Monday Post

A– So, yesterday India crossed the figure of 6 million Covid cases, and in the process they became only second country after USA to achieve this dubious record. But here also some people are finding solace that last million cases took 11 days where as cases from 4 to 5 million took 12 days, thus they feel that now trend is showing downward trends. The death toll in Indi due to Covid has risen to  the figure of 95,000+ .  The number of cases in first 20 days of Sept rose considerably, and for the week ending on 27^th Sept it has shown the reduction of about 50,000 cases over the earlier week. For your information as an on 1^st Sept India had 2.3 million cases less then USA, but by 26^th Sept this difference came down to 1,1 million, which implies that the peak is subsiding in USA, but in India whether peak is going to subside further will be only known during next couple of weeks, till then let us keep our fingers crossed. Now as of 27^th Sept 2020 the details of Maharashtra is  Total cases 13.39 Lakh, Recovered 10.3 Lakh, Active cases 2.7 Lakh and Deaths 35,571, Fatality rate 2.7% and correspondingly Mumbai has contribution of Mumbai in this is- Total cases 1.99 Lakh, Recovered 1.63 Lakh, Active cases 26,716 and Deaths 8794, Fatality rate 4.4%. The fatality rate of Mumbai is much higher that National and Maharashtra’s average, which is quite surprising as compared to other parts of Maharashtra, the availability of medical facilities are much better in Mumbai.

The National R value- which indicates the likely number of people a patient can infect- has gone below 1 during last week in five high infected states, including Maharashtra and Karnataka, but still profile  of disease in 5 big cities Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru  is not clear. As per the experts India is dependent on how Maharashtra is doing because for a large number of active cases and therefore, it is going to contribute to national average. Of course, it will also depend on the magnitude of R value But so far, Maharashtra continues to dominate the value of India. Now if India is able to sustain the R value below 1 for a longer period of time,  then only epidemic may start declining.

B– Friends, about 3 months back when news of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death came, there was too much media hype, and all the TV channels and social media was full of news relating to this case, and all were blaming the Mumbai Police and Maharashtra govt for bungling the case, and there were allegations that the govt is trying to shield some VIPs in this case. In the end case was taken away from Mumbai Police and given to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Then it was discovered that one of the friend of Sushant  was supplying drugs (narcotics) to him, and then Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) was called for. It looks like after the involvement of NCB, the original case of Sushant’s death is forgotten, and NCB has started investing who and who of Bollywood is consuming/buying/dealing in drugs, and in the process they have called few female actors for enquiry and confiscated their mobile phones. It looks like Maharashtra govt and Mumbai Police must be feeling quite happy that the focus has been shifted from death case to drug enquiry, and the focus has been shifted from involvement of VIPs in death case. For your information I want to add that it is a known fact that in the entertainment  and fashion industry use of narcotics is highly prevalent, as both these industries give lot of stress to the people involved in them. It looks like NCB is trying to prove this which is a  already known fact. Till date have any agency has come with the fact that Sushant died because of overdose of drugs forcibly given by someone known to him. Now out of many people summoned by NCB, only 2 or 3 people had direct contact with Sushant, and among them are actress Rhea Chakravorty and her brother, now if they had supplied drugs to Sushant which led to his death then take them into custody and charge sheet them for murder and let the due course of law follow. Instead they are in custody of law, because of possession and procurement of drugs, which should be a separate case.   To me it looks like there is a concrete effort by some people in NCB/CBI to divert the attention from Sushant’s death case.

Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

28^th September 2020.