Police personnel deployed; members of minority community start returning home

Titoli (Rohtak) :
A day after the arrest of a Muslim youth and his accomplice on charges of killing the calf of a cow, an uneasy calm prevailed at Titoli village in the district. No untoward incident was reported from the village in the wake of Wednesday’s incident.

Rohtak SDM Rakesh Kumar, who was camping at the village along with DSP Narayan Chand and other police and administrative officials, asserted that the situation was normal and peaceful.

“We are coordinating with prominent residents of the village to maintain normalcy and social harmony. Two companies of the police force have been deployed at the village as a precautionary measure,” he stated.

Rajbir, a leader of the Muslim community at the village, and village nambardar Suresh, said members of the Hindu and Muslim communities had been living at the village peacefully and harmoniously for several decades.

“Yesterday’s incident was unfortunate and unintentional, and it got flared up as it coincided with the Eid festival. We will make all-out efforts to restore the communal harmony at the village,” they maintained.

Suresh pointed out that a man named Maman, who had allegedly sown the seeds of discord among the village residents, had fled the village after the incident.
Rajbir’s brother Surender stated that several members of the Muslim community, especially women and children, had been moved out of the village due to fear of backlash, but they had started returning to their homes in the village.

Sadiq, who works as a farm labourer at Titoli, had fled the village along with his wife and two children and has taken shelter at the home of his elder brother Mahender Singh (Khan), a former Army official.

Sadiq stated that his wife had returned to the village and he would also return within a day or so if the situation continued to be normal and peaceful.

Former Subedar Major Mahender of Titoli, who now lives at Peer Colony in Rohtak, said the police-administration had taken swift action and were coordinating with the local residents to maintain peace and law and order.

“The government is also doing well on its part, but it has failed to control radical outfits like the RSS, Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal,” he lamented.

Sonepat :
The police have registered a case against unidentified persons following the death on an infant at the PGIMS, Rohtak, on Tuesday. 

In his complaint to the police, the victim’s father Jitender Paswan of Kundli stated that his wife Sweety gave birth to a pre-mature child in a private hospital at Kundli on Tuesday.

As the newborn was seriously ill, the child was referred to the Civil Hospital in Sonepat. The ambulance carrying the child got stuck in traffic jam for about half an hour on the National Highway-1 due to the cycle rally of the Congress party. 

Doctors at the Civil Hospital referred the child to the PGIMS, Rohtak, where the doctors declared the child as brought dead. He alleged that the condition of the child deteriorated during the traffic jam. 

Additional SP Rajiv Deswal said that a case under Section 304A of IPC and the Motor Vehicles Act had been registered at Kundli police station against unidentified persons. 
Refuting the allegations, state Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who is on a four-day cycle yatra in the district, said that the ambulance was immediately given way. Tanwar said that the death of the child was due to pre-mature delivery. 

On the other hand, Sweety was brought to the Community Health Centre (CHC) at Badhkhalsa after her condition deteriorated in the evening. After giving preliminary treatment, she was referred to the Civil Hospital at Sonepat where her condition was stated to be stable. 

Dr Chetan, SMO at the CHC, said that the patient had not taken any food for the last two days after the death of her newborn baby.

Says no ground is made out for enlarging him on bail

Panchkula :
CBI Special Magistrate, Haryana, Kapil Rathi, here on Thursday dismissed the bail application of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the case involving the castration of his male followers.

The judge said, “Considering the nature and gravity of the accusations levelled against Ram Rahim and the alleged role played by him, no ground is made out for enlarging the applicant/accused on bail.”

He also reasoned that charges had been framed against him “for having committed the substantive offences punishable under Sections 326 (for voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 417 (for cheating) and 506 (for criminal intimidation) of the IPC”, and the case was at the initial stage of prosecution evidence to be led on the behalf of the CBI and the material witnesses were yet to be examined in this case.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment, the judge added that “we should not be understood to mean that bail should be granted in every case”.

The order also said that the case of Ram Rahim “cannot be stated to be on parity with the other co-accused”.

The other two accused in the case are Dr MP Singh and Dr Pankaj Garg. While Dr MP Singh had been granted interim bail on medical grounds, Dr Garg had been granted anticipatory bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court and was admitted to regular bail in terms of the order dated May 16 of the high court.

It has been alleged in the case that on the asking of Ram Rahim, Dr Pankaj Garg and Dr MP Singh allegedly performed surgeries and castrated various devotees in the year 1999-2000.

The CBI registered the FIR on January 7, 2015, and filed the charge-sheet on February 1. The court took the cognisance on February 12.

On December 23, 2014, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ordered a CBI probe into the charges of forced castration inside the dera after a petition by former Dera follower Hans Raj Chauhan in 2012.

The petitioner had alleged that around 400 male followers, including those from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, were castrated at the dera chief’s behest. The charge-sheet claimed that mass castrations took place at the dera’s old printing press building in Sirsa and two charity hospitals — Shah Satnamji Speciality Hospital in Sirsa and Shah Satnamji General Hospital at Ram Rahim’s ancestral Gurusar Modia village in Rajasthan.
The CBI submitted that the dera chief made his victims sign a general power of attorney authorising his protégés to purchase/gift land in the followers’ name. Later, the property was gifted to the dera. There are six victims and 58 witnesses in the case.

Ram Rahim was sentenced to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 30 lakh for raping two women followers last year. Two murder cases are also pending against him.

Sonepat :
On second day of his cycle yatra, state Congress president Ashok Tanwar on Wednesday reached Gohana after covering more than a dozen villages of the Gannaur Assembly constituency. 

Tanwar alleged that state ministers enjoyed foreign jaunts for four years in the name of setting up of an international market at Gannaur. The market was to be set up within a year and farmers, labourers and businessmen of the area were to benefit from it, but nothing had been done in the past four years, he alleged.

Charging the BJP government of adopting step-motherly treatment with Sonepat, Tanwar said that the UPA government had approved the proposal to set up a rail coach factory at Gohana and in the last four years, the project just remained on paper. “The BJP has not spared people of the area from patronising illegal mining in the Yamuna. There was a talk of running ships in the river, but deep mining has left big pits where children have drowned,” he said. 

Chandigarh :
To allay rumours that the INLD-BSP alliance in Haryana may not last long, Leader of the Opposition Abhay Singh Chautala visited BSP supremo Mayawati’s place in New Delhi on Wednesday. She tied “rakhi” to Abhay. 

Abhay met Mayawati to invite her for the INLD’s “Samman Diwas” rally in Gohana on September 25 to celebrate the birth anniversary of former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal.

 “She accepted my invitation and also invited me to her house for Rakshabandhan on August 26. Since I will be away on Sunday, I requested her to tie rakhi today,” Chautala said after his meeting with Mayawati. 

He hit out at the Congress and the BJP for spreading rumours that the INLD-BSP alliance would not last long. “On September 25, Mayawati will address a public meeting with INLD leaders and give a befitting reply to those spreading canards about the alliance,” Abhay said. 

Ever since the INLD entered into an alliance with the BSP in April, Congress and BJP leaders have been claiming that the pact would not last till next year’s Assembly elections. 

The ongoing parleys between the Congress and the BSP for a possible alliance at the national level are being cited to substantiate rumours that the INLD-BSP pact will break up before the elections. 

“Ours is no more a ‘gathbandhan’ (alliance). Our tie-up has assumed the character of Rakshabandan – a tie between a brother and a sister where one comes to the rescue of the other in the time of need,” Abhay added.