Jalandhar, August 16
After frequent incidents of honour killings in Haryana, a similar case surfaced in the Nurmahal area, near here, in neighbouring Punjab on Sunday morning when the body of a youth was found dumped in a jute bag in the bed of the Kali Bein.

The love affair of a girl of a Jat family of Mandal Himmat village with Rakesh Kumar (19), belonging to a Dalit family of the same village, is said to have triggered the incident.

According to information received here, Rakesh, alias Kaki, son of Kewal Singh, a wire-winder by profession, had been having an affair with the girl (a student of Arya College, Nurmahal) for the past couple of years and had gone to meet her at her home on Friday.

Family members of the daughter of an NRI were enraged to find both of them together which, in turn, prompted the girl’s relatives, including her uncle Balwinder Singh, to kill the boy.

The family members of the boy claimed that the girl had informed Kaki’s brother Gurpreet Singh that her family members had planned to eliminate Rakesh.

Phillaur DSP Sandeep Sharma claimed that the girl’s family members attacked Rakesh after finding him with the girl. Balwinder Singh raised the alarm and attacked Rakesh thrice on his head with a baton, leading to his death.

In an attempt to destroy evidence, the family members bundled the body of Rakesh in a jute bag and dumped it in the bed of the Kali Bein at Jamser village.

The body was handed over to the boy’s family after a post-mortem examination at the Civil Hospital, Phillaur, this afternoon. The police has rounded up Balwinder Singh, his wife, the girl, her mother and certain other relatives in this connection.

The DSP, however, denied that it was a case of honour killing. He said that a case of murder had been registered against Balwinder Singh.

Tarsem Peter, President of the Pendu Mazdoor Union, Punjab, claimed that the incidents of honour killing had increased in the state over the past some time. He demanded stringent action against the culprits, alleging that the Punjab police had been hushing up some of the cases.

Kapurthala, August 16
The district police arrested a head constable and a woman when it found its two head constables (HCs) and the woman blackmailing a potato grower of Jalandhar district.

A team, led by PCR in charge Niranjan Singh, laid a trap at the local bus stand on the directions of SSP Ram Singh and succeeded in nabbing Sukhwinder Kaur and head constable Gurdev Singh. However, head constable Kuldip Singh is absconding.

According to information, the potato grower was standing at the bus stand to board a bus for Surkhpur village on Friday when the woman approached him and started talking. In the meantime, the two head constables came there and took both of them to a deserted place near grain market. They threatened him that they would book him for indulging in prostitution and demanded Rs 15,000 from him as bribe. The potato grower, Sukhwinder Singh, alleged that they snatched Rs 2,000, the only money he had at that time, from him.

Sukhwinder asked them to give him Rs 50 so that he could go to his village to bring the balance amount. When he reached his house, he narrated the entire incident to his father. He and his father met SSP Ram Singh and a trap was laid at the bus stand.

Ram Singh told The Tribune that the trio had reached the bus stand to get the balance amount from Sukhwinder Singh. The police team in plain clothes nabbed the woman on the spot on Saturday, whereas both the head constables managed to flee.

Later, head constable Gurdev Singh was caught on Saturday night, whereas head constable Kuldip Singh was still at large. The SSP said both head constables, posted at Police Lines, were suspended. A case was registered 

Kahnuwan (Gurdaspur), August 16
Even as the state Congress leadership is yet to find out the reasons for defeat of its candidates in all three assembly segments where byelections were held on August 3, with the victory of Sewa Singh Sekhwan, SAD candidate from this assembly constituency, all 11 seats in Gurdaspur district have gone to the ruling SAD-BJP alliance in Punjab.

Perhaps, this is for the first time in the election history of reorganised Punjab that all 11 assembly seats of the district are won by candidates of the ruling SAD-BJP alliance. Sekhwan has defeated Fateh Jung Singh Bajwa, Congress candidate, with a margin of 12,044 votes.

Partap Singh Bajwa, who vacated the seat after he was elected to Parliament in the last Lok Sabha elections, was the only candidate of the Congress who was elected MLA in the 2007 assembly elections by defeating Sekhwan.

All other 10 assembly seats of the border district went to the SAD-BJP alliance candidates. In the 2002 assembly elections, the SAD-BJP alliance touched its lowest ebb when it won only one seat out of 11.

Two consecutive defeats in the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections have been haunting both Sekhwan and Fateh Jung Singh Bajwa. Sekhwan got defeated in 2002 and 2007 in Kahnuwan, while Bajwa got defeated from Sri Hargobindpur in 2002 as an independent 
candidate and in 2007 as the 
Congress nominee.

What has turned the game to the favour of Sekhwan, who was defeated by Partap Singh Bajwa twice in 2002 and 2007, was the fact that Parkash Singh Badal and his Cabinet colleagues and other party MLAs and leaders indulged in aggressive campaigning and managed to reach out to the maximum number of voters at their doorstep. Badal camped in Gurdaspur town for about 10 days during the whole period of campaigning.

On the other hand, the campaign of Fateh Jung Singh Bajwa was managed by him and his brother Partap Singh Bajwa along with their family members.

Though the local Congress leaders of the area made their presence felt in the campaigning, the main leaders of the party, including Capt Amarinder Singh, who was being considered as a vote catcher, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Leader of Opposition, and state Congress chief Mohinder Singh Kaypee, used the “touch and go” policy as they addressed only one rally each in favour of Bajwa.

The other factors which have become a cause of concern for the Congress leadership are that Sekhwan has won the seat with effective victory margin of 12,044 votes, which was not witnessed in earlier elections.

Interestingly, in the last Lok Sabha elections in May, 2009, Partap Singh Bajwa managed to take a lead of 4,700 votes in the Kahnuwan assembly segment from Vinod Khanna, the SAD-BJP alliance candidate.

The other factor, which played a key role in the victory of Sekhwan, was the fact that government machinery along with senior police and civil officials were made to work for the job, clandestinely.

Though the Bajwa brothers lodged a number of complaints with the Election Commission, Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab, and Election Observer in connection with the use of official machinery and police force in favour of Sekhwan, these failed to bring desirable results.

However, a section of supporters of Sekhwan were disappointed over the fact that he (Sekhwan) has not been inducted into the Cabinet so far despite the fact that he remained minister during the SAD-BJP government from 1997 to 2002.

Amritsar, August 16
Ravneet Bittu, Member Parliament and Punjab Youth Congress President, today stated that he would take up the issue of constructing a memorial in the memory of the about 10 lakh persons who were brutally killed during partition of the country in 1947.

Bittu, the grandson of former Congress Chief Minister Beant Singh, pointed out that even after 62 years of Independence, successive governments had failed to raise a suitable memorial to the people who lost their lives in the holocaust.

He said during nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, in which about two lakh people were killed, the government there built national memorials.

He said even after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and Kargil war, memorials had been constructed to those who laid down their lives for the sake of the country. He said he would raise the issue in Parliament and would do his utmost for getting a memorial built.

Expressing concern over smuggling of narcotics and fake currency across the country, Bittu said the Youth Congress would constitute a team of young party workers in each block, which would go door to door spreading awareness against the drug menace.

Jalandhar, August 16
Kulbir Singh Sanghera, elder son of revolutionary Ghadarite Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, along with the members of the local Desh Bhagat Yadgaar Hall (DBYH) Trust today thanked the state government for conferring the prestigious Punjab Rattan Award on Baba Bilga.

Baba Bilga was accorded the honour posthumously for his glorious role in the Ghadar movement and the freedom of the country. The award was presented by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal during the state-level Independence Day function held at Ferozepur.

Sanghera thanked the state government for giving the honour to the great Ghadarite. “The family as well as the members of the DBYH are thankful to the state government for conferring this award on Baba Bilga,” he said.