Rohtak, April 25
The services at the PGIMS here, the largest government-run hospital in the state, were paralysed today with a majority of senior and junior resident doctors of the institute going on strike since last night in protest against an alleged assault on a doctor in the emergency ward of the hospital last evening.

The agitating doctors are demanding security for doctors and the resignation of the Medical Superintendent of the hospital.

“Over 800 doctors, including 400 junior residents, 200 senior residents and many house surgeons and HCMS doctors, have gone on strike in protest against the failure of the PGIMS authorities to provide a safe work environment for doctors attending to patients at the emergency ward,” claimed Dr Gunjan Chaudhary , president of the Resident Doctors Association of the institute.

He said this was the second time in the past one month that a doctor had been beaten up in the emergency by attendants of patients.

“The Medical Superintendent had assured us of action within 48 hours last time, but nothing was done. Now, around 15 persons, who had come with a patient in the emergency ward last evening. not only assaulted the doctor but also threatened him with dire consequences,” he said, adding that they had come with a patient who had bullet injuries in his ankle.

“The matter was reported to the authorities and the police, but no one has been arrested so far,” he said. “At least five such incidents have taken place in the hospital in the past few months, but the authorities seem to be in a state of slumber and have done nothing about it,” he added.

Stating that the protesting doctors would continue the strike if no action was taken to redress their grievances, he said sacking of the Medical Superintendent, provision of a police PCR near the emergency ward and installation of CCTV cameras were the main demands of the doctors.

The Vice-Chancellor of Pt BDS Health University, Dr SS Sangwan, described the strike as unfortunate and claimed that the authorities were ready to talk with the doctors.

Jakhal (Fatehabad), April 25
Radha, who is in her early thirties, has spent the last five years of her life chained in subhuman conditions in a dingy room at her brother’s house in the Bajigar basti of Jakhal village in Fatehabad.

Her day starts and ends in this stinking room meant for tying animals.

She gets her frugal meals in this very room, where she has to answer the nature’s call as well.

Her unkempt hair and filthy clothes show that Radha has not taken bath for long.

It is very difficult for a visitor to stand in her stinking room for long.

Her brother, Gurmukh, who has kept his sister in chains, explained that Radha was born as a mentally retarded child and her problem aggravated with the passage of time.

“Our parents tried to get her treated though they were not rich enough to take her outside for medical advice,” he added.

Now that the parents have died, Gurmukh is the only member of the family to take care of Radha.

“I am a poor labourer and eke out a living for my family through manual labour. I am not in a position to get her treated from specialists,” said Gurmukh.

Gurmukh said he took her to some doctors, but finally gave up five years ago when there was no improvement in Radha’s condition.

Since then Radha lies chained in her brother’s house cut off from the rest of the world.

“No one in the village was aware of Radha’ condition,” said Krishna Rani, sarpanch of the village, adding that she would try to arrange government help for the hapless woman.

Rohtak, April 25
With kin of a girl, who eloped and got married secretly to a boy of another caste, reportedly holding meetings with the panchayat over the issue, the police authorities have issued a warning to the elected members of the panchayat and to those opposing the marriage against resorting to any means which could pose a threat to the life of the couple or which could be deemed as an interference in their life.

The couple - Deepak Kumar, a Dalit from Sundana village, and Chhavi Sharma, a Brahmin girl from the neighbouring Kakrana village in the district - reportedly got married on March 21. They have been staying at an unidentified place since then.

The revelation of the inter-caste marriage sparked a protest and unrest in the girls’ family and the community, which held a meeting at Sundana village on Sunday. The community condemned the elopement and announced that it would not allow the couple to stay together as it was against their social norms.

The panchayat had announced to take up the matter with the district authorities and the police to bring back the girl to the family. It was, however, claimed that the panchayat had no information about the marriage of the couple.

Police sources said the couple got married in an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi last month and had decided to stay away from their villages.

The family of the boy at Sundana village also claimed that it was unaware of his marriage, but admitted that he had been missing for the past one month and had not contacted them since then.

The boy (21) is reported to be self-employed, while the girl, also a major, is a student of the BA course of the distance education programme of Maharshi Dayanand University.

A 22-member committee was reportedly set up by the panchayat at Sundana to make efforts for the recovery of the girl and get the couple separated in a peaceful manner.

The couple had fled from their houses on March 21 and got married the same day. The girl’s family has lodged a complaint, alleging that she had been kidnapped.

Though the police had recovered the girl and had sent her to Nari Niketan in Karnal, she was allowed to move with her husband after she told the court that she was a major and got married of her own will. SSP Satish Balan said the police would ensure the security of the couple.

He said the police would take action against the panchayat if it took law into its own hands by intimidating the couple or by trying to forcibly separate them. No one from the village or the family of the couple had met him so far, he claimed.

Sirsa, April 25
Family members of a boy, Davit Kumar, who married a girl against the wishes of her parents, have alleged police inaction and apprehend physical harm to him.

The boy’s family alleges that owing to police inaction despite court orders for providing protection to the couple, the girl’s family has managed to take away the bride and the boy is missing under mysterious circumstances since last evening.

Davit Kumar’s brother, advocate Amit Sahni, who practises in the Supreme Court, has served a legal notice on the SP, Sirsa, calling upon him to save his brother’s wife from the “clutches” of her parents and provide the couple security in the protection home set up in the district.

The notice said the police inaction in not providing protection to the couple despite court orders tantamounted to disobedience of the orders of the District and Sessions Judge, Sirsa, and held the SP liable to face proceedings under the Contempt of Court Act.

Davit Kumar married Kuldeep Kaur, a resident of Sant Nagar, in a temple on April 14 and sought police protection by filing a petition in the court of the District and Sessions Judge, Sirsa, on April 20.

In his orders dated April 21, the judge, while adjourning the case to May 11 for notices to the respondents, passed interim orders of protection for the runaway couple.

The orders said, “Interim protection be provided to the runaway couple and a copy of the order be sent to the Superintendent of Police, Sirsa, for strict compliance.”

The boy’s family alleges that the police failed to provide protection to the couple and the girl’s family managed to take away Kuldeep Kaur.

They allege that Davit Kumar, who was receiving threats from a member of the girl’s family, is missing since last evening.

The family has lodged a missing report with the police and the boy’s brother, Amit Sahni, said his brother’s life could be in peril.

SP Satinder Kumar Gupta, however, maintained that the girl’s family members had taken away their daughter on the promise that they would marry her to Davit Kumar in a formal manner on their own within 20 days.

He said perhaps Davit’s family was now apprehensive that the girl’s family might not fulfil the promise.

New Delhi, April 25
The Supreme Court today ordered a magisterial probe into allegations that victims of Mirchpur Dalit violence were being targeted by those accused of killing an elderly Dalit and his daughter in the village. A Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly asked the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Hisar district to conduct the inquiry and submit the report within two weeks.

The Bench passed the order on an application by the victims and their lawyers, alleging that they are being targeted by the accused persons.

On April 21 last year, a Dalit man and his physically challenged daughter were burnt alive in violence against the community allegedly by members of an upper caste, forcing about 150 families to flee Mirchpur village in Hisar.

Demanding a fresh probe into the Dalit killings, upper caste people of Mirchpur and other adjoining villages in Hisar district had brought rail and road traffic to Delhi via Jind to a grinding halt in March this year.

Earlier, the apex court had asked the Haryana government to identify the persons and organisation responsible for holding demonstration in December last year against booking of some upper caste people in connection with the killings.

The Bench had also directed the government and the Railway Board to spell out steps taken by them to recover financial loss caused following the 11-day stir organised by 12 'khap' panchayats.

A Delhi court had on January 9 directed the Haryana government to move all 98 accused from Hisar jail to Tihar prison since their trial was transferred to a court in Delhi following a Supreme Court order. — PTI

Chandigarh, April 25
The Congress government in Haryana came under attack for offering a “pittance” of Rs 50 per quintal as bonus on wheat to the farmers while lambasting it for “burdening” the common man with taxes after announcing a tax-free budget.

Addressing a press conference, INLD general secretary Ajay Singh Chuatala and state unit chief Ashok Arora said that the government had raised VAT on essential items made from wheat, mustard, cotton, iron by 25 per cent.

“The VAT on these items has been raised from 4 per cent to 5 per cent. Besides this, the government is all set to introduce house tax in the state and has raised the collector rates which will further burden the common man. This tax-free budget presented by the government is a farce. We are going to protest against this in every Vidhan Sabha segment on May 4,” Chautala said.

Critical of the “collapsing law and order situation”, Arora said that the number of murders being reported on any given day had gone up substantially. The INLD demanded an inquiry into the allegations by an MPand a Haryana Cabinet minister that they were being threatened.

Chandigarh, April 25
The committee of ministers in charge of agriculture marketing, which held its sixth meeting at Haryana Niwas, Chandigarh, has prepared its first report containing several policy recommendations for agricultural marketing reforms and has decided to submit the final report to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

The chairman of the committee, Harshwardhan Patil, who is the Minister of Marketing and Cooperation, Maharashtra, said at a press conference here today that the committee had been set up by the Government of India in March last year to promote agriculture market reforms in the country.

He said the committee deliberated on vital issues for two days to bring in agricultural marketing reforms and had invited stake holders, including farmers, traders and “consulted states”, to seek their views.

Patil said the purpose behind the agricultural marketing reforms was to give a choice to the farmers to sell their produce where they got a handsome price. The committee was examining what alternatives the farmers had and how they could get a good price. Based on the recommendations of the committee, the Centre would take further decisions.

Maintaining that the committee aimed at ensuring that the farmers get a handsome price for their produce, he said the Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMC) Act should be adopted by all states. “So far, 16 states have adopted the APMC Act. Bihar and Kerala have no APMC Act. The Act was still under consideration of seven states and the states would make amendments as per their need,” he said.

Haryana’s Agriculture Minister Paramvir Singh said the issues discussed today at the meeting included requirement of warehousing and storage.

New Delhi, April 25
An Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer, who had landed in trouble after blowing the whistle on an alleged forest scam in Haryana, has sought a CBI probe into his charges of irregularities involving some politicians and officers in the state as well as in the Environment Ministry.

In a letter to Union Environment secretary T. Chatterji, IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi - who was suspended before being reinstated by a Presidential order earlier this year, requested to "refer the case to the CBI, without any further delay, as per recommendation of the inquiry committee.”

The letter was sent after Haryana rejected the findings of the Centre-appointed inquiry committee and asked the Environment Ministry to have a fresh look at the allegation levelled by Chaturvedi against some very important functionaries in the state government.

A two-member panel set up by the Union ministry of Environment and Forests to probe irregularities and violations of the Forest Act in Haryana had recommended a CBI probe into the matter and indicted the CMO, Cabinet Minister Kiran Chaudhary and some senior state government officers for the “harassment” of Chaturvedi.

The IFS officer has alleged in the letter that he still continued to be harassed by “the powerful vested interests” whose “misdeeds” he had exposed.

“Even after the Central Government’s intervention twice in the past three years on the same issues, the harassment/ personal attack by the authorities concerned of the state government is going unabated,” Chaturvedi said.

He alleged there was an attempt to implicate him in fresh false police or departmental cases.

“My life/liberty/career is continuously under severe threats from those powerful vested interests whose misdeeds have been exposed by me,” the letter stated.

Officials in the ministry confirmed that they have received Chaturvedi’s letter. The two-member panel, headed by Inspector-General of Forests AK Shrivastava and AIG Shally Ranjan, had found that the harassment of Chaturvedi included frequent transfers -- 12 in five years, suspension and fabricated charge sheet for exposing large-scale irregularities in various projects.

The charge sheet against the whistleblower was revoked by President Pratibha Patil on January 19 based on the panel’s report against senior politicians and more than six bureaucrats. — PTI

Hodal (Palwal), April 25
Two brothers, Raj Kumar (30) and Ajit (28), died on the spot when the car they were travelling in rammed into a tractor on the Hodal-Nuh road, 10 km from here, late last night. The victims, residents of Bahin village here, were on the way to their home.

The police has registered a case and impounded the tractor. The tractor driver, however, absconded.

The incident took place when the tractor, which was overloaded with wheat, abruptly halted in the middle of the road. The victims lost control over the vehicle and rammed into the tractor.

Rewari, April 25
The police has booked two teenagers, Mohan and Rohit, both students of Class XII, on a charge of murdering Param Vir Yadav (19) of Mundi village.

The victim’s uncle, Rajender Singh Yadav, alleged that the duo killed Param Vir by pushing him into a tube well at a farmhouse in Mundi village, 12 km from here, on April 23. — OC