Govt puts lid on ragging probe

New Delhi: The human resource development ministry has ruled out physical abuse in the ragging case at the School of Planning and Architecture here based on an inquiry it instituted, reports our correspondent.

“There was no physical abuse, only mental trauma. There will now be no more inquiries into the incident,” ministry officials concluded after the final inquiry report was handed in on Thursday.

A first-year student of the institution had alleged that he and his batchmates were forced by seniors to have sex with each other early in August and one of them was even made to copulate with a dog.

HRD minister Arjun Singh instituted two inquiries despite the school’s anti-ragging committee having already taken action against the errant students following a written complaint from the victim.

The ministry’s first inquiry, conducted by the school’s director, Subir Saha, and dean of studies T.M. Vinod Kumar, had failed to record the statement of the victim who had returned home to Patna. The final inquiry, conducted by academicians from outside the school, among others, ascertained the facts after speaking to the victim.

The school had earlier suspended for three weeks the three accused, who were final-year students of Bachelor of Planning, and fined them Rs 10,000 each. The institute had insisted the harassment was verbal and not physical.

SC death poser to convict

New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court has asked a murderer appealing against his life sentence to justify why he should not be sent to the gallows.

Septuagenarian Veerachamy killed his wife on June 18, 1998, after she gave away some of his belongings to his son. He then cut her body into 27 pieces and buried them in a pit dug inside a room.

The next day, Veerachamy went to police and confessed to the crime.

The trial court held him guilty and convicted him of murder and destruction of evidence. He was sentenced for life and asked to pay a fine of Rs 3,000 for the murder while a seven-year jail term and a fine of Rs 2,000 were slapped on him for destroying evidence. Madras High Court upheld the conviction and the sentence.

An apex court bench of Justices B.. Agrawal and H.K. Sema, while admitting his petition for hearing on Thursday, issued a notice to Veerachamy asking him to “show cause as to why the sentence of life imprisonment awarded to him not be enhanced to death sentence”.

The court also refused his plea for bail and called for the records of the trial court and the high court.

Andhra orders arrest probe

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government has ordered a Crime Branch-CID probe into the arrest of alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba members on Sunday, reports our special correspondent.

The probe was ordered after a delegation of the Muslim Minority Front led by local MP Assaduddin Owaisi and MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi met home minister K. Jana Reddy on Thursday.

Education cess

New Delhi (PTI): Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission, has clarified that the 2 per cent education cess proposed in the budget will go into the consolidated fund — a common pool of resources for different ministries. No separate education fund will be set up, but the finance ministry stressed that the money collected will be spent on education.

Homosexuality

New Delhi (PTI): Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation challenging the constitutional validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that makes all kinds of unnatural sex, including homosexuality, a punishable offence. Alleging misuse of the section by police, a petition by an NGO working for AIDS awareness had sought to restrain the law enforcing agencies.

Hacker held

Manila(AFP): An Indian woman has been arrested for allegedly leading a gang that hacked into the Philippines telecommunications system to make unauthorised long-distance calls, officials said on Thursday. Pooja Khemlani was arrested in her Manila apartment earlier this week after her husband, also an Indian citizen, informed police about her, the immigration bureau said in a statement.

Chopper strays

Islamabad (PTI): Pakistan has claimed that an Indian helicopter, apparently “unsure” about the ground position, entered its airspace on August 28. The pilot, however, turned back immediately after realising that he was close to Lahore, the official APP news agency reported.

The railway has for the first time listed on its website the new all-India timetable, Trains at a Glance, effective from September 1. People can search the timetable through either the station or train index and can print individual pages.