M A I N   N E W S

21 killed as train falls into river

Kozhikode, June 22
Twentyone persons were killed and over 100 injured when eight coaches of the Mangalore-Chennai Mail derailed with four of these falling into swollen Kadalundi river, 20 km from here.

The accident occurred at 5.30 pm when the train was crossing the Kadalundi bridge on the Kozhikode-Shoranur section of the Southern Railway during heavy rains, the officials said. The train had left Mangalore at 11.15 am.

More than 100 persons were injured and admitted in hospital where the condition of some of them was stated to be serious.

Heavy rains were hampering the rescue efforts and had also disrupted communication facilities in the area, they said. Sources said the accident occurred due to a fissure on the rail close to the Kadalundi bridge.

Naval divers from the Cochin Naval Base were rushed to the area by road. PTI

Chohan gets travel documents
Varinder Singh
Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 22
The decks have been cleared for return of the veteran Khalistan ideologue Jagjit Singh Chohan to India with the Indian High Commission at London finally providing one-way travel documents to him.

Dr Chohan has been striving for restoration of his passport to come back to India and has been fighting a legal battle for this for the past more than two decades. It was only on May 29 that after hearing a writ petition filed by Dr Chohan through his counsel Ranjan Lakhanpal that the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Indian Government to provide necessary travel documents to Dr Chohan within one month to facilitate his visit to India.

Earlier too, in 1982, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had asked the government to provide travel documents to Dr Chohan but the government had not done so on various grounds, apprehending that his visit to the country might fuel the anti-India sentiments and encourage the Khalistan elements. Taking a strong note of the “anti-national” activities of Dr Chohan, founder of the Council of Khalistan, his passport, which was issued by the Regional Passport Office at Chandigarh in 1979, was cancelled by the Indian Government in 1981 though he has not been booked in any case in the country till date.

The London-based Indian High Commission had handed over travel documents to Dr Chohan last evening, about a week before the expiry of the deadline fixed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, where Dr Chohan was represented by his lawyer, Ranjan Lakhanpal.

Dr Chohan was not available at his London residence. His wife Charanjit Kaur, while speaking to The Tribune over telephone, confirmed they had got the necessary travel documents last evening through the Indian High Commission.