NEIGHBOURHOOD

Banur farmers turn to chilly
Gurdeep Singh Mann
Tribune News Service

A farmer in a farm of chilly at Banur. A Tribune photograph

Kaloli (Banur), August 9
Farmers of Banur and adjoining areas are turning towards the spicy commodity chilly due to high gains and handsome profits earned from its cultivation.

The area under cultivation of chilly has increased in past few years. With increase of demand in chilly crop, the government should set up processing units for chilly power, medicines, cosmetics and for other uses.

“Chilly cultivation has been increased by manifolds during the past just few years. Farmers of the area have increased area under cultivation as they got good price for crop last year,” said Malkiat Singh of Buta Singh Wala village.

Though chilly is largely grown in Nabha and adjoining areas, but farmers of Banur, Rajpura and Fatehgarh Sahib had also shown keen interest in growing the crop, said the chilly growers.

Investment of a chilly plant would surely be profitable for investor and farmers as the yield and area under cultivation had been increasing, said farmers of the area.

Chilly crop is grown from February to October and it can also be rotated with other crops. Subegh Singh, a chilly grower for past around 12 years, said the profit from the crop keeps on increasing and decreasing.

Last year, the profit was high and a large number of farmers got lured to the spicy crop, resulting in many farmers sowing chilly at least in some part of their total landholding under agriculture.

Last year, the price was between Rs 3,000 and Rs 3,500 per quintal. A farmer could get 200 or 250 quintals from an acre and it also depended upon the variety of chilly, he said, adding that this year, the yield had been good.

After two months of transplantation plucking begins and the labourers are hired at a cost of Rs 2 per kg. Once the crop had been ready, it was plucked after every 10 or 12 days, he said. Even the low labour costs have attracted many farmers, who do not have to worry about labour shortage, which mars the paddy transplantation.

Ropar, August 9
The Ropar Sessions Court has sentenced five persons to life imprisonment in a murder case of Rajinder Singh alias Mintu in 2006.

The accused included Manjit Singh, Gurvinder Singh alias Raju (both from Bajheri in Kharar), Sonu from Khattra village, grain market resident Sukhwinder Singh Bittu and Varinder Singh Binder.

Additional public prosecutor Sansar Chand Attri said the court of additional sessions judge Mandeep Pannu had awarded life sentence to all five accused. Rajinder Singh alias Mintu was murdered on June 8, 2006. Rajinder, owner of a gym in Kharar, and his friend Taranjit Singh alias Laddi were attacked. While Taranjit survived the attack, Rajinder lost his life.

Rajinder ran Mintu Health Club. As per the statements of Taranjit Singh, a resident of Mundi Kharar, on June 8, 2006, he was at Rajinder’s gym to buy some machine. Around 8:45 pm, the five accused came to the gym and attacked Rajinder with sharp-edged weapons.

When Taranjit tried to intervene, he also sustained some injuries. Both were rushed to PGIMER, Chandigarh.

Kalka, August 9
The loan defaulters of the Primary Agricultural Co-operative Society (PACS), Kalka, would soon be behind the bars as the society had decided to take stern action against them.

Under a special campaign, the Kalka PACS has started filing a case against the chronic defaulters in the Panchkula court. Informing this, Balwinder Rana, manager of the Kalka PACS said the cases had already been filed in the court against the three defaulters, who had not deposited their loan amount. The bank had issued notices to them. Even they denied to receive the legal notices of the society.

They had been issued summons by the new court. The defaulters included Sulocna Badola of Kurari mohalla, Kalka, Mukesh Kumar of Preet Nagar, Kalka and Mast Ram of Karanpur.

He said the trio had been given loan amounts of Rs 54,000, 31,000 and 50,000 respectively, which had been lying out standing till date.

Rana further added that a total of Rs 3.18 crore had been disbursed as a loan amount to 1,801 account holders of the society, which included agricultural and non-agricultural loan, out of which more than 50 per cent of the loan amount had been recovered. The rest of the outstanding amount would soon be recovered.

Patiala, August 9
In a function “Help the needy” held here Pran Sabharwal, director of National Theatre Arts Society (NTAS), Patiala, and citizens expressed gratitude to the philanthropists for their noble gesture of helping the needy and down trodden.

The philanthropists Rotarian, Dr Ashok Gupta, gave Rs 10,000 for the marriage of a needy family's daughter, Rs 10,000 to Kusht Ashram for renovation of their common room, Jai Mahajan DGM, State Bank of Patiala and Balwinder Kumar AGM SBoP for providing financial aid of Rs 5,100 for Leprosy Patient's Colony to meet their needs and SK Chaudhary, a retired chief engineer, PSEB, for providing financial help to four charitable institutes in Patiala.

CRIME

5 held for heist at medicine godowns
Tribune News Service

Panchkula, August 9
With the arrest of five persons from Sector 19 here last night, the Panchkula police claims to have solved a series of robberies that took place at some medicine godowns in the industrial area.

The arrested have been identified as Krishan Goyal, Uttam Ghosh, Naresh Kumar, all residents of Delhi, Ajit Kumar from Hisar and Sumair from Rewari. It was after a tip-off that the police managed to bust the seven-member gang by arresting five of them. According to the police, the suspects were nabbed while they were planning another robbery in a medicine godown in the area.

The gang headed by Krishan Goyal was specifically targeting medicine storage houses and was reportedly involved in a number of robberies, including a couple in Ambala, one in Panchkula and one each in Panipat, Faridabad and Delhi.

“It was after a tip-off that we managed to arrest five of the seven-member gang. Also, we have recovered two countrymade pistols and two sharp-edged weapons and a Tata 407 that was used for the crime. The gang deals specifically in medicines and has already committed robberies to the tune of Rs 1.25 crore at several places”, said the Station House officer, Sector 20. It was also added that the five were later produced in the court and taken on police remand.

All the accused have been remanded to police custody.

Police officials said the gang had struck at the godown of Lubin Compay on June 29 and they decamped with goods worth over Rs 12 lakh after taking the security guard and the chowkidar’s family hostage 

Chandigarh, August 9
A city-based businessman has accused his daughter in law, her father and a relative of kidnapping his two grandchildren.

According to police sources, Ajinder Aggarwal of Sector 18-C filed a complaint alleging that his daughter-in-law, Napur, along with her father, Vithur, and maternal uncle Narinder Nath of Delhi, had kidnapped his two grandchildren on July 6.

Sources in the Woman and Child Support Unit of the Chandigarh Police said that Aggarwal alleged that his daughter-in-law took her children and a maid to Fun Republic in a car. On reaching there, she told the maid to wait and went to a car on the other side of the road in which her father and uncle were sitting.

She sat in the car along with the children and drove away.

The maid called him up informing about the incident and the matter was reported to the police.

The police said there was a matrimonial dispute between the families and Napur had lodged a dowry harassment complaint against her in-laws.

The police said the matter was resolved amicably then.

Meanwhile, the police has registered a case of misappropriation, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy under Sections 406, 365 and 120-B of the IPC against Napur, her father and maternal uncle.

Chandigarh, August 9
Reetu, a resident of Kajheri, died of burn injuries at the PGI here this afternoon. According to the police, the victim suffered burn injuries while cooking meals on stove at her residence last night.

Her sari caught fire and soon the fire spread leading to a stove burst. She was rushed to the PGI in a critical situation where she died during the treatment today.

Panchkula, August 9
Prateek Thakral clinched the junior snooker title in the ongoing 23rd Haryana State Billiards and Snooker Championship being held on the Sector 11 premises of Haryana Billiards.

In the junior snooker’s semifinal, Prateek defeated Karan Dhir 2-0 and Nitin from Kurukshetra 2-0. Nitin on the other hand won his two matches against Karan Dhir and Himanshu Aggarwal 2-0 each.

Though Himanshu defeated Prateek 2-1 but he was not in the race because of the frame difference and Nitin got the second place in the junior snooker championship.

Karan Dhir hits the highest break of 43.

In the senior snooker, Aman Goyal defeated Sunny Bhalla 3-0. Bhalla could not get his touch in all three frames. Aman Goyal kept his cool and was hitting small breaks in every visit. He hits breaks of 32, 29 and 36.

Results:

Junior snooker: Prateek bt Nitin 2-0; Prateek bt Karan Dhir 2-0; Himanshu bt Prateek 2-1; Nitin bt Himanshu 2-0 and Nitin bt Karan Dhir 2-0.

Chandigarh, August 9
The city may be the hub of football and hockey academies but the ground reality is that the perfomance of these sports in the national games are negligible.

According to information provided by the Chandigarh Olympic Association (COA), the hockey and football teams hardly even stand a chance to qualify in the national tournaments while the individual sports, including wrestling, boxing, archery, rowing, and kayaking & canoeing, have put up good performance.

The Chandigarh team had bagged 16 medals in the 33rd National Games held in Guwahati in 2007. All these medals came from these individual sports while the hockey and football teams even failed to qualify in most of the nationl games.

“The hockey and football teams never won in the senior nationals and I don’t see any hope of their winning in future too. Most of the junior players, who come from academies, either go back to other states or join services,” said Maha Singh, joint secretary, COA.

Officials in the sports department get away by saying that the Chandigarh Hockey Academy and the Chandigarh Foobtrall Academy, being run by the administartion, are for junior players while the national games are held in senior category only. However, sportsmen argue that when these players will not represent Chandigarh in the nationals then what is the use of opening these academies.

“Why these have been opened, just for officials tours to Germany with players. When these players, a majority of whom are not even from Chandigarh, will head to their patron states or will take the benefit of gradation and quit the sport, then who will represent the Chandigarh team? Questioned a coach in the department.

Raged over the Chandigarh sports department for not being recognized even after giving performance in the nationals, an office-bearer of a sport association, said, “In individual sports, we bagged five gold medals in the last nationals. Rather than honouring the players or the coaches, the department has reduced the number of three boxing centres to one and with this only one coach is left.”

“When the country won its Olympic medal in the individual sport and even in nationals individual sports rule the roost, then why don’t the administration open an academy for this?” he questioned.

Speaking to The Tribune, JPS Sidhu, joint director, sports, said, “According to fresh norms of the administration, we only honour international players. Honouring the national level players is the work of the COA, not ours. We already have football, cricket and hockey academies and it is a very difficult job to handle all this. We don’t have any plan to open any more academy right now.”