Jammu, August 21
While in the fast-paced life civil society seems least concerned, unidentified and unclaimed bodies continue to trouble the “overstretched” Jammu police.

In the past one month, 16 corpses were found from various parts of the temple city. And despite being understaffed, the police and the health department claim that they follow the rulebook in performing the last rites of the person as per his or her religion.

“We get two types of corpses. Those being brought by the police and those who die in the hospital without any identity,” said a senior official of Government Medical College here.

“In both cases, we keep the body in the hospital morgue for at least 72 hours and inform the police so that claimants, if any, can come and identify them,” he added.

After 72 hours, the autopsy is performed and the body is cremated through the police as per the religion of the victim, he said.

The official said, “In case, we come across a corpse in good condition with no claimant to stake claim within 72 hours, we send the body to the anatomy department for the purpose of dissection”.

A senior CID officer said after shifting unidentified bodies to the hospital mortuary, the police gave their photographs and description in the form of news in various newspapers and TV channels so as to locate their claimant.

“We wait for 72 hours for their relatives and thereafter last rites of such bodies are performed,” he informed.

“If the victim is a Hindu, the body is given to the Seva Samiti for the last rites and in case, the victim is a Muslim, we give the body to the Auqaf Trust, which performs its burial,” he added.

Though most cases are of natural deaths, the police initiates proceedings under Section 174 of the Cr PC, he said.

When asked about ashes in case of Hindus, he said, “We usually immerse them in the Tawi or Purmandal or Akhnoor”.SP (City North) Randeep Kumar, who rightly described it as a part of police duty, said, “In some rare cases, if a claimant approaches us after the last rites, we apprise him of the entire police exercise.”

Kumar further said, ”In most cases, we have found that the victim is either a mentally challenged person or a beggar, who died of illness, starvation or extreme climate”.

However, he attributed the rise in such cases to migrant labourers, who came in large numbers from states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Orissa.

“They are in thousands and at the same time their antecedents are not known. Hence, an exercise is in the offing to keep their records via their contractors,” he added.

Though the health authorities claim to identify the religion of the victims for their last rites, it is not an easy job.“We identify the victim’s religion through various ways, including name or religious symbol tattooed on his arm and private parts in case of a male, sources said.

However, when asked how they identified bodies of Christians, they had no answer. “Hitherto, we didn’t face such a case, but it might be tricky for us to handle such a situation,” said a health official.

Srinagar, August 21
Policemen in the Kashmir valley have been picking up unwed couples and harassing them either for money or for projecting themselves as moral guardians of society.

Police personnel of Harwan police station, whose jurisdiction spreads over the outskirts of Srinagar, picked up a boy, Mudassir, recently, accusing him of getting cozy with his girlfriend in a public place. His friends told The Tribune that the couple was moving around in a garden and was spotted by cops. The girl began crying and the cops asked her to write a statement that the boy was teasing her.

Local youths allege that gardens and parks are frequently targeted by cops as lovers go there to spend some private moments.

Ashrar Sahil, a friend of Mudassir, says couples, who look vulnerable are also their easiest targets. “Last week, a boy from Shaalimar was picked up and released only after he paid bribe,” he says.

Puritans have taken roots in Srinagar, which was much more liberal prior to militancy, in the past two decades and couples have been the softest targets for the so-called moral police and Islamist leaders like Asiya Andrabi. Even illegal harassment of couples never invites any disapproval from society or media and it only encourages cops who want to victimise them.

A police official defended the “idea” behind action against couples, saying the police has to work keeping in mind the societal sensibilities. “Whenever we carry out any drive against such obscenities, we get appreciation and praise from people. The police wants to make friends with civil society, more so in Kashmir,” he said.

He, however, added that the police had to use their discretion in such cases. Harassing girls for making statements against their boyfriends was untenable, he added.

Police sources said most of such cases resulted in compromises, benefitting corrupt policemen who knew that such cases would not hold any ground in a court of law.

There are even cases when travelling couples have been picked up from autos by cops. “Police officials could be punished only when girls come ahead and reject the official accusation of eve-teasing or molestation against their boyfriends.

They never do it due to family pressure,” an official said. 

Jammu, August 21
It won’t be wrong to say that Jammu is a city of speed bumps. One can find numerous such hurdles dotting the roads at short intervals in almost all localities.

This is not the only problem. The speed breakers are neither properly marked nor are they small in size as per the guidelines. Mounted high and matching in color with that of the rest of the road, these speed breakers are barely identifiable from a distance and thus, invite accidents every day. Motorists can be seen falling down or skidding because of the hurdles, and colliding with other vehicles.

There does not seem any sense behind creating such speed bumps one after another in a row on the same road that too in congested localities. The roads have become a nightmare for the motorists.

Ridhima Sharma, a student, complains, “It appears that these speed breakers have been built by some individuals without giving any due consideration to its implications on commuters. It is irritating to slow down the vehicle time and again. It also creates jam on the roads”.

A high mound at the very beginning of the road is another odd feature of the speed breakers. Joginder Singh, a government employee, says the chassis of his car got damaged from below as it touches the surface again and again as and when he takes turns.

The guidelines of building speed breakers at a height of 10 inches seem to have gone haywire when one see these mounds proliferating all over the city.

It is not even wrong to say that most of them have been created to fulfill the whimsical wishes of some residents, as confirms Dinesh Sharma, assistant executive engineer, Public Works Department (PWD), “The residents, especially the influential, put pressure on the authorities to get these speed breakers built in their lanes in the name of safety from the speeding traffic. MLAs/councillors, too, support them”.

Speed breakers on the national highway and main roads are the responsibility of the PWD whereas the municipal corporation looks after those within the localities.

Sharma informed that before every Darbar move, all speed breakers are painted by the PWD, but the paint fades out due to the load of traffic.

The PWD is considering some strong measures to improve the condition of roads by doing away with some unnecessary speed bumps. Thaseen Mustafa, superintending engineer, PWD, informs that on the new or upgraded roads such as in Janipur and Trikuta, the department is replacing bumpy road dividers with rumble strips and cat-eye studs (the ones before Hotel Asia) to counter the heavy traffic.

“It is a boon for us that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has asked to do blacktopping on all main roads of Jammu once the work of laying of water and sewer lines gets completed. While blacktopping the roads, we will do away with the surplus speed bumps or reduce their height”.

Though the PWD has set guidelines for constructing speed breakers, the MC does not have any such instructions.

Mubarak Singh, municipal commissioner, says, “There are no guidelines for creating speed breakers in localities. People get them built by simply asking civil engineers”. There is a need for specific guidelines and equally important is the adherence to those guidelines to avoid the menace of unnecessary speed bumps, especially in the residential areas.

Srinagar, August 21
The mode of transmission of H1N1 influenza, high-risk groups involved, its complications, signs and symptoms and the ways of prevention were discussed by faculty at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences  (SKIMS), Soura.

“We need to restrict our travel to the high-prevalence areas. There is no reason to panic, but it is always good to be cautious. Observe precautions without turning them into a taboo,” said Dr Zargar.

He said: “People have the right to information but they need not to be scared. Human interaction put at backburner makes us to pay the price. Changing dynamics of human relationship is responsible for such pandemic. It took us two decades to take up diabetes (that was earlier prevalent among West only) and I see no reason why we will not catch up with this (Novel H1N1). We need not to fall in the trap of cult that is not in consonance with the human relationships”.

Prof Imtiyaz Ali, dean, Medical Faculty, SKIMS, said: “We need to be prepared and should have a policy to handle such cases - probable, suspected and confirmed. We need to have full  logistic support”.

“The government, particularly of Jammu and Kashmir, has woken up, creating awareness and sensitisation, forming rapid-response team, screening centres and isolation facilities in hospitals,” said Prof Imtiyaz.

He said H1N1 influenza was likely to persist in the densely populated areas of the country. “There is good news. It is not a disease that body can’t resist”.

He, however, warned that “situation will be alarming as winter is approaching and the temperate areas are more prone to the infection. But we need not to panic”.

He said the influenza was first reported in Mexico in April 2009 and then it spread to other continents. “No one knows the actual number of  cases globally”.

Dr Parvaiz A. Koul, Department of Internal and Pulmonary Medicine, SKIMS, said: “Most of the states in India have reported it. Twenty-six deaths have been reported in India so far. Pune (Mumbai) is the worst affected, now Bangalore is catching up”.

He said 1,77,475 cases and 1,462 deaths, world over, had been reported so far. “Novel H1N1 is a new  respiratory virus”.

Dr Koul said response goals were to reduce transmission and illness severity, provide information to help health care providers, public health officials  and public.

“Pregnant women, children less than five years and adults above the age of 65, people with cancer or pre-existing medical illness (hepatic, cardiac respiratory), diabetics, immunosuppressed persons are high-risk groups,” said Dr Koul.

About warning symptoms, he said: “Increase in breathlessness, chest pain, seizures, cyanosis, fever, cough, sore throat, body ache, headache, chills, fatigue, running or stuffy nose are its signs and symptoms”.

Jammu, August 21
If the official website of the Jammu and Kashmir government is to be believed and relied upon, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Dr Farooq Abdullah and Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad continue to be Members of the state Legislative Assembly!

Till the filing of the story, the website (http://jammukashmir.nic.in) was splashing the name of Farooq Abdullah in the list of “newly elected MLAs” from the Assembly segments of Hazratbal and Sonwar, establishing the fact that the site has not been taken care of after the results of the Assembly elections which were held in the last week of December 2008.

Similarly, Azad’s name figures as the MLA from the Bhaderwah constituency.

Interestingly, during this period, both Farooq and Azad were elected to the Rajya Sabha and later inducted into the Union Council of Ministers.

While Farooq initially quit the Hazratbal seat on January 9 and retained Sonwar, Azad had resigned from Bhaderwah on February 20. It was upon his induction into the Rajya Sabha that the National Conference (NC) president also resigned from Sonwar on February 13.

Another misrepresentation of the facts on the website was evident from the fact that some of the Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs) did not find their names in the list. Some of the retired MLCs are still shown on the website. One such prominent MLC, who does not find his name in the list, is the state’s former chief secretary and lone Kashmiri Pandit legislator, Vijay Bakaya.

The website has more stale information in store for Internet surfers. Names and portfolios of only nine NC-Congress coalition ministers have been incorporated under the category “list of Council of Ministers”. Raman Bhalla, RS Chib, Sakina Itto, Aga Syed Ruhulla Mehdi, Qamar Ali Akhoon, Abdul Ghani Malik, Ajaz Ahmad Khan, Dr Manohar Lal, Shabir Ahmad Khan, Nasir Aslam Wani, Ghulam Mohd Saroori and Javed Dar have not been shown as ministers.

Further, the website profiles only 14 districts of the state. The districts like Bandipur, Ganderbal, Samba, Reasi, Ramban, Kishtwar, Kulgam and Shopian, which were created over two years ago, are still nowhere in sight on the state’s official website.

The government’s another website, (http://jksrtc.nic.in), taken “care of” by the State Road Transport Corporation, displays on the homepage the photograph of senior Congress leader Mangat Ram Sharma as “deputy Chief Minister” and the “chairman of the corporation”. Sharma was holding both these portfolios when Mufti Mohd Sayeed was the Chief Minister.

A senior officer of the General Administration Department remarked that there could not be a bigger shock than the present one to the computer-savvy Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had many a time expressed his keenness to bring the benefits of the Information Technology at grass-roots level.

Srinagar, August 21
Journalistic skills were imparted to media students about reporting social affairs here during a two-year workshop project on “Reporting Society” organised by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service Trust in collaboration with the Media Education Research Centre (MERC) and the Educational Multi-Media Research Centre (EMMRC), University of Kashmir.

The project started in April last year and would culminate in December 2009. It includes six journalists working with various national dailies, electronic news channels and broadcasters apart from three MERC faculty members and three producers at the EMMRC.

The participants were offered hostile environment training apart from lectures on social affairs reporting. The students came out with media outputs at the end of each training session.

Shakoor Rather, first-semester student at the MERC and a participant, said he found the workshop useful. “It has been beneficial for all students as it provided us practical know-how about journalism,” he added.

Stephen Hall, an international trainer, said, “We have managed to introduce and develop some core journalistic skills among first and second year students. They have been able to demonstrate understanding and application of journalism. The workshop has been conducted to train the students about practical skills of journalism”.

A group of participants said it would guide us all along our career. It had been a great experience and we would love to have more such workshops in future.

Harpreet Kaur, project manager, BBC World Service Trust, said: “The main objective of the workshop is to promote social affairs reporting in Kashmir. We are building capacity of local journalists and faculty so that the benefit trickles down to the students who are the scribes of future”.

During the first year of the project, the trust trained 20 journalism students of the University of Kashmir. The local journalists and faculty later trained the students, along with the international trainer.

“The project is funded by the Ford Foundation. Though the project was initially meant for senior students of Kashmir University alone, the trust extended its reach to junior batches of the university and undergraduate students of Government Degree College, Baramulla,” said Kaur.

Nowshera (Rajouri), August 21
Even after hundreds of trees were destroyed in forest fires in this border district, the Forest Department, despite evidence of the local mafia behind such fires, has failed to arrest even a single person for causing a loss to the “green gold”.

The police authorities may not say openly, but they, too, regret that even as hundreds of trees have been destroyed in the forest fires here, the department has not taken cognisance of even a single case and has not even sought the help of the police.

Local sources said hundreds of trees had been destroyed in the forest fires during the last two to three months in the Nowshera area only, but the department had remained a mute spectator.

The sources further said even as there was evidence of existence of a nexus between the timber mafia and some lower-rank forest officials, the higher authorities of the department had failed to crack down on the mafia. They added that even some locals burned down trees to encroach on the forest land.

A police officer of the area on condition of anonymity also confirmed that hundreds of trees were destroyed in forest fires in the area. “Even as there has been a huge loss to the green gold in the area, the department has not taken cognisance even in a single case and has not registered any FIR with us. They even don’t seek our cooperation to arrest the culprits behind these fires,” the officer said.

“There may be a nexus between the mafia and some lower-rank forest officials, but the higher authorities of the department are not probing such a possibility”.

K. Ramesh Kumar, divisional forest officer (DFO), Nowshera, confirmed that there had been a huge damage to the trees in his area of responsibility, but the department had not arrested even a suspect responsible for the fires.

“People lodge unnecessary complaints against each other for setting up forest trees on fire. First, we have to probe such complaints and then we can take action as per the provisions of the J&K Forest Act. In cases, where villagers set forest trees on fire, we impose penalty on them,” the DFO said.

“I have not heard about any nexus between the forest officials and the timber mafia and these are just allegations with no substance,” he added.

The DFO also confirmed that they had not registered any FIR with the police in connection with the forest fires but they seek their cooperation.

Udhampur, August 21
This year’s Kailash yatra has cemented the bond between Hindus and Muslims in Bhaderwah, which in the recent years has witnessed ugly communal clashes. Muslim brethren came out in large numbers not only to receive the pilgrims but also to make arrangements for the smooth conduct of the pilgrimage.

Rajiv Singh of Udhampur, who has been regularly participating in the yatra for the past 15 years, said after so many years the Muslim community turned up in large numbers. At many places, Muslim families arranged refreshments, he added.

Echoing similar views, Raghu Slathia, a resident of Ramnagar, said the participation of all sections of society in the annual pilgrimage was a befitting reply to those who had been trying to exploit the sensitive issue of religion.

Bhaderwah, the land of Nagas, is famous for its yatras and fairs and Muslims used to participate in these events with enthusiasm. The famous yatra of Kailash Kund is held every year in the honour of Vasaki Nag. According to legend, Vasaki Nag while escaping the tyranny of Mughal emperor Akbar had taken shelter at Kailash Kund, which is the main source of the Neeru river, which passes through Bhaderwah town.

On the west of the town, a beautiful stream emanating from the surrounding Kailash Mountains adds to its charm. Kailash Dham, a beautiful fresh water lake, is also located in its proximity. Kailash Kund is one of the most revered and famous Hindu pilgrimages, situated at an altitude of 14,500 ft above sea level.

Till early 90s, local Muslims used to make all arrangements for pilgrims. Communal harmony that prevailed in this town before 90s can be gauged from the fact that Hindus always outnumbered Muslims in visiting famous “zerats” of saints. A majority of Hindus of Bhaderwah used to visit the “zerat” of Sai Sadeqq, which is located at Seri Bazar, a Hindu-dominated area.

Before the emergence of militancy in this belt, which is also known as Chotta Kashmir due to its natural beauty, Bhaderwah was famous for its communal harmony and brotherhood.

However, Bhaderwah witnessed the worst- ever communal riots a few years ago. Though the violence was controlled with the intervention of intelligentsia of both communities, such efforts could not bridge the divide between the two communities. The repeated incidents of militancy, especially selective killings like the infamous Chapnari massacre and the assassination of Ruchir Kumar, added fuel to the already volatile situation.

However, the situation has been gradually returning to normal. In 2006, the then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is a native of this place, had taken the initiative to popularise the Kailash 
yatra and involved all sections of society in the holy event to promote Hindu-Muslim unity.

He invited 20 tour operators from all over the country for first Kailash tourism festival in 2006, which marked the beginning of that year’s Kailash yatra.