Jalandhar, June 10
With summer at its peak, the threat of disease looms large and the health authorities need to keep surveillance in the city to check any outbreak. However, equipped with just two health supervisors against the required number of 24, the Health Department is not able to keep surveillance running as 17 of them are on election and census duty.

The primary job of supervisors is to conduct a door-to-door survey in the disease-prone localities and to ascertain the cause of the outbreak. It is on the basis of this survey that the Health Department has chalked out its strategy to deal with the outbreak.

With only two supervisors, such a survey and effective strategies seem like a distant dream.

The problems came to the fore when the health authorities today suddenly stopped the survey in the diarrhoea-hit Nizamat Nagar and Ujala Nagar localities where eight cases of diarrhoea were reported yesterday. However, the authorities cited another reason for the discontinuance.

“Particularly in this case, a staff shortage is not a problem. The whole population of the localities has been surveyed and given preventive treatment. Now supervisors are surveying other areas,” said District Health Officer Dr Roop Lal.

However, admitting the shortage of supervisors, he added, “Such surveys in disease-prone localities suffer as 17 health supervisors are carrying out census and election duties.

“We have four supervisors these days. Only two supervisors are available for survey as the other two are usually deployed to do technical work in the office,” said a health official.

The health authorities have divided the city into three zones for surveillance. Eight teams, comprising a supervisor and two swasthya sahayaks, are deployed in each zone to conduct the survey. There are 24 such zones in the city.

However, supervisors’ strength is only for two to four zones.

Civil Surgeon Dr S.K. Gupta said, “A shortage of supervisors is there, but the problem is not severe. We are managing the situation by making alternative arrangements.”

Tarn Taran, June 10
Sawinder Singh, sarpanch of Pandori Sidhwan village, his two sons and another villager have been booked for the murder of a Dalit of the same village.

The victim identified as Charanjit Singh (60), an ex-serviceman, had been missing since June 6 from his village. The decomposed body of Charanjit was found from under the bridge of a canal in Thathgarh village, 6 kms from his village, yesterday.

After collecting first hand information from the spot, the Chabal police on the statement of Jaskarnjit Singh, son of Charanjit, registered a case under section 302 and 34 of the IPC against the accused. Jaideep Singh and Raju, two sons of the sarpanch, and one Raja of Mannan village are the other accused.

Charanjit was also a property consultant. Jaskarnjit in his statement to the police said his father after receiving a call from mobile phone 99146-48431 on June 6 went to somewhere on his bike but did not return.

It is learnt that the sarpanch had been facing a trial in a case under the SC (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which has been filed on the complaint of Charanjit. The case was in its final stage in a local judicial court.

SSP Preetpal Singh Virk that raids had been conducted to nab the accused.

Gurdaspur, June 10
Two pilgrims died and 21 others were injured when a private bus in which they were travelling rammed a tree in the wee hours at Sohal village, 8 kms from here, on Thursday.

The pilgrims were coming from Vaishno Devi Shrine and going towards Amritsar.

The pilgrims, who hailed from Ghaziabad, had hired a private bus and were on their way back to Amritsar after paying obeisance at the shrine.

The injured were shifted to civil hospitals at Dhariwal, Naushera, Majha and Gurdaspur. The local police also helped the district administration in rescue 
operations. Gurdaspur SSP Lok Nath Angra and SDM J.P. Singh coordinated the rescue operations.

The dead have been identified as Bala Deei and her son Shubham from Ghaziabad.

The SDM said the condition of the injured was said to be stable. Sources disclosed that the driver of the bus lost control while trying to save a motorcyclist and rammed the bus into a tree. An FIR had been registered against bus driver Anand on a complaint filed by passenger Kishore Kumar. The case has been registered at the Dhariwal polce station under sections 304, 279, 337 and 338 against the driver.

Amritsar, June 10
Three persons lost their lives when they were hit by an electric railway engine while they were crossing the railway lines last night. They were identified as Harjit Singh and Palwinder Singh of the Krishna Nagar area and Vikram Kumar of the Sharifpura locality.

The railway police authorities said they died on the spot. They were drunk at the time of the incident that took place near Joura Phatak, it is alleged.

However, the police authorities said as two parallel railway lines passes through the area, the deceased probably could not locate that from which line the railway engine was coming. The engine was going to the Tangra side, he said. The police initiated action under section 174 of the CrPC. — TNS

Hoshiarpur, June 10
On the complaint of Paramjit Kaur of Ward 11, Langeri road, the Mahilpur police booked Gurdev Kaur and her husband Lehamber Ram of Langarian Mohalla Gorayan under section 406 of the IPC last night for keeping the dowry articles of her daughter Raj Kumari and throwing her out of the house.

Pathankot, June 10
Nearly 150 women got a liquor vend removed from the Simble chowk area on the Pathankot-Dalhousie road here today. The women, led by Rewa Sharma, wife of Punjab Transport Minister Master Mohan Lal, forcibly picked bottles of liquor from the stacks of the vend and placed them on the road. The excise contractor loaded the stock in a vehicle and went away without registering any protest.

The women of the area, fed up with the assurances and promises being made by the district civil and police administration to the residents continuously for the last one month that the liquor vend opened in the locality would be shifted to some other area shortly, today adopted a different way to lodge their protest against the indifferent attitude of the administration.

The women gathered in front of the vend and started demonstrating in protest against the location of the vend and an ahata, which were opened in the locality having a coeducation college and a religious place of worship besides dense population about a month back.

The women sat on a dharna and blocked the traffic on the Pathankot-Kangra and Pathankot-Jalandhar roads. The traffic remained disrupted for more than one hour causing great harassment to the passengers and general public.

The police, led by the SP (City), Bhupinderjit Singh Virk, rushed to the spot and persuaded the women to lift the dharna. The SP advised the protesting women to meet the SDM and placed their grievances before him. The women went to the SDM, Sukhmandar Singh, but he too failed to satisfy them.

Then they went to Rewa Sharma, who accompanied them in a procession marching through the city bazaars to the site of the venue.