Chandigarh, August 23
A two-day talent search competition opened today at DAV College Principal S. Marriya inaugurated it. Various competitions were organized and student participated in events like geet, ghazal, folk songs, mehandi and quiz contests with great enthusiasm.

Prof Surinder Sharma of Panjab University presided over the function.

Chandigarh, August 23
After many twists and turns over a period of nine years, the Beant Singh trial is set for speedy disposal with the court of the Special CBI Judge, Mr M.M. Sharma, today extending court timings by one hour.

A decision to extend the court hours was taken during the course of the proceedings in the high-security Burail Jail here today. Currently, the court proceedings are held from 3 p.m. to 4.15 p.m. and now the court will begin at 2 p.m.

Sources said the decision to extend the timings had to be seen in the backdrop of the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to conduct the trial on a “day-to-day-basis” and preferably conclude it by October this year.

It may be recalled that till now 275 out of over 500 prosecution witnesses had deposed before the court. After the escape of Jagtar Singh Hawara, the main accused, along with three others from the Burail Jail in January last year, the trial got delayed. All witnesses examined during his absence are being examined again.

Today Mr Nanha Ram, an Inspector with the Chandigarh Police, who was among the first persons to reach the blast site on August 31,1995 at the Punjab Civil Secretariat was examined again.

The defence counsel had earlier contended that there was no need to re-examine the witnesses, who had already deposed before the court in the absence of Hawara. However, the court reportedly turned down their plea and as a result that as many as 35 persons examined during his absence will have to be re-examined.

Meanwhile, an application was moved earlier by one of the undertrials, Navjot Singh, whose father was arrested by the local police on August 21. Navjot sought exemption from appearance as he was “mentally depressed” on account of his father’s arrest. When it was brought to his notice that the trial could not be held in his absence he withdrew the application.

Earlier, the Judge, CBI counsels and the defence counsels were frisked by the jail staff. However, today the security checks were conducted outside the court as against yesterday when the frisking was done inside the court room.

In order to break the impasse between the defence counsels and jail authorities, the judge had ordered on August 20 that all cars, including his own official vehicle, would be parked outside the jail. 

Chandigarh, August 23
A Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal, comprising Mr L.M. Goyal and Ms Shyma Dogra, today adjourned the hearing in the case of the UT employees’ transfer to the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, to September 6.

The bench after two days of lengthy arguments and justification given by the counsel of the respondents and the defendants adjourned the case.

The hearing of the case of case was taken up on August 22 after the employees of Chandigarh Administration had sought transfer of their cases to another Bench.

At least 24 different applications have been moved by 83 employees. It may be mentioned that recently the Punjab and Haryana High Court, while maintaining status quo in case of Harpal Singh and others Vs Union of India, had directed the Tribunal to decide on the matter within 30 days.

The issues being contested are the seniority list and whether the employees who have already exercised their option can again exercise the option. 

Chandigarh, August 23
The Army has ordered a court of inquiry (CoI) into allegations of certain documents pertaining to the sensitive Tehelka case being tampered, it is learnt. During an ongoing general court martial trying a brigadier for allegedly demanding and accepting bribes form arms dealers, a witness had alleged that answers given by him during recording of the summary of evidence (SOE) have been altered.

The orders in this regard have been issued by Headquarters 2 Corps, Ambala, and the General Officer Commanding a division deployed in western sector is expected to be the COI’s presiding officer.

Former tehelka.com staffer Aniruddha Bahal, who had masterminded a sting operation catching senior politicians, bureaucrats and military officers demanding and accepting bribes for fictitious arms dealers, had stated during his deposition before the GCM in June that Brig S.S. Gill had added certain words and statements to his answers which had given only as “yes” or “no”. Brigadier Gill had recorded the additional SOE.

Headquarters 2 Corps, thereafter, had sent the handwritten script to the Government Examiner of Questioned Documents (GEQD), Forensic examination of documents established that certain portions of the additional summary of evidence and the report was presented by an expert before the GCM.

The report revealed that in some portions of the SOE, the dots representing fullstops were altered to represent commas and the tint of the ink representing fullstops and commas was different.

Further, the writing succeeding the commas appeared to have been written with an ink of different tint vis-à-vis the original writing, indicating that the words were subsequent additions. The relative size and spacing of various letters and words written after the punctuation marks is not consistent with that of the writing preceding them, the report stated.

The additional SOE was recorded by Brigadier Gill in March, 2004, and at present he is commanding an artillery brigade in western sector. The convening authority had recently placed restrictions on his movements and had directed that he should not leave station or proceed on leave without intimating them.

Later, Mathews Samuel, who had physically executed the sting operation, had made similar allegations before the court while deposing.