Bathinda, May 28
Installation of Reverse Osmosis (ROs) filtration plants is progressing at a slow pace to provide potable water in the rural households of the Malwa belt that has over the years come to be known as the cancer capital of Punjab.

Residents of these villages have been consuming highly contaminated canal water with which they refuse to irrigate their crops. The government's scheme to install ROs has come as a ray of hope for them.

Of the 754 villages in the districts of Bathinda, Muktsar and Mansa, only about 280 have so far been provided with community-based ROs. Residents of the Jhajjal and Gyana villages in the Talwandi Sabo block of Bathinda that have remained in news because of a very high incidence of cancer are satisfied following the installation of RO units. However, the unit in Gyana has reportedly not been functioning smoothly.

A total number of 88 ROs have been installed in the Bathinda district, 78 in Mansa and about 130 in Muktsar where safe drinking water is sold for 10 paise per liter.

According to an engineer of the Public Health department in Bathinda, 13 ROs were at an advanced stage of installation in the district and the government has approved another 13.

The Gidderbaha area of Muktsar district that also had a high number of cancer patients has now got RO units. Residents of several villages were compelled to drink water containing high quantity of calcium, magnesium, potassium, chloride and sulphates. These minerals cause various water-borne disease, including cancer.

Residents of villages that have not yet been provided RO units fetch filtered water from the neighbouring areas and were demanding such filtration plant in their own hamlets. However, menfolk of the Teona Pujarian village in the 
Talwandi Sabo block were shy of carrying the plastic cans to fetch water from the RO in the neighbouring village of Sangat Khurd, said a resident Jagsir Singh.

Rural folk in certain areas have offered to pay additional price for RO water in case the operators made arrangements for home delivery. The arrangement was already in vogue in Bathinda town where cab and rickshaw operators are seen delivering RO water at the doorsteps of hotels, clubs, commercial establishments and domestic customers at a nominal additional payment. An engineer said, reports have been received from certain areas where not more than 35 per cent of the village folk fetch water from the RO. Others were pressing for introduction of home delivery system.

Top priority was being given to the installation of ROs in the Bathinda town with 50 municipal corporation wards where 37 have already been commissioned, said senior deputy mayor Tarsem Goyal. The left out wards would also be provided RO filters in the first round. The bigger wards would be provided additional ROs in the second round, he added.

Of the 281 villages of Bathinda, 279 have been identified as water scarcity villages where the residents depend on canal and groundwater.

In most of the southern areas of Punjab, underground water is unfit for human consumption as it contains total dissolved solids (TDS) in the range of 15000-35000 mg per litre. Whereas, according to BIS standards, safe drinking water should have TDS in the range of 0-500 mg per litre.

Bathinda, May 28
Finally, despite all the hiccups, the prestigious Bathinda-ring road phase II project is ready to take off again with allotment of contract for construction being carried out today in the evening.

According to officials of the Bathinda Development Authority (BDA), after a neck to neck competition between 13 renowned players, Gawar Construction company of Haryana emerged as the successful bidder, getting the contract for the construction of the road, installing streetlights and laying irrigation channels beneath the road.

Speaking over the phone, officials said that against the reserve price of Rs 17.38 crore, the contract was allotted with a reduction of 20-22 per cent.

“It was a smooth and fair process of allotment as the financial bids were opened in the presence of all 13 bidders," claimed the chief administrator of the BDA, Ravi Bhagat.

Among the contenders, a majority belonged to Bathinda, while some outsiders hailing from Barnala, Chandigarh, Sangrur, Moga, Sardoolgarh and Haryana also tried their luck in the bid.

The 100-feet wide and more than seven km long ring road was planned with the aim of developing Bathinda as a business hub in the coming years, connecting the under construction Bathinda refinery with the Civil Airport, Bhisiana.

The road would cater to traffic as a bypass, providing a direct link between Dabwali road to Malout road, passing through Lal Singh Basti, Multania road, Behman road, Patti Jhutika and some other localities located on city outskirts.

It may be mentioned that before the final allotment, the project kept grappling with the legal hiccups, as people, whose land was under acquisition, had knocked at the doors of the the Punjab and Haryana High Court with their objections including the award of compensation amount that was deemed as inadequate by them.

Moga, May 28
The additional district and sessions judge of Moga SK Aggarwal in a landmark judgement pronounced within five months of the trial has on Friday awarded death sentence to a woman, her paramour and one other accomplice on the charges of brutally murdering her two kids- the ‘little angels’ by strangulating them to death.

The ‘little angels’, Aman (10) and Om (6), both students of the RKS Public School studying in Class IV and LKG, respectively, went for tuition in the evening of September 24 last year but did not return home.

Their bodies were recovered from near the railway tracks near the industrial area on the outskirts of the town on the next day.

The police registered a criminal case under sections 364, 302, 506 and 120 B of the IPC and took into custody Anita alias Arti, mother of the deceased children, her paramour Ravinder Singh alias Kaku and Ranjit Kumar Gupta for investigations.

It came to light during the investigation that the trio were hand-in-glove for committing this gruesome crime.

The challan was presented to the court in this case on December 11, 2009.

During the course of trial, the prosecution side produced evidence to prove that the children were last seen with Ravinder and Ranjit during the night time on the day they went missing, details of phone calls of the mobile phones recovered from the trio went a long way to show that they 
frequently talked with each other before and after the murder, the ropes used to strangulate the kids were recovered by the police during the investigation and the conduct and reaction of the woman was unnatural on seeing the bodies of her children.

Judge SK Aggarwal while pronouncing the judgement of death sentence in the open court observed, “It is proved that the accused have served death on these little angels most brutally, mercilessly and devilishly. The deceased were small schoolgoing children. They were tender in age. Their bones were milky bones, which were not yet grown up and the accused under pre-meditation mercilessly and brutally strangulated them.”

“The circumstantial evidence is so voluminous against the accused that it is only consistent with their guilt and inconsistent with their innocence,” he said.

In a 72-page judgement, the court further observed, “It is said that motherhood is one of the most precious gifts endowed upon mankind and there is no relationship more pristine and pure than that of a mother and her child. No mother in normal circumstances can tolerate even a scratch on the body of her child.”

However, in the case in hand, “The mother has betrayed trust of her little sons as well as her husband. It appears that she has no remorse for her brutal activity. The murders of little angels by the accused in this case are the most cruel and pre-mediated in diabolical manner.

“They have not only extinguished the light in the house of Rakesh Kumar (father of children) forever but have caused bleeding injuries on the body of the society and have converted themselves into cancerous growth.”

Finally, while pronouncing the death sentence Aggarwal stated, “It is one of the rarest of the rare cases which calls for maximum sentence permissible under the law and such scene of occurrence when visualise even for a moment gives a jerk to the judicial conscience and in turn the convicts also deserve a jerk of the hangman’s rope to have the taste of death.” 

Ferozepur, May 28
The district police authorities achieved a distinction when they got second place in the state in the quarterly performance rating system introduced by the Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab, PS Gill a few months ago.

The Ferozepur district got the second place in the state in the performance rating system for the second time consecutively. First, it stood second when the performance rating for the period ranging from October-December 2009 was declared a few months ago.

Again this, the district stood second when the performance rating for the period of January-March 2010 was declared by the state police authorities recently. During the first quarter, the Ferozepur district police managed to score 62 marks out of 100 which had gone up to 72.2 per cent in the second quarter performance.

In the first quarter rating, Gurdaspur district stood first and in the second quarter rating, the first position went to Sangrur district with 75 marks out of 100.

SPS Parmar (SSP) said that while working out the performance rating, the state police authorities took many points including crime control, crime detection, maintenance of law and order, recoveries, inspections and discipline among the force into consideration minutely.

He said efforts were on to make police more friendly and sensitive towards the problems of people. Field force was not being allowed to be lax in any matter connected with the law and order situation in this one of the major districts of Punjab bordering Pakistan, he added.

Abohar, May 28
The student of the DAV College, Geeta Bharti, here has topped in the Panjab University in the BCA final year examination securing 2037 out of 2400 marks. She got second position in the PU last year in the BCA (II).

Principal Dr BB Sharma, vice-principal Anil Makkar and all teachers of the Computer department welcomed Geeta Bharti on her arrival in the campus. The principal announced that all the 95 students of the college, appeared in the final year exam, have passed with first division.

Geeta said that her father Bharat Bhushan Bharti, a businessman in Malout and mother Usha Rani had always been inspiring her to improve her position than that of last year. “My choice in TV viewing is confined to Colors and Star One programmes including “Mile jab hum tum”. I used to watch news bulletins also and discuss current events with my father, she said. Notably, Geeta had topped in the school while completing school education in the SD Senior Secondary School at Malout by getting 82.4 per cent marks. She wishes to emerge as fine computer engineer.

Ferozepur, May 28
Baz Singh and Bagga Singh, both cousins hailing from the Moga district, were arrested by the Zira police for their alleged involvement in making an attempt to murder Darshan Singh, head constable, Punjab police, while the victim was performing his duties near village Shahwal of this district.

The accused, who are known smugglers of this region and have been facing number of criminal cases on account of their smuggling activities in the past in different police stations, attacked Darshan Singh with Kahi ( a tool used to dig out sand) when the victim was chasing them yesterday.

Both the accused, who were later overpowered by the police team, were found possessing six kilograms of poppy husk. Parsan Singh, in-charge, CIA, police station, said Darshan Singh had been admitted to Zira hospital with a head injury. Darshan Singh was responding to his treatment.

Both the accused had been remanded into police custody till May 31when they were produced before the court of the judicial magistrate concerned. A case under sections 307 and 34 of the IPC and section 15 of the NDPS Act had been registered against them.

Ferozepur, May 28
The Border Security Force (BSF) authorities have put the field troops on extra alert on more than 550 kilometres long Indo-Pak border in Punjab after intelligence inputs were received in connection with the fact that terrorists from across the border might infiltrate into Indian soil.

The BSF had taken these measures after a joint operation against terrorists belonging to various outfits was launched in Lahore and its surrounding areas by Pakistan rangers, Pakistan Army and police force about two days ago to flush them out from that area.

The terrorists belonging to Tehrik-e-Taliban carried out bomb blasts in Lahore and attacked a police training school (PTC) located near Lahore in the past few months.

The areas, where the Pakistani forces had launched a joint operation, are located close to Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab.

Earlier, a few months ago, the Pakistan security agencies had arrested Khaliullah, commander, Tehrik-e-Taliban, southern Punjab province, and a 17 years old ‘would be suicide bomber’ who had revealed during their interrogation that they along with eight others had been trying to carry out killings at Wagah border during the flag lowering ceremony carried out by Pakistan rangers and BSF daily.

“Now, we have received inputs that terrorists may try to infiltrate after finding it difficult to resist the joint operation of Pakistani forces and hence we must be prepared enough to meet any situation,” said a senior functionary of the BSF on the condition of anonymity.

Some terrorists from Pakistan managed to enter into Punjab area from Simbal Skol area of Pathankot border a few weeks ago and hence the BSF could not remain indifferent to such situations, he added.

“We have also increased the strengths of quick reaction teams (QRTs) deployed at the joint check-posts (JCPs) of Sadiqi, Hussainiwala and Wagah. New strategy has been worked out in connection with the manner of patrolling alongside the border and laying down ‘nakas’ at various sensitive points,” he added.