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Eight killed in Kolkata building blaze

     Kolkata: Eight people, including four children were killed in a fire that broke out in a building in the congested part of Kolkata late on Wednesday night. Police said the fire, which started due to spill of kerosene oil, spread to large parts of the building. Police said five of the dead belonged to a family, including a 30 year-old woman and her four children. Deepak Sarkar, fire officer, said preliminary investigations revealed that the fire spread from a kerosene stove that was being used for cooking. People in the neighborhood claimed that kerosene was being fed to the lit stove when the blaze started. "The fire took place in the kitchen of the third floor of the five storeyed building. What we believe is that the fire took place after a huge amount of kerosene oil fell on top of a stove. This gave rise to a huge flame and the fire spread instantly," said Sarkar. Sarkar said eight fire engines were pressed into service but when they arrived they found it difficult to approach the building. The fire, however, did not spread beyond the second floor.

Gold palanquin stolen from Delhi gurudwara  (Go To Top)
by Megha Arora

     New Delhi: Robbers don't want to spare even religious places, it seems. In a shocking incident, robbers decamped with a gold- plated palanquin (palki) from Gurudwara Singh Sahib in Punjabi Bagh in the early hours on Thursday. This West Delhi Gurudwara had closed at 10 PM on Wednesday night. Ameer Singh, who performs sewa every morning, woke up to find the sacred Palki missing The Granth Sahib was placed on the Palki. The corner- most window of the Gurudwara was open. Alarmed, Ameer Singh immediately informed other families who reside nearby. They reported the theft to the Police who are investigating. No clues have been found so far. Besides being a robbery, the act is seen as a violation of sanctity of the place of worship. "Every night we close the Gurudwara at 10 PM and it is reopened at 4:30 in the morning. In every Gurudwara, the palaki and the dome are made of wood and then gold layers cover it. The thieves have even tried to remove the rest of the gold element from the dome," Jaspal Singh Chawla, secretary of the Gurudwara Singh Sabha said. The loss reported is to the tune of four -five lakh rupees. The Palki had only been installed a year ago with the money that had been collectively put together by the Singh Sabha Committee.

Saptharishi goes silent on Chhapra  (Go To Top)

     New Delhi: Senior bureaucrat L V Saptharishi who had kicked off a row by levelling serious charges against two Election Commissioners -- B.B.Tandon (now India's Chief Election Commisioner) and N.Gopalswamy (fomerly Union Home Secretary) over the countermanding of elections in Chhapra in Bihar last year, has refused to be drawn into the controversy. ''This is not the forum to talk about it...even off the record, I will not say anything'', Saptharishi said. The Senior IAS officer, who is the Director General of Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) made the statement on the sidelines of the inauguration of theSouthern Regional conference on ''Enabling Micro Enterprises for Sustainable Livelihood of the Marginalised''. Saptharishi who had served as Election observer in Chapra Lok Sabha constituency, where Railway Minister and RJD President Lalu Yadav was a cadidate, in the Lok Sabha elections in May last, had charged Tandon and Gopalaswamy with countermanding the elections in Chhapra, at the instance of the then Home Minister and BJP leader L K Advani. However, defending the Election Commission, the Centre, in the show cause notice, accused the West Bengal cadre IAS official of violating the Civil Service (Conduct) rules by attacking the Election Commissioners.

Dara Singh's death sentence set aside (Go To Top)

     Bhubaneswar: The Orissa High Court has set aside the death sentence awarded by a trial court to Dara Singh, the prime accused in the sensational triple murder of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons Phillips (11) and Timothy (8) in 1999. Dara's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sujit Barman Roy and Justice Laxmikant Mohapatra. The court retained the life imprisonment awarded by the lower court to Mahendra Hembram while acquitting all other appellants. The district and sessions judge Khurda M N Patnaik after a long- drawn trial had sentenced Dara to death while awarding life imprisonment to 12 others, including Hembram in his judgement pronounced on September 22, 2003. One of the accused Andha Naik alias Aniruddh Dandapat was acquitted by the court. Staines and his two sons were asleep in their jeep at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on the night of January 22, 1999 when a mob attacked them and set their vehicle on fire, killing all three. The incident sparked off a country-wide outrage leading to the setting up of a judicial commission headed by then sitting judge of Supreme Court D P Wadhwa. The case was also handed over to the CBI for investigation.

Bombay HC grants bail to Gutka accused (Go To Top)

     Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has granted bail to Rajesh Pancharia, arrested under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) on the charge of supplying gutka pouch manufacturing machinery to the underworld to help establish business in Pakistan. Justice R S Mohite granted bail to Rajesh on a personal bond of Rs one lakh and directed him to surrender his passport to CBI which is investigating the case. The judge also directed Rajesh to attend CBI office once in a month and cooperate in the investigation. Rajesh's lawyer Srikant Shivde argued that the accused had sold machinery to a person in Dubai and that it was a legal transaction as he had received money through cheque. He denied Rajesh's alleged links with the underworld. Rajesh was arrested last year along with Jamiruddin Khan alias Jumbo on suspected links with Pakistan-based don Dawood Ibrahim and helping him establish gutka business with the active support of gutka barons Rasiklal Manikchand Dhariwal and Jagdish Joshi. Jumbo is still in custody. As both Dhariwal and Joshi were in Dubai at that time, a Mumbai court issued warrants against them at the instance of city police. Later, the probe was transferred to CBI and both of them appeared before the investigating agency for questioning.

Centre to ensure one job for each family (Go To Top)

     New Delhi: The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has reiterated its commitment to the ambitious "Bharat Nirman" (India Development) programme as per the Common Minimum Programme (CMP), the economic policy roadmap. In its offer of a new deal to the rural India, prime minister Manmohan Singh earlier this week had approved 1.74 trillion rupees project aimed at providing employment to every section of the society. The project will cover six vital issues of rural infrastructure. "In the Bharat Nirman, the ultimate aegis of Bharat Nirman, they are going to have the national rural health mission, the horticulture mission, the urban renewal mission, the national project for repair and restoration of water bodies and expanded Antyoday Anna Yojana. All these and others will in their own term generate employment which will go to fulfill the promise made in the Common Minimum Programme to provide one earning hand to begin with in every rural home," Ambika Soni, spokesperson of the Congress party, told reporters after the UPA-Left Front coordination committee meeting in New Delhi to assess the government's achievements over its first year in office.

      The prime minister had asked the project to be implemented on top priority and with a sense of urgency, Soni added. The project will bring an additional 10 million hectares under assured irrigation and connect all villages that have a population of 1,000 to a road. It also includes constructing 6 million houses for the poor, provide safe and potable drinking water to over 74,000 new habitations and providing electricity to 125,000 villages that still lack such facility. Soni denied the Communists, whose support is crucial to the ruling coalition, had differences over a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting. "Everybody was present there at the meeting and it was being held in a very cordial, constructive and upbeat manner," said Soni. The statement said the government would take steps to implement further the CMP. There are reports that the Left Front is likely to restrict itself from attending the one year bash of the federal alliance. The Left has criticised the government for ignoring the welfare goals in the CMP. The Communists have also found fault with liberalization policies of the government. The government has been charged by the Left parties with not taking any initiative for bringing legislations for the benefit of the unorganised sector, agriculture workers and women's reservation.The Left has also accused the Congress party, which leads the UPA, of dilly-dallying on the Employment Guarantee Bill. The CMP, with a slight left-wing slant and an emphasis on directing funds to the countryside, where 70 percent of India's one billion populations live, was made with a commitment to reforms and strong growth. Despite opposition from the Left, the government raised the FDI cap in civil aviation from 40 per cent to 49 per cent, and in telecom from 49 per cent to 74 per cent. The Communists were pacified when the government granted an unrealistic 9.5 per cent interest for Employees Provident Fund, the largest pension fund. The UPA swept to power in May last year after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance was handed down a stunning defeat in what was seen as the revenge of the rural poor for being left out of an economic boom.

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