CHANDIGARH: Twenty years after former Haryana DGP S P S Rathore molested Ruchika Girhotra, who was just 14 then, the law caught up with the top cop, with the Chandigarh district court on Tuesday dismissing his appeal against his conviction and six-month sentence. The court also enhanced his sentence from six months to one-and-a-half years (18 months).
The court directed that Rathore be taken into custody and sent to the local Burail Jail immediately following the dismissal of his appeal and enhancement of the sentence. Additional district and sessions judge Gurbir Singh also asked the superintendent of Burail Jail here to provide all medical assistance to Rathore, after the former Haryana DGP complained of chest pain.
Apart from dismissing Rathore’s plea for dismissing a Chandigarh court’s order of December 21, 2009, sentencing him to six months on charges of molestation, the judge also admitted the CBI’s plea for enhancing his sentence.
Ruchika Girhotra was molested by Rathore on August 11, 1990. She committed suicide in December 1993, following harassment by Rathore. A prolonged fight for justice followed, led by Ruchika’s father S C Girhotra and Ruchika’s close friend Aradhana Gupta.
The court had heard arguments on day-to-day basis from May 3 to 11. The proceedings were held in camera.
Air India crew, engineers on flash strike; 10 flights cancelled
NEW DELHI: At least 10 flights of Air India were cancelled on Tuesday as a section of employees of the airline, including engineers, went on a flash strike across the country to protest delay in payment of salaries.
Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel held a meeting with Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav to take stock of the situation, official sources said.
Three flights each from Kolkata and Mumbai and four from Delhi were cancelled as the employees, including engineers and ground staff, walked out of their offices this afternoon and staged demonstrations at airports in different parts of the country.
"We have begun a flash strike to protest the delay in payment of salaries and highlight the problems of the cabin crew, after the management refused to pay heed to our demands," Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU) General Secretary J B Kadian told PTI here.
Air India had recently decided that the May salaries would be delayed by a week.
Kadian said the management had issued "gag order" against leaders of all unions of Air India by asking them not to go public with their problems and termed the move as "anti-democratic".
The ACEU claims representation of 12,000 members of the erstwhile Indian Airlines including ground-handling and technical staff and cabin crew.
In Mumbai, ACEU President Dinakar Shetty demanded an immediate withdrawal of the "gag order" saying that it was an infringement on the right to freedom of speech. The employees would not return to work unless the order was withdrawn, Shetty said.
An official circular, issued last evening, said "instances have come to the notice (of the management) that contrary to instruction issued under office order HQ-81-3/360 July 2009, 13 employees of the company holding positions of office-bearers of unions/associations/guild are freely airing their views to the media despite channels of communication existing with the company to voice their grievances.
"Employees concerned are advised to forthwith refrain from going public with their statements that has potential to harm the company's image and revenue prospects, failing which action as deemed appropriate will be taken," the circular said.
The union had served a strike notice on the management and the Chief Labour Commissioner on May 15 against Air India's decision to defer salary payments. However, that notice had called for a strike from May 31.
Unions belonging to the international wing of Air India have not gone on strike on this issue so far.
ACEU is part of the Civil Aviation Joint Action Front (CAJAF), a joint platform of 11 recognised trade unions in National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL).
India disappointed over Pak SC decision on Hafiz Saeed
Expressing disappointment over Pakistan Supreme Court's dismissal of appeals challenging the release of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, India on Tuesday hoped that Islamabad will take "meaningful action" to address its concerns.
Adding that enough evidence has been given to Pakistan on role and activities of Saeed, she said, "Now since Pakistan has assured us that it will not allow its territory to be used against India, we hope Pakistan will be sensitive to our efforts and take meaningful action."
Saeed, also the founder of the banned Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT), was put under house arrest in December 2008 in the wake of the Mumbai attacks after the UN Security Council declared the JuD a front for the LeT.
The JuD chief challenged his detention in the Lahore High Court.
Saeed was freed on June 2 last year by a three-judge bench of the High Court that said that Punjab and federal governments had failed to provide sufficient evidence to keep him in custody.
Following pressure from India and the international community, the federal and Punjab governments had challenged the High Court's ruling in the apex court.
Pakistani leaders like Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi have contended that India has not provided any evidence that will allow authorities to act against Saeed.
Home Minister P Chidambaram has maintained that India has provided sufficient evidence against Saeed in several dossiers handed over to Pakistani authorities.
Experts analyse key devices of Air India plane
New Delhi: The process of analysing the Black Box and other vital components of the Air India aircraft that crashed on Saturday began on Tuesday to ascertain the cause of the accident with officials and experts holding a series of meetings here.
These two vital components were brought to the DGCA headquarters from the Mangalore crash site last night.
Officials of various divisions of the DGCA, Air India's engineering department, aircraft manufacturer Boeing and other technical experts held a series of meetings during the day, the sources said.
Several kinds of tests would be conducted on the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) or the Black Box, which has been damaged in the crash, to decode it.
The entire process of opening up and carrying out preliminary examination of these devices would take several weeks, the sources said.
The CVR and DFDAU have been damaged due to the impact of the crash and the high intensity flames that followed.
The sources said that any decision in this regard would be taken only after preliminary examination of the major components, including the Black Box, CVR and DFDAU.
While the CVR captures radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit such as the pilots' voices and engine noise, the DFDAU records all parameters of a short-duration flight.
While the taped conversation between the Air Traffic Control at the Bajpe Airport and the pilots of the Boeing 737 -800, moments before the crash, has been played out, the investigators would now depend on technical information from these devices to corroborate findings made from these tapes, the sources said.
Four teams of investigators from engineering, operations, ATC and aerodrome units, which inspected the wreckage, the runway and the accident site, would now pool in their resources to carry out their task further.
Efforts would be made to take out the electronic chips of the CVR and insert them in a serviceable unit in order to decode them and retrieve information, the sources said.
These components, including the FDR, could also be sent to the US, where the Boeing 737-800 was manufactured, for technical analysis.
Business News
DLF eyes Rs 15,000 cr from 90-storey skyscrapper homes
Mumbai: Realty giant DLF is planning to build a 90-storey tall super luxury housing project, which it estimates will fetch Rs 15,000 crore, in this space-starved city.
Each apartment here is expected to cost Rs 5-10 crore and would make it one of the country's tallest and most expensive housing projects, sources said.
DLF is looking to launch next month this project at Lower Parel, where over 2,000 super-luxury homes would be spread vertically over 90 floors. Of this, the first 17 floors would be reserved for parking and there would be a king-size garden on the 18th.
The project would be developed on an 18-acre land at Lower Parel that DLF bought from National Textile Corporation (NTC) in 2006 for Rs 702 crore. It would have a total saleable area of about five million sq ft, comprising of multiple towers, each 90-storey tall.
DLF has yet not fixed the selling price of the units and the same would be determined after the market survey, sources said, adding that the company expects a sales realisation of Rs 12,000-15,000 crore from this high-end project.
When contacted, DLF spokesperson declined to divulge the details of the project.
"We are not in a hurry to launch this project. As we see market improving, we are waiting for the right time to launch this project to have a better realisation," he added.
However, in the analyst presentation earlier this month, the company had mentioned that Mumbai-NTC mills project will be launched this year.
The launch of this project follows robust response from customers for its prestigious project 'Capital green' in the national capital.
In March this year, DLF launched the third phase of its prestigious project 'Capital Green' in central Delhi. It had offered 150 luxury flats with a price tag of Rs 4 crore per unit. The selling price was fixed at Rs 11,000 per sq ft.
The company had last year launched the first and second phases with 1,400 and 1,250 units, respectively.
DLF had also launched a housing project at Panchkula and booked more than 1,200 flats within a week.
Overall, in 2009-10 fiscal, DLF sold 12.5 million sq ft of area in housing segment with a sales realisation of 7,150 crore. This fiscal, it is targeting to sale 15-18 million sq ft of area.
Sensex plunges by 447 pts
Equities skidded 2.7 per cent to their lowest close in three-and-a-half months on Tuesday as Europe's sovereign debt woes sparked heightened fears of larger foreign fund outflows.
Financials and energy major Reliance Industries led the slide amid worries the problems in Europe may trigger a renewed crisis in the continent's banking sector and delay a world recovery.
Although India's economy is firmly on an upward trajectory, thanks to strong domestic demand, the weak global sentiment has doused investor appetite for risky assets and foreign funds have come under redemption pressure.
"Even though fundamentals are in our favour, liquidity and sentiment are currently acting against the market," said Sanjeev Patkar, director of research at Almondz Global.
The 30-share BSE index shed 2.71 per cent, or 447.07 points, to 16,022.48, its lowest close since Feb. 10. Only one of its components managed to close in the green.
The benchmark has lost 8.7 per cent so far in May, weighed down by foreign fund withdrawals of around $1.8 billion as the deteriorating fiscal health in Europe rattled world markets.
The fall was almost in line with China's Shanghai Composite Index that is down 8.6 per cent but lower than Brazil's Bovespa stock index which has shed 11.3 per cent in May.
The BSE index has also fared better than MSCI's measure of Asian markets other than Japan that has fallen 13.1 per cent so far in May and MSCI's emerging market index that has dropped 12.6 per cent.
Foreigners are still net investors of around $4.8 billion in Indian equities in 2010.
"The market will stay rangebound until we have more clarity on developments in Europe," Patkar said.
World stock markets tumbled with pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares down 3 per cent by 1017 GMT, while MSCI's index of Asian shares other than Japan dropped 4.6 per cent, hit by the euro zone worries and tensions in Korea.
Highly indebted Italy was the latest euro zone country due to announce a three-year austerity plan worth 24 billion euros later on Tuesday.
On the weekend, the central bank had taken over a small Spanish lender, leaving investors worried over what next was in store in the region.
Trouble started showing up in Europe weeks ago when a debt crisis begun in Greece.
Top lender State Bank of India dropped 3.9 per cent, while rivals ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank closed down 2.7 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively.
Standard Chartered, which is raising as much as $588 million through an issue of Indian depositary receipts, saw investors bidding for just 4.5 per cent of the 204 million shares on offer by 4 p.m. (1030 GMT) on the first day of sale.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, which has the highest weight on the Sensex, dropped 3.4 per cent to Rs 986.85.
Export-led software companies declined on concerns the deteriorating fiscal health of the euro zone will lead to reduced order flow from the region.
Top outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services shed 2.7 per cent, while Infosys and Wipro lost 2.4 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively.
In the broader market, losers outnumbered gainers in the ratio of 4.7:1 on a relatively low volume of 301 million shares.
The 50-share NSE index fell 2.8 per cent to 4,806.75, its lowest close since Feb. 15.
RIL headcount dips by 1,314 employees
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries shed more than 1,300 employees during 2009-10 – making it the second straight fiscal year of declining workforce -- while registering a surge on profitability curve.
The company had a total employee base of 23,365 people as on March 31, 2010, down by 1,314 from 24,679 employees at the end of previous fiscal, according to company's annual report for 2009-10.
Prior to this, RIL's headcount had dipped by 808 employees during 2008-09, a period marked with massive job losses in India and across the world.
RIL is one of the biggest employers among the non-IT private sector companies in the country.
Its profit after tax rose to Rs 16,236 crore in FY'10 from Rs 15,309 crore in 2008-09. Its revenues jumped to Rs 202,860 crore from Rs 148,388 crore in the comparable period.
During 2008-09, RIL's total headcount had declined for the first time in six years, despite the company hiring more than 1,500 engineers that year.
The steepest fall so far has been in 2003-04, when the headcount fell from 12,915 to 11,358 employees. During 2007-08, the headcount rose by close to 791 employees and by a massive 12,156 people in 2006-07.
Along with its subsidiaries such as Reliance Retail, the company had a total workforce in excess of 48,000 at the end of 2007-08, according to the company's annual filing for that year for its shareholders.
RIL has not disclosed specific numbers of employees of subsidiaries for the years 2008-09 and 2009-10, a period when there had been various reports of heavy job losses in its retail and SEZ businesses.
RIL said that its average employee age currently stands at 41 years, which it aims to bring down and "invigorate the youth to take the organisation forward over the next few decades."
"The enterpreneurial spirit has been a hallmark of the organisation. The company continues to nurture this as it grows exponentially," it added.
The average age of employees at the company had increased from 34 years to 39 years during 2008-09.
The lower headcount during 2009-10 coincided with a decline in employee cost also, which fell to Rs 2,350 crore from Rs 2,398 crore in 2008-09. Prior to this, the employee cost had risen from Rs 2,119 crore in 2007-08.
The total employee cost for the latest year included Rs 20 crore towards expenditure incurred on voluntary retirement scheme and special separation scheme announced for the staff of certain units. In 2008-09 also, Rs 111 crore paid towards a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) for the employees of
Patalganga unit during the year, when about 430 employees accepted the VSS offer.
Sports News
Rahul Gandhi's pistols power shooters
A lot of upcoming shooters from the hamlets of Uttar Pradesh including Seema Tomar, silver medal winner at Dorset World Cup, owe their success to Rahul Gandhi as the young Congress MP donated his pistols for their training.
Rahul, who trained under Dr Raj Pal before leaving for political shores, gave two of his air pistols to his coach and the gesture proved quite beneficial for the budding shooters. Raj Pal has since been training aspiring shooters in his institute in Johadi village in Baghpat district of UP.
Tomar, who initially trained with Rahul's pistol, has not met him yet but want to personally thank him besides requesting him for more help in providing better infrastructure and facilities for sportspersons.
"There are six MPs among the present lot who have received training from me and Rahul is the wisest of them as he not only donated his pistols for others to train but also asked me to work on creating conducive atmosphere for the development of to the game specially in his constituency , Amethi," Raj Pal said.
As of now Raj Pal has four pistols from which one has been donated by Jayant Singh, RLD MP from Mathura, and another by his disciple Sunita Singh who went on to become an IPS officer in 1996.
Raj Pal, who is superintendent in a Delhi hospital and is due to retire next year, said he has picked some girls from Amethi region for training through camps.
He said among the lot, three girls have done him proud.
"Ruchi Singh has got junior Olympic quota. Mahajbeen Bano has got admission in prestigious St. Stephens and alongwith Varchika Singh these three are in the junior team of Air India," Raj Pal said adding that all three hail from various villages of Amethi.
Raj Pal said when he last met Rahul he advised the young politician to not open a shooting range in Amethi until proper atmosphere and infrastructure comes up.
"As of now we are working towards honing the talent of the local talents belonging to Amethi by brining them to Johadi. This sport ensures job security and secure future," he said.
Dhoni gives a miss to graduation exams again
The Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies forced India cricket skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni to skip his graduation exams for the second consecutive year.
Dhoni, who is enrolled with St Xaviers College in Ranchi to study Office Management and Secretarial Practices (OMSP), thus failed in his exam for the second time.
Last year also he did not appear in the exams as dates of the T20 World Cup in England clashed with it.
"Yes it is true, that Indian skipper MS Dhoni did not take exams," examination controller Prof. Ajit Kumar Sinha said.
India were ousted from the World Cup after losing all the Super Eights matches.
Prof Sinha said that the examination of the fourth semester began on May 10 and will conclude on May 29 whereas the World Cup began on April 30 and concluded on May 16.
The entire programme is of six semesters, spread over three years but Dhoni had hardly attended any class because of a busy cricket schedule.
Dhoni missed the first semester exams and has not been able to clear his Part I exams either, said Prof Sinha.
Dhoni has the option to clear all his papers in six semesters within a period of five years but till date he has not appeared for even a single paper.
After completing his schooling from DAV School nearly a decade ago, Dhoni had sought admission to the college in 2008 for his graduation under sports quota and was exempted from attending classes because of his cricketing commitments.
Vice Chancellor of the Ranchi University Prof. AA Khan said St Xaviers College is an autonomous College of the University and conduct exams on its own.
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