New Delhi, January 10
A brawl that allegedly started over a bill at a dhaba (eatery) in Chanakyapuri last night could have claimed someone's life, when a head constable of the Punjab police fired a round from his carbine gun that instead inflicted a flesh wound to a dhaba employee.

Head constable Amarjeet Singh was with his two acquaintances Ram Karan and Bhim Bahadur, both private drivers. They fled in a Toyota Fortuner, their employer's vehicle, after Singh fired the gun. They were later arrested outside the Taj hotel.

A police official said, "The three accused had arrived at "Arjun ka Dhaba" that is situated opposite Gujarat Bhawan at Kautilya Marg around 10 pm. They were told to pay Rs 295 for the food they ate. But, Singh refused to do so. A brawl ensued between the dhaba owner, Arjun Prasad Gupta and the accused. Gupta's employees joined the fight and started beating the three men. When the accused saw that they were outnumbered, Singh brandished his carbine gun and threatened to shoot. He fired one round which missed killing anyone. The shell of the bullet has been recovered."

A case of attempt to murder has been registered against the three accused. The owner of the car, Neeraj Saluja, was informed about the situation. Singh is his personal security officer (PSO), while the other two accused are his private drivers.

Sources said that Saluja was an industrialist based in Punjab. After the police arrested the accused he left for Germany to attend an exhibition.

Gupta said that the accused were drinking in the Fortuner car in which they had arrived at the dhaba.

"The three of them came out and sat at my dhaba. When they finished eating, I asked them to pay a bill of Rs 295. The policeman said that he belonged to the police and therefore did not have to pay. I told them to give a lower amount of money. One of the accused then took out Rs 200 from his pocket and handed it over to me," he said.

The fight, however, was yet to begin after the three accused went back inside their car and then came out to allegedly threaten Gupta.

"The policeman walked towards me and asked me to give back Rs 200. When I refused to do so, he grabbed my neck and started hitting me. His two friends also joined in. A brawl started and I, along with my employees, started bashing them. The policeman started brandishing the gun and threatened to kill me. My employees ran away and I was left alone. The three of them started pulling me towards the car and I shouted for help. About 10 to 20 of my friends came to my rescue. In the ensuing fight, the policeman fired a round from his weapon that hit the road," added Gupta.

Sources said Singh had aimed the gun at Gupta, but the round that was fired hit one of the fingers of an employee, Vikas.

"One of my friends, Rohit, got into Innova car and followed them. The accused reached the Taj hotel at Sardar Patel Marg. And Rohit and some of my employees had also arrived there. The security-guards stopped the accused from entering the hotel. I immediately reached the hotel with the police," said Gupta.

They had arrived at the hotel, where Saluja was staying, according to the sources.

New Delhi, January 10
A 78-year-old woman was today found murdered inside her residence at Mayur Vihar Phase I that is reportedly a high-security zone.

The police is investigating whether the motive behind the murder was robbery, because the house was found ransacked. It also suspects the involvement of an insider, because the murderer's entry to the house was friendly.

The woman, Sarojini Bartwal, stayed alone at her residence in Pocket-4, Mayur Vihar, after her husband BS Bartwal died on July 2008. He worked as a Deputy News Editor for the newspaper, Nav Bharat Times.

Her closest family thereafter was her son, Hemendra Bartwal. He was an editor with the newspaper, Hindustan Times and works as a political advisor at the British High Commission. He stays with his family at Indirapuram.

Hemendra was later informed by the police about the murder of his mother. He said, "My wife last spoke to my mother at 10 am on Monday. I tried calling her at 9.30 pm the same day, but her phone was switched off. The next day we tried again but her phone was still switched off. Then today at 11 am I was informed about the incident."

"One of Sarojini's two maids found her murdered inside her bedroom. Since there are no injury marks on her body she was probably smothered to death. Her room was ransacked and cupboard was open. It seems that the murder was committed for robbery," said a police official.

The police suspects an insider to be in conspiracy of the murder, because the murderer had a "friendly entry".

A forensic team and sniffer dogs were sent to the house to discover vital clues. Her two maids, Manju and Saroj, were also questioned about the incident.

Sources said that Pocket-4 was a high-security zone of Mayur Vihar Phase I. All the 11 gates were guarded by security personnel. Vendors were allowed to enter the locality after 11 am. And all the gates were locked by 11 pm.

A local beat constable daily visited Sarojini and gave her instructions about her safety. She was a registered senior citizen at the Mayur Vihar Phase I police station, according to the official.

RA Saxena, the president of the RWA, said, "A beat constable helped her in chores like buying vegetables. The SHO also visited her once a week."

New Delhi, January 10
Fervour, enthusiasm and absolute frenzy will return on campus at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) with its students' election after a gap of three years. If all goes well, JNU will have a new students' union by February 9.

After the Supreme Court ruled in favour of students' poll at JNU, student parties decided in a late last night united general body meeting to conduct the elections within a month's time.

The resolution moved jointly by five organisations - SFI, AISF, AISA, NSUI and ABVP - by a margin of 372 against 117 votes read, "The meeting mandates that the elections should be held as per the Supreme Court order dated December 8, 2011. This should be an interim arrangement till the court case is resolved in the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. The election should be conducted within one month. And the joint struggle committee should make all efforts to handover charge to the election committee by January 14."

"The future students' union should carry forward the struggle against the Lyngdoh Recommendations and use every opportunity for the restoration of the JNU students' union constitution in the future," it added.

"The struggle for restoration of election has been a protracted and arduous one and the students' community is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to exercise its franchise.

The joint struggle committee must implement the mandate of the general body meeting properly so that elections can be held within one month," said Roshan, a member of the SFI.

With election not very far now, parties have already started working on their plan of action and agendas to gain votes.

Coming down harshly on the AISA that held the students' union office till February 2010, the SFI today said that the AISA failed to provide leadership in the struggle for the restoration of the election.

Assessing its role over the past three years, a senior SFI leader said, "The AISA and its office-bearers were happy to leave the conduct of the elections to the fate of an interim application filed in the Supreme Court. It was the SFI which first proposed that the joint standing committee should enter into a dialogue with the amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam to seek relaxations from the Lyngdoh Recommendations in 2010. None of the office-bearer from the AISA was the part of the dialogue process with Subramaniam. It was the SFI leadership which persisted with the dialogue process, pushing it forward."

New Delhi, January 10
The education department of the Delhi government today shot notices to three public schools of the city for not adhering to the nursery admission guidelines.

The schools-- Army Public school, Air Force Public School and Naval Public School-- located in Delhi Cantonment have been issued show-cause notices for not being transparent in their admission procedures, according to education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely.

"We have sent show-cause notices to three schools as there was no information on the percentage of civilian students that they select. We have asked them to clearly state the ratio of the children of defense personnel and civilians admitted by them," said the minister.

He said though the schools fell under the special category, they were covered by the Delhi School Education Act and Rules (DSEAR) 1973 and the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009, which also made it mandatory for them to provide free education to students belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS) of society.

"At present, we have no idea as to whether they are following the EWS norms. Once we get a detailed reply from the schools, we would be able to take action," he said.

The notices were sent today after the matter was raised by BJP MLA Kanwar Singh Tanwar during the first half of the winter session of the Delhi Assembly. The schools have been given a week's time to submit their replies.

In the academic session 2011-2012, three schools of the Air Force admitted 6,946 students, out of which only 324 were civilians. Of the 7,707 students admitted by three Army schools during the same session, only 466 came from the civilian background. Naval Public School admitted 380 civilian students against a total of 2,048 seats.

Giving information about the complaints received from parents seeking admission in different schools, Lovely said the department had registered 137 complaints. The nature of the complaints included refusal to issue or accept EWS forms, insistence on submission of attested certificates, charging higher prices for admission forms by clubbing the forms with the prospectus, violation of admission schedule issued by the directorate of education, violation of admission guidelines, he said.

However, the minister claimed that more than 50 per cent of the complaints had been attended to. He assured that the rest would be redressed shortly.

There are 2,820 schools in the city. Of this, 1,995 are non-government and 258 are government-aided schools. They provide admission to 39.20 lakh students annually. 

New Delhi, January 10
A German couple's dream of having a memorable honeymoon in India turned into a nightmare as two rogues allegedly cheated them of over Rs 1.6 lakh soon after they landed in the national capital.

Tour operator Jahangir Ahmed Wani and driver Rajinder Singh had been apprehended from Gole Market and IGI Airport, respectively, for allegedly threatening and cheating the German couple, DCP (airport) RA Sanjeev said.

Kai Trostrum and Shirin's ordeal started on the night of January 5 when they landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport. The couple is from Bonn.

The couple, who got married two years ago, had saved their hard-earned money for their honeymoon trip to India, Sanjeev said.

"At the airport, they hired a pre-paid taxi and asked the driver to take them to Paharganj where they already had a hotel booking. The driver misguided them by saying that the rooms might have been occupied as many passengers had been stranded in Delhi because of train cancellations due to fog," he said.

In the complaint, Trostrum said that the driver claimed that he knew a person who could help them and took them to Jahangir Ahmed Wani, who told them about various tour programmes.

"The tourists told Wani that they wanted to sleep and asked him to arrange a room for them. But Wani got angry and prepared a Rajasthan tour programme for them. He threatened the couple and forcibly took their signatures. Under pressure, the couple had to pay Rs 1.16 lakh through their credit card," Sanjeev said.

Wani then arranged a taxi for them to Pushkar in Rajasthan and charged another USD 200 and 25 Euros.

"They were dropped at a hotel in Pushkar. The Germans were so scared that they returned to Delhi in a bus without telling anyone about their ordeal and approached the German embassy," Sanjeev said.

During interrogation, it came to light that Singh was allegedly working as tout for Wani, who runs a travel agency, India Adventure Tour.

"He used to lure foreigners on one pretext or other and then extort money from them in the name of arranging tours. Both of them have confessed to have cheated many passengers with the same modus operandi," the DCP said.

Wani earlier worked as a casual worker with some travel agency and started his own agency two years ago. He does not have any licence from the tourism ministry, the officer added.

Singh, who runs taxi at the IGI airport, had been earlier arrested for touting. -- PTI

New Delhi, January 10
A 42-year-old vegetable vendor, who was a drug addict, was found murdered when his family discovered his body at his residence in Tilak Vihar this morning.

A police official said that Manoj Singh's wife and two sons had left the residence on January 5 to attend a wedding. He stayed with them at A-12, Tilak Vihar in West Delhi.

"When they came back this morning they discovered his body lying in the one-room residence. He was probably hit on the head with a blunt object. And he also has injuries on his legs," said the official.

The police is suspecting some of his friends, who are also drug addicts, to be involved in the murder.

"His family said that when they were not present at home, Manoj would call his friends over. They would then drink together. The murder was probably committed when he had a fight with his friends. The entry to the house at the time of the murder was also friendly," said the official.

According to the official, "Manoj had earlier committed the murders of his brother Purva Chand and neighbour Sauhan Singh. He was sentenced to imprisonment and was later released."

The postmortem of the body would be conducted tomorrow at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital.

Ghaziabad, January 10
The Ghaziabad police has arrested a wanted criminal who had escaped from the police custody when he was brought to attend a court hearing about two month ago.

The police nabbed him when he was travelling in an Esteem car with his wife and a friend.

The senior superintendent of police, Raghuvir Lal, said the Kavinagar police on Monday night nabbed three criminals from near the Columbia Asia hospital.

During general checking, the police suspected the car passengers to be criminals when they could not get satisfactory replies to their questioning. The police took them to the police station where the criminals revealed their identity as Vicky, alias Vikram, a resident of Sanjay Nagar, Mansi, the wife of Vicky, and Vicky's friend Sunny.

After being convinced that the nabbed criminal was Vicky, who carried a reward of Rs 15,000 on his head, the police formally arrested him.

During extensive search, the police also seized gold ornaments worth over Rs 50 lakh and cash of Rs 1,00,000 and a car from their possession.

The police said during interrogation Vicky said that after escaping from the custody he and his accomplice Mukesh stole an Indica car and went to Jaipur, Lucknow and other places.

They committed thefts, amassed a large amount of jewellery and invested it in Mumbai.

They returned from Mumbai and committed thefts in Delhi and other towns of the National Capital Region. On Monday night, they were planning to go to Nainital for which they informed a man in Sanjay Nagar to send a voter identity card near the Columbia Asian hospital and were waiting for him there.

In the meantime, the police stopped the car for questioning and arrested him and his aides. - IANS