Hoshiarpur, April 11
The Tanda police on Thursday night arrested Manohar Singh and his wife Baljit Kaur of Dargaheri village under sections 302, 201 and 120-B of the IPC for murdering their daughter Ravinder Kaur, alias Rozi (18).

SSP Sukhchain Singh Gill told this correspondent here on Friday that Ravinder Kaur, who went to the house of her lover Amritpal, alias Bhopa, of the same village on Wednesday, was murdered by her parents and thereafter they cremated her body hurriedly in the village cremation ground to destroy evidence.

After receiving information about the incident on Thursday night, the police reached the village and took samples of bones and ashes of the deceased for investigation.

Preliminary investigation revealed that after the girl’s recovery from the house of Amritpal, she was brought to her parents’ house and later her mother sent Ravinder Kaur to the house of her sister-in-law Daljit Kaur at Harsi Pind.

Later, when Manohar Singh reached his house, Baljit Kaur narrated the whole incident to him.

Both husband and wife went to the house of Daljit Kaur and the trio murdered Ravinder either by strangulating or giving her poison, said Gill, adding that the police was actively searching for Dajit Kaur who had absconded.

Jalandhar, April 11
Following reports on alleged irregularities in the construction of a shopping mall in Defence Colony, MC commissioner C.S. Talwar has ordered an inquiry into the matter and the report would be available within five days.

Municipal town planner (MTP) Murari Dutt Sharma said though the residents claimed a violation of the building bylaws, the plot is situated in a non-scheme area.

“The sanction has been accorded by the Punjab government. The plot falls in category six and hence there is no question of violation,” Sharma said.

However, the members of the Defence Colony Residents Society claimed a loss of more than Rs 90 lakh to the state exchequer and maintained that the MC gave a wrong recommendation and information to the chief town planner, Punjab, and the department of local bodies, Chandigarh. “The information is contrary to the reality as it is a residential area and educational institutions are also situated on this road,” said a Defence Colony resident. The residents also maintained that the owner of the said plot managed to get “change of land use” approved through some influential people. MC joint commissioner Rahul Gupta said, “We are looking into the matter and a detailed report in this regard would be available very soon.”

Jalandhar, April 11
The technical institutes in the city are soon going to be much more happening with the opening of IT parks and knowledge centres within the campuses.

Since the IT parks and centres will house the offices of top IT companies, otherwise based in the South, these will facilitate better institute-industry interface, joint research initiatives, better placement systems and training facilities.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology is soon coming up with an IT park, which will house offices of companies like CISCO making it easy for the students to carry out common real life research programmes and other collaborative initiatives with the company representatives. The director, Dr Moin Uddin, said, “The 90 per cent of construction work of the building is complete. I expect the park to become operational in another few months.” But the director tells that a bigger project in the offing is a centre for complete technology. “This will be a joint venture of seven institutes in India and Dundee University in UK.

We have recently received a grant to the tune of 0.75 billion pounds for the project called UK-India Research Initiative Programme which has been inked by Prime Ministers Dr Manmohan Singh and Tony Blair. The project aims at sharing research base of the eight institutes for generating good results of the level of M.Tech civil engineering”, he explained. The DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology is also coming up with a knowledge centre. “The ground floor of the five-storey building will have offices of IT companies like Wipro.

Company representatives will be able to carry out their regional operations from here besides coordinating with the institutes in this area for training manpower, redesigning of curriculum as per current needs and ensuring timely placements.

The companies have been approaching us with this agenda since quite sometime and we are hopeful of a better tie-up with them as soon as the project comes to a completion, may be in a year’s time. The construction for the purpose has already started”, said C.L. Kochher, director-cum-principal of the institute.

Kochher added that the first floor of the building would be a huge common library open for students, staff and company officials. The other floors would have centres for preparing students from the institute and outside for competitive examination like IAS and PCS, he said.