New Delhi, November 12
A scam of nearly Rs 500 crore had left over 2 lakh people cheated of their money, when they invested it in a sham investment company called "Stock Guru India". The Delhi police that unearthed the scam learnt that a couple - school dropouts - is allegedly responsible for it.

Ulhas Prabhakar Khaire (33) and his wife Raksha J Urs (30) were arrested in Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, on November 10. The police has photographs that show the several disguises of the couple. Stock Guru India was a fraudulent company, as it was not registered with the Registrar of Companies and the Reserve Bank of India. The aqccused had earlier opened an educational academy called the "Institute of Psychotherapy and Counselling" in Dehradun in 2009, said a police official. The institute, which had been opened with the alliance of Dr R K Maheshwari and Dr Prachi Maheshwari, was allegedly used to cheat students of their money.

"They both had expensive taste. We learnt that the couple had assets worth Rs 63 crore. We seized demand drafts worth close to Rs 27 crore from them. They have 94 accounts spread over 20 odd banks, which they operated in 13 different names. They have 12 properties in Delhi, Bhiwadi, Alwar, Goa and Moradabad, which have been attached. They also bought 12 cars such as Mercedes Benz," said the Joint Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing- EOW), Delhi, Sandeep Goel.

The first two cases relating to the Stock Guru fraud were registered in April and June last year. The police had received a total of 14,303 complaints against them and their investigations revealed that 2,05,062 people had invested money in the company. The total investments of the victims were Rs 493 crore. The office was located at Rama Road in Delhi.

Ankur Sachdeva, a victim said, "The couple had convinced us that it was giving us a big opportunity. Every six months it would publicise its scheme at five star hotels. I had invested about Rs 12 lakh in that company."

"The couple had guaranteed to provide a 20 per cent return per month up to six months on the principal amount. The accused had promised to also give the subsequent refund of the principal amount in the seventh month," said Sandeep Goel.

In January 2011, there was an income tax raid at several offices of Stock Guru India. "It was the downfall of the company after that," said an official. The couple after collecting the people's investments fled to Goa in the same year. It later moved to Ratnagiri.

Investigators also said that the couple had opened the firm under the aliases of Lokeshwar Dev and Priyanka Dev.

This year the police arrested the couple at Ratnagiri. Here Prabhakar had started a share trade business and Raksha had started a media business. The accused had seized Prabhakar's passport that was made under his alias Lokeshwar Dev. For procuring the passport he had allegedly submitted a Class XI marksheet, which belonged to the real Lokeshwar Dev, who is a resident of Dehradun.

Investigators probed this clue and learnt of the Dehradun scam. They discovered that Prabhakar had stolen the identity of Lokeshwar, who had submitted his marksheet with Rs 35,000, when he came to gain admission in the "Institute of Psychotherapy and Counselling" in Dehradun.

From 2005 when the couple was married till before 2009, "it had made sporadic forays into crime. It formed an identity and used it to obtain high value credit cards from banks. After withdrawing money and making purchases they moved to another city and lived under different aliases," said the official.

New Delhi, November 12
Come Divali and there is warmth of festivities on shopping malls and markets buzzing with attractive offers to woo customers and people sharing gifts. But it also brings the woes like man-made accidents due to reckless driving and improper handling of firecrackers.

This necessitates police, fire and traffic personnel to remain on alert in the national Capital, while the doctors and other staff at the emergencies in the hospitals too are geared up, especially at the burns casualties which are flooded with patients with firecrackers injuries around this time.

Such is the rush, say doctors at Safdarjung Hospital that ahead of the Divali, every year a three-day disaster management protocol is revoked under the direct supervision of the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

"Announced on the eve of Divali the disaster protocol is for three days and we are all ready to receive at least 500 patients within no time. Around 30 doctors are on their toes along with the paramedics. There will be around 10 senior while 30 junior doctors on the job," said Dr Karoon Agrawal, the head of the Plastics and Burns Department at Safdarjung Hospital. For this, the burns department, which receives patients from the city as well as neighbourhood, prepares a contingency plan a month in advance and submits it to the Health Ministry.

"Adequate stock of bandage and medicines are earmarked for these three days when our casualty here receives 200 patients on an average. It takes 7 to 10 minutes for a patient to walk into the emergency and go out with treatment, such is the management. We also take the help of other departments, such as critical care specialties, eye, ortho and skin, etc.," he added.

Similar arrangements have also been made in several other tertiary care government and private hospitals even as many hospitals continue to be ignorant about the disaster protocol per say, as found by a recent study among doctors and paramedics of Safdarjung Hospital and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where 83 per cent of the respondents didn't know about the regulation indicating laxity on the part of the hospital authorities.

Among hospitals run by the Delhi government which have designated doctors, manpower and beds for Divali are Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Lok Nayak Hospital and Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, both having opened up their disaster wards for this time while c-managed Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Kalawati Saran Hospital and Smt. Sucheta Kriplani Hospital (SKH) too will be ready to receive patients on Divali.

"Separate beds are kept for Divali and a team will remain on duty with doctors on the campus always on call," said the doctor in-charge from SKH.

New Delhi, November 12
State Health Minister A.K. Walia today said that in order to exercise more effective control and better management of dengue, 3,400 domestic breeding checkers (DBCs) engaged by the East, North and South Municipal Corporations would now carry out domestic breeding checking throughout the year in place of the present practice of their engagement for the eight months that is from April to November.

He has directed that an additional fund of Rs 500 lakh be released to the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi so that they could continue the work for the whole year. The DBCs of the New Delhi Municipal Council will also work throughout the year.

Walia said this while reviewing the situation at a meeting with senior health officials to make first-hand assessment of the dengue and other vector borne and communicable diseases, including malaria, H1N1, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis.

The minister felt that there is a strong need to train DBCs, especially in view of checking breeding of "mother foci" of aedes mosquitoes comprising surface, overhead and underground water tanks.

He directed the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR) to jointly provide training to the DBCs from first week of December this year. The training module will be developed by the NCDC, he said. The training will help the DBCs to upgrade their skills and keep pace with new trends.

During discussions with the health officials, it emerged that there is an acute need to create public awareness with regard to mosquito breeding. It was reported that breeding was detected in all the strata of society - whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, urban or rural, high-rise or low-rise dwellers.

The minister directed that in order to reach all sections of society, SMSes through mobile phones will widely be communicated, educating the people with regard to steps to be taken for prevention and control of dengue. He said that 60 lakh SMSes will be communicated tomorrow.

New Delhi, November 12
On the eve of Divali, traffic jams were witnessed on all the major roads of the capital as shopkeepers from neighbouring states - UP and Haryana - thronged the city to purchase crackers and other household items and the people of nearby areas who reside in Delhi were on way to their native places to celebrate the festival of lights.

The traffic was crawling from ITO to Vikas Marg and Mother Dairy in the evening. Some people came out of their offices but went back after they saw the traffic. They left the office after one and half hour.

Same was the situation at Old Delhi Railway Station, Mori Gate, Sadar Bazar, Paharganj and Karol Bagh. People were not getting parking space. Heavy traffic was also seen at India Gate, Bhogal to Badarpur on Mathura Road. Traffic was standstill at Mukarba Chowk in outer Delhi for about two hours.

Anamika Mehta, who left her office in Connaught Place about 5 pm, reached home in Gautam Nagar around 7 pm. When she saw traffic jam outside her office she took auto-rickshaw instead of boarding a DTC bus. Still she was late.

Razzak, a resident of Jamia Nagar, said he left Chandni Chowk at 5.30 pm but reached his destination about 8 pm as there was heavy traffic on Ring Road as well as Mathura Road. He said that the traffic police was deployed at major points but they were hapless to control the traffic due to unusual rush of the vehicles from 
neighbouring states.

New Delhi, November 12
The "homeless" in the national capital are not only invisible from the country's census and polling picture, but they and all their issues and concerns are no where in the mandate of the country's top human rights institutions - the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the National Commission for Women (NCW), National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW).

At least, this is what is reflected by their shocking responses to information sought under the RTI Act, 2005, in December last year by People's Rights and Social Research Centre (PRASAR) on the issues surrounding homeless' rights, documentary proof, available government rehabilitation schemes and budget allocated for them in the past five years.

While the latter two chose to pass the buck to the Government of India, the ignorance of the NHRC about the issues of homeless - figure, nationality and identity, schemes of rehabilitation and funds for homeless in the past five years points out at their blatant apathy towards the section concerned.

The NCW it its reply stated that the commission is not concerned with the existence of homeless women on the street, neither with their rights nor with their nationality/identity. Its sister concern in the capital DCW was more upfront in admitting that it had not done anything on the issues of homeless and it doesn't fall under its domain, it said in its response on April 23, 2012.

Condemning this indifference and insensitivity, human rights activists under the banner of Shahri Adhikar Manch: Begharon Ke Sath, a collective of 30 organisations, have demanded an investigation into the deaths of homeless persons in Delhi and accountability to be fixed and an action plan to prevent such deaths.

According to police records, there were a total of 6,861 deaths of homeless persons (unclaimed bodies), comprising 4,748 males, 277 females and 105 children in Delhi. And 1,731 of these reported deaths were unclassified.

"While the so-called human rights institutions have not responded even after four months of being informed about the deaths revealed by the RTI response from the Delhi police, the Delhi government has not paid heed to the Delhi High Court's order of providing permanent shelters," pointed Campaign for Rehabilitation of Homeless' S. A. Azad who spearheaded the RTIs.

"These are not accidental deaths and such being the alarming scenario, accountability needs to be fixed. They are dying because there are no schemes and medical facilities for them in the city," said Shivani Chaudhry, the associate director of Housing and Land Rights Network.