Bathinda, March 4
After six years of proceedings in a corruption case, district and sessions judge SK Aggarwal today awarded the accused, Kulwant Singh, the then medical officer at the Civil Hospital, Bathinda, with an imprisonment of two and a half years. The punishment will go parallel with an imprisonment of one-and-a-half year that was awarded to him on another charge. The court has also slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on him.

Giving details, SSP, Vigilance Bureau, Bathinda, Sukhdev Singh Chahal said the accused had received bribe from one Darshan Singh of Patti Saul Mehraj village to give a medico-legal report of his injuries. Though the accused had demanded Rs 3,000, the deal was settled at Rs 2,000, which the then DSP (VB) Gurmeet Singh along with an official recovered from the accused at his office. The case was registered in 2005 under various sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act at the police station (VB), Bathinda.

Chahal said the court has accepted the bail application of the accused.

Ferozepur, March 4
The jail authorities have apprehended an employee identified as Balbir Singh, working as fitter master in the factory of the local Central Jail on the charges of possessing two grams of smack besides several pouches of tobacco.

It is the third incident in the recent past when drugs, psychotropic substances and banned articles have been recovered from the jail.

As per the jail officials, all those staff members, working in the local Central Jail, whose activities were suspicious, were being kept under surveillance to identify all those, who were allegedly conniving with the inmates to bring such material in the jail premises.

Earlier, during a joint raid of the jail premises conducted by the Deputy Commissioner KK Yadav and SSP Dr Kaustubh Sharma, many articles, banned in the jail including mobile phones, charges, SIM cards besides narcotics were recovered from the possession of the jail inmates. Three jail officials were places under suspension in this connection.

It is pertinent to mention that several notorious drug peddlers including some Pakistani smugglers are also reportedly lodged in the jail. Captain LS Jakhar, Superintendent, Central Jail, said the police authorities have been asked to register a case against Balbir Singh. “We have to identify all the accused and take stringent action against them to cleanse the system,” claimed Jakhar. 

Fazilka, March 4
Two members of a family living in a Katcha house at village Sabuana, located in the close vicinity of the Indo-Pak border in the sub-division, were killed on the spot while two other members suffered multiple injuries, when the roof of their dwelling collapsed in the wee hours today.

After listening to a big bang, caused when the roof collapsed, a few residents of the surrounding dwellings rushed to the spot.

After removing the debris, the residents found that Mangal Singh along with his daughter Gagandeep Kaur (4) was dead while two other members of the family including Gurmeet Kaur, wife and son Gurpreet Singh, were found seriously injured. Amar Singh, father of Mangal Singh, had died a few days ago in a road mishap.

Mangal Singh along with other three members of the family was asleep inside his house. It was learnt that the rains which lashed the region in the past few days, caused cracks in its walls and hence its roof caved in today.

Senior functionaries of the civil and police officials visited the spot. The residents of the village along with the officials of the state government shifted the bodies to the local civil hospital. Both Gurmeet Kaur and Gurpreet Singh were also admitted to the Civil Hospital. SDM, Fazilka, Ajay Sud visited the injured persons in the Civil Hospital. He assured them they would be taken care of properly.

Meanwhile, the residents of this and various other villages, located near the creek of Sutlej river, today demanded that the Punjab government must give them adequate money to repair their dwellings as the same had suffered damages during the last floods.

They also demanded that the Punjab government must give adequate compensation to the family members of Mangal Singh as Mangal, who worked as labourer, was the only breadwinner for them. A case in this connection had been registered at the police station concerned. 

Abohar, March 4
Even as the state government had taken up six multi-crore projects for creating new sub-canals in the region, the condition of the Bahawalbasi minor (sub-canal) has not attracted anybody’s attention so far.

Some farmers including Gurbachan Singh, Jarnail Singh, Mander Singh and Gurbaz Singh revealed to the media today that the sub -canal was formally inaugurated on November 11, 1972.

Since then none of the successive governments had bothered to get it cleaned or repaired. The sub-canal spread over 4.5-km length had suffered breaches many times resulting in damage to the standing crops but most of the time the affected farmers had plugged the breach.

The sub-canal partially meets the requirements of the farmers of village Gobindgarh and Bahawalbasi in irrigating over thousand acres of agricultural land.

“We have been cleaning it by rotation deploying own resources as the officials concerned had not responded to the requests for sanctioning funds for its annual maintenance or take up lining work, regretted Gurjant Singh, a farmer.

Another farmer Gurmail Singh said such state of neglect to the problems of the waterlogged village had prompted the locals to join the ‘Jago Punjab Yatra’ launched by the former finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal during his maiden rally, recently.

The farmers have been patrolling the sub-canal to prevent another breach during the rains.

Official sources said a proposal for repairing the sub-canal had been submitted to the state government but nod was awaited.

Abohar, March 4
The tension that had mounted up during the eviction bid under strong cover of the civil and police administration at village Patti Billa of Khuyiansarwar sub-tehsil in the sub-division has been defused following negotiations between the warring factions well-placed sources said.

Hundreds of people staged a protest yesterday and foiled the bid to get them evicted from a colony in compliance of directions issued by the court in a case filed by some landlords who had purchased the land in November 1984.

The protesters led by senior activists of the Bhartiya Kisan Union Ekta-Ugrahan had refused to vacate the houses that had reportedly been raised during the past four decades.

They had claimed that the administration had released water and electricity connections during the period of (illegal) possession.

The occupants in the disputed colony have offered to pay some negotiated value against the land that was under their possession. The police force has been withdrawn from the village. 

Mansa, March 4
The Mansa police booked two constables of the Bathinda police for felicitating an undertrial at the Central Jail, Bathinda, to spend a night at his home in lieu of a bribe of Rs 1,500 and liquor.

It is learnt that the constables, Charanjit Singh and Major Singh, were the custodian of one Satveer Singh of Ram Nagar Bhathal village (Sangrur) while the latter was to appear before a court at Jind on Thursday. Satveer was facing various cases of fake currency, murder and duping registered at different police station. He was lodged in the Central Jail, Bathinda. While returning from Jind, Satveer bribed the two constables with Rs 1,500 and managed to stay a night at his home. In the meantime, Mansa SSP Hardyal Singh Mann got information about the illegal act of the Bathinda cops. Acting swiftly, he ordered the Boha police to conduct a raid at the place.

A police team visited Satveer's house at about 2 a.m. on Friday and found the two constables in inebriated condition. The team recovered the bribe money from their pockets. The two cops and the undertrial Satveer Singh have been arrested and a case in this connection has been registered against them.

Confirming the facts, the Mansa SSP said if the police team had not reached the spot on time, the undertrial could have fled.

Bathinda, March 4
Members and activists of the district unit of The Class IV Government Employees Union Punjab today staged a protest against the stoppage of payments (through treasuries) of advances (loans) to the employees from their own general provident fund (GPF) accounts, which they need to fulfill their domestic requirements, including conducting repairs of their house.

The protesters were also agitating against the stoppage of payments of leave encashment, gratuity and final payment of the GPF to the retirees through treasuries.

The protest was organised under the leadership of district president of the union Manjit Singh, outside the Mini-secretariat here. Besides Manjit, other leaders who were present or spoke on the occasion included district general secretary Gurbans Singh, chairman of the Control Committee Daler Singh, district finance secretary SS Yadav, Sukhdev Singh, Ramesh Lal, Sukhpal Singh and Mohinder Singh.

The leaders said during Sangat Darshans, the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister were distributing grants in crores to earn goodwill in public whereas the payments of advances (loans) to the employees even from their own GPF accounts were not being made. They alleged that the treasuries were returning their bills to their respective offices by putting ‘baseless objections’ on the bills.

The union leaders also stated that Class IV employees from the Bathinda district would participate in the employees’ rally to be held on March 17 at Chandigarh during the budget session of the Punjab Assembly.

Bathinda, March 4
A former president of the Punjab unit of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Dr Amrit Sethi, today said the proposed imposition of five per cent service tax on the healthcare industry had hurt the sentiments of the health sector even as it had been proposed only on air-conditioned (AC) hospitals.

Dr Sethi said the proposed service tax in the Union budget was bound to hit common man because no medical instrument, laboratory or operation theatre today ran without air-conditioner. Once introduced, the service tax would further worsen the state of affairs by letting the inflation go unchecked and hindering the growth of healthcare in the private sector.

He said the health sector was expecting provisions for new healthcare facilities in the general budget. However, the budget did not have an apparent mention in this regard. Sethi went on to say that in the last few budgets also, the government had talked about opening more hospitals/medical colleges but nothing had been materialised yet.

Abohar, March 4
The Punjab Government Pensioners Association has urged the state government to pay the arrears of the past 43 months in one installment before the end of the current financial year. The Association members today submitted a memorandum to the SDM Jasdeep Singh Aulakh here today.

Chairman Captain (retd.) SK Dutta, president RS Sharma and secretary CP Bulandi regretted that the notification had not been issued by the state government even when a decision to remove the anomalies had been taken in a meeting with the Punjab chief secretary on May 25, last year.

They demanded 50 per cent concession in the bus travel fares besides fixed medical allowance worth Rs 1000 per month.

The Association also demanded regular payment of the retirement allowance at par with differently abled persons. Dutta said the pensioners deserve free electricity supply to consolidate their domestic budget keeping in view the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities.