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Maidan (Kolkata)

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The Maidan (lit. 'open field'; Bengali: ময়দান), also referred to as the Brigade Parade Ground, is a large public park and urban green space in the center of Kolkata, India. With a total area of 988 acres (4.0 km2), it is the largest urban public park in India. It is a vast stretch of field that includes numerous sporting grounds, including the famous cricketing venue Eden Gardens, several football stadiums and the Kolkata Race Course. The Maidan is also dotted with many statues and architectural works, the most notable being the Victoria Memorial. Due to the freshness and greenery it provides to the metropolis, it has been referred to as the "lungs of Kolkata".The property of the Indian Army, the Maidan hosts the army's Eastern zone high command in historic Fort William. The Maidan stretches from the Raj Bhavan building on the Esplanade in the north to the National Library on Belvedere Road in Alipore in the south. The wide field stretches from the Hooghly River in the west to the Victoria Memorial in the east. The park is considered the historical and cultural center of Kolkata, as well as one of the city's most popular tourist attractions and a hub of leisure and entertainment for Calcuttans.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Maidan (Kolkata) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Maidan (Kolkata)
Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Kolkata Ho Chi Minh Sarani (Kolkata District)

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Latitude Longitude
N 22.551388888889 ° E 88.347222222222 °
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Jawaharlal Nehru Road

Jawaharlal Nehru Road
700071 Kolkata, Ho Chi Minh Sarani (Kolkata District)
West Bengal, India
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2002 attack on American cultural centre in Kolkata
2002 attack on American cultural centre in Kolkata

Four police constables and a private security guard were killed and 20 other people injured when, on 22 January 2002, Islamic militants attacked an American cultural centre in Kolkata, India. The centre houses a library, the American embassy's public affairs office, a press section and a cultural wing.Two motorcycle-borne attackers, draped in shawls, sped up to the American Centre building at about 6:15 IST, refusing to stop at checkpoints and began shooting at police guards from an AK-47 assault rifle who returned fire. Four of the dead were Kolkata police constables while the one of the dead belonged to a private security agency Group Four. The constables killed in the attack were identified as Pijush Sarker, Ujjal Burman, Suresh Hembram and Anup Mondal and belonged to the 5th battalion of Kolkata Armed Police.Two groups claimed responsibility for the attack. A Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI) member, Farhan Malik owned responsibility and said the attack was in protest against "the evil empire of America", while another person claiming to be a member of Asif Raza Commandos, a gang with ties to radical Islamic groups, claimed responsibility. Malik was also wanted in connection with a case of kidnapping a Kolkata shoe baron Partha Pratim Roy Barman, who was later released on a ransom of ₹37.5 million.Four days after the attack, two men — Salim and Zahid — were killed in an encounter with a Delhi police team in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. The police had come to know about the involvement of Aftab Ansari in the American Centre attack from the dying declarations of Salim and Zahid.On 23 January 2002, Aftab Ansari alias Farhan Malik, prime suspect in the attack was arrested in Dubai. On 9 February 2002, he was deported to India. Ansari was in possession of Pakistani travel documents with his passport number J872142, being issued in Lahore in February, 2000, in the name of Shafiq Mohammad Rana.On 28 April 2005, a Special CBI Court found Aftab Ansari and six others guilty for the attack. Aftab Ansari and Jamiluddin Nasir were sentenced to death under Section 121 of the Indian Penal Code for waging war against the state. The others sentenced along with Ansari are: Rehan Alam, Musharat Hussain, Adil Hasan, Hasrat Alam and Shakir Akhtar.On 5 February 2010, the Calcutta High Court upheld the death sentence of Aftab Ansari and Jamiluddin Nasir but commuted the capital punishment awarded to three others to seven years imprisonment.

Birla Planetarium, Kolkata
Birla Planetarium, Kolkata

The Birla Planetarium (officially M. P. Birla Planetarium) in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, is a single-storeyed circular structure designed in the typical Indian style, whose architecture is loosely styled on the Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi. Situated at Chowringhee Road adjacent to the Victoria Memorial, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Maidan in Central Kolkata, it is the largest planetarium in Asia and the second largest planetarium in the world. There are two other Birla Planetariums in India: B.M. Birla Planetarium in Chennai and the Birla Planetarium in Hyderabad. Popularly known as taramandal, the planetarium was inaugurated on 2 July 1963 by the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. It has an electronics laboratory for design and fabrication of science equipment. It has an astronomy gallery that maintains a huge collection of fine paintings and celestial models of renowned astronomers. The Planetarium also has an astronomical observatory equipped with a Celestron C-14 Telescope with accessories such as ST6 CCD camera and solar filter. It offers to the public and students more than 100 astronomical projects dealing with various facts of astronomy, astro-physics, Space Science as well as myths concerning stars and planets. It has a capacity of 6800. Daily programs are conducted in English, Bengali and Hindi from 12:00 to 19:00 hrs. The show timing is as follows: Mon to Sat - 12.30 PM HINDI, 1.30 PM ENGLISH, 2.30 PM HINDI, 3.30 PM BENGALI, 4.30 PM HINDI, 5.30 PM BENGALI, 6.30 PM ENGLISH and two extra shows on Sunday and Holiday is 10.30 AM HINDI, 11.30 AM BENGALI (updated on 15.08.2017) Programs are occasionally conducted in Odiya, Tamil and Gujarati, as well. Extra shows are arranged on holidays. The Planetarium was constructed by ML Dalmiya & Co. which is owned by Board of Control for Cricket in India former President late Jagmohan Dalmiya. It reopened to public on 18 July 2017, after closing down for 28 months of renovations work. The new planetarium system for the Birla Planetarium is a so-called ZEISS Hybrid Planetarium, with the STARMASTER, an optical-mechanical planetarium projector (also called “Starball”) working in synch with a dome video display system. The Starball presents the most realistic starfield in the dome with superimposed images of constellation outlines, space objects like nebula and galaxies, planets and moons by the VELVET digital video system, called fulldome projection. The technical upgrade was delivered and installed by the German company Carl Zeiss AG.