Beyond Layoff

Lessons from the story about Bangalore Techie being extorted - Let’s use social media judiciously to help those in need I was fascinated to see a thread of complaint posted by @vpatilav , a 22 year old intern from Himachal Pradesh who tweeted about being extorted by a couple of cops. His Twitter thread explained how he was illegally detained and extorted by cops while returning home after a late-night shift. The two cops on night duty allegedly planted a small twig of ganja (marijuana) in the youth’s bag and threatened to implicate him in a drug related case. They asked for cash in return for ‘letting him go.’ The techie paid them about Rs 2,500 before he could walk away. The distraught techie took to social media the next day and the story blew up on Reddit (thread) and elsewhere.  What was intriguing was that  @vpatilav , abruptly deleted the thread saying “Police was looking into the matter.” This led to speculation that he was being harassed for “falsely” accusing cops. Dear

103 people from an apartment in Bommanahalli in Bengaluru (India) tested positive for Covid-19 after a recent party in the complex. According to media reports, a party was held at the SNN Lake View apartment on February 4 and it was attended by most of the apartment residents. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad confirmed to the media that 103 people out of 1,052 residents of the apartment tested positive. “We have tested 1,052 residents of the apartment; one person is admitted in the hospital and others are in quarantine. The BBMP had put in place various measures, including isolating and quarantining those who had tested positive and we have intensified contact tracing,” Prasad said. The BBMP has also sent samples to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences(NIMHANS) to find the variant of the virus. “The Samples have been collected and sent for genome sequencing to the NIMHANS laboratory to ascertain the virus variant,” he said,