New Delhi, September 9
More than 12 police officer, including a woman, sustained injuries, while two police vehicles were damaged by an angry mob this morning, when they were protesting the murder of a 40-year-old woman in the Model Town area, north-west Delhi. The police said they have arrested 18 protesters including a woman.

They have been booked under the relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including rioting and attempt to commit culpable homicide. The police said that at 9 am on Sunday, the body of the woman identified as Kamlesh was found at Ramleela Park in Model Town. She worked as a domestic help in the locality. Kamlesh was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors declared her dead. The body was handed over to her family after postmortem. Today, her family with about hundreds of neighbours staged a demonstration against alleged police apathy in the case.

The police were informed about the demonstration about 10 am. They were told about a traffic jam caused by the protesters at GT Road in Model Town. The protestors alleged that Kamlesh was gangraped before being brutally murdered. "I had seen the body which was lying abandoned in a pool of blood at Ramleela Park. Her body had multiple injury marks and her clothes were torn. The police seem to be reluctant to add sections of rape to the case, because we belong to the lower economic background," said a protester, Rameshwar Dayal Singh.

The police rubbished the allegations of the protesters that she was gangraped before being murdered. "According to the post-mortem report, the doctors have denied that she was sexually assaulted," said a police officer.

As protesters refused to end the demonstration, several teams of the police were called to the GT Road to bring the situation under control. The police tried to pacify the crowd and assured them that a clean investigation will be conducted in the case.

When the police tried to disperse the crowd to allow traffic movement, the protesters clashed with them. The police were forced to use force to quell the disturbance. The mob pelted stones at the police, injuring 12 police officers, including a woman constable and two SHOs. The police were able to bring the situation under control by 3.30 pm.

The injured were taken to a nearby hospital. Five policemen reportedly sustained fractures, while the woman constable suffered head injuries after she was hit with a stone.

New Delhi, September 9
Four persons have been arrested for allegedly posing senior officers of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and cheating people of more than Rs 3 crore on the pretext of allotting DDA plots to them.

The accused have been identified as Naveen Kumar, alias Lucky (41), Shailender Bhatia (53), Padam Singh, alias Bhagat (53), all residents of Delhi and Ajay Kumar (36), who lives in Ghaziabad.

According to the police, Prem Shankar Sharma is allegedly the kingpin of the racket and is lodged in Tihar Jail. He has 17 cases of cheating of a similar nature against him. Bhatia has a criminal record of cheating and has been arrested in eight cases of cheating, wherein he used the same modus operandi as was used in this case.

The Crime Branch is also investigating the role of the DDA staff. "They acted as facilitators for the cheats, providing them with official stationery and enacting scenes at the DDA premises. Some more arrests are likely to take place," said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav.

Kanwal Sahni, a resident of Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi, lodged a complained that Padam had met him in 2012. He had introduced himself as an employee of the sub-registrar office. Padam introduced Kanwal to Prem, who was a class IV DDA employee, but was introduced as an assistant director of the agency.

Padam runs a kachori shop near DDA Headquarters in Vikas Sadan. He contacted the persons visiting DDA and would lure them to buy vacant DDA plots allotted under the Nazrul Act on official rates.

"Prem further lured the victims to pay for their allotment of plots in Paschim Vihar on official rates. This official rate is much less than the prevailing market price and a huge amount was asked to be paid as the share of the conmen to fixing the deal. They cheated around Rs 3.83 crore from Kanwal Sahni, Mukesh Kumar, Preetam Singh Saluja and Manoj Saluja.

They asked the victims to deposit Rs.1.27 crore as value of the plots. Prem and his associates then provided them with forged and fake documents which had nothing to do with the records of the DDA.

Ajay procured and prepared the documents and acted as a deed writer of the DDA. Naveen, who works as a tout in the DDA office, impersonated the assistant to the assistant director (Prem). Shailender posed as a junior engineer of the DDA. He got the plots inspected by the complainants and gave it to them.

New Delhi, September 9
As the parent political bodies have been showing interest in the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections, various students’ groups and their candidates riding high on their support and have not given a second thought to violating the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations.

The need for adherence to the "code of conduct" for DUSU was also flagged by the Chief Election Officer for DUSU, Dr Ashok Vohra, but to no avail as officer is yet to receive reply to the letters written to the top bosses of political parties in which he had urged them to advise their candidates to abide by the recommendations.

"I have not yet received reply from political parties on the matter that I had written in which I had asked the political parties to see that the candidates backed by them do not indulge in any violations of code of conduct and direct them not to use printed posters, deface property and carry out processions without the permission of authorities," said the Chief Electoral Officer.

Even as the DU Election Office has managed to get the printed material banned by the committee removed from the campuses there are many places across the city, including areas in east and south Delhi roads, where printed stickers bearing names of the Congress-backed NSUI and RSS-supported ABVP presidential candidates were noticed.

It is not only this brazen defiance but another aspect of putting a cap of Rs 5,000 for a candidate is something that almost all student groups admit that it is impractical for a university like DU where nearly 80 colleges are to be covered.

"It is not at all practical for candidates to campaign in so many colleges spread across the capital," said Saket Bahuguna, member of the ABVP. Similarly, Sunny Kumar of the AISA, said, "It is ridiculous and no way that a university is going to ask the candidates to show the expenditure. This time, the university has completely overlooked all kinds of violations that the NSUI and the ABVP have indulged."

Importantly, on the other side DU had for the first time offered the DU website and community radio as canvassing platforms through which each contestant maximum of "five minutes" could have reached out to wider audience of the university. But the move, aiming for bettering the campaigning results at a time when the varsity practices a ban on using printed posters and campaign material, as mandated by the Lyngdoh Committee guidelines, did not see any cheer among the students.

New Delhi, September 9
The Delhi Government Cabinet today approved a pension scheme for un-organized and informal sector workers during a meeting chaired by the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit.

The Cabinet has approved the pension scheme for un-organized and informal sector workers which includes hawkers, loaders, artisans, pity workers, construction workers, leather workers, sign workers, domestic workers, cobblers, rickshaw-pullers, anganwadi workers, anganwadi helper, ASHA workers, auto driver, taxi driver, coolies, self-employed persons, etc. of un-organized or informal sector.

The pension scheme would be open for workers between the age group of 18 and 60 years. They are required to contribute Rs 1,000 per annum under the scheme. The equal amount would be contributed by the city government and the union government. At the age of retirement at 60, the beneficiary or the worker could withdraw 60 per cent of amount from his account and balance 40 per cent would remain in his account for which pension will be paid.

The Cabinet also approved the campus of NIT in Delhi, which is presently functioning from the temporary site at Integrated Institute of Technology, Polytechnic Campus at Sector-9, Dwarka. The NIT is a unitary institute focusing on research and higher learning in areas of knowledge broadly under the domain of technology and engineering. The NIT has been sanctioned in Delhi by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development after re-naming all regional engineering colleges as NITs in the country. The government has approved releasing of Rs 158 crore for a plot measuring 20.8 hectare allotted by the DDA for developing a permanent campus of the NIT at Narela sub-city.

New Delhi, September 9
A 22-year-old man has been arrested, allegedly with 1,440 kg of "fine quality" poppy husk worth Rs 30 lakh. The accused has been identified as Azad Singh, who lives in Churu district of Rajasthan. He was apprehended on Saturday. Azad, who is a school dropout, allegedly said that he went to Oman as a labourer in 2007. 

In 2009, he went to Doha in Qatar, but did not get any employment and returned to India. "He then started driving heavy vehicles for different parties. During this period, he met some drug traffickers of Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh and started supplying drugs for them," said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav.

Officers of the Crime Branch were earlier informed that a person named as Balaram, who is a resident of Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, would be sending a consignment of poppy husk to his client in Panipat, Haryana. "According to the information, the consignment would be delivered by Balaram's confidant truck driver Azad. The inputs further revealed that Balaram in connivance with local contractors supplied poppy husk in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi," said Yadav.

The officers tipped off that a truck with a Rajasthan number plate, containing poppy husk, would be passing by the Nazafgarh-Bahadurgarh road. "We apprehended the driver and identified him as Azad. During the search of the truck, we found poppy husk weighing 1,440 kg packed into 36 gunny bags. To avoid visibility, the bags were covered with 60 kg of coriander powder," said Yadav.

Explaining the unique modus operandi, Yadav said that recent drug trafficking cases have revealed that substances such as lemons and coriander powder are loading over the drugs. This is done to disperse the smell of the drugs.