Working for over a month, the men in the jail produced more than 80,000 cotton bags of the three crore required by the district administration to seal the ballot boxes.

Putting in extra effort, the men also produced 2,30,000 candles and made 6000 uniforms for the home guards to be deployed in the district for election duty. They also made 1,92,640 metres of narrow tape required to seal the ballot boxes.

No water supply for fringe villages
Seven merged villages on the Pune-Alandi and Pune-Ahmednagar roads will not receive water supply on Friday due to a technical snag at Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran's water treatment plant at Chikhali.

Deputy City Engineer H L Ghume from Cantonment Water Works said the technical snag at the water treatment plant was noticed on Thursday evening. The repair works have been started, he added.

Seven villages, which are provided water under the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran's Wagholi regional water supply scheme, will not receive water on Friday as a result.

Among the affected areas were Kalas, Dhonori, Lohegaon, Vidya Nagar, Chandan Nagar, Kharadi and Wadgaon Sheri. These areas will receive water late and at low level on Saturday, Ghume said.

Duo wanted for cheating nabbed
The Bund Garden police have arrested two residents of Calcutta for cheating a city businessman to the tune of Rs 16 lakh under the garb of selling him spare parts of photocopying machines last month.

Ashok Kumar Madhusudhan Jayswal (42) and Amir Ul Islam Mohammed Abu Shahid alias A K Mukherjee (42) (both residents of Anandpura area in Calcutta) were arrested in Calcutta recently. Jayswal and Mukherjee are facing charges of duping Dhananjay Thite, who deals in the spare parts of photocopying machines in Pune on July 9, according to the police.

Stockbroker held
The Chatuhshringi police have claimed to have cracked a fake share scam following the arrest of a stockbroker operating from Senapati Bapat Road, on Wednesday.

According to the police, the accused, Chandrasahekhar Sadashiv Karkhanis (54), promised Govind Gajanan Joshi (65) to sell off shares held by him between March and September 1999, for an agreed sum. Although Karkhanis allegedly promised to pay Joshi more than Rs 66 lakh he only paid him Rs 8,50,000, defaulting on the balance of payment. When Karkhanis failed to pay the promised sum to Joshi despite repeated requests, Joshi lodged a complaint with the Chatuhshringi police station. Karkhanis was subsequently arrested and remanded to police custody for six days and assistant police inspector S R Kulkarni of the crime branch is conducting further investigations.