5 booked for preparing fake passports
Amritsar, September 30
The Civil Lines police has booked five persons, including two women, for allegedly forging documents to prepare fake passports.

Touts operate right under the nose of passport office
Amritsar, September 30
Right under nose of the Regional Passport Office (RPO), touts and fake travel agents operate with impunity and help people with forged documents for their passport applications.

 

Amritsar, September 30
As many as 10 persons were injured, one of them seriously, when a speeding truck hit a bus ferrying devotees from the Golden Temple to Gumtala bypass chowk, at court road early morning today. The injured were rushed to a private hospital on Ajnala road.

The yet-to-be unidentified driver of the sand-laden truck fled from the spot. The impact of the collision was so powerful that the bus overturned and the passengers had to get out of it by breaking the windowpane in the front portion of the bus.

The injured include Sangeeta Rani, a resident of Guru Amardass Avenue, Sukhwinder Singh, a resident of Government Enclave, Mukhtar Singh of Green City, Wazir Singh, Manbeet Kaur and others.

The hospital authorities said Sangeeta was shifted to the ICU as she sustained a serious head injury.

Wazir Singh of Ajnala road said 60 passengers were in the bus. The bus is owned by a political leader, he added. The bus used to ferry devotees from Gumtala Bypass Chowk to the Golden Temple at 2.30 am and returned at 5.30 am everyday.

Amritsar, September 30
It was an emotional moment for Sonu Parsad and Sumri Devi when Pooja, their daughter who had gone missing from Amritsar three years ago, was finally reunited with them today. Pooja was first produced in a local court here. The Crime Branch of Punjab police had recently rescued her from New Delhi.

Fifteen-year-old Pooja alleged she was subjected to physical and mental torture by the persons who had taken her to Delhi to work as a domestic help. She went missing in 2008 after Pooran Kaur, a native of Nangli village near here, took her along with them with the promise to get her hired as a domestic help. However, Pooran shifted her to Delhi to work as a domestic help at the residence of her son, Sukhbir Singh.

“After working there for a few months I got fed up with the ill-treatment meted out to me and fled from their home and took shelter in a park,” said Pooja. “A woman working as a maid took me and dropped me at another home. My new employers were good people,” Pooja said.

It was from the residence of a former DIG of CRPF, P Purshotam that the police finally recovered the girl. “Saab (employer) and his family treated me very nicely. I learnt many things there,” she said.

A native of district Gaya in Bihar, Sonu Parsad, who now works at a local spinning mill stated, “We had given our consent to Pooja working in Amritsar but not in New Delhi. Pooran Kaur sent her to Delhi without our permission. When she failed to get her back to Amritsar despite repeated requests from us, we became suspicious and reported the matter to the police.” He said had the court not intervened and entrusted the inquiry to SSP Crime branch Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh, they would not have found their daughter.

Sonu said, “We cannot express our happiness. Her siblings are extremely happy to have found their sister.” Later, the family filed a habeas corpus writ in the High Court. When the local police failed to locate the girl, they tried to placate the family and wash its hands off the case by trying to hand them over a girl named Lalia, projecting her as Pooja. Interestingly, Lalia too claimed in the court that she was the missing daughter of Sonu and Sumri. When the family refused to accept the girl produced by the police as their daughter, the court directed that DNA tests should be conducted to help establish the parentage of the girl.

“As the DNA tests failed to match, the court entrusted the enquiry to Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh, SSP Crime branch,” said Navjot Kaur Chabba, counsel for Sonu Parsad.

Amritsar, September 30
As we celebrate International Senior Citizens’ Day today, we salute two senior citizens of the holy city who chose not to lead a retired life and do something for society. While one of them, Jatinder Brar emerged as a torch-bearer for theatre artists, the other, PS Bhatty became a green activist. 

At the ripe age of 66, Jatinder Singh Brar is a dramatist, Punjabi playwright, industrialist and, last but not the least, theatre promoter. He is acting as a catalyst for theatre activity. His tenacious approach for promotion of theatre has helped him to create a niche for theatre. Punjab Naatshala, situated opposite Khalsa College on Amritsar-Attari GT road has become a hub of theatre activity.

Brar has managed to wean away a large number of audience of the holy city from television and cinema to enjoy the live events in theatre. He started the Naatshala on World Theatre Day (on March 27) in 1998, singlehandedly on a chunk of his land. His close associates had written off the concept of opening a theatre as an archaic one that would find no takers here. On the contrary, an array of local, national and international theatre groups have staged thousands of plays successfully.

Brar’s dream is to keep the Naatshala in tune with changing times. His visits abroad, especially to London, which is the international hub of drama, offer him the opportunity to learn about new changes being taking place in the ageold art. He strives to incorporate these changes in his theatre which is, at present, one of the state-of-the-art theatres in North India.

He recalled that in its early days, the Naatshala was an open-air theatre with a 60’x60’ stage and trees in the background.

Amritsar, September 30
The Civil Lines police has booked five persons, including two women, for allegedly forging documents to prepare fake passports.

Amritsar, September 30
Right under nose of the Regional Passport Office (RPO), touts and fake travel agents operate with impunity and help people with forged documents for their passport applications.

Over a dozen of such agents have set up their offices on the basement of a building adjacent to the Regional Passport Office. None of them is on the list of accredited travel agents of the Regional Passport Office. A visit to the passport office revealed that men engaged by these agents keep standing outside the office to look for prospective clients.

With a simple query “Do you want to fill application form?”, these agents start luring the visitors.

Though the passport office has a counter for sale of forms and help desk for queries, visitors prefer to pay these agents to save them from the hassle of their application being rejected at a later stage because of some mistake.

The Tribune team visited the basement where these touts have their offices and found that the people are being charged Rs 100 for filling the application forms. From making forged documents to procuring token from the application accepting counter, agents serve a lot many purposes for the applicants.

Jasvir Singh, a resident of Muktsar, said, “My friend had to submit the application. We were late and could not get the token as we were told that the entire quota of tokens for the day was already distributed. Then we got this man (agent) who procured a token for Rs 200.”

He said they had to pay the token fee because would have cost more money had we come for the work again on some other day.

When contacted, Regional Passport Officer JS Sodhi said, “We have written to the police about the presence of these touts near the office.” He said while signing the rent deed with owners of buildings, where the passport office is situated, they had added a clause that owners would not rent out the remaining portion to any person whose work is related to passports in any way.

“But as the cabins of these agents are located in the adjacent building we don’t have a jurisdiction over them. But we have made the complaints to the police,” said Sodhi, adding that applicants should not fall prey to these people.

He said the office has displayed that a list of 18 accredited travel agents in the office, adding that none of these agents in the basement are accredited.