New Delhi, January 9
A couple, both doctors, were arrested for allegedly confining and physically torturing their 14-year-old male servant who was employed at their residence in the Bharat Nagar area, northwest Delhi. The boy was rescued on January 7.

The couple, Dr Dinesh and Dr Preety, are employed at Sant Parmanand Hospital in Civil Lines.

They are residents of Rana Pratap Bagh and had employed the boy about a month ago.

The matter came to light when a passer-by saw the boy waving his hands and trying to say something. The passer-by grew suspicious and reported the matter to the police.

The police thereafter reached the couple's residence and rescued the boy. The injury marks on his body were signs of the torture that he had undergone, according to sources.

Sources added that the couple often thrashed him with a wooden stick.

The boy is a native of Darbhanga district in Bihar. He was sent by his father to his uncle based in Delhi.

His father being poor and illiterate wanted his son to earn a living. The boy's uncle accordingly got him employed at the doctors' residence.

The police said that the couple have been booked under appropriate sections of the Justice Juvenile Act, Child Labour Act and Indian Penal Code. They have been given bail.

The boy's parents in Bihar have been informed about the case.

New Delhi, January 9
Observing that "our heart bleeds when we see homeless persons sleeping without roof in this winter", the Supreme Court today directed the Delhi government to ensure that there are no deaths on account of the biting cold conditions in the country.

"You can't permit your own children to die in winter", a bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Mishra told Additional Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran appearing for the Delhi government.

The apex court made the remarks while referring to media reports and photographs highlighting instances of scores of people sleeping on the pavements outside the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Parasaran told the court that due to security reasons AIIMS had demolished the night shelter earlier constructed by the government but assured steps would be taken to set up a temporary night shelter at the place.

But the apex court expressed displeasure at the statement and said "you are quick in demolishing instead of constructing. It is a serious problem. It must not happen any more. You have to protect your own people." The Parasaran told the court that the Delhi government had facilitated construction of 64 permanent shelters in the national Capital.

But the contention was challenged by the petitioner Peoples Union for Civil Liberties' (PUCL's) counsel Colin Gonzalves who said hardly any of the shelter homes had occupants and there was "near zero occupancy." — PTI

Greater Noida, January 9
Working on the guidelines of the election commission, the administration today directed to cover the statues of the UP Chief Minister Mayawati at the National Dalit Prerna Sthal, Noida.

At Greater Noida the process began with the covering of 36 statues of elephant and three of Mayawatis' with polythene sheets.

"The election commission has directed us to cover the statues by January 11. We will complete the process within the time," said District Magistrate (DM) Hridesh Kumar.

"We are also removing hoardings and banners of all the political parties, including the ruling BSP. Even FIR too has been lodged against all political parties' prospective candidates for not removing the banners yet," said deputy electoral official.

Though the park, located opposite the Film City, was inaugurated by Mayawati in October, could not be open to public yet as the construction work was incomplete. It was expected to be open on January 15, on the birthday of Mayawati, but now after the election code of conduct, it will be delayed by two months.

Meanwhile, the election staff was given training. They will keep watch over rallies and activities and send daily report so that expenditure could be monitored.

They were told to even report the number of chairs at the venues, persons attending the rallies and how many persons were given food and how many vehicles were used by prospective candidates.

They were also supposed to identify the banners and posters. For all their inspection, they have to do videography and submit the video CD with report.

Candidates will have to pay the expenditure incurred by the district administration on removal of their banners and posters. Further, arms holders have been asked to deposit their arms. There are around 9,000 arms licence holders.

"We have issued instructions in this regard," said the DM.

Meanwhile, voters' list has been put online at the district's website. Around 1.16 lakh new voters have been included into the list.

"Due to overloading of the server, residents were not able to see the list today," said NP Singh, president of the Federation of Noida Residents Welfare Association.

Some residents complained about irregularities in voter cards regarding age and address.

"On Sunday, voters' cards were distributed at camps. Any discrepancy reported by the residents will also be rectified," said Sushil Kumar Maurya, deputy election official and Additional District Magistrate (administration).

New Delhi, January 9
Troubles for parents seeking admission for their wards in nursery schools don't seem to end. After days of procuring forms from numerous schools, parents are now facing absolute chaos while submitting them.

What's more, many schools are now winding up the sale of forms. The last date of their sale at city schools was announced to be January 16.

"The timing to collect forms has also been changed now. While for the first week, the schools sold forms till late afternoon, now it is as early as 11 am in some schools. We wanted to submit the forms as soon as possible to avoid any last-minute problems. But the endless queues eat up a lot of time. I had to buy 16 forms for my son this time. However, I have managed just 10. I hope I am able to meet the deadlines," said Sonu Abhinandan Kumar, a parent at Tagore International today.

Even after the strict guidelines issued by the Delhi government, several schools have shifted their dates for submission of forms. Schools like Martyr De, Vasant Valley and even Bal Bharti are asking parents for more documents, which is resulting in added hassles for the parents.

"Nowhere does the prospectus say that original documents are needed at the time of submission of forms. They wanted attested copies of the documents, which I had. After nearly two hours of standing in the queue, I was told that my original address proof along with original phone and electricity bills, voter ID and pan card were required. I had to come again today for form submission," said Kamakshi Kothiwal, a parent at Martyr De today.

There are some schools which do not even have a proper faculty member, checking the submission process.

Mia Saifi, a mother at Hamdard School, said, "At most schools in south Delhi and even in east Delhi, we were asked to just drop the forms without any checking. Here, we were asked to meet the school guard who was sitting beside a box. We were asked to drop our forms in it. We asked whether our forms were filled in correctly or whether any other document was needed, the guard just told us to leave it to him and drop the form."

New Delhi, January 9
Five people were arrested for being allegedly involved in a theft of 56 cartons consisting of about 3,000 mobile phones, from a godown of a wholesale dealer at Karol Bagh.

The police has recovered 2,800 mobile phones worth Rs 30 lakh from the accused. They are identified as Deepak, Yashwant Singh, alias Lalla, Parmod, Nitin Tomar and Sanjay Shukla.

On December 18, Rajender Prasad Hasriya, reported to the police about a theft of 52 cartons of mobile phones from his godown at Karol Bagh. He is a wholesale dealer of mobile phones and accessories.

Hasriya said that he had locked his godown on December 17, but when he opened it the next day he discovered that his cartons were missing.

The complainant also revealed that his employee, Deepak was absconding. Deepak had been employed about two months ago and was in possession of the keys to the godown.

The police examined the CCTV footage of the market, where the godown is located. It saw some people removing the cartons from it. They were identified as Deepak, Suraj and Ravi.

On January 6, the police raided their hideout and arrested Singh. He said that he and his associates, Ravi, Suraj, Deepak and Tomar had committed the crime.

Additional commissioner of police (central) DC Srivastava said, "Deepak had made duplicate keys of the godown and with his help the accused stole the mobile phones. He further said that they sold 10 cartons for Rs 1.70 lakh to a mobile phone shopkeeper in West Patel Nagar. Deepak kept four cartons at his house. The stolen 14 cartons containing 700 mobile phones of the Chinese company "Vxtel" were recovered at his instance and the shopkeeper, Sanjay Shukla, was also arrested."

Tomar was caught red-handed on January 6, while he was selling mobile phones at Dwarka. The police recovered 24 cartons consisting of 1,200 phones of the same company from West Patel Nagar.

The arrested individuals were presented before the court and were remanded to the police custody.

New Delhi, January 9
Hopes have come crashing down for Jamia Millia Islamia students seeking elections after the Delhi High Court today asked the three petitioners who had filed a case in the matter, to withdraw the petition.

The three petitioners, who had filed a writ petition in the High Court in December 2011, were seeking directions for holding elections to the students' body in the college. They had filed the petition against the university and were seeking the court's intervention in lifting the ban on students' union election.

The university's spokesperson today said, "Jamia informed the court of the excruciating circumstances that prevented the university from holding direct elections. The university also cited that there is a mechanism to air grievances of the students and their representation is ensured through subject associations in various departments/faculties of the university."

There had been a lot of excitement among the students soon after Jawaharlal Nehru University was given a nod by the Supreme Court to conduct elections after a gap of three years. Students expected a breakthrough at Jamia as well as there had been no student elections for the last seven years.

The court observed that the petition was made by the individuals who were not even on the regular rolls of the university.

The court noted that Afroz Alam Sahil, who was also a petitioner, has not been attending classes in the university.

"The court was of the opinion that the petitioners do not genuinely raise issues pertaining to electoral politics on campus and they being non-interested parties, Justice S.K. Kaul was inclined to dismiss the writ petition. At this juncture, the counsel for petitioners withdrew the writ petition against Jamia Millia Islamia," the spokesperson added.

Speaking to The Tribune just a few weeks ago, Jamia's VC Najeeb Jung had clearly said that the university wasn't keen on student elections as the atmosphere on campus was really volatile.

"The location of the college comes into play as well. There is an active mechanism in the university wherein students can state their grievances. There is a lot of lobbying behind the cause by those who are least interested in students' interests," he said.

New Delhi, January 9
Teachers of Delhi University are not all happy with the administration it seems. At a special meeting of the Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) today, members strongly condemned the university's attitude while making important decisions and introducing new procedures.

The DUTA is now making grand plans to launch a protest so as to make its voice heard on certain matters. From introducing measures to upgrade the grading system to starting a four-year special honors course from 2013, the teachers said that their opinion had not been sought on even a single matter.

"We are not at all the part of any process anymore. Any amount of efforts to connect with the administration, fall flat every time. Our concerns and problems have been unheard for long now. And to register our protest against such attitude, the DUTA will hold a dharna outside the vice-chancellor's office at 11 am on January 12," said DUTA president Amar Deo Sharma.

"The vice-chancellor has been announcing all these fancy initiatives about new courses and a meta university and much more without any knowledge to us. Teachers find out from the media most of the times about such initiatives. We have been sidelined in such decisions completely. All academic decisions should ideally be introduced in the academic and the executive council first, however, even that is also not being followed properly," Sharma added.

"We demand that the hiring of teachers should be started again. The process was stopped even though more than 4,000 posts are still vacant in the university. We demand that an enquiry should be set up against the Ram Lal Anand (RLA) and Dayal Singh College administration. While the sexual harassment charges at RLA have been going unnoticed for long now, the financial discrepancies at Dayal Singh College also need to be looked in," added another DUTA member.

Members of the staff association from both colleges were present at the meeting today and reiterated that the university's intervention in both the colleges' matters was necessary now.

New Delhi, January 9
Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Tejender Khanna today lauded the state government's achievements in his address to the Delhi Assembly which began on the issue of trifurcation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

His speech, though full of compliments for the government, had nothing to offer in the form of policies for the coming year.

Amid opposition shouting against the government, the LG expressed hope on the division of the civic agency, which is just round the corner. He said that it would serve as a better solution for everyday problems of the people of Delhi.

"With three new smaller municipal bodies, the day-to-day problems of the citizens of Delhi will be addressed more expeditiously and effectively," said the LG in his speech.

He said that the government has adopted the concept of participative governance to ensure that the results of development lead to tangible improvements in the quality of life of people. "The principle of 'inclusive growth' has been the cornerstone of the policies and programmes of the government," he said.

However, the BJP kept accusing the government of being 'riddled with corruption' and demanded strengthening of the Lokayukta institution in the Capital.

The party criticized the LG for his speech, which according to it, missed important issues and termed the speech 'dull'.

"The government has been evasive on a lot of issues. We will ensure that it replies to a range of issues, from irregularities in selecting unauthorised colonies for legalization to corruption and price rise," said the leader of the opposition VK Malhotra.

The first day of the Assembly session began with a pandemonium as BJP MLAs kept raising slogans against the government.

The session is expected to witness similar stormy meetings in the coming days as it is the last chance for the opposition to show its anger against several issues before the municipal elections, which are slated to take place in April.

The BJP has already announced a protest against price rise tomorrow. One of the other important issues likely to be taken up by the opposition is the financial assistance being extended to the power distribution companies.

However, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said that the opposition does not want the proceedings of the House to go on smoothly and decried its allegations, calling them 'baseless'.

"We have made Delhi a world-class city with a string of policies and schemes. The BJP is just looking for some fodder to belittle us," she said after the session.

On the move to trifurcate the MCD, she said it would only benefit the Capital and help redress civic grievances more effectively.

New Delhi, January 9
The CBI director has been summoned by a special court to explain as to how some crucial documents in the multi-crore rupees Molarband and Dheerpur land scam involving "cholle-bhature" vendor Ashok Malhotra, have gone missing.

Special CBI Judge AK Mendiratta issued notice to the CBI director to appear before it on January 12, saying, "I am of the considered view that in the facts and circumstances, notice be issued to the director, the CBI to appear in person to explain the circumstances in which the fact regarding the missing documents had been suppressed."

The case pertains to Delhi Vidhan Sabha canteen's former contractor Ashok Malhotra, who was arrested in 2007 along with MCD and DDA officials for allegedly conspiring to acquire plots meant for resettlement of slum dwellers and subsequently selling them at exorbitant rates.

"The matter is of exceptional nature as the sensitive documents relating to the case have not been placed along with the chargesheet and are stated to be missing.

"The prosecution as such also needs to clarify if the missing documents have some relevance in the connected cases. The fact that the documents are missing has been suppressed by the prosecution before this court is disturbing," the court said.

The fact of missing documents came to the court's notice only on November 28, 2011, when it was told by the CBI that the documents and the statements could not be filed in the court as the investigating official (IO) of the case, inspector DK Thakur, was arrested in a trap case. - PTI

Ghaziabad, January 9
A middle-aged man has been killed after falling from a moving train near the Vijay Nagar area here, the police said today.

The incident took place last night when the man fell from the train and died on the spot.

Prima facie it appeared that he died due to

head injuries, said the police.

The victim has not been identified yet, while further probe into the matter is on. — PTI