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Monday,
June 18, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Report on
‘monkey man’ syndrome submitted 13 lakh sign against NDA govt Towards daughterless
nation? Gulshan Kumar trial
begins today
DD Metro prime time on
sale |
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Jaya is now
Jayalalithaa
Bharat Shah moves HC afresh for bail Naushad composes PM’s poems Protesters burn
PM’s effigy BJP, Mulayam trying to kill me: Mayawati Punjab Today award for I.K. Gujral
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Report on ‘monkey man’ syndrome submitted New Delhi, June 17 The report, prepared by Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) Rajiv Ranjan, was submitted to Delhi Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma yesterday and is likely to be made public soon. The lengthy report carries the crack team’s verdict that there was no ‘monkey men’ or ‘black monkey’ and the reasons for reaching this conclusion. It also analyses the psychology that led to the mass hysteria. The investigators have also gone into the origin of the ‘monkey mania’ and the reasons for such a mass reaction. Top police sources said today that the crack team had rejected the involvement of any gang or robot or animal in the ‘attacks’ which left five persons dead and more than 75 injured. Most of the victims bore self-inflicted injuries as they fell prey to ‘fear psychosis’ caused by rumours which engulfed the Capital for 10 days starting May 10. The report is understood to have said that investigations could not prove that the victims were attacked by ‘black monkeys’ or ‘monkey men’ or any organised gang. None of the victims bore signs of animal bite or scratch marks. The sources said the report also spoke about the origin and spread of the rumours. The team presented a sequence of events in the ‘monkey men’ episode while investigating whether any organised gang used the rumours to their benefit. The Capital received about 400 calls of such attacks, a majority of which were found to be fake. Earlier, the Delhi Medical Association (DMA) and the Indian Rationalist Forum, an NGO, had discounted the existence of the ‘monkey men’ and attributed the attacks to mass hysteria. A senior police official had questioned the existence of the mysterious creatures. “There appears to be serious doubt about the existence of any ‘black monkey’ or ‘monkey men’ in Delhi as a study of the attacks hardly provides evidence of any scratch or bite by an animal or an attack by any external creature,’’ the officer had said. The reports of attacks were mostly rumours and some stemmed from public imagination, he had said. Medical examination of the victims at hospitals in the Capital had also established that none of them were injured in attacks by monkeys as they bore no evidence of animal bites or scratches. In some cases, it appeared that although the injuries were self-inflicted, victims reported that they had been attacked by a ‘black monkey’ or ‘monkey men’ whom they had not seen, doctors said. However, they found it difficult to explain the reason for this public reaction. An analysis of the cases revealed that only about five per cent of the callers believed they had seen the attackers. But, even they failed to describe the “mysterious” creatures when asked to do so. The report was prepared after consulting forensic experts, psychologists and doctors. The opinion of experts from the Central Scientific Forensic Laboratory (CSFL) and psychologists from the National Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (NIHBAS) was also sought.
UNI |
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13 lakh sign against NDA govt New Delhi, June 17 The signatures were today handed over to party President Sonia Gandhi by the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC), which had launched the initiative, to be forwarded to President K.R. Narayanan. Senior party leaders, addressing a Congress workers convention in the capital, made a blistering attack on the government, converting the meeting into a platform for launching a campaign that smacked of its readiness to take on the BJP in the coming Assembly elections. Addressing a Congress workers convention on the tehelka expose, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said the news portal’s tapes had tellingly exposed the Centre’s “anti-people and corrupt policies.’’ The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had squandered all moral authority to remain in power and must resign if they had any respect for constitutional propriety, she said. Ms Dikshit, while lauding DPCC President Subhash Chopra and Signature Campaign Committee Convener Sajjan Kumar for their initiative on the tehelka expose, exhorted party workers to remain united for defeating the BJP in the coming Assembly elections. All-India Congress Committee general secretary Kamal Nath, in charge of the party’s Delhi unit, said the recently-concluded assembly elections in four states and the union territory of Pondicherry amply proved that people were thoroughly disillusioned with the BJP. “A total of 450 seats were at stake in the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Pondicherry and the BJP could win a mere 12 seats. It could not even open its account in West Bengal and Kerala.” The Assembly elections were now due in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Jammu and Kashmir, and it was imperative that party workers remained united to give “a decisive blow’’ to the BJP and its allies, he said. The Congress said it would adopt “a tougher” stand against the NDA government on the tehelka expose on Defence deals in the ensuing monsoon session of Parliament. “The Assembly elections reflected the people’s mood against the corrupt Vajpayee government whose real face was shown by the tehelka expose, we would toughen our stand against the government in the Lok Sabha” AICC general secretary Kamal Nath told reporters on the sidelines of a party workers convention here.
UNI, PTI |
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Towards daughterless nation? New Delhi, June 17 The girl child seems to have lost badly despite numerous programmes and projects. The sex ratio of the child population which was 945 in 1991, decreased to 927, a decrease of 18 points. The dismal figures are revealed in the first publication of (provisional) results of the Census of India 2001 by the Registrar-General in which separate figures are available for the sex composition for the 0-6 age group. Though the Census papers show an overall increase in the sex ratio (females per 1000 males) of the population, 933 in 2001 compared to 927 in 1991 or an increase by six points during the last decade, the decline in the child sex ratio is the most shocking aspect. Renowned demographer Ashish Bose remarks that the 2001 figure is not freak, it is a secular trend. In 1961, the 0-6 sex ratio was 976, it declined to 964 in 1971, 962 in 1981 and 945 in 1991. But the sharpest decline has been in the past decade. The Census Commissioner observes in his report: “One thing is clear — the imbalance that has set in at this early stage is difficult to be removed and would remain to haunt the population for a long time to come. Demographically the 0-6 sex ratio does not augur well for the future of the country”. The alarming nature of the report is the drastic decline of the 0-6 sex ratio in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and also in Chandigarh and Delhi. In Punjab, the child sex ratio declined from 875 to 793 (a decrease of 82 points), in Haryana from 879 to 820 (59 points) in Himachal Pradesh from 951 to 897 (54 points), in Gujarat from 928 to 878 (50 points), in Chandigarh from 899 to 845 (54 points) and in Delhi from 915 to 865 (50 points). This sharp decline in the states must be the consequence of female foeticide on a massive scale if not female infanticide and higher female child mortality rates, remarks Professor Bose, author of the book ‘India’s Billion Plus People: 2001 Census Highlighted’. Professor Bose who coined the acronym BIMARU for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for being demographically backward, coins an acronym DEMARU - where ‘D’ stands for daughters and ‘MARU’ for killings. “On the basis of 50 points decline in the child sex ratio, I would classify Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat as DEMARU states”, he says. The yearning for male child was predominant in the north-west India but shockingly the decline in female child population is in every state of India, except Kerala, Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim and Lakshadweep. The unborn or the innocent infant daughters are dying, the alarming statistics are giving warning signals, but are we listening or is the nation going to live without its daughters?
PTI |
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Gulshan Kumar trial begins today Mumbai, June 17 The first witness to tender evidence before Additional Sessions Judge M.L. Tahilyani will be Ramchandra Lavangare who saw three persons gunning down audio king Gulshan Kumar on August 12, 1997, outside a temple in suburban Juhu. Ramchandra, a resident of Jeet Nagar in Juhu, had filed the first information report with the police. He is a trustee of the temple where the chief of T-series Gulshan Kumar had gone to pay obeisance to the deity on the day of the shoot-out. The examination-in-chief will be conducted by prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam and the defence team comprises Majeed Memon, Adik Shirodkar, Satish Maneshinde, Abbas Kazmi and Sayaji Nangre. The prosecution has cited 270 witnesses, including film actor Bhushan Kumar, son of the late audio king Gulshan Kumar. The other star witnesses are actors Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Chunkey Pandey, film producer Boney Kapoor, playback singer Anuradha Paudwal and Shravan of the Nadeem-Shravan duo. The trial had been delayed because the government had filed an extradition case in the UK against the prime accused and music composer Nadeem. The House of Lords in London recently discharged Nadeem from the extradition case. Nadeem continues to be in London and the prosecution has shown him as absconding accused in records before the court. Seventeen accused are facing the trial. PTI |
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DD Metro prime time on sale New Delhi, June 17 The decision to auction the slots which brought it back in the reckoning, thanks to Australian Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine, and also the 10 p.m. to 12.30 a.m. slot is being seen as a suicidal move on the part of Prasar Bharti which is already under fire for ignoring its main mandate. Observers feel there is always a chance that the slots may be acquired by a rival TV channel instead of a software production house like Channel Nine for promoting its own programming in the way Discovery Channel is doing at noon on DD Metro. However, these observers do not deny that selling the three-hour (7 p.m. to 10 p.m.) slot to Channel Nine had enabled Doordarshan to increase DD Metro’s annual revenue from Rs 54 crore to a whopping Rs 121 crore and also brought back the viewers it had been losing to satellite television channels. It is felt that it would be more prudent to continue the present arrangement and not auction any further slots. They feel viewers who returned to Doordarshan for the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. programming may again desert the broadcaster in case there was a major change in content. Dr N. Bhaskar Rao, Chairman of the Centre for Media Studies, even the Shunu Sen Committee, which reviewed the working of Prasar Bharti, had recommended that more programmes should be done in-house without looking at the profit motive in view of its public service broadcasting status. Dr Rao said there was a fear that foreign channels may use this to make a ‘backdoor’ entry into India and virtually hijack the public service broadcaster. Started in September last year with just two hours a day (7 p.m. to 9 p.m.), the slot was increased by one hour from October 16 and the three-hour slot is now being repeated in the mornings. While the viewership of DD2 had remained more or less static before the auctioning of the Nine Gold slot, the revenue had fallen from Rs 103 crore in 1996-97 to Rs 75 crore in 1998-99 and Rs 57 crore in 1999-2000. UNI |
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Jaya is now
Jayalalithaa Chennai, June 17 The AIADMK supremo has started spelling her name as J. Jayalalithaa, following the advice of numerologists. According
to AIADMK sources, the change in the spelling was effected after Jayalalithaa performed a yagna to Goddess Kali at a temple in Iyyavadi village near Kumbakonam in Thanjavur district late last year. The sources said though she had changed the spelling while writing her name in English, there is no change when she writes her name in Tamil. State Information Department officials had recently requested the Press informally to use the new spelling. Following an astrologer’s advice, Jayalalithaa had vowed to offer an elephant to the famous Sri Krishna temple at Guruvayoor in Kerala if she won the Assembly elections. Jayalalithaa, whose party was routed in the 1996 elections, had won a landslide victory in the May 10 poll, this year. The AIADMK supremo was supposed to make the offering on June 10, but postponed it to another date, later this month. In fulfilment of her pre-election vow, she would also be offering prayers in several temples in Kerala.
PTI |
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Bharat Shah moves HC afresh for bail Mumbai, June 17 The petition will come up for hearing tomorrow before Mr Justice A.B. Palkar. Copies thereof have been served on the respondents — the State of Maharashtra and Mumbai Police. This is the sixth bail plea of the accused who has been charged with targeting film personalities for personal gains in nexus with Pakistan-based gangster Chhota Shakeel. The high court has twice rejected his bail petitions, while the trial court has turned down his plea for liberty on three occasions. In this petition, Shah has not challenged earlier orders rejecting his plea for bail. This time, he has harped on a new ground. According to him, the probe was complete as the prosecution had filed before the court additional material in the form of statement of witnesses, panchnamas and reports of Central Forensic Laboratory on telephonic talks recorded by the police. Shah pleaded that he was in jail since January 8 this year and investigations had come to an end. Therefore, it was highly improbable that he would tamper with evidence if released on bail. According to Shah, the orders passed by the competent authority under the Indian Telegraph Act to record telephonic conversation between Chhota Shakeel and himself were not in accordance with the law.
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Naushad composes PM’s poems Mumbai, June 17 “We played the tape of his popular poem ‘Unki Yaad Karen’ and he expressed satisfaction and lauded the effort,” a smiling Naushad along with singer Hariharan told PTI last night after meeting Mr Vajpayee at the hospital. ‘Unki Yaad Karen’ pays tributes to India’s freedom fighters and revolutionaries including Veer Savarkar. “Mr Vajpayee’s poems are not romantic but focused on patriotism. I am sure his poems do not merely lie within the pages of a book, but reach the general public,” Naushad said. The music virtuoso said he planned to come up with a complete album of Mr Vajpayee’s poems. The album is slated to be released on August 15 and will subsequently be dubbed in various languages.
PTI |
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Protesters burn
PM’s effigy Imphal, June 17 The strike in Manipur was called to protest against the Centre’s decision this week to extend ceasefire with rebels in neighboring Nagaland. The All-Manipur Students Unions and about 80 organisations which backed the strike said the move to include Manipur and two other states within the ambit of the ceasefire would effect the authority of these states and trigger unrest in the region. A separatist group, Kangleipak Communist Party, in a statement said that the Central Government and politicians were to be blamed for any consequences arising out of the recent decision. A Manipur police officer said the mob burnt the effigies of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and T. Muivah, the chief of the separatist National Socialist Council of Negaland (Isaac-Muivah), with whom the truce was signed.
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BJP, Mulayam trying to kill me: Mayawati Lucknow, June 17 She said she had already written to the President and the Prime Minister about her threat perception and the “need” for continuing her Z-plus security. Speaking to mediapersons here yesterday, Ms Mayawati said the governments, both at the Centre and state, had been “tinkering” with her security arrangements now and then. Recalling the June 2, 1995, “guest-house incident” when she was kept under house arrest for nearly two days and an attempt was made on her life, she said: “Mulayam was making plans to get me liquidated. I am sure I would be killed the day the Z-plus security is withdrawn,” she added. She maintained that her party would contest all 403 seats. She claimed that the BJP, the Congress and other parties were thinking of an alliance with her party because their own support base had been shifting in favour of her party. Meanwhile, the BJP has said it would welcome its “old allies”, including the BSP, to form an alliance for the forthcoming Assembly polls.
ANI |
Punjab Today award for I.K. Gujral New Delhi June 17 While urging the Punjabi community to maintain “Punjabiyat”, Mr Gujral exhorted them to adopt a scientific temper and ensure literacy in the state. Referring to the huge foreign investments being made in Maharashtra and South India, Mr Gujral said Punjab must ensure that it was not left behind in the field of economic development. Union Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa presented the award to the former Prime Minister at a glittering ceremony in the Capital which was attended by several dignatories. Mr Dhindsa said Mr Gujral’s political career had not been tarnished with any scandals or scams. He was the pioneer in improving Indo-Pakistan relations, he said. |
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