Kapurthala, March 16
Rail coach factory driver Anil Kumar, who committed suicide in January this year, was reportedly upset over his wife’s illicit relations with his colleague.

The fact has come to light after a two-month-long police investigation. The Sadar police had initiated proceedings after recovery of Anil’s body from a lake on the RCF campus. The deceased’s Delhi-based brother Raj Mohan had pointed to some foul play behind the death.

Talking to The Tribune, Sadar SHO Ravinder Singh said the police came to know about the illicit relations after verifying the mobile call details of Anil’s wife Shivani (36).

The SHO said, “Shivani had illicit relations with the RCF crane driver Kabul Singh (56) who was her neighbour. The latter had got add-on facility on his mobile phone to make free calls on Shivani’s phone.” During preliminary interrogation, the duo confessed they had illicit relations due to which Anil used to remain depressed.

Interestingly, the RCF had recently given a job to Shivani on compassionate ground. RCF sources said both Shivani and Kabul would be suspended after receiving formal information of their arrest and a departmental action would be taken against them.

However, their services would be terminated only after their conviction by court of law, the sources added. The accused were produced in Kapurthala court and remanded in one-day police custody.

Batala, March 16
With the panchayat poll round the corner, the internal bickering seems to have surfaced once again within the SAD.

The Nirmal Singh Kahlon (speaker, Vidhan Sabha) group is at loggerheads with the faction headed by village development and panchayat minister Ranjit Singh Brahmpura.

Gurpartap Singh Khushhalpur, ex-chairman, labour federation, Punjab, and a staunch supporter of Brahmpura has alleged that he and his supporters were being politically targeted and victimised at the instance of Kahlon and his men.

Khushhalpur said he had conveyed his grouse to SAD chief Sukhbir Badal and requested him to intervene in the matter to avoid division of Akali votes.

On the condition of anonymity, some Akali leaders admitted that Brahmpura was trying to win over the Akali workers of Kahlon.

Interestingly, prior to the assembly election Sukhbir Badal had arranged a compromise between Khushhalpur and Kahlon.

However, Kahlon’s son Ravi Karan Singh denied any factionalism in the Akali circles. “We are committed to safeguard the interest of party workers,” he added.

Hoshiarpur, March 16
At a recent meeting of local leaders of political parties, they urged the Chief Minister to make Dasuya subdivision of Hoshiarpur an independent district.

They included Dasuya BJP block president Jaswant Singh Pappu, its mahila wing chief Sita Rani, All-India Cadres Pensioners Association secretary Jai Dev Rishi, Beopar Mandal senior vice-president Tulsi Dass Jagga and municipal councillor Satish Ghai.

Jagga told this correspondent that residents of Dasuya had also sent a representation to the CM in this connection.

The historic town of Dasuya was centrally located among the Talwara, Mukerian and Tanda blocks and could cater to the need of the people of these areas, he said.

Ancient Gurdwara Gharna Sahib, which was only 4 km from the town, had been established in the memory of the sixth Sikh Guru. A large number of pilgrims from all over the country visited the place daily, he said.

The worship place of Baba Lal Dayal was situated at Datarpur, 30 km from Dasuya. It is easily approachable from Tanda, Mukerian and Talwara areas and also was a gateway to Himachal Pradesh.

The inhabitants of these subdivisions had to travel a long distance to reach the district headquarters by spending a huge amount.

The development of this area was only possible if Dasuya was made a district of Punjab, he claimed. An action committee was being constituted to pursue the matter, he added.

Hoshiarpur, March 16
The police has registered a case against four persons for assaulting and ripping the uniform of a home guard jawan.

He was performing his duty in the examination centre at Johly High School. The accused have been identified as Ajunveer Singh, Dalbir Singh and Mohinder Singh. The identity of one accused is yet to be ascertained.

In a complaint lodged with the Tanda police, home guard jawan Harmit Singh alleged that the accused were trying to copy during the examination on Friday and when he tried to stop them they assaulted him.

Nawanshahr, March 16
Amardeep Singh Shergill Memorial College, Mukandpur (a constituent college of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar), in collaboration with the UGC, organised a seminar on the topic “Emerging trends in information technology”.

Teachers of various schools and colleges and the students of MSc (IT) attended the seminar. Uma Mani, chief publisher, MacMillan India Ltd., inaugurated the seminar.

In her inaugural address, she highlighted the need and importance of information technology in assimilation and dissemination of knowledge in various fields.

Information technology had changed the traditional concept of classroom teaching, especially internet had facilitated interactive teaching as well as dissemination of knowledge to a large number of people, she said.

In his enlightening and comprehensive lecture, Dr Gurwinder Singh from the GNDU asserted the fact that the future belonged to embedded systems, examples of which could be seen in our daily life, like mobile phones, machines with fuzzy logic, micro-processor controlled conveyances, etc.

The embedded systems converged the different systems of our daily use, which meant a prospective student in computer science should be well conversant with the mechanics, the electronics, the philosophical and the software, he said.

Vishal Goyal from Punjabi University, Patiala, acquainted the audience with different programmes of natural language translation (NLT) carried out in India, and the various intuitions involved in them.