Kumartuli or Kumortuli is located in the northern part of the city of Kolkata . The locality is a traditional habitat of the potters for nearly three hundred years. The potters or the artisans or the artists settled here during the restructuring of the Kolkata colonial region by the British East India Company . Earning a livelihood by making earthen pots and utensils first they gradually shifted to the making of the idols of Gods and Goddesses for various festivals round the year. With increasing demand and quality of their creations over time the artisans became famous and Kumartuli came to be known as the hub of idol makers supplying thousands of idols, particularly of Goddess Durga , to whole of the state of West Bengal and to NRIs of around 90 countries across the globe. At least three months before Durga Puja , the biggest festival of West Bengal and one of the biggest across Eastern India, more than five hundred workshops come alive with hyper activity day and night. Fir...
Jyotirmay Dey , crime editor of a Mumbai eveninger Midday, was shot dead in broad daylight yesterday afternoon at Powai township. Dey was returning home on his bike when four people on two motorcycles came up to him and shot five rounds of bullets into him from close range. This brutal murder looked to be very professional and it indicates involvement of the Mumbai underworld. More specifically the oil mafia. Apart from his regular articles Dey wrote two researched books on the underworld and recently he was writing a series on diesel adulteration in a particular locality near Mumbai for which he received threatening calls of late. An investigative journalist goes down to mafia bullets for writing his views. Only last January an additional district collector of the Government of Maharashtra, Yashwant Sonawane was burnt alive in broad daylight for inspecting suspicious activities of petrol and diesel adulteration. It's very disturbing. Both acts showed bold defiance of the pe...