New Delhi, December 15
The Delhi BJP president, Vijay Goel, today said that the AAP does not seem to be working with serious intent of forming the government as it will not be able to fulfil the promises made in its manifesto. The BJP accepted people's verdict with humility, but the AAP is misusing the verdict for political mileage as is actually scared of being exposed, he said.

Taking the AAP leaders, Goel said it is unfortunate that they have turned the process of government formation into a political drama. "The AAP is deliberately delaying to clear its stand on this issue. The formation of government is a serious process and it should not be used for petty political gains. Incidentally, these are the same leaders who had taken oath on their children that they will not have anything to do with either the BJP or the Congress and now these are the same leaders who are opening window of negotiations. This is a clear case of doublespeak," he said.

"I would like the AAP to clear its stand for once and all that whether it is forming the government in Delhi or not. It has no right to humiliate the Delhi people with such brazen show of political arrogance that makes mockery of democratic processes," he further noted.

Goel said as the BJP was short of majority and was not supported by any other party, so "we went and without creating any hype or hoopla told the LG that the BJP will sit in opposition as it is not in a position to form the government".

"If the AAP wants to form the government, there is no need of staging such political drama and setting conditions as the Congress has already offered them unconditional support. The BJP is the single largest party and the first choice of the people in Delhi and yet like always it has shown humility in accepting the verdict of the voters. But the AAP, unfortunately, has failed to respect the aspirations of common people. It has frequently changed stands in the last few days," he said.

And the fact that the AAP has been wavering on its stand, it is a clear indication that the AAP leaders are running away from honouring their commitment and promises made to the people of Delhi, he added.

New Delhi, December 15
The chilly Sunday morning saw thousands of runners who assembled at the starting line inside the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium to put their best foot forward.

As the elite athletes break away from the pack, fans across the course cheered them on, celebrating the spirit of freedom and triumph of endurance. The city was buzzing with excitement as a keen contest between more than 31,000 participants who ran for the ninth edition of the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon.

The runners were flagged off at 7 am sharp from the stadium that was decorated with banners, placards and indicators all put in place to help the participants.

Apart from elite athletes, eager to log their personal bests, the participants of the annual run hailed from all age groups, including large number of women, senior citizens and children. "I participate in this event every year. It is has become an annual feature for me. It gives me an opportunity to challenge myself," said a 40-year-old participant, Dharmender Awasthi.

The race day saw in action different personalities from India Inc. and Bollywood. Representing India Inc. will be the country's top honchos and running enthusiast Anil Ambani, Rakesh Mittal (vice-chiarman and MD, Bharti Enterprises Ltd.), Ajay Puri (director, market operations, Bharti Airtel), and N. Chandrasekaran (CEO and MD, TCS). The Bollywood fraternity would be represented by Bipsha Basu, "Face of the Event", along with Rahul Bose and Gulshan Grover among others.

Visually impaired also participated with equal enthusiasm. George Abraham, who is from Delhi, ran for second time today to raise funds for his organization "Score Foundation" which works towards giving a new vision of life to the visually impaired. Gulab Singh Bhandari, who is visually challenged, came from Dehradun, Uttarakhand, to participate in the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon. He ran with his nephew. He has been participating in the Delhi marathon since 2010.

"The reason behind running the marathon was so that society gave respect to people like me," said Bhandari". He was eagerly looking forward to many more such opportunities to prove that he was perfect just like others in every way.

New Delhi, December 15
Taking the responsibility of shameful defeat in the Delhi Assembly elections, the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) president, Jai Prakash Agarwal today resigned from his post.

The party managed to win only eight seats in the 70-member assembly. Sources said Agarwal sent his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in which he cited the party's electoral debacle as the reason for his stepping down.

In a meeting on Thursday with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Congress MLAs had reportedly told him that Agarwal had not put in enough efforts in the elections. A number of other Delhi Congress leaders in the past few days had also conveyed their unhappiness over Agarwal's functioning during the elections.

The Congress suffered its worst defeat in the assembly elections on December 4, following which a number of senior party leaders, including Sheila Dikshit, had blamed the DPCC chief for its poor performance.

Three-time Chief Minister Dikshit was also defeated by Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi constituency by a huge margin of over 25,000 votes. Four Cabinet ministers and the Speaker of the House had also lost the election.

Agarwal is not known to share a good equation with Dikshit as both of them differed on many crucial issues in the run-up to the polls. He was unhappy with Dikshit's push for giving tickets to all the 43 sitting MLAs.

Last week, Dikshit had attacked Agarwal, saying he did not enthusiastically back her in the polls. Giving reasons for the defeat, she had also said that the party was not active and there was absence of coordination between it and the government in Delhi.

"The party was not active enough," she had said, elaborating that though her government had prepared a lot of documentation about the work done by it, the party merely told the people "bahut kaam hua (lot of work has been done)". That is not enough, she had said.

However, AICC general secretary and in charge for Delhi, Shakeel Ahmed said he has no knowledge of the resignation. "I do not know anything about it. It has not been sent to me," he said.

New Delhi, December 15
The Delhi High Court verdict in the December 16 gangrape case confirming the death sentence of the four accused is likely to be delivered in January, lawyers said.

The high court has been hearing appeals of the four accused and arguments on the death sentence on a daily basis in the sensational case of the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist who was brutally raped in 2012.

"We (defence counsel) are arguing now and I am expecting the verdict to come in the second week of January. I will try to complete my arguments next week and thereafter the court's holidays will start. Then we have to give fact findings, Supreme Court's judgments in related cases and conclude it," M.L. Sharma, defence counsel of two of the accused, Mukesh and Pawan Gupta, said.

Another advocate, A.P. Singh, representing the other two accused, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, said that the verdict in the case "can be expected in January next year".

"Prosecution completed their arguments. Now defence counsels are arguing. So, I think the verdict can be expected in January end," Singh added.

But Special Public Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan is not so hopeful.

"The high court decided to hear the case on a day-to-day basis. Prosecution has completed its arguments in the case. But looking into the conduct of defence counsel, I cannot say now how much time it will take for the judgment," Krishnan said.

He was referring to Sharma's alleged tactics to delay the proceedings by seeking repeated adjournments, which the court had noted.

Sharma had earlier also objected to the daily hearing of the case.

A Delhi court on September 13 had awarded death sentence to four of the rapists -Mukesh, 26, Akshay Thakur, 28, Pawan Gupta, 19, and Vinay Sharma, 20 - on 11 counts, including gangrape, murder, dacoity, unnatural offences and destruction of evidence.

The court later sent the case to the high court for confirmation of the death sentence.

The young woman was brutally gangraped by six persons, including a minor, in a moving bus in December last year. The men also robbed the victim and her male friend and then threw them out in the night to die.

While the minor has been sent to a reform home for three years, one of the main accused committed suicide in prison.

A division bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani started hearing the case on November 1 on a daily basis, "as sword is also hanging on their (convicts') heads".

The Supreme Court, however, asked the high court on November 12 not to rush through with the hearing after the defence counsel moved the apex court seeking copies of judgment and other trial records in Hindi for the convicts, which the high court had rejected.

But the high court observed that Sharma was misleading and hiding facts from the apex court.

Asking whether he was miffed with the high court's decision to hear arguments on a daily basis, Sharma, has now said that daily hearing would be "good for the convicts".

"It is good in some way for the convicts. Daily hearing will help in recollection of memory of court. My clients are innocents and have been framed in the case by the police, that is all I want to prove," he said.

A.P. Singh, who had also objected to the daily hearings, said: "So many rape cases have been decided by the high court and I have never seen day-to-day hearings of any such cases. So, what is so special about this case? The day-to-day hearing is not fair." — IANS

New Delhi, December 15
Under severe attack after the December 16 gangrape, the Delhi Police took a slew of steps like setting up helplines and women help desks at police stations to ensure women's safety but there is no let up in the crimes against them which have actually increased during the period.

The number of rape cases this year is highest in the past 13 years, but the police has attributed it to greater awareness and registering of cases which otherwise would have gone unreported.

According to the Delhi Police data, a total of 1,493 cases of rape were registered in the national Capital till November 30 which is more than double the number of cases registered in the same period in 2012.

What is more alarming is that the number of cases of molestation has registered a five-fold increase as till November 2013, a total of 3,237 such cases were registered as against 625 last year. Cases related to outraging the modesty of women, that includes eve-teasing and stalking, also show a similar trend with the figure sky-rocketing to 852 from last year's 165.

According to the data of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), in 2012, a total of 706 rape cases were registered while in 2011, the numbers of registered rape cases were 572, as against 507 rape cases reported in 2010.

The figure stood at 469 in 2009. In 2008, the figure was 466, while in 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 the figures were 598, 623, 658, 551, 490, 403 and 381, respectively.

However, the police terms it as a good sign that now more cases are being registered which mean that more women are coming forward and reporting the crimes which probably was not the case earlier.

The police also involved the community to ensure women's security and self-defence training was provided to hundreds of women.

A 'Parivartan' scheme was also launched in order to create awareness in schools, localities and police stations, sending women police personnel to patrol the neighbouring areas. Women groups were encouraged to form a monitoring system in their vicinity.

The reforms even caught the eye of the French Government which is grappling with women's security issues back home. A delegation consisting of their Minister for Women's Rights and the French Ambassador met Delhi Police officials in October to study the measures taken by it to deal with the menace.

The police may argue that so much has been done in the last one year but the national Capital has always been termed unsafe for women and even statistics support this as only one out of 10 women here go out to work.

According to Primary Census Abstract 2011, the number of working women in the National Capital Territory (NCT) stands at a mere 10.58 per cent which is even lower then states like Jharkhand and Bihar, which are considered 'bimaru'.

And the obvious reason why an average Delhi woman is scared to step out and work is that she and her family is not sure whether she will be safe on the roads, in the public transport bus or when she walks back home from the bus stop to her house on a deserted lane which is not properly lit.

"My friends in Mumbai can go out at 12 in the night but here you do not feel comfortable, if you are alone on the road even at 7 pm. Frequency of DTC buses is always wayward and the connectivity is horrible.

"After 8pm, auto-rickshaw drivers either totally refuse to go to some localities or take hefty charges forcing us to share a ride with drunken men and hooligans in Grameen Seva vehicles," said 25-year-old Nitisha Agnihotri who works at an airline company at Connaught Place and commutes everyday from Nangloi. — PTI

New Delhi, December 15
The Crime Branch of the Delhi Police has busted a gang of robbers active in the area of south-west district and arrested four members for being allegedly involved in the gang, said a police official.

The leader of the gang, Pardeep Dogra, was arrested after an encounter in Sector 11, Dwarka. With his arrest, the police have solved six cases of robbery, snatching and motorcycle theft at different police stations of south-west district.

The police have seized one .32 bore pistol with three live and one fired cartridges and two .315 bore country-made pistols with five live cartridges. It has also recovered Rs 40,000 and one black motorcycle from them.

According to the police, Dogra is involved in several abduction and vehicle theft cases.

The official said they got a tip off that members of a gang, involved in number of cases in the west Delhi area, will gather near a park in Sector 11 in Dwarka to meet their associates.

"A trap was laid near the expected place yesterday and four youths were spotted near the park, after which they were cordoned off by the police team and directed to surrender. But, instead of surrendering, Dogra fired upon the police and tried to flee.

"In retaliation and self-defence, the police also fired and after a scuffle, all accused were overpowered by the police," said Additional Commissioner of Police Ravindra Yadav.

The other three arrested persons are Dinesh, Om Prakash and Kuldeep, who are brothers.

New Delhi, December 15
The weather in the national Capital remained pleasant today, while tomorrow there will be shallow fog in the morning hours, according to an official of the Meteorological Department.

The minimum temperature today was a notch above the season's average at 9.4° C, while the maximum was recorded at 24.0° C, the official said. Humidity levels fluctuated between 65 and 100 per cent.

"Tomorrow, the sky will be clear. Mist or shallow fog is expected in the morning," said the official. The maximum and minimum temperatures tomorrow are likely to hover around 24° and 8° C, respectively, he added.