Chandigarh: Drug menace in Punjab reached alarming proportions in 2014, even becoming a key poll issue and engaged the Opposition Congress and the SAD-BJP government in a bitter war of words throughout the year.
While Congress accused the SAD-BJP government of indulging in “patronising drug suppliers”, the ruling dispensation rejected these charges, vowing to eliminate drug abuse from the state.
How serious the drug problem in the state can be gauged from the fact that drugs, liquor and other narcotics worth Rs 800 crore were seized from Punjab by poll authorities ahead of Lok Sabha polls.
Narendra Modi in his first election rally at Pathankot in April spoke of the drugs problem, saying the country’s enemies now resorted to “narco terrorism” route as part of their nefarious designs to destroy youth.
“Every mother, especially every mother of Punjab is worried that her son may get addicted,” he had then said referring to the drug menace in the state.
Modi had even promised voters to put a lid on the drugs being pushed into Indian territory from across the border if BJP-led government came at the Centre.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi took on SAD-BJP led regime, charging the Akali regime with indulging in illegal activities including drug smuggling, sand mining etc.
She further accused the Punjab government of failing in curbing “growing drug” menace in state, saying drugs were destroying youth in the state.
Facing “vitriolic” attack from several quarters on drug issue, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal announced the launch of an elaborate anti-drug drive and crackdown against the drug abuse.
Simultaneously, the state government also announced massive programme of drug de-addiction in the state and free medicines to drug-addicted youths in these centres.
As part of measures to control flow of drugs, a ‘Punjab State Narcotics Control Bureau’ was also set up which was headed by Inspector General of Police (IGP).
Badal promised to take action against any politician involved in drug trade.
Senior Akali leader and state minister Sarwan Singh Phillaur had to even resign on moral grounds when his son’s name figured in drug trade in May.
Alliance partner BJP said drug menace, among other issues such as property tax, VAT refund, rising prices of sand and gravel in the state was a reason that led to SAD-BJP’s “below expectation” Lok Sabha results in Punjab.
Despite sentiments in favour of BJP at the national level, the SAD-BJP alliance could win just six of the 13 seats in Punjab while senior BJP Arun Jaitley lost to Amarinder Singh from Amritsar.
Singh also called for formation of a National Drug Policy to “comprehensively” address the problem of drug addiction across the country and Punjab in particular, saying where the problem is “assuming dangerous propositions”.
The state’s anti-drug drive, however, earned the wrath of chemists and drug shop owners who even shut down their shops in protest against the alleged harassment caused by state police in its state-wide drive against drug menace.
In the state Assembly in July, Congress even tried to maintain pressure on Akali regime on drug issue and sought white paper from the state government pertaining to cases registered against drug smugglers.
The Opposition party was up in arms against SAD-BJP regime when it accused the state government of muzzling its voice by deliberately dragging the name of Congress MLA from Gidderbaha Amarinder Singh Raja Warring in a drug racket.
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal said in the assembly that the state government never indulged in political vendetta.
In a drive against drugs, Punjab government seized several types of drugs including heroin, opium, poppy husk, synthetic drugs from smugglers in the state, saying these come from other states.
With the government contending that the state was used as transit point for supplying drugs like heroin to other states, Punjab Police arrested 10,538 persons till July as against arrest of 16,821 persons in 2013 under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
Besides other drugs, it also seized 382.84 kg of heroin and 1212 kg of mixture to make methamphetamine (synthetic drug) till July.
The conviction rate under NDPS Act filed against accused by Punjab police rose from 70.8 per cent in year 2010 to 80.5 per cent in 2013, it said.
– See more at: http://freepressjournal.in/drug-menace-reached-alarming-proportions-in-punjab/#sthash.iwEfqVE2.dpuf
Pakistani police have detained the alleged Mumbai attacks mastermind in an unrelated kidnapping case, a day after a court ordered his release.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi has spent six years in jail awaiting trial for the 2008 attacks, in which 165 were killed.
The government has been fighting a court decision to grant him bail.
Indian officials say Mr Lakhvi led the Pakistani militant group that carried out the attack, and have reacted angrily to the decision to free him.
Mr Lakhvi is among seven suspects who have been in jail awaiting trial for six years. Nine others have been charged in absentia.
Pakistan has not convicted anyone suspected of planning the attacks.
On Tuesday, the authorities registered a case of abduction under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law against Mr Lakhvi.
He was produced in a court amid tight security and later police took him into protective custody.
Analysts say the Pakistani government, which has promised to crack down on militancy, does not want Mr Lakhvi to be freed.
The government is challenging and earlier decision to grant him bail, and imposed a three-month detention order in an effort to keep him in prison.
But the Islamabad High Court quashed the detention order on Monday, forcing the authorities to bring new charges to keep him detained.
Mr Lakhvi was accused of heading the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed for the Mumbai attacks.
The charges brought against Mr Lakhvi and other suspects were mainly based on a confession given by Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the only gunman captured alive after the attacks.
India executed Qasab in 2012.
The attacks severely strained relations between India and Pakistan.
At least 21 people have been killed and nearly two lakh fled their homes in one of the worst floods in Malaysia’s history with weather office indicating there will be no respite from strong winds in coming days.
Fourteen people were reported dead in Kelantan, the worst affected state where around 158,000 people have been evacuated to safety. Four died in Terengganu and three in Pahang state.
Prime Minister Najib Razak has been visiting flood-ravaged states and coordinating relief operations since last week. He has already announced an additional 500 million ringgit ($143 million) assistance.
National Security Council admitted there were delays in its relief efforts, saying it was partly because some of its staff were among the flood victims. It is the country’s worst flooding in more than 30 years.
“Due to the magnitude of the floods, most districts were completely inundated. Our entire district machinery collapsed as they (staff) had become victims themselves,” council secretary Mohamed Thajudeen Abdul Wahab was quoted as saying by the Star newspaper.
Malaysian Meteorological Department, meanwhile, has forecast strong winds and rough seas for the coming five days in country’s waters.
The Met department said in a statement that Category-two north-easterly winds of between 50 and 60 kilometres per hour and waves as high as 4.5 metres were expected to occur in the waters off Samui, Tioman, Condore, Bunguran, Reef North, Layang-layang, Reef South, Labuan, Sulu and Palawan areas.
The department said Category-one north-easterly winds of between 40 and 50 kilometres per hour and waves as high as 3.5 metres were expected to occur in the waters off Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, eastern Johor, Sarawak, Sabah (Interior, West Coast, Sandakan and Kudat districts) and the Labuan federal territory.
It warned that the strong winds and rough seas were dangerous for all coastal activities and shipping, including ferry services, as well as fishing.
Hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter in schools, community halls and other relief centres, according to flood monitoring centres. PTI
Panaji: A Mumbai-based woman who was in Goa for new year celebrations, died allegedly due to drug overdose, police said on Tuesday.
Calangute police confirmed that the 28-year-old woman, identified as Isha Mantry was in Goa to participate in one of the electronic dance music events.
“She was brought dead at a private hospital last night. We have sent the body for postmortem,” police inspector Rajesh Kumar said.
PTI
The time between Christmas and New Year can make soccer careers appear as transitory as the life of butterflies. Neil Warnock became the first manager to be fired in England’s Premier League this season when struggling Crystal Palace dismissed him on Saturday.
Fernando Torres, the Spanish striker, has finally been released from Chelsea, where his once prolific career had stalled and sputtered ever since he moved there in the transfer window of January 2011. He cost Chelsea a then-British record fee of 50 million pounds, or about $78 million, and he leaves for nothing.
Warnock, 66, is a veteran of the hire-and-fire game of team management. Torres, 30, is on a tortuous journey that ended back where he started, at his first love in soccer, Atlético Madrid.
– The Warnock situation has a simple arithmetic explanation. He was hired by Palace two days before this season began to fill the shoes of Tony Pulis, a coach who had turned around the south London team at this time a year ago.
The club was in peril of being dropped from the Premier League when Pulis, well known for his pragmatic ability to get the best out of limited playing resources, took on the task of saving the team. He made it solid on defense, quick on the break, and he gave players a belief in themselves.
Palace finished last season in the middle of the standings in the richest league in the world. The Eagles, as the team is known, had soared. And then, Pulis and the board fell out over the way forward — and Warnock was plucked from retirement to fill the void.
The bottom line is that Pulis has never been relegated with any team. Warnock has taken two clubs down, and sometimes battled back. Their roles had reversed. Last summer, Warnock sat in a TV studio, giving his comments on where other coaches were failing; now Pulis is broadcasting while he awaits the right job to re-enter the hire-and-fire game.
The time is ripe. January is the designated midseason window when clubs can transfer players in or out — and so a club that has no faith in the manager or head coach will dismiss him first rather than allow him to recruit players his successor may not approve. While the media (and the eager stock of unemployed coaches sitting in front of the microphones) speculate, Crystal Palace should already know whom it wants in place of Warnock.
Time is of the essence for Palace. Its team has won only three times all season long, and only once in the last dozen games. The numbers do not tell us everything about form, and if they did then Fernando Torres might already have found his game is up.
Torres has been in limbo for some considerable time. His continued…
Ahmedabad: A cinema hall in Ahmedabad screening the Aamir Khan-starrer PK was today vandalised allegedly by members of a right-wing group.
Around 40 people allegedly belonging to the Bajrang Dal, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s parent body – reportedly broke glass panes of the multiplex, demanding that the screening of the film be stopped. The group then vandalized another multiplex nearby which was also showing the film.
PK, which released on December 19 and has smashed several box-office records, has generated a huge controversy with several outfits demanding a ban on the movie, alleging that it hurts religious sentiments. Others have demanded the removal of certain scenes from the film to ensure communal harmony.
The criticism also spilled onto Twitter with the hashtag #BoycottPK which was promptly countered by the film’s supporters with the hashtag #WeSupportPK which was one of the top trends on the micro-blogging site.
The Censor Board has refused to delete scenes from the film, saying “it’s already out for public viewing.”
‘PK’, directed by Rajkumar Hirani, is a satire on India’s godmen and Aamir plays the lead role in it. The film also stars Anushka Sharma, Sanjay Dutt and Sushant Singh Rajput.
Another plane at the bottom of the sea, another search area widened: events in south-east Asia following the crash of flight QZ8501 have taken on haunting dimensions of the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March.
The AirAsia flight, with 162 people on board, lost contact with air-traffic controllers shortly after dawn, local time, on Sunday. The Airbus A320 was flying from Indonesia’s second city, Surabaya to Singapore.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency concluded that the aircraft is on the seabed, in a relatively shallow area of the Java Sea between Borneo and Sumatra. But as any hope of finding survivors was dashed, the families of the passengers and crew faced a second night of uncertainty.
Two days of aerial searches involving aircraft from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have failed to identify any wreckage. An oil slick sighted during the day on Monday was found to be unconnected with the loss.
The losses of MH370 and QZ8501 took place in very different circumstances. The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet remains shrouded in mystery, with general acceptance that the transponder was deliberately switched off to avoid detection, at a point where the aircraft was out of contact with air-traffic controllers in both Malaysia and Vietnam. “Pings” from the Boeing 777’s engines have led investigators to search a swathe of the Indian Ocean west of Australia, where the jet is presumed to have crashed after fuel ran out.
MUST READ: Hunt for QZ8501 observes smoke coming from island
The AirAsia flight was in normal flight above a relatively narrow area of sea, in an area busy with other aircraft. Investigators are not exploring the possibility that the loss was deliberate.
Nevertheless, anger is growing that lessons from the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet have not yet been implemented by the aviation community. Some observers believe that real-time flight tracking, where the position of each aircraft can be continuously monitored, should have become mandatory after the loss of Air France flight 447 five years ago.
Technology allowing airlines to track their aircraft is widely available. A Canadian company, Flyht, sells a system that should have enabled rescuers to pinpoint QZ8501. If an aircraft encounters an emergency, the “Automated Flight Information Reporting System” (AFIRS) streams cockpit voice recordings and flight data to receiving stations in real time. The information, equivalent to that recorded by the aircraft’s “black box”, would help investigators to understand what caused the loss of the aircraft and where it is likely to be located. The equipment has been certified for use on the Airbus A320, but is not currently fitted to AirAsia aircraft.
In May, the UN International Telecommunications Union Secretary-General, Hamadoun Touré, said: “We must make every effort at the international level to develop real-time tracking solutions for the aviation industry.” But the UN agency responsible for passenger flights, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), has not issued any instructions to airlines to install the equipment.
MUST READ: Critics ask how planes can go missing in age of GPS
Scott Anderson, an analyst for the aviation website Leeham News and Comment, said: “It’s time for ICAO to make a decision, and if it doesn’t then individual country regulators need to step up and require real-time tracking. “This won’t save the lives lost but recovering wreckage and the black boxes in a timely manner could lead to safety and operational changes that will save lives in the future.”
Some experts have speculated that the Airbus was flying too slowly for its altitude, but without data from the “black box” there can be no certainty.
A statement from AirAsia in Surabaya said: “We have been keeping the families updated on the search and rescue efforts as well as provide emotional support. Another group of AirAsia officials are providing the same to the families based in Singapore.”
As the search continues, attention is focusing on the pilots and whether they may have responded inappropriately to stormy weather. As with AF447, which was flying from Rio to Paris, the AirAsia jet was flying through an equatorial area. The sun’s energy creates thunderstorms that present a threat to aircraft. The pilots requested a change of direction and height shortly before it disappeared from the radar screens. The increase in altitude was refused by air-traffic controllers because of the presence of other traffic.
At a press conference in Surabaya, AirAsia’s chief executive, Tony Fernandes, said: “We really can’t speculate until we find the aircraft. Then we’ll see what we need to improve – if we need to improve.”
In April, AirAsia was forced to remove its inflight magazine following the disappearance of MH370. An article by a retired pilot, said:“Pilot training in AirAsia is continuous and very thorough. Rest assured that your captain is well prepared to ensure your plane will never get lost.”
Pangkalun Bun (Indonesia): Items resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects were spotted during an aerial search Tuesday for missing AirAsia flight 8501, Indonesian officials said.
“We spotted about 10 big objects and many more small white-coloured objects which we could not photograph,” Indonesian air force official Agus Dwi Putranto told a press conference.
“The position is 10 kilometres (six miles) from the location the plane was last captured by radar,” he said.
He displayed 10 photos of objects resembling a plane door, emergency slide, and a square box-like object.
An AFP photographer on the same flight that spotted the debris said he had seen objects in the sea resembling a life raft, life jackets and long orange tubes
Hundreds of underprivileged children of CRY’s ‘Diksha’ and ‘Calcutta Samaritan’ projects sang Christmas carol today aboard a luxury vessel hoping to ring in a promising tomorrow, in a unique first-ever show.
Popular Bengali singer Neepabithi Ghosh, actively associated with the two projects of CRY, handed over gifts to the children who sang along side her.
While the children of ‘Diksha’ hailed from some of the red light areas of the city, ‘Calcutta Samaritan’ works for the precocious street kids, a CRY spokesman said.
“My little association with them have opened my eyes in more than one way. I have brought my son to interact with them and show them how more privileged our children are than these kids who have the extra urge to prove themselves and don’t take things for granted,” Neepabithi told PTI.
Neepabithi, whose Mor Bhabanare in ‘Tagore on the Highway’ is among the top tracks on the FM, sang D L Roy’s iconic song ‘Dhano Dhanyo Puspe Bhara’ with the children.
“Amazed the way they recited the number and joined the chorus. A little compassion and tenderneess will make them feel special. They have the creative spark which needs to be ignited,” Neepabithi, who dedicated her last album Iconic comprising timeless Bangla tracks including the D L Roy number, said.
Besides Neepbithi, elocutionist Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee and popular film and small screen actor Bhaswar Chatterjee joined the children in singing ‘Jingle Bell’ on the deck of yacht.
AGARTALA: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has cautioned that any attempt of forcible religious conversion in the state will be severely dealt with.
“Left Front government is cautious about the religious freedom of every person or community and our government will not leave any stone unturned to thwart any attempt of forcible conversion and strict legal action will be taken against such move,” Sarkar told a meeting of party workers yesterday at Gandhacherra town in Dhalai district, about 150 km from here.
He said there was no religious conflict in the state, where Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists were living in communal harmony and that tradition should be maintained with utmost care.
“We are aware that some people are converted from one religion to another in Uttar Pradesh by giving them BPL card and other facilities, but any such attempt will be resisted here,” Sarkar said
Religious conversion is a very common practice in the North East for over a period of more than ten years. The amazing rate of Churches established in the interior parts of the North East is a matter of grave concern. Poverty, illiteracy and unemployment are the factors behind this conversion.
The indigenous groups, culture and festivals that are a pride of the North East is very much endangered by these conversions.
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