Disney painting competition held
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 26
Walt Disney and Kores India Limited organised a national-level spot painting competition for the kids today at Kendriya Vidyalaya, JNU-Mehrauli Road. The event, called ‘Good Morning Disney’s Little Artists’, was organised to mark the completion of Walt Disney’s 100 years of comic entertainment for children and also to mark their association with Kores India Limited as the official Disney art material licencee in India.

As part of its centenary celebrations, a national-level drawing talent recognition contest was started in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore last month. The first stage involved an intra-school drawing competition, wherein six artists from each of the participating schools were short-listed.

The second stage involved an inter-school competition to select winners from each category of children. Over 100 schools from Delhi and the NCR participated in the inter-school painting competition, which took place today. The schools included all DPS branches, G D Goenka, Apeejay, Springdales, Manav Sthali, St. Thomas, Father Agnel, Green Fields, Modern (Barakhamba Road), Spring Fields, Bloom Public School, Aster Public School and Ryan International.

Three winners from each of the two categories — Class 1 to 4 and Class 5 to 7— were selected. The winners in the first category were Khushbu Singh (Aster Public School), Rishabh Mehra (G D Goenka) and Rijul Gulati (DAV, Brij Vihar). In the second category, Gaurav Kundu (Apeejay, Sheikh Sarai) Karishma Mehra (St Thomas) and Niharika Chhabra (G D Goenka) were declared winners. The winners from all four cities will now gather at the sets of “Good Morning Disney Show” in November.

‘Centre ignoring education’

Rewari, October 26
Prof H. L. Agnihotri, a former principal of C.R.M. Jat College, Hisar, has said that the Union Government is shirking its responsibility of providing education to the young citizens. He was delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the fifth state-level convention of the All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) here yesterday. He asserted that education as well as employment was a fundamental right of every young citizen in a welfare democratic state. It was deplorable that the budgetary allocation for education was being cut persistently by the Union Government as a result of which the emoluments and allowances of teachers were consuming almost the entire budgetary allocation. This left little funds for expansion of education. OC

COURTS

SC sets aside HC order, grants bail to mahant
Jatinder Sharma

Rohtak, October 26
Setting aside the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the Supreme Court has granted anticipatory bail to Mahant Chand Nath Yogi, head of Sri Baba Mast Nath Math, Asthal Bohar, near here.

The police had registered a criminal case against Mahant Chand Nath on January 24, 1999 at Bawal police station (Rewari) under Sections 302 and 120-B of the IPC and Sections 25, 54 and 59 of the Arms Act on the charges of murdering Mahant Azad Nath at a temple in Assalwas village in Rewari, on the complaint of one Randhir Singh, son of Mr Chhote Lal.

The complainant had said that on the fateful day, Mahant Azad Nath was sitting with sewaks Tej Pal, Jaina and Ombir and others when a man came there and introduced himself as Sangwan from Jind and that he wanted to smoke sulphas. Baba Azad Nath refused permission, but told him that he could take the meal if he wanted. The young man refused to take the meal.

Thereafter, the complainant and others started taking food and Baba Azad Nath went to the bathroom. Within 4-5 minutes, there was a big noise of fireworks and the baba gave a call “Bhago” (run). On hearing the noise, the complainant and others rushed to the spot and saw Baba lying near a tree and bleeding from the right side of his chest.

In the FIR, it is stated that the complainant and others doubted that the person who had come to smoke earlier might have been hiding in the dark and must have fired at Baba. They suspected that the latter died because of gunshots and if the person came before them, they could identify him.

Mahant Chand Nath Yogi, in his petition, said that the police with mala fide and oblique motive and under the pressure of the present government of Haryana wanted to implicate him in this case. He said that a false case was tried to be made out against him to mar his reputation and create hurdles in the developmental activities being carried out by his Math. The police officials, he said, attempted to falsely implicate him in the criminal case with the aid of one Kishan, son of Randhir Singh of Mehandipur village. Kishan, he said, was a hardened criminal and a life convict against whom several criminal cases pertaining to heinous offences were pending.

It was alleged by the police that Kishan in custody had made a statement implicating Mahant Chand Nath Yogi under Section 120-B of the IPC. In this case,

Mahant Chand Nath was interrogated on June 24, 1999 by various police officials, including Inspector, CID/Crime, Faridabad and found that Mahant Chand Nath was not involved.

Mahant Chand Nath further contended that at the behest of senior politicians, the police made another attempt to implicate him with the help of another hardened criminal, Manjit Singh, son of Tek Ram, and Ashok Kumar, a resident of Delhi. Manjit Singh, he said, had remained in police and judicial custody in various criminal cases and no plausible explanation had been given by him as to why he did not disclose the alleged involvement of Mahant Chand Nath in the crime after the registration of the aforesaid FIR and till his arrest on March 10, 2001.