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| Friday,
April 20, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Hotelier refuses to pay ransom,
killed Bad weather hits
procurement From pillar to post to trace
husband HUDA, IT Dept lock
horns POSTINGS\TRANSFERS Raids conducted on quacks, ‘clinics’ |
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Dead bodies: five were murder
victims Private schools ‘hiring’ old computers Cashier attacked, robbed of 1.25 lakh
Examiners await dues for 3 years Competitions on environment held
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Hotelier refuses to pay ransom,
killed Rohtak, April 19 Two unidentified gangesters came to the hotel, situated near the Shiela bye-pass here, at about 9 p.m. last evening and pumped four bullets from their revolvers into a temple and head of the hotel owner, Mr Vijay Kumar. The Manager of the hotel, Mr Karegappa, also sustained injuries when a bullet hit him in the abdomen. He has been admitted to the local PGIMS and is said to be out of danger. SSP Subhash Yadav said that the extortionists belonged to the Krishan gang of Nazafgarh, Delhi. These gangsters were wanted in nearly half-a-dozen cases of murder in this district alone. These gangsters had demanded Rs 10 lakh from Vijay Kumar and had threatened to kill him in the event of non-payment of the extortion money. This had happened in October last year and the police had registered a criminal case on the complaint of Vijay Kumar. Vijay Kumar was provided a constable for his security and a PCR was normally posted near his hotel, which was among the most crowded resorts in the town. The roadways and other buses plying between Delhi and various places in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan used to stop in front of this hotel. Mr Yadav said that four members of the Krishan gang, including Krishan himself, had been arrested after the receipt of complaint about the extortion. One member of the gang, Shamsher, had absconded and another member had been released on bail a few days ago. He said that police parties had been sent to various possible ‘hide-outs of these gangsters in the district and adjoining areas of Jhajjar and Delhi. The security had been tightened of the persons in the town who had also received similar extortion calls and threats, he said. Although the extortionists had been kidnapping and killing persons for ransom in Delhi, this was the first such incident in Rohtak town that forms part of the National Capital Region (NCR). The security guard attached to Vijay Kumar was not present at the site at the time of the incident. The PCR van, too, was stationed at some other place at that time. The customers in the hotel at the time of the incident ran helter skelter as soon as gangsters opened fire. Bus passengers standing on the road in front of the hotel, also did not react to the incident. The gangsters drove away on a two-wheeler after committing the murder. |
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Bad weather hits
procurement
Chandigarh, April 19 The wheat procurement operation, which is currently on in Haryana, has also been affected by the inclement weather. Wheat arrivals in the state mandis till yesterday totalled 4.92 lakh metric tonnes (LMT), substantially more than 4.10 LMT in the corresponding period last year. However, while the arrivals had picked up and more than one lakh tonnes of the grain was coming to the mandis every day, it suddenly dropped to 89,000 tonnes yesterday. Official sources said the increase in the moisture level in the grain might have led to a drop in arrivals as the farmers were busy trying to reduce the moisture. The state government had also asked the farmers to dry the wheat before bringing it to the mandis so that the grain did not fall below the specifications. Wheat already purchased by the agencies, which was kept in the open, was being dried by government personnel, the sources said. The sources said another issue which was posing a problem in the procurement operation was the FCI’s inability to make payment to the state government for the grain lifted by it from the state agencies. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which gives money to the state government in the form of CCL (cash credit limit), released through the State Bank of India (SBI), for the purchase of grain has sanctioned a CCL of Rs 1,560 crore to Haryana. However, out of this amount the SBI has withheld Rs 521 crore to adjust the pending CCL of the state government. The sources said state agencies had already handed over grain worth that amount to the FCI but since the FCI did not make any payment, the state government was unable to repay its loan to the SBI for settling last year’s CCL. “The SBI has agreed to give us only Rs 1,039 crore out of which we drew Rs 95.39 crore till yesterday, but unless the SBI releases the full amount to us we may soon run into problems regarding making payment to the farmers”, said an official here. The CCL problem as well as the issue of bad weather were discussed with the Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, at a review meeting held here today. The consensus at the meeting was reportedly that since the RBI as well as the FCI were both Central Government outfits, the RBI should be asked to settle the payment issue with the FCI and not make Haryana suffer. As for the bad weather, those at the meeting could only hope for a change in the conditions. The state government had already announced compensation for standing crops affected by hailstorms in the state earlier. The amount of compensation was recently increased threefold as a mark of respect to the late Devi Lal. The huge stocks of wheat lying in the godowns of the state also figured at the review meeting. While 36 LMT of wheat procured earlier is already lying with the state agencies, the FCI is yet to move 20 LMT of wheat kept by it in state godowns. Around 50 LMT of wheat is expected to be procured by the state agencies in the current season, unless something goes drastically wrong, and by the end of July Haryana may have 10 million tonnes of wheat (about half of the country’s emergency stocks of grain) . The movement of grain from the state is 1.5 LMT to 2 LMT every month which will not make much difference to the stocks inside the state. Sources said while the storage of wheat could still be managed, as it could be stored in the open if the weather conditions are good, there could be a major problem in the storage of rice during the kharif season unless the movement of grain from the state picked
up.
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From pillar to post to trace
husband Gurgaon, April 19 On account of the subsequent utterances from the landlord, she has the fear gnawing at her heart that her husband has been “liquidated”. She is convinced that the police is playing a “partisan” role in favour of the landlord and was not seriously pursuing the case. Rather, when she and her family members were running from pillar to post to tap all
possible sources to locate Mr Chander, the landlord allegedly broke open the locks of the shop and took over its possession. This “forceful” entry into the shop took place when Mr Chander’s family members brought it to the notice of the police that the landlord might have a hand in his disappearance. Frustrated over the alleged apathy of the police and suspicious behaviour of the landlord, Anita has brought the entire gamut of developments to the notice of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, and the statutory bodies of the Centre and the state relating to Human Rights. In the letters addressed to various authorities, she has alleged that the landlord and his sons sometimes had skirmishes on the issue of vacating the shop. When Mr Chander’s brother went to the landlord to ascertain about his whereabouts he was asked to first vacate the shop. She further said that the son of the landlord once called upon the family members to say that her husband was working in a local factory. The landlord once again misled the family members by saying that her husband had come to the nearby PCO to make a phone call. Then the wife of the landlord telephoned her to tell that Mr Chander was near a PCO and she should immediately come to her place. After Mr Chander’s family reached the residence of the landlord, they were asked to vacate the shop instead of giving them details about her husband. She further said sensing foul play on the basis of mischievous behaviour of the landlord and his family members she made a representation to the district police chief on March 30. Instead of getting any positive response from the police the family got a rude shock on the next day. The landlord had forcefully entered the shop which was closed following the disappearance of her husband. According to Mrs Anita, when her brother-in-law went to the shop to enquire from the landlord the reason for his making a forceful entry, he was asked to make himself scarce or face the consequences that his brother (Ram Chander) had met with. She says that when her family members met the SHO concerned, he allegedly tried to effect a compromise between the two parties. She vows that she would take the case to its logical conclusion. |
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HUDA, IT Dept lock
horns Chandigarh, April 19 While HUDA claims exemption from the payment of tax under the Income Tax Act, the IT Department does not think so. HUDA says since its activities are covered under Section 10(20A) of the IT Act, it is not bound to pay income tax. Section 10(20A) provides that the income of any authority constituted in India under any law for the purpose of dealing with and satisfying the need for housing accommodation or for the purpose of planning, development or improvement of cities, towns and villages or both will not be taxed. However, the IT Department has taken the stand that the IT Act has granted the power to decide the taxability of any income to the authorities specified under Section 116. Since HUDA is not an authority specified under this section, it cannot suo motu decide that its entire income is exempt from income tax. The department has also taken the plea that since HUDA requires investment of capital for the purchase and development of land and it runs the risk of profit or loss while selling or allotting the plots, the authority is carrying out commercial activities. Referring to the data provided by HUDA, the department points out that there have been ups and downs in the fortunes of HUDA. While it suffered a loss of Rs 66.15 lakh in 1992-93, it earned a profit of Rs 1694.15 lakh in 1996-97. This, the department says, supports its contention that HUDA runs a “risk of profit and loss” in its commercial activities. There is another point of dispute between HUDA and the IT Department. HUDA claims exemption from the purview of Section 44AB, which deals with the mandatory audit of accounts by a chartered accountant. Its plea is based on the argument that since it is exempt from paying tax under Section 10(20A), it is also exempted from the provisions of Section 44AB. On the other hand the department says since the activities of HUDA are commercial in nature and its income exceeds Rs 40 lakh a year, its accounts have to be audited in accordance with Section 44AB. The department has told HUDA that its income will be exempted under Section 10(20A) if it is able to prove before the assessing officer that all its sources of income relate to the activities specified in that section. However, if the assessing officer finds that any expenditure has not been incurred for the purposes specified in this section or inflated expenditure has been incurred for non-specified purposes, that expenditure will be added to the taxable income. As directed by the department, HUDA has filed its statements of accounts for a number of years as well as the income returns with the department. However, in the returns, it has claimed no tax liability. Though the department is yet to assess the tax liability of HUDA, it appears that both are heading for long litigation. |
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POSTINGS\TRANSFERS Chandigarh, April 19 Mr Kaushal, who was earlier an Additional Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister also, goes as the Director, Local Bodies. The Deputy Commissioner of
Rohtak, Mr R.K. Khullar, has become the Director, Public Relations. The other Deputy Commissioners who have been transferred are Mr Amit Jha(Sirsa),MrMahavir
Singh(Kaithal), Mr Sudhir Raj Pal(Sonepat); Mr Sant Kumar
Joshi(Bhiwani) and Mr Anil Malik(Fatehabad). While Sirsa is the native district of the Chief Minister, Bhiwani is the parliamentary constituency of his elder son, Mr Ajay
Chautala. With the transfer of Mr Jha, both the Deputy Commissioner and the SP of
Sirsa, who were appointed immediately after Mr Om Prakash Chautala had assumed power in July, 1999, have been replaced. The SP., Mr K.K.
Mishra, was replaced earlier. Mr Ankur Gupta, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation,
Faridabad, will be the new Deputy Commissioner. of Sirsa. MrG.Madhavan, Financial
Commissioner and Secretary, Health(including Medical Education), will now be the Secretary, Technical Education, vice Mr
H. C. Disodia, who goes as Commissioner and Secretary, Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Departments and as Commissioner for Inquiries-II. Mrs Veen
Eagleton, who so far held the departments of Animal Husbandry and Dairy
Deveopment, becomes the Financial Commissioner, Health(including Medical Education). Mr
S.K. Maheshwari, Secretary, Forests, has left his department of Mines and Geology in favour of Mr Manik B.
Sonawane, who will hold the charge of this department in addition to his present assignment of Commissioner and Secretary, Local Bodies. Mr
Maheshwari, however, gets an additional Department of Wildlife Preservation from Mrs
Eagleton. Interestingly, the Department of Mines and Geology has changed hands when the department is processing applications for the allotment of over 30 lucrative mines. Mr
M.L. Tayal, OSD, Planning Board, becomes Member, Sales Tax Tribunal. Mrs Shakuntala
Jakhu, Labour Commissioner and Special Secretary, Industrial Disputes and Labour Department, relieves Mr
S.K. Gulati as the Managing Director, Dairy Development Cooperative Federation and the Dairy Development Corporation. Mr Gulati becomes the Director and Special Secretary, Institutional Finance and Credit Control, vice Mrs Keshni Anand
Arora. Mrs Surina Rajan, Director, Local Bodies, will be the Joint Secretary, General Administration and Inquiry Officer, Vigilance-I. Mr Jha will be the new Labour Commissioner. Mr
S.N. Roy, Joint Secretary, Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development, will take over as the Deputy Commissioner of
Sonepat. Mr K.S. Yadav, CEO, Mewat Development Agency, Nuh, and the Managing Director, Haryana Minerals, will also work as the Additional Resident Commissioner, Haryana
Bhawan, New Delhi, in addition to his present duties. Mr Mahavir Singh will be the Additional Director, Urban Estates,
Panchkula. Mr Sudhir Raj Pal will be the Additional Managing Director,
Hartron. Mr Anand Mohan Sharan, Joint Secretary, Industries, goes as
OSD, Planning Board. Mr Sant Kumar Joshi will be the Joint Secretary, Industries. Mr Anil Malik will be the new Deputy Commissioner. of
Rohtak, while Mr H.S. Malik, ADC-cum-CEO, DRDA, Rohtak, goes as the Deputy Commissioner of
Bhiwani. Mr Fateh Singh, ADC-cum-CEO, DRDA, Rewari, becomes the Deputy Commissioner. of
Kaithal. Mr Arun Kumar Gupta, Joint Secretary, General Administration, is now the Director, Non-Conventional Energy Sources. While Mr Pushp Raj Singh, ADC-cum-CEO,
DRDA, Fatehabad, goes as Commissioner of the Faridabad Municipal Corporation, Mr
O.P. Indora, ADC-cum-CEO, DRDA and Special Officer, APZ, Hisar, and Additional M.D.,
Hafed, becomes the Deputy Commissioner of Fatehabad. |
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Raids conducted on quacks, ‘clinics’ Faridabad, April 19 The raids were conducted in Palwal town by a team of drugs officials led by the Additional State Drug Controller, Mr G.L. Singhal. The team seized several boxes of drugs from these ‘clinics’. While an FIR was registered against two quacks, two others managed to escape from their ‘clinics’. In the first case, the drugs officials found that Gyanender Kumar was posing as a doctor and running a clinic under the name City Clinic at Shamsabad locality on Aligarh road. The so-called doctor fled after he asked the authorities to wait till he brought his documents. The team also caught one Dr Narain Singh Baghel running Baghel Clinic illegally in the same locality. While he had no medical degree, he was also found to be using used syringes. About 200 syringes with their pouches torn were seized from his clinic. In the third incident, a youth, Ashwani Kumar, was found to be illegally running a chemist shop Bhardwaj Medical and Ayurvedic Store located in the same street. But two other “fake” doctors running clinics in the same colony fled as the team reached there. The authorities also detected a nursing home on the G.T. Road, Palwal, which was running an illegal ‘Dispensary’ (chemist shop) there. Samples of eight types of medicines were lifted from there. The custody of the seized drugs was taken from the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mr Jagdeep Jain. |
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Dead bodies: five were murder
victims Hisar, April 19 About 50 such bodies were found in canals in Ferozepore district of Punjab and 11 (seven men and four women) in Hisar district. The post mortems of the bodies found here have revealed that five of them were murdered. They include four men who had died of head injuries inflicted by sharp-edged weapons. One woman was found to have been throttled to death. So far nine post mortems have been conducted. Reports on two of the remaining bodies are awaited. The post-mortem examination of four bodies could not determine the cause of death because these were highly decomposed. Significantly, the post-mortem reports also indicated that all victims had died a week or a fortnight before the bodies were found. Since none of the bodies had their hair intact, the religion of the dead could not be ascertained. Mr Maan Singh, DSP, who is investigating the cases, maintained that the dead belonged to Punjab from where the canals flow into Haryana. The canal’s tail ends are in Hisar district. He said no missing persons reports were pending in any Haryana police station falling in the command area of the canals from which the bodies were recovered. The local police had registered five different cases of murder but sources said this was merely a legal formality. They said there was no hope of identifying the victims and, therefore, the question of nabbing their killers did not arise. They said the Punjab police had not responded to their queries in these cases. A day after the bodies were found near Ferozepore last week, senior Punjab police officers had claimed the bodies had been immersed by Rai Sikhs living in the area after natural deaths. They had claimed that tel-tale evidence of immersion like ‘matkas’ had also been found in the canals. |
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Private schools ‘hiring’ old computers Hisar, April 19 The government under its new education policy has introduced computer education in schools from this session. Government schools, therefore, began attracting students. Worried, private school owners went in for cheap and obsolete 486 series of computers to serve as mere showpieces to hoodwink parents. Since the number of such schools runs into thousands, second-hand computers were soon out of stock. Some schools hired monochrome monitors and keyboards. Inquiries reveal that computer centres are charging Rs 500 to Rs 700 a month for these two pieces of hardware. It is learnt that many of these “showpieces” are not even in working condition because as a school manager confessed: “In any case these are useless without the CPU. So where is the point in hiring working hardware”. He said most parents, especially in the semi-urban areas, perceived the monitor and the keyboard as a computer. This hardware was thus serving the purpose well. Computer education has proved to be a windfall for such schools which are charging between Rs 40 and Rs 60 per student for the facility. Thus a school with around 500 students will earn between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000 a month. School managers say they will buy second-hand obsolete computers for Rs 5,000 and after summer vacation they would have earned about Rs 1 lakh through computer education charges alone. The government decision has come as a boon for computers dealers. Even Delhi’s Nehru Place, regarded as the biggest
computer market in the country, is unable to meet the sudden demand. A computer dealer told The Tribune on telephone that while they would have no problem supplying any number of the latest Pentium III or even Pentium 4 computers, it was not possible to find obsolete hardware since their production ceased years ago. Nevertheless, he said, they had introduced an exchange scheme for companies which were willing to trade their old computers with new ones. These second-hand computers would then be passed on to schools in Haryana. He felt the exchange scheme would succeed since this was a rare opportunity to find buyers for obsolete machines. Computer experts, however, say these old machines will serve little purpose since most software these days are designed for modern frontline systems with fast CPUs and higher RAM. It will be hard to run even simpler programmes like older versions of MS Word. Besides, these machines will find it hard to provide access to the Net because of lower RAM, low capacity hard disk drives and obsolete software. |
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Cashier attacked, robbed of 1.25 lakh Sonepat, April 19 According to preliminary reports, the alleged culprits also assaulted an associate of the cashier who came to his help and injured him seriously. The cashier also sustained serious injuries when he was hit by a bullet. It is learnt that some people arrived on the spot and took the injured to the local Civil Hospital. Later, the duo were shifted to a private nursing home for further treatment. According to the injured cashier, Mr Padam Singh, the three alleged assailants came on a motorcycle and tried to remove cash from the cash box and when he resisted, one of them opened fire on him. Thereupon, his associate came to his rescue, but he was roughed up by lathis. On receipt of information, a contingent of the police arrived and returned after making an inquiry into the incident. The incident has caused panic among the residents of the
village. |
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Examiners await dues for 3 years Sirsa, April 19 The district secretary of the association Dr Harvinder Singh said nearly 50 examiners appointed for on-the-spot evaluation of board examinations of 10+2 answersheets in the local C.M.K. National Girls College had not yet been paid their daily allowance even after three years. The Principal of the college confirmed that this payment had not been released and said that due to this attitude of the board, the college authorities had stopped offering their college for being made an on-the-spot evaluation centre. She added that the board had not released her dues pending for the past two years due to her and her team for their services as a flying squad in spite of reminders.
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Competitions on environment held Hisar, April 19 According to a spokesman of the university, more than 200 students participated in the programme. Mr R.K. Chauhan, Vice-Chancellor, gave away prizes to the winners. |
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