🇲🇺 DPP seeks discipline for two Sodnac officers over a detainee's sex claim

DPP seeks discipline for two Sodnac officers over a detainee's sex claim

The Director of Public Prosecutions has asked the police to open disciplinary proceedings against two officers at Sodnac police station. One, a constable, is suspected of having had sexual relations with a woman who was locked in a cell there. The policewoman on duty, the one assigned to watch that cell, now faces action of her own.

The detainee is Lisa Lily Romain, a French national the ADSU arrested in March, and she remains in custody on suspicion of importing 16 kilos of drugs. The recommendation from the DPP's office rests on an interim report that the police themselves handed up, which makes this an internal account the force cannot easily wave away.

Central Barracks say the case will run under the force's Standing Orders. Discipline is one track. Whether the alleged conduct also opens a criminal file is the question that decides if this ends as paperwork or as a prosecution, and that choice sits with the same office that just ordered the discipline.

Life in prison for Magdeleine, who killed two elderly men in eight months

Christopher Jonathan Magdeleine, 40, will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The assizes sentenced him on Friday for the April 2023 murder of Sri Balkrishna Luchmaya, 90, who died of asphyxiation in his Port Louis fabric shop. He had pleaded guilty.

Judge Mehdi Manrakhan noted a disturbing similarity to an earlier killing: in eight months Magdeleine had taken the lives of two elderly men, both strangled, both robbed. A timely guilty plea, the judge held, does not by itself earn a lighter term.

Airlink opens a direct Cape Town to Mauritius route, skipping Joburg

A South African carrier has put Cape Town within a single flight of Mauritius. Airlink flew its inaugural service on Friday, the first time it has reached the island, and the first direct link that skips usual change at Johannesburg.

It runs twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, on a 124-seat Embraer E195-E2. Its chief executive, de Villiers Engelbrecht, calls the route a major addition that ties two tourism and business markets closer.

Another carrier betting on the island helps seat prices; the test is whether both weekly flights fill once the novelty fades.

Pay your road fines online from 30 October, no court queue

Hate queueing at a district court to settle a road fine? From 30 October you can pay fixed-penalty fines online through the Supreme Court portal, logging in with MauPass and paying by Juice, Pop, or card. For now it covers only fines that carry no penalty points; a later phase adds the rest, including the fines from the island's 63 speed cameras.

With 280,000 aged over 60, hospitals add wards for the elderly

Around 280,000 Mauritians are now 60 or older, and the health service is reshaping care around them. Ten Acute Care of the Elderly wards, five for men and five for women, are open in public hospitals, built to treat the tangle of conditions that tend to arrive together in older patients.

An ageing island is a budget story as much as a health one; the wards are the easy part, the staffing is not.

Shorts

A vet school and animal hospital for Belle-Rive – India is helping fund the new Belle-Rive complex, with a dog refuge planned at Richelieu.

SC English oral pushed to 14 November – The oral exam moves back because 9 November is a holiday, the day after Divali.

Tougher road penalties now in force – Drink or drug driving can now cost your licence for months, and drivers are split on it.

New STC board under Gilbert Shu – Gilbert Shu now chairs a rebuilt STC board, with Jayen Chellun speaking for consumers.

Mauritius line up two friendlies with Sri Lanka – The football double-bill against Sri Lanka carries plenty of unknowns.

Rs 58 billion

Statistics Mauritius has revised the 2023 economy upward by that much. A bigger base quietly flatters the debt and deficit ratios without a single new rupee earned.

1.6 million

pupils in Libya still has no school year, as teachers keep walking out over unpaid wages and term stays postponed in the divided country.

100 million barrels

of diesel will hit the market after G7 countries agreed to release reserves to cool prices. For a country that imports every drop it burns, the pump is watching.

Egypt arrests a whole fact-checking newsroom as unlicensed

Egypt's interior ministry says it arrested six staff of an independent outlet that checks facts, calling it unlicensed and tying it to the banned Muslim Brotherhood. Press freedom groups read it differently.

Journalists there have long worked in a narrow space. Detaining a whole team, rather than an editor or two, raises the cost of doing the work at all.

Guinea-Bissau's junta blocks Embalo's return

The military has refused to let former president Umaro Sissoco Embalo come home, citing security days after he said he would.

Sickle cell still hits Uganda hard

The inherited blood disorder strikes close to 20,000 Ugandan newborns a year, bringing bouts of severe pain.

A third US carrier steams toward Iran as Trump weighs strikes

The United States is sending a third aircraft carrier and more troops to the Middle East, piling pressure on Iran as President Trump weighs possible strikes. Three carrier groups in one theatre is not a drill posture, it is the kind of build-up that tends to precede a decision.

For Mauritius the worry is an old one. Anything that rattles the Gulf rattles the oil price, and the island imports every drop it burns.

Putin raises the nuclear threat over Kaliningrad

President Putin warns Russia could use its full arsenal, nuclear included, if Kaliningrad is attacked, accusing NATO of eyeing a blockade of the exclave.

Borrowing turns pricey as US yields hit a 2002 high

The US 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.344%, its highest since 2002, in a global bond sell-off that makes government debt dearer everywhere.

The drug squad shows up and the streets go quiet

Here is how you know the ADSU is coming into Port Louis: the dealers know first. When the squad rolled out toward Parc Coson, Karo Kalyptis, and La Grotte, lookouts on motorbikes were circling the Abercrombie police yard, phoning ahead.

By 9.30am the usual corners had gone still. Two shows of force in under 48 hours bought a few quiet hours; keeping the lead, the squad admits, is the harder trick.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

Enjoying 4minit?
❤️ Share 4minit with someone who'd enjoy it
📲 Follow us on Facebook and Instagram
🤝 Get in touch to sponsor us

Feedback | Unsubscribe