New Delhi, May 7
Even as investigations are on into the modus operandi of Superna Sethi, who ran the now shut Gurgaon shelter home where minors were sexually abused for over a year, the district administration today faced an altogether new challenge. “Who should the children be handed over to?” was the question that baffled the state government authorities, which met here today to discuss the way forward for around 19 girls that resided in the shelter home in Wazirabad.

After reports of exploitation of children came out, parents of at least five girls turned up at the meeting called by Gurgaon’s Deputy Commissioner today to seek custody of their children. None of them however had the proof that children belonged to them.

“Unless we know for a fact that the child being pointed to is the biological child of the parent concerned, we can’t hand him or her over to that parent. We have ordered a full fledged home verification of each child to ensure they don’t land in unsafe hands,” the district authorities told The Tribune. The social activists who are part of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights team probing the case today said the predicament was strange and unheard of.

“This is what happens when you allow systems to run without any modicum of monitoring. The owner of the shelter home was housing children in an ad hoc manner. She has no proof of which child belongs to whom. Tomorrow if children were to go missing from this place, there would be no accountability of anyone. Parents who came today were returned because they could not furnish any proof of the children belonging to them. In the absence of proof, the state is obliged to keep the children,” said Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini.

The children have now been housed in another Gurgaon shelter home called ‘Aarushi’ run by the Salam Balak Trust.

Gurgaon, May 7
A 28-year-old woman allegedly jumped to her death from the sixth floor of an apartment in Sector 10 here today.

Meenakshi (28) was the wife of Amit Kumar(34), who runs a chemical factory in the old city area. They got married in December, 2005, and have a five-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son.

The police said the couple, who belonged to Sriganganagar in Rajasthan, had been staying in Pelican Apartments here for the past about five years. Amit’s younger brother and his wife were also living in the same flat.

Amit and Meenakshi’s son had some health problems and Meenakshi’s mother had also been putting up with them for some time. Recently, Meenakshi had reportedly objected to consumption of alcohol by Amit though their relationship in general was stated to be cordial.

Meenakshi sent her daughter to school this morning and told her mother that she was going to a temple. However, she went to nearby Karamyogi Apartments. In the entry register at the gate, she indicated that she was going to a beauty parlour located in the apartments.

“It seems that instead of going there, she went to the sixth floor and jumped from there,” said the police.

No suicide note was found. The victim’s family has expressed shock at the extreme step taken by Meenakshi. Her body was handed over to the family after a post-mortem examination. 

The implication of bad roads

n Bad roads claimed 13 lives daily in the state in 2011 n As many as 26 persons were injured daily in the state in 2011 n In 2011, the state witnessed 10,672 accidents, a majority of them in the NCR n The number of fatal accidents in the state was pegged at 4,145 last year n Potholed roads give a bad name to the fast-developing NCR

Chandigarh, May 7
With the road network in the fast-developing National Capital Region(NCR) in a shambles, the Haryana Government has sent an SOS to the Central Government to release Rs 350 crore for the immediate improvement of around 1,000 km of road network.

In a recent communication to the Central Government, the Haryana Government has pleaded that since these roads were constructed over 30 years they needed a huge investment for their recarpeting. In fact, they should be covered under the Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojana(PMGSY), the communication asserted.

In fact, officials highlighted that of the 8,715-km road network falling in the NCR, the Major District Roads (MDR) and Other District Roads(ODR) networks covering nearly 7400 km were in a poor condition.

While Haryana had been taking up the case of bad roads with the Centre regularly, the Central Government had not been forthcoming with the financial assistance.

Till now, the NCR Planning Board has assisted the state government with loans for 884-km length of roads.

Pleading for a major financial assistance for the state government to improve its road infrastructure, the officials claimed that a majority of the roads were used by people from all over the northern India.

Due to large-scale urbanisation in the NCR segment falling in Haryana, the traffic on the roads from New Delhi to Haryana has increased manifold in the recent years. The percentage of the state’s urban population has increased from 28.92% in 2001 to 34.79% in 2011.

Panipat, May 7
The alleged X-Ray report racket unearthed at the Panipat Civil Hospital might not be an isolated case as there are apprehensions that similar practices were going on in other parts of the state also.

Meanwhile, the health authorities have summoned the relevant records pertaining to the inquiry that had been conducted by a panel of four doctors at the Panipat hospital.

The Civil Surgeon, Dr H.S. Randhawa, had sent a copy of the inquiry report to the higher authorities of the health department on April 27, but following reports in the media, the department has summoned the complete records. The inquiry panel has been dismantled and asked to hand over all related documents to the officiating civil surgeon.

Sources revealed that the higher authorities had first asked the officiating civil surgeon, Dr Anita Tandon, to report at the health department head office along with the details related to the inquiry into the alleged racket.

However, later it was decided to send a messenger to Panipat to collect the report documents and bring them to the head office. The sources said the panel of doctors had handed over all records pertaining to the X-Ray report racket to the officiating civil surgeon, after Dr H.S. Randhawa who had ordered the inquiry into the working of the radiographer was transferred from Panipat on Saturday evening.

The sources also confirmed that the DG had also summoned the radiographer, K.K. Rana, to Chandigarh.

Meanwhile, further investigations carried out by The Tribune revealed that the besides irregularities in the issuance of the X-Ray reports (1,197 were issued without doctor’s signatures and 1,681 X-Rays had neither the signatures nor were reported to any doctor) and maintenance of related records, there were several discrepancies in the receipt system.

But before the authorities at the civil hospital could bring these violations to light, the civil surgeon was transferred and the panel of doctors dismantled.

Meanwhile, repeated attempts made to contact the Director-General Health, Dr Narveer Singh, proved futile.

Fatehabad, May 7
The district authorities have accredited 14 private hospitals of the district for conducting tubectomy surgeries on women belonging to Scheduled Castes and BPL families and no scalpel vasectomy (NSV) surgeries on men free of charges.

“Five hospitals in Fatehabad, eight in Tohana and one in Ratia have been accredited by the authorities during a meeting of the District Quality Assurance Committee headed by Deputy Commissioner ML Kaushik,” said the civil surgeon, Dr SB Kamboj.

The hospitals will not charge any fees from patients. However, the government would pay these hospitals Rs 1,500 per surgery.

In Fatehabad, Patiala Children and Maternity Hospital, Wadhwa Hospital, Siwach Surgical and Maternity Hospital, Sandooja ENT and Maternity Hospital and Geeta Nursing Home have been authorised for the family planning surgery.

In Tohana, Rajasthan Medical Centre, Arora Hospital, City Hospital, Kakkar Hospital, Sangam Hospital, Bhatia Nursing Home, Shalini Hospital, Sethi Hospital and Maternity Home have been authorised. In Ratia, Goel Nursing Home has also been accredited for quality assurance by the authorities, said Dr Kamboj.

The hospitals will be covered by insurance under the government scheme.

The hospitals will display a notice that tubecomy operations of SC and BPL women and NSV operations of all men were conducted free of cost in their hospitals.

Karnal, May 7
A teacher of government school Modipur (Karnal) was thrashed by some villagers and was booked by the police after a class IX girl student alleged he tried to molest her.

The girl alleged that the accused teacher called her to his room, caught hold of her and tried to molest her and narrated the incident to her mother who went to the school and demanded action against the teacher. The villagers when came to know about the sordid incident got so incensed that they asked the police to take immediate action against him and thrashed him.

The police rushed to the school and started investigating the incident but before he could be taken to the police station, the villagers pounced on him and gave him good thrashing. The efforts of the police to pacify the villagers yielded no results and they even damaged the police vehicle.

The police registered a case against Sultan Singh on the complaint of the student and arrested him.

The incident happened few days back but the girl gathered courage to tell it to her mother today who also told the villagers about it. The villagers were so provoked that they locked the teacher in the room and opened the lock after two hours when the police reached the school.

Her mother said when she went to the school, some teachers asked her to forgive the errant teacher but she insisted that strict action should be taken against him and reported the matter to the police. 

Hisar, May 7
INLD Secretary-General Ajay Singh Chautala has demanded that the government amend its education policy and put an immediate end to the exploitation of teachers in the state.

In a statement issued here today, he said the government was pitting thousands of guest teachers against an equal number of eligible teachers instead of framing a proper policy for recruitment of teachers.

He said thousands of teachers had been working in government schools as guest faculty while there were thousands of others who had qualified the Haryana Teacher Eligibility Test (HTET).

For the past many years the government had not recruited teachers due to lack of a policy. This had brought down standards of teaching in government schools. From time to time the government had been announcing recruitment of thousands of teachers but even after the intervention of the high court no recruitments had been made.

The INLD leader said ruling party politicians were merely watching the two categories of teachers fight with each other while students continued to suffer in schools.

Chautala also demanded that the condition of HTET should not be imposed while promoting schoolteachers.

Chandigarh, May 7
There will be no shortage of gunny bags in Haryana as railway rack from Kolkata has left for Rohtak. Another rack for Sirsa started from Kolkata today, which would reach there within twoor three days. Also, the state government has purchased 400 bundles of plastic bags from Jaipur, which would soon reach Haryana.

Satpal Sangwan, Cooperation Minister, said a bumper wheat crop had been recorded this year and many farmers from neighbouring states had reached Haryana mandis for selling their wheat. He said that one of the reasons for the scarcity of gunny bags in the state was due to a bumper crop in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh has recorded 85 to 90 lakh metric tonnes of wheat against a target of about 60 lakh metric tonnes. Gunny bags had also been purchased from Delhi .

He said the government would not let farmers face any loss. HAFED officials had been directed to ensure the supply of gunny bags, wherever any shortage was felt on a priority basis. HAFED had purchased more than 27.75 lakh metric tonnes of wheat as against 24.31 lakh metric tonnes.

Chandigarh May 7
The Haryana Public Health and Engineering Department has constituted a committee “District Water and Sanitation Mission” to ensure adequate drinking water supply, maintain proper hygiene and also to implement new projects in Bhiwani district.

Members of the committee included MP, all MLAs of the district, Additional Deputy Commissioner, Civil Surgeon, District Education Officer, District Primary Education Officer, District Social Welfare Officer, Programme Officer of Women and Child Development Department, Executive Engineer of Irrigation Department, district-level officers of Agriculture Department, District Development and Panchayat Officer, District Information and Public Relations Officer and three NGO members, a spokesperson said. The Executive Engineer of Public Health Department, Bhiwani, Division-2, had been designated as Member Secretary of the mission.

The committee would ensure sufficient arrangement of drinking water supply, successful implementation of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and would also monitor the developmental schemes in rural areas in this regard.

The committee would also give approval to the water and sanitation schemes framed at the block and village level and would also set priorities of the schemes. It would also select those NGOs, which would generate mass awakening in society on hygiene and water conservation.

The committee would establish coordination between public representatives, officers and people. Apart from this training facility would also be arranged for those people who would work towards spreading awareness in society.

Sonepat, May 7
“I raised the demand for an extension of the Metro train service on a priority basis in the western and northern parts of Haryana adjoining Delhi in the recently concluded Lok Sabha session and I am sure that the Central government will respond positively in public interest.”

This was state by the Rohtak MP, Deepender Singh Hooda, while talking to mediapersons after inaugurating a multi-specialty hospital at Kharkhoda on Sunday evening.

The extension of the Metro had become the need of the hour for promoting commercial and industrial activities in the NCR area of Haryana, he added.

He said that the proposals raised by him included the extension of the Metro service from Jahangirpuri in Delhi to Kundli and Bahalgarh in Sonepat district and from Mundka in Delhi to Bahadurgarh and from Dwarka in Delhi to Badli in Jhajjar district of Haryana.

He claimed that with the opening of half a dozen institutes of higher education in the district, including three universities, the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM) and the Central

Institute of Plastic Engineering and Management and sanctioning of an IIIT near Sonepat, the area had emerged as an education hub of education.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda would lay the foundation stones of as many as 12 educational institutes of higher learning, including the National Law Institute at the Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Rai near Sonepat, on May 10, he added.

Hisar, May 7
Haryana Agricultural University has developed a new variety of sesame, which is expected to boost sesame production in Haryana, Punjab, HP and Jammu & Kashmir.

According to Vice-Chancellor KS. Khokhar, the variety has been named HT 9713 (HT 2). It has a high yield potential and resistance against diseases.

He said the variety had been identified for release in Haryana, Punjab, HP and Jammu & Kashmir at the annual group meeting of the All-India Coordinated Research Project held at University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, recently.

Dr Khokhar said that the new variety had recorded 15 to 25 per cent more seed yield than the existing varieties.

RK Sheoran, Dhiraj Singh, AS Rathi, RS Banga, SP Singh and Kamal Dhawan comprised the team of scientists credited with developing this variety.

RP Narwal, Director of Research, said this variety possessed 48.2 per cent oil content, adding that resistance against leaf curl virus was its another feature.

Karnal, May 7
The National Integrated Forum of Artists and Activists (NIFAA), an NGO, has demanded the creation of a separate ministry and department of youth affairs to give a boost to youth welfare activities in Haryana.

In a letter addressed to Chief Minister B.S.Hooda, NIFAA president Pritpal Singh Pannu said at present the Department of Youth Affairs was working under the Directorate of Sports and Youth Services and the creation of a separate department would be a gift by the government to the youth during 2012, which has been declared as the ‘year of youth’ by the government.

“A separate department would facilitate the creation of posts of district youth officers in all districts and issues pertaining to development and welfare of youth would get more attention,” he said.

He added that the youth had brought pride to Haryana and the maximum number of national youth awardees belonged to the state.

Pannu said that the contribution of the youth in the development of the state could not be undermined and the government must take steps to assure them a good future.

NIFAA requested the government to provide adequate financial support to rural youth clubs in the state on an annual basis. The clubs could play a role in the social development of their respective villages and act as a catalyst in the implementation of programmes.

Hisar, May 7
The All-India Aggarwal Sammelan has demanded that the benefit of reservations be extended on an economic basis instead of caste.

A resolution to this effect was passed at a mahapanchayat organised by the organisation at Agroha, near here, yesterday.

Introducing the resolution, Surendra Gupta, president of the sammelan, said caste as the basis of reservations was a flawed choice. Since Independence many so-called upper castes had become economically backward and these deserved reservation in government jobs.

He said though the Aggarwals were perceived as a moneyed community, the fact was that many members of the community were economically backward. He appealed to all community members to safeguard the interests of their community. He announced that the community would build a memorial to Aggarwal martyrs who had laid down their lives for the country.

handigarh, May 7
The Haryana Government is set to face a crunch of officers, with at least 11 IAS officers set to retire in the next one year and no replacement in sight.

In fact, the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government would have to do with a limited number of IAS officers. The situation may also turn grave with certain officers going on deputation to the Central Government recently.

A senior functionary of the state government confirmed that no replacements were coming in place of officers retiring in the coming months. “If we do not get replacements, even the routine administrative would be affected and a large number of officers forced to hold additional charges,” he added. Among those retiring from service are Raj Kumar, Anita Chaudhary, Manik Sonawane, NK Jain, Maha Singh, Vimal Chandra, Fateh Singh Dagar, JS Ahlatwat, BS Malik, Satwanti Ahlawat and Krishan Kumar.

In fact, officers crunch at the senior level was also the result of Hooda government’s dilly-dallying attitude in promoting eligible HCS officers to the IAS. Recently, the state government appointed a large number of new HCS officers.

Meanwhile, as the Hooda government is liberal in appointing retired senior bureaucrats to lucrative posts, rehabilitation is clearly on the minds of the officers on their way out of the service. Retired Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati was appointed as the State Information Commissioner. Earlier, her husband Naresh Gulati was appointed Chief Information Commissioner. 

Sonepat, May 7
Three farm labourers died of food poisoning after they consumed contaminated food at Jahri village, near here, the police said today.

The victims, who hailed from Bihar, were taken ill after consuming meals in their room in Ganaur subdivision of Sonepat yesterday.

When another farm labourer. Dinesh Paswan, reached the room, he raised an alarm following which locals rushed the labourers to the PGIMS, Rohtak, where three of them died.

The victims were identified as Dinesh Pal (25), Babloo Paswan (18) and Guttan, alias Gatar (25). The police said the condition of four others was stated to be serious.

The bodies have been sent for a post-mortem examination. — PTI

Karnal, May 7
A married woman and mother of a five-year-old girl was found dead under mysterious in her house in the Lal Kuan area this morning. The parents of the victim, identified as Dipika, alleged that she had been tortured to death by her in-laws who had been demanding dowry even after six years of marriage.

The brother of the deceased, Sanjay Khanna, alleged that Dipika had been killed and there were marks of injury on her neck and feet.

The police said that it would take necessary action only after the post-mortem report was received.

Sanjay said Dipika had rung him up yesterday and told him that she was being beaten up mercilessly and did not want to live with her in-laws. When he and his parents reached her house today, she was lying dead in the house.

He said that Dipika was married to Deepak of Lal Kuan six years ago and they had been meeting the demand of her in-laws at regularly. Her in-laws had demanded Rs 1 lakh for the repair of the house and they paid Rs 50,000 and assured them to pay the balance amount and gift a fridge on the birthday of their granddaughter but, they did not wait, he alleged.

The police investigating officer Janak Raj said that there were marks on the neck and feet of the deceased but he could not say anything till the post-mortem report was received.