem in the aircraft that was scheduled to fly him.

NCP General Secretary and chief spokesperson D. P. Tripathy said efforts to arrange another plane were not successful.

Tripathy said Pawar was scheduled to visit Bhubaneswar either on 7th or 8th April depending on BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s availability.

The polls in Orissa are scheduled to be held in two phases- April 16 and April 23 – to elect 147 members to the State Assembly and 21 members to the Lok Sabha. (ANI)

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Judgment in second Nithari case to be delivered on April 15

April 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Ghaziabad, Apr. 1 (ANI): The judgment in second Nithari rape and murder case of 8-year-old Aarti will be delivered by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge on April 15.

Aarti was the last known victim in the Nithari killings, having disappeared just about two months before the case was busted.

In the previous judgment in the Nithari killings, the special CBI court on February 12 awarded the death sentence to Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli for their respective roles in the Rampa Haldar murder case.

Just like in Halder murder case, the CBI has given a clean chit to Pandher primarily on the basis of his cellphone records, while holding only Koli guilty of the crime.

Unlike Rampa’s father, Aarti’s parents Durga and Neelam Prasad have never challenged CBI’s contention that Koli alone was the culprit.

Aarti had reportedly returned home from school on the afternoon of October 25, 2006 after which she went out to buy herself some toffees.

However, she never came back. A report about Aarti going missing was then taken down at the Sector 20 police station in Noida.

On December 29, 2006, Aarti’s remains were found buried behind Pandher’s home in Nithari.

Both Pandher and Koli are accused of killing and disposing off the bodies of 19 children and a young woman between 2005 and 2006.

The investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI on January 11, 2007. The CBI has filed chargesheets in 16 cases. Chargesheets in the remaining three cases are still awaited. (ANI)

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