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Indian police seek spycam Swedish model: report

Police in India said they were continuing their hunt for Swedish photo model Lucky Mångårda after the 34-year-old whistleblower claimed to have further video evidence of links between Goa police and the region's drug mafia, New Delhi TeleVision (NDTV) reports.

Published: 9 May 2010 12:54 CEST
Updated: 26 May 2010 21:33 CEST
Indian police seek spycam Swedish model: report

“We have been trying to trace her,” said Goa Crime Branch deputy superintendent Chandrakant Salgaokar, according to NDTV.

Mångårda has strongly rejected the claim however. Writing on her website, the model said the police had not made any attempts to contact her until after the publication of recent reports. But writing on May 12th, she said she had now finally received “a new penfriend” in the form of police from Goa.

Mångårda first came to the attention of the authorities when she posted spycam footage to YouTube of her drug dealer Israeli husband Yaniv ‘Atala’ Benaim. The video resulted in the arrests in March of Atala and half a dozen Goa police officers, the Times of India reports.

The Swedish model revealed last month she was in possession of further incriminating video material tying police in Goa, as well as the son of a local politician, to the region’s drug trade.

“I have not put out all the (spycam) recordings because I need to save those in case they will be coming after me. If they make any problem for me in the future, I will put it out,” she wrote in an email to NDTV in April.

Mångårda, also known as Lucky Nova, said she had been working recently as an extra in Bollywood but did not reveal her current whereabouts in her most recent email exchange this weekend with NDTV.

Mångårda has featured in several ad campaigns and glamour shoots, and also participated in 2000 in reality TV show Villa Medusa.

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INDIA

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears

Spain will make all travellers arriving from India undergo a 10-day quarantine to prevent the potential spread of the Asian country’s coronavirus variant within the Spanish territory.

Published: 27 April 2021 15:38 CEST
Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears
Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP

Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero made the announcement on Tuesday, explaining that as there are no direct flights between Spain and India, it isn’t possible for Spain to adopt measures such as banning arrivals outright as other European countries have done.

The quarantine requirement for travellers arriving to Spain from India starts on May 1st 2021.

India joins a number of South American and African nations that are already on Spain’s quarantine list to stem the spread of the Brazilian and South African variants. 

According to the Spanish government’s website, those “coming from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of South Africa, Republic of Botswana, Union of Comoros, Republic of Ghana, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe, Republic of Peru and Republic of Colombia, must remain in quarantine for 10 days after their arrival in Spain, or for the duration of their stay if it is shorter than that. This period may end earlier, if on the seventh day the person is tested for acute infection with negative results.”

India is currently battling a record-breaking rise in Covid-19 infections that has overwhelmed hospitals and led to severe bed and oxygen shortages.

A key question is whether a new variant with potentially worrying mutations – B.1.617 – is behind what is currently the world’s fastest-growing outbreak, setting four records in a row for the highest daily coronavirus infections by one country, the latest on Sunday with 349,691 new cases.

The country has also been recording around 3,000 deaths per day from Covid-19. 

Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands have all imposed restrictions or travel bans on arrivals from India in recent days.

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“No cases of the Indian variant have been detected to date to my knowledge,” Spain’s Emergencies Coordinator Chief Fernando Simón told journalists on Monday. 

“The intel does not indicate that we have to worry about it,” he added, given that the UK variant now makes up 94 percent of all infections in Spain. 

“We cannot rule out that a case (of the Indian variant) may be detected”, Simón admitted, but “so far it is not a variant of concern, it is a variant of interest”.

Patients breath with the help of oxygen masks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi on April 27th, 2021. (Photo by Money SHARMA / AFP)

That is not a view shared by Amós José García Rojas , president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinations (AEV), who argues “we have to worry a lot” about the “chaos” that this new variant is leaving in the Asian country and why it could affect the spread of this strain of the virus.

“This new variant is fundamentally worrying because of what it is causing in India,” Rojas told medical publication Redacción Médica. 

“It shows that as there are territories where people are largely not vaccinated, there’s many people who are susceptible to the virus and it creates a breeding ground for the development of new variants”.

“We cannot vaccinate comprehensively in some countries and forget about other countries at the mercy of God.

“We have to worry about everyone because there is a risk that situations like the one seen in India will happen again. 

So far, the B.1.617 variant has been categorised by the World Health Organisation as a “variant of interest”.

Other variants detected in Brazil, South Africa and the UK have been categorised as “of concern”, because they are more transmissible, virulent or might reduce antibody efficacy.

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