Yamunanagar, March 20
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked the Director-General of Police, Haryana, to order a probe against senior officials of the Yamunanagar police for allegedly violating the rights of a local resident for raising his voice against rise in crime in the district.

The orders came after a local resident, Suresh Kumar Saini, filed a complaint with the commission, alleging that he and his five minor children, including four girls and a son, were charged with ‘interfering in official work’ in August, last.

Suresh, who used to dispatch cuttings of local papers highlighting crime reports to Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, allegedly became the victim of the wrath of the police officials after the CM sought an explanation from the district police.

Suresh alleged that he and his five children were implicated in a false case, following which, he was picked up and beaten by the SHO of Farakpur police station Ajeet Singh and other policemen in the presence of DSP headquarters Phool Kumar, who threatened him to stop reporting the crime to the CM or else he would be further charged with violation of the NDPS Act.

Suresh, who is a shopkeeper, contended how he and his five minor children could interfere in the ‘official work’ of the police.

Following this, Suresh reported the matter to the National Human Rights Commission, which asked the DGP Haryana to inquire into the matter and submit a report. After this, district police chief Mitesh Jain prepared a report and sent it to the DGP, who then forwarded it to the NHRC.

However, the NHRC refused to accept the report, stating that it was ‘not very clear’ and asked the DGP to get the matter inquired into by a senior police official from some other district and submit a fresh report within eight weeks.

Suresh Kumar said there had been an unprecedented rise in criminal activities in the district and the police had been unable to curb it. He said crime reported in the newspapers highlighted the failure of the police officials in enforcing the law and thus he had started reporting this to the CM.

Suresh said after the latest directives issued by the NHRC, the DSP sent policemen to his house last evening who asked him to appear before the official. “The last time I appeared before the DSP, I was badly beaten up. Thus, this time I have refused to appear before him,” Suresh said.

Gurgaon, March 20
A first year student of a local engineering college is battling for his life after falling prey to alleged ragging. Though the police is waiting for the victim’s statement to register a case, the incident has left college students across the city fuming.

Tula Ram, a Delhi resident and student of the Gurgaon College of Engineering in Bilaspur, was allegedly thrashed and poisoned by his seniors when he arrived to appear for his first semester examination.

Tula Ram was found lying unconscious in one of the college parks and the management rushed him to Sunrise Hospital, Gurgaon, where he has been kept on a ventilator and his condition is said to be critical.

Friends and family members said there were injury marks on his body and doctors had told them that he had been poisoned. They also said that it was during break time that Tula was found in the park with foam coming out of his mouth.

Tula’s fellow students claimed that they were being harassed or ragged by their seniors regularly and they had taken a special fancy to bullying Tula Ram. Tula Ram's friends said the seniors had avenged a recent complaint made by juniors to the management.

“We have been facing this for the past few months. Tula was the worst hit as they would bully him all the time. He was frequently cornered and slapped by seniors. We had approached the management, but it did nothing. Tula had recently given a complaint against some boys. While the college authorities failed to do anything, those named in the complaint had threatened him,” said one of his friends present at hospital.

The police, however, refused to confirm ragging. SHO Bilaspur Babu Lal said, “It appears that he consumed some drink with friends but nothing can be said till he gives his statement. We cannot confirm ragging till then. All that we have now is a complaint against the college authorities for not informing the family about Tula’s condition and his admittance to hospital.”

“My son was dying and they rushed him to this hospital but never cared to inform us. It was Tula’s friends who did so. The college turned a deaf ear to complaints of ragging and my son is now bearing the brunt,” said his aggrieved father.

Hisar, March 20
Major-Gen A Krishnan, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Hisar-based 33-Armoured Division, was cremated with full military honours here today.

Lieutenant General Gian Bhushan, Army Commander, South-Western Command, Lt-General Surendra Nath, Chief of Staff, Southern Command, Lt-General PS Bhalla, DG, NCC, Lt-General RC Chadha, DG, Operational Logistics, Lt-General SS Thakral, DG, Remount Veterinary Services, and several other top military commanders and B Satheesh Balan, SP, Hisar, attended the cremation.

The Hisar tehsildar represented the civil administration in the cremation.

Major-General A Krishnan had died after a heart attack at the age of 54 this Monday. He is survived by his wife, Mahalaxmi Krishnan, and two sons, Kaushik and Ashwin.

Fatehabad, March 20
Additional District and Sessions Judge LN Jindal, who heads a special court for trial of cases against women at Fatehabad, today sentenced a sexagenarian to imprisonment for seven years for raping a 13-year-old girl for several months at Khai village in Fatehabad.

The crime had hit the headlines in October last year when after knowing of the rape, the government school at Khai had shown the door to the victim as well as her two other sisters.

The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the convict, Sohan Lal.

Sohan Lal (60), who sold guavas outside the school, had allegedly been raping the victim for several months by luring her by offering fruits free of cost.

The victim, whose mother had died some years earlier, revealed the matter to some classmates, who in turn informed their parents.

Later, a meeting was held in the school where the village sarpanch, a close relative of the accused and the headmaster, allegedly showed the victim and her two sisters, aged 12 and 11, the door after obtaining their signatures for shifting their school.

Though the victim’s poor father approached the police, the panchayat as well as the school tried to settle the matter though compromise.

However, when the matter was highlighted in the media, the police registered a case on October 13 and arrested the accused.

The incident had devastated the family as the victim’s father, the lone earning hand in the family, had gone into depression due to the attitude of the authorities.

Eventually, the family had to leave the village forever for providing education to the three girls in a neighbouring village.

The court’s decision today sentencing the accused to imprisonment for seven years within five months of the FIR must have come as some relief to the family.

New Delhi, March 20
Prof Mool Chand Sharma, Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Haryana, has been appointed a full-time member of the 20th Law Commission headed by retired Supreme Court Judge DK Jain.

Justice SN Kapoor, a retired Judge of the Delhi High Court, will be another full-time member of the commission which has a three-year term till August 31, 2015, an official press note stated today.

The commission would have two part-time members. They were Prof Yogesh Tyagi, Dean and Professor of Law at South Asian University here, and R Venkataramani, a senior advocate of the SC.

Rohtak, March 20
In a surprising move, a private school affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) here has decided to disallow girls of class VIII to XII from wearing skirts in the school. A notice issued recently says that the girl students of these classes should wear salwar-kurta instead of the old dress of skirt and top (shirt) from the next academic session beginning on April 1.

The parents of some students say the new dress code was revealed recently when they went to buy uniform for their wards.

It is revealed that several students who contacted the authorities for clarification in this connection were told that the decision had been taken for the convenience of the girls.

The school, located in Arya Nagar, is for girls only and one of the oldest public schools affiliated to the CBSE in the city. Another school run by the same society is for boys.

Satish Sindhwani, president of of the Shiksha Bharti Society running the school, claimed that the decision had been taken after taking the parents into confidence. He said skirts caused inconvenience to girls during physical exercise classes.

Sirsa, March 20
To counter the INLD "Pol Khol Abhiyan" after the conviction of former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son, Ajay Singh Chautala, in the JBT rescruitment scam, the Haryana Youth Congress has launched a "Yuva Sandhesh Yatra."

Haryana Youth Congress president Amit Sihag addressed public meetings in nearly 10 villages of the Dabwali assembly segment to launch the yatra in the district.

The Chautalas had been sentenced for betrayal of thousands of deserving youths by giving jobs to their favourites, alleged Sihag, who incidentally is Chautala's cousin Dr KV Singh's son.

Dr KV Singh is presently OSD (Media) to Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

He alleged the Chautalas had been trying to befool people by terming their conviction as the Congress's handiwork.

He said it was a matter of record that the Supreme Court had ordered a CBI probe into the case on an IAS officer's plea.

The CBI investigated the matter at a time when Chautala himself was in power in Haryana and the NDA government, supported by the INLD, was in power at the Centre.

He alleged the Chautalas had committed a big fraud by increasing the marks of interview from 12.5 to 20 in their endeavour to benefit their favourites.

Chandigarh, March 20
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has upheld the Haryana Staff Selection Commission’s action of fixing minimum 65 per cent marks as cut-off for interviewing candidates for the posts of pharmacist.

The development is significant as 165 posts of pharmacists were advertised.

But the number of applicants was proportionately high, compelling the commission to come out with a cut-off percentage for interview.

Taking up an appeal filed by Raj Singh and other appellants against Haryana and other respondents, a Division Bench of Chief Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain asserted that the fixing of cut-off marks was not only permissible in law but special instructions were also issued in this regard in the advertisement itself.

Reproducing the instructions in the order, the Division Bench asserted: “In view of this, we do not find that the Single Judge has committed any error in dismissing the writ petition of the appellant herein challenging the action of the commission in fixing the minimum 65 per cent cut-off marks. Hence, the present appeal is hereby dismissed”.

Chandigarh, March 20
The Punjab and Haryana High Court today sought a report from the National Highway Authority of India(NHAI) on the construction of a bypass on NH-71. The directions were issued after the court was informed that the bypass would pass through the playground of a government college in a village near Rohtak.

The directions came on a petition filed in public interest by an NGO “Himmat” of Rohtak.

The petitioner claimed that Government College for Women in Lakhan Magra village was built on gram panchayat land donated to it by the Pracheen Shri Ram Mandir Committee. The Rs 10-crore building was inaugurated by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on September 27, 2012. The institute was the only college for women in the entire area. The construction of a bypass through its playground would divide the college and result into accidents.

Besides, the studies would also be disturbed due to heavy volume of traffic on the bypass.

The case will now come up for hearing on March 26 when the NHAI submits its report.

Chandigarh, March 20
The ambitious plans of the Vigneshwara Group of Companies to develop a state-of-the-art cyber park at Gurgaon has hit a roadblock with the Haryana government canceling its licence granted on April 24, 2009, for violation of terms and conditions.

An order issued by the Director-General, Department of Town and Country Planning, listed a number of deficiencies which resulted in “blacklisting” of Aquarius Buildcon Private Limited, a firm of realty giant Vigneshwara Group of Companies.

The deficiencies detected by the department included default by the firm on an amount of nearly Rs 33 crore, including Rs 30.65 crore on account of external development charges (EDC), Rs 2.29 crore for internal development charges (IDC) and about Rs 6.88 lakh as licence renewal fee.

Besides the non-payment of the statutory dues, the developer did not submit the no-objection certificate (NOC) from the competent authority. Also, the compliance certificate was not submitted by the company.

Chandigarh, March 20
The government has decided to launch an enrolment drive ‘Pravesh Utsav’ on March 24 for bringing each child into the school system to make ‘Right to Education’ a reality.

Education Minister Geeta Bhukkal said Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda would launch this programme on March 24 at Government Girls Senior Secondary School, Tohana(Fatehabad). She said that the programme would be simultaneously conducted in all government schools of the state on the same day.

Bhukkal said the objective of ‘Pravesh Utsav’ is to ensure 100 per cent enrolment of children in class I and 100 per cent transition from class V to VI, VIII to IX and IX to XI. It would be the joint responsibility of the sending and receiving school that is primary and middle or middle and high or senior secondary to ensure that children of terminal classes of V, VIII and X enrolled in next classes. Girls and children with special needs were the key target groups to be addressed in this programme.

The department would soon circulate the performance parameters in terms of bringing in ‘out-of-school’ children, bringing in difficult categories and cent per cent enrolment and cent per cent transition. All achievers, including teachers, school heads, and school management committees, block and district officials would be suitably awarded in May. 

Fatehabad, March 20
In welcome departure from routine bureaucratic delays, Fatehabad Deputy Commissioner Saket Kumar provided claims under the Rajiv Gandhi Beema Yojna to the family of the father-son duo who died in a roof collapse with three days of the accident. The DC handed over cheques worth Rs 2 lakh to next of kin of the two victims, Dharampal and Jaipal, in his office last evening.

Dharampal, a labourer, and his teenaged son, Jaipal, had died when the roof of their house at Lalluwal village of Fatehabad collapsed in the wee hours on March 16. Four members of the family were critically injured in the accident. Under the Rajiv Gandhi Beema Yojna, a sum of Rs 1 lakh is paid to next of kin if an earning hand dies an accidental death.

Rewari, March 20
Shakuntala Bhandoria, a woman councillor, was elected chairperson of the Rewari Municipal Council here today.

The post of chairperson was reserved for a woman councillor of the Scheduled Castes. Pawan Bathla was elected unopposed as vice-chairman of the Municipal Council.