Life convict seeks conjugal rights in jail

In a plea before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, a woman serving a life sentence has requested that she be granted conjugal rights with her husband, who is on death roll, within the prison so that she could bear a child. The couple, convicted in the abduction and murder of a 16-year-old-boy, has stated that the accused (husband) is the only son of his parents and they wish to have a heir to the family.

Jasvir Singh and Sonia, within eight months of their marriage, kidnapped the boy and killed him in Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Lodged separately in the Central Jail, Patiala, the two were first awarded death penalty by the trial court under Section 364 A, 201, 120-B of the India Penal Code, which was confirmed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court here. Singh was given the death sentence while Sonia received a life term for the crime.

Plea challenged

While the couple now want a common cell so that they can have a child before Jasvir is hanged to death, Ravi Verma, father of the slain teenager, has challenged the couple’s petition in the High Court. “Had they known the value of children they would not have killed my son. When we came to know of the petition seeking conjugal rights to have a child, we moved the High Court. We will fight it tooth and nail,” Mr. Verma said.

Right to procreate

The court has appointed an amicus curiae to assist the court to arrive at a decision. Gursharan Kaur Mann, Sonia’s counsel, said the right to procreate survived in imprisonment. Even if the person has been sentenced to death, his rights would remain the same.

The couple kidnapped the boy in a car on February 14, 2005, while he was on his way to school and demanded a ransom of Rs. 50 lakh. But even as negotiations were on, his naked body was dumped near Adampur town, 20 km from Hoshiarpur. The child died after an overdose of a tranquillizer. They dumped the body, but continued the ransom drama till police caught up with them.

New lease of life for 20 children from Malawi

Thanks to the Rotary Club of Chandigarh, 20 children from Malawi suffering from congenital heart diseases will get free treatment here.

Announcing the arrival of the first batch of four such children, the club said that the offer to provide free treatment was made in April this year, when a team of doctors, led by former world president of Rotary International Rajendra K. Saboo and then district governor Madhukar Malhotra, went to Malawi and Zambia on a medical mission and treated patients there.

Project Heartline

The club has been running the Project Heartline, earlier known as Gift of Life, since 1999 and providing free treatment to children suffering from congenital heart diseases. “So far, 365 children have been saved and whenever there is a deserving case in and around Chandigarh, the Rotary always takes up such cases,” Mr. Saboo said.

“The idea of taking up cases from other countries is also to serve beyond our borders and live up to the eternal saying Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam [The world is one family].” In the past, two children from Afghanistan, six from Nepal, 24 from Pakistan and 12 from Uganda have been treated free here.

The four children who arrived from Malawi with their guardians were: Brain Milanzi (2) suffering from atrial septal defect , Hasting Maloya (6) and Patience Nkhoma (6) — both suffering from ventral septal defect — and Prisca Patrick (14) diagnosed with patent ductus arteriosus.

Mr. Saboo said all these children would be operated upon at Fortis Hospital in Mohali, one of the partner hospitals of Rotary Heartline project. Ten doctors from Malawi are expected to arrive in the country for advanced short-term training, courtesy the Rotary. So far, 365 children have been saved. “The idea is to save beyond our borders”

A school for monkeys

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government has sought clearance from the Central Zoo Authority to set up an ultra-modern facility to tame, rehabilitate and teach manners to rogue monkeys.

The first-of-its-kind monkey school will provide inmates with medical care and good-behaviour training. “In addition to veterinary doctors, the centre will have experts and it would be a sort of good manners school for the monkeys,” said a senior official of the Punjab Wildlife Department, on Friday.

Alarming situation
“There have been several cases of monkey bites and the problem has reached such an alarming situation that every week there are one or two cases of monkey biting from across the district. This is why we have decided to build a rehabilitation centre adjacent to a mini zoo in Patiala. This will be the first such centre in the State,” Chief Wildlife Warden of Punjab R.K. Luna said.

According to Mr. Luna, the monkey population has reached 50,000 in the State and around 10,000 in Patiala. The aim is to target monkeys that pose a serious threat to people in Punjab, as the animals move into towns and cities looking for food. They usually create havoc by chasing and attacking residents, injuring them and snatching their belongings.

Complaints with civic bodies and Divisional Forest Offices have been pending mainly because there is no place the animals can be kept after they are caught.

Jasmer Singh, DFO Wildlife, Patiala, said: “Once the centre is functional, forest officials in Punjab will be able to catch monkeys from residential areas and send them across so that they can be taught to be decent and live socially with other monkeys.”

Bad behaviour
Officials accuse them of a variety of bad behaviour from terrorising children to destroying property. Macaque monkeys destroy TV antennae, tear down clothes lines and damage scooters and motorcycles.

“Besides people landing in hospitals after encounters with monkeys, the animals also often get hurt when house owners try to chase them away or keep them out by using live electric wires and other means,” Mr. Luna added.

Minister for Forests and Wildlife Tikshan Sud said the case file had been sent to the Central Zoo Authority and a location on Dakala Road in Patiala identified.

u judge this….

Vrinda Sharma
Staff Reporter

CHANDIGARH: Former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Nirmal Yadav was granted bail by a CBI court here, on Saturday, in cases of corruption, conspiracy, destroying evidence and creation of false eviedenc ein the infamous cash-at-judge’s door scam.

ON 13th August, 2008 a sum of Rs 15 lakh was wrongly delivered at the residence of Justice Nirmaljit Kaur, another judge of the High Court here. She reported the matter to Chandigarh Police and it was later found out that he cash was meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav.

Justice Yadav, who retired as a judge in the Uttarakhand High Court, personally appeared before the trial court judge in the district courts complex here following a direction by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. She furnished a bail bond of Rs.25,000 and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court directed her to be present at the next date of hearing Sep 16. Accompanied by her lawyer S K Garg and lawyer and family friend Preduman Yadav, 62-year-old Justice Yadav appeared before the Court of Special Judge Ritu Tagore nearly 30 minutes after the proceedings in the case had started.

Yadav was a sitting judge in the high court here when the scam was reported. The police later arrested the then Haryana additional advocate general, Sanjeev Bansal, a property dealer Rajiv Gupta and Delhi-based hotelier Ravinder Singh in this connection. Bansal and Gupta told the police that the money was meant for Nirmal Yadav. They claimed that another packet containing Rs.15 lakh was separately delivered to Yadav at her Sector 24 official residence later after the first packet was wrongly delivered to the other woman judge. Yadav, who went on leave after the episode surfaced, was later transferred to the Uttarakhand High Court.

While the case was transferred from Chandigarh Police to the CBI, the Supreme Court also set up a committee of senior judges to investigative the matter separately. Besides the chargesheet, the CBI also submitted a 126-page docum entary evidence in the case.

Justice Yadav had earlier submitted before the court that she had been falsely implicated by the CBI, politicians and bureaucrats, contending that they have made her a scapegoat because her brother was a minister in the Haryana government. Her brother Capt Ajay Singh Yadav is a six-time Congress MLA from Rewari and currently holds the power portfolio in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in the state. (Eom)

Brides purchased, then exploited in Haryana, Punjab

Decades of unchecked sex-selective abortions have made the once fertile States of Punjab and Haryana suffer a drought of brides, making human-trafficking a lucrative and expanding trade. Often projected as a voluntary marriage, every year, thousands of young women and girls are lured into the idea of a happy married life with a rich man in Punjab or Haryana. Sadly most ‘purchased brides’ are exploited, denied basic rights, duplicated as maids, and eventually abandoned.

Only solution

With skewed sex ratios (Punjab-893, Haryana-877 females per 1,000 males) it is impossible to find a bride for each man, and ‘importing a bride’ has become the only solution. Also, with the tradition of not marrying within the same village and eligible girls marrying the wealthiest suitor, often NRIs, the majority of men in villages are left unmarried and often addicted to drugs.

“What is wrong in marrying a poor girl? I demanded no dowry, rather her family’s social and economic position has improved,” said an agitated Prakash Singh of Harsola village in Kaithal (Haryana), when asked why he married a 19-year-old girl hailing from a poor village from Assam. Interestingly, Mr. Singh has three brothers and no sister; he does not believe that there is any dearth of women in his village.

“There were no eligible girls in our village or social circle. After my son turned 35, we realised that unless we accept a non-Punjabi girl he would never be married and no one would carry the family name forward; so we had to make arrangements,” said Mahinder Singh, an elderly man in Pohlo Majra, Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab). The migration might seem to be a measure to correct the gender imbalance, but the ultimate goal is producing sons.

“Marriage to an imported bride makes caste, language and culture immaterial as long as the price is paid to the girl’s family and a male child is born. Depending on the age, looks and virginity of a girl, grooms pay anywhere from Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 300,000,” said Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini, a non-governmental organisation working on the issue.

The obvious need gives the practice a social sanction and makes it look like a social service: Sushma Kaur of Pohlo Majra, who married a Sikh man 15 years elder to her, calls it a ‘blessing.’ “My uncle arranged the match, it was difficult in the beginning because of the new language and the culture, but my husband took care of me…My village in Bengal has an excess of females and no one to care for them, and it is a great service if I can arrange a matrimonial match. Ever since I got married, 10 years ago, over a dozen girls have followed me from Bengal,” she says with pride. She added that none of the girls were ill-treated; however, it was not unheard of.

A field study on the impact of sex ratio on the pattern of marriages in Haryana by Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra covering over 10,000 households, revealed that over 9,000 married women in Haryana were bought from other States. The study which covered 92 villages of Mahendragarh, Sirsa, Karnal, Sonepat, and Mewat districts said that most of the people accepted it as a common practice, but denied having bought a bride in their family.

Most untraceable

“In every village there are over 50 girls that have been bought; some of them as young as 13 and a very small percentage of the ‘sold for marriage’ women are found to be living a married life. Most are untraceable or exploited or duplicated as domestic servants by the agents or men who marry/buy them. There are also instances of girls being resold to other persons after living a married life for a few years,” the study added.

Most of them come from poverty-ridden villages of Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa, because their families need money; and despite the prevalence of the dowry system in the north Indian states, men are ready to pay for a wife.

bribe me with a Bride

Jind(Haryana): With a skewed sex ratio of 861 females to 1,000 males due to decade of female foeticide and a high unemployment rate, it is not surprise that men in Haryana have asked the politicians to ‘bribe them with a Bride’.

Over 250 bachelors assembled in Jind on Wednesday, to protest against the government for being unable to provide employment and brides to them. “Our motto is clear Bahu do; vote lo (give a bride and take a vote),” says Chief of the Bachelors Union, Pawan Kunwara, who has changed his sur name to –Kunwara(bachelor), “being a bachelor is my only identity,” he explains.

On being asked why he choose the issue of unemployment and female foeticide he said that, “The two are not separate, I can’t get a wife because there are hardly any girls and if somehow there is a girl, chances are her father will refuse me because I don’t have a job. Hence to solve the problems of the Haryanavi youth, these two issues have to be solved together.”

Ahead of the Assembly elections on 13th Aug, the bachelors are demanding that political parties make promises of weddings and jobs instead of farm waivers. “The question is not about us being unmarried, it shows that educated men can’t find wives. No one will marry his daughter to an unemployed person. And instead of wavering off debt, we should provide new avenues of employment, so that no one has to take a loan.” But political parties have nothing more then a promised monthly allowance of Rs 3,000 for the educated unemployed.

Brainless sex preference and preference of a male child has made one of the most fertile lands of the country a matrimonial wasteland and presence of unemployment amongst the youth has added to the woes of the Bachelors. “The number of our unemployed bachelors would outnumber most countries’ armies, and still people think it is funny. It is high time we take a step to stop female foeticide and provide employment options to men,” Mr Kunwara added.

The sex ratio of 861 females to 1,000 males the absence of marriageable women has given boost to the crime of trafficking. In many villages of Haryana, wealthy men have to purchase brides from other states as there is a shortage of marriageable females, which is due to rampant Female foeticide.
(Eom)

Justice- Recused

CHANDIGARH: Former Haryana DGP SPS Rathore’s conviction in the 1990 teen molestation case came after 19 years, however final hearing is far from near as yet another Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on Tuesday, recused itself from hearing the matter. For the fifth time in the last three months the case has been referred to some other bench as all benches have recused themselves from hearing a PIL seeking direction to take action against those officials who sided with Mr Rathore and prolonged the case for almost 20 years.

A special CBI court had convicted Mr Rathore for molesting a teenage girl in 1990, who committed suicide in 1993, he was sentenced to six months imprisonment. On Tuesday the bench of Justice SK Mittal and Justice Arvind Kumar referred the matter to some other Bench, after obtaining orders from the high court Chief Justice. The petition will now come up before a Bench in which Justice Mittal is not a part. Earlier on 28th July, the matter was placed before the Bench of Justice Mittal and Justice AN Jindal. But it was referred to some other Bench, after Justice Jindal recused himself.

Prior to that, on 7th July, Bench of Justice MM Kumar and Justice Gurdev Singh had issued similar orders. Before that, on May 13, the Division Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice AN Jindal had also recused itself. The Bench of Chief Justice and Justice Surya Kant had refused to hear the matter before that.

The public interest litigation(PIL) filed by an NGO World Human Rights Council had sought an independent probe in the case from the date of her molestation and also for action against officers who sided with SPS Rathore and enabled the trial to continue for over 19 years. After conviction Mr Rathore filed a plea against the decision which was opposed by the CBI, rejecting Rathore’s appeal against his conviction, the Chandigarh District Court, on 25th May, 2009 sentenced him to one and a half years of rigorous imprisonment. However, in November 2010, the Supreme Court granted bail to Mr Rathore on the condition that he should not leave Chandigarh. (Eom)

Anna supporters stage protests in Chandigarh

Volunteers of city-based NGOs and local supporters of social activist Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill defied prohibitory orders and staged protests outside the Prime Minister’s house here on Tuesday.

Additional security has been provided at Manmohan Singh’s private bungalow here, as well as to residences of his Cabinet colleagues such as Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni.

Gaurav Goel and B.S. Makkar, members of an NGO, said people were frustrated with the system and had taken to the streets. “The government should reach a consensus with the Anna team to resolve the issue,” a supporter added.

Several Anna supporters also staged a dharna in front of Mr. Bansal’s residence.

Army begins biggest operation to destroy deadly scrap

LUDHIANA: Mortar bombs, projectiles, grenades, rockets, detonators, artillery shells were unheard of in Shekowal and Kalewal village, until Indian Army’s biggest operation to dispose off scrap ammunitions began there in November.

Over 30 kms from here, 738 residents and 2,500 animals of the villages are evacuated each day by the police to the nearby Gurdwara and other safe places so that the Army can transport, segregate and then dispose of over 17,000 pieces of ammunitions of unknown origin that made their way to the centre of the industrial capital of Punjab.

Steel and other metal re-rolling units in Punjab had imported the scrap at throwaway prices between 1999 and 2004. They had not specified the nature of the consignment and only mentioning scrap while taking permission for the imports. It was only during inspections by Customs that their hazardous nature was discovered at a dry port in the industrial hub of Ludhiana in 2004 but it took nearly six years to start the process of disposing it off.

“Bomb disposal is always high risk so we take extra precautions to ensure the safety of the men handling the ammunition, the villagers and even the cattle. We execute six to eight blasts every day and the project should be complete in two months. The sheer scale of the operation has given us a chance to train our team,” said Lt. Col. Vinod Bhat, commanding officer of the 202 Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU), about the Operation.

The operation has been named ‘Saiyam'(patience). “We have been trained but each time a bomb is picked or placed there is considerable risk involved, that is why the remote controlled vehicles, telescopic handling machines, bomb suits etc are used, if proper precautions are taken there is little fear left,” said a jawan in a bomb suit as he picked a rusted piece of metal and carefully placed it on a padded crane. The scrap was intended to be recycled for the steel industry and had the explosives gone off while melting the scrap, consequences would have been catastrophic.

The ammunitions, weighing over 50 tonnes, was imported into the country in the garb of metal scrap to be recycled into steel. It was stored in five containers, four of which were 20 feet long and one was 40 feet in length at the dry port which is located inside a populated area in Ludhiana. Operation Saiyam will cost about Rs. 13.5 million and the authorities have levied this penalty on the eight private individuals who imported the scrap. Till now, Army officers have conducted over 60 blasts and destroyed over 1400 pieces. “It is only through visual inspection that we saying that there are about 17,000 pieces of ammunitions. We have not counted them physically. The number can go up when we take actual stock of the situation in the coming days,” he said. “This is a very tedious process and consumes a long time. Our officers cannot rush things and they have to be very patient. Therefore, we keep rotating our officers on different jobs so that monotony does not set in,” Lt. Col. Bhat pointed out.

The villagers have been told to keep away from their fields between 7 am and 5 pm till the operation is completed. Army aims to destroy the large calibre ammunition first so that the villages can be rehabilitates as soon as possible, “the cooperation of the villagers is very important, we have 12 police posts to ensure that once the blasts begin, there is no one around the area and until we are left with very small calibre ammunitions, we won’t take any risk,” Lt Col Bhatt said adding the most dangerous are the hand grenades as most of them are without their pins.

will to survive is mightier than nature’s wrath

DAGSHAI: Destruction could not defeat the determination of Tsewang(14) and Kunzang(12), sisters who lost their family when flash flood in Leh flattened their home but they found a fresh lease of life when the western command of Indian Army adopted them. Presently studying at the Army Public school in Dagshai, the sisters were overwhelmed by the gestures of Lieutenant General S.R. Ghosh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Army Command, who met the two girls at Dagshai on the sidelines of the army school’s annual day celebrations and felicitate them.
Over 190 people were killed and another 200 went missing in the flash floods in Leh after the cloudburst. In the devastation that the natural disaster left in the Ladakh region, several thousands lost their families and were rendered homeless. The army was in the forefront of the immediate rescue and relief operations in the Ladakh region that went on for over a month. When Ladakh Scouts regiment of the Indian Army in which their father had served came to know about their plight, the girls were adopted and admitted to the prestigious school at Dagshai in Himachal Pradesh. Commanding Officer (CO) of Ladakh Scouts and his wife are now custodians of these teenagers.

Father of the two sisters, a soldier with Ladakh scouts died during the Kargil war in 1999 and their mother married his younger brother. On 6th August last year the girls lost their mother, step father and step brother as rubble covered the entire Choglamsar village. The girls survived the tragedy as Tsewang had gone to a nearby village Saboo to meet one of her relatives and Kunzang was in the school hostel. “The loss is irreparable and we can not make up for what nature snatched away but we will ensure that they get the best of education and are taken care of in every way possible. They will be provided the best of exposure to the world so that they can grown up as confident girls and pursue their lives, “said , Lt Gen S R Ghosh.

The girls get emotional and often breakdown crying while talking about the day when they were orphaned but soon the indomitable spirit and steely resolve of these two girls wins over the sad memory as they start to speak about their friends and school. “I miss the traditional food and my grandmother but i plan to take some of my friends to Leh and teach them the language,”said Kunzang who aims to be a cardiologist and Tsewang wants to become a pilot in the Indian Airforce.

Today, both of them are adjusting to their new lives, “i love to play basketball and study so that i can become a doctor,”said Tsewang. “The school is very nice and the teachers are very helpful. Both of us have made new friends and enjoy the studies a lot,”she added. A teacher at the school said that they girls were an inspiration to many, “Despite the grief and loss they have adjusted so well to their new life that all of us feel inspired. Army and the school provide them will all the comforts but it is truly their spirit to survive that has kept them going so well.”