The Court was hearing a petition filed by Rajendra Eknath Dhande, who sought a direction to the authorities to disallow sand excavation in drought-hit Khatgaon village of Karmala taluka in Solapur district.

Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice Anoop Mohta were of the view that sand excavation in drought-hit areas should be banned totally as it deprives the people of their basic requirement of water.

In drought-hit areas, already there was shortage of potable water and if sand excavation was allowed it would result in aggravating the problem, the Court said in an order last week.

The judges took into account a certificate issued by the Executive Engineer of Rural Water Supply Department, Zilla Parishad, Solapur, which said excavation of sand in drought-hit areas will result into serious problem for drinking water for people and animals.

Hearing the petition earlier, the Court had issued notice to respondents on Februrary 21 and made it returnable on February 28 in view of the urgency of the matter.

Angry over the incident, students of the college held demonstrations and blocked the National Highway 2.

The student, Akaash, was living as a paying guest in Sector-8 area of Faridabad, and on Sunday night he went to meet his friend in the hostel and stayed for the night, police said.

Last morning his body was found in a pool of blood.

The victim’s body was sent for post mortem to a hospital.

Ram-Singh

After initial reports suggested Singh committed suicide, jail authorities and the government have been mum on the cause of the death – they would only say that he was found hanging inside his cell.

The post mortem is being conducted at AIIMS in the national capital.

Ram Singh’s family will be handed over the body after the autopsy, reports said.

The family has alleged that he was murdered and demanded a CBI probe into the incident. “He has not committed suicide. He has been murdered and then hanged. I am saying this on the basis of the fact that evidences has been erased. He could not move his hand as it had fractures.

Ram Singh, 35, was seen hanging at 5.45 a.m. by a Tamil Nadu policeman in the prison’s Jail No. 3 – 84 days after the horrendous gang-rape. He used a part of bed linen to hang from an iron grille eight feet high in his 15×12 rectangular cell.

He was arrested from a Delhi slum where he lived Dec 17 — a day after he and five others, including a juvenile, raped the physiotherapist trainee, a crime that shook the collective conscience of the country and made for shocking news across the world.

Ram Singh was the bus driver which the young woman and her male friend boarded Dec 16 night in a south Delhi neighbourhood.

While the woman was brutally raped, her friend was thrashed. Both were flung out of the bus, bleeding and without clothes. The woman died 13 days later in Singapore.

Tihar officials had earlier said that Ram Singh was on “suicide watch”, after he and the other accused reportedly became depressed. The watch was lifted later, they said.

Ram Singh, who had confessed to the crime, had been charged on 13 counts. One of the five accused is his younger brother Mukesh. All are being tried in fast-track court.

Lawyers said Ram Singh’s death would not affect the trial. He was supposed to go to the court Monday.

The others accused in the case are Pawan, 19, and Akshay, 29, who are held in Tihar Jail No. 4, Vinay, 20, and Mukesh, 26, both in Jail No. 7. The sixth accused is a juvenile, lodged and being tried separately.

Anti-rape Bill delayed

The bill, which has to be introduced in parliament, has divided the cabinet over key features like whether the age of consent should be lowered from 18 to 16.

To find consensus, a group of ministers headed by P Chidambaram will review the bill, which is based largely on the recommendations of the Verma Commission, a three-member panel of legal experts which was set up in December amid national outrage over the student’s gang-rape. Named for retired chief justice JS Verma, the commission suggested important and over-arching amendments to existing laws for crimes against women.

At a cabinet meeting this morning, senior ministers were not able to agree on issues like whether the word “rape” should replace “sexual assault” in the proposal, and how to define voyeurism and stalking, which the bill identifies as criminal offenses.

Law Minister Ashwani Kumar allegedly expressed his concern about not enough safeguards against false evidence and testimony.

v

“I keep coming quietly, those are very secretive visits when I don’t really want to meet anyone else but the family,” said the actress in Kolkata. Bipasha, born of Bengali parents, has spent a substantial part of her childhood in Kolkata.

Several members of her family reside in the city. But she admitted that with Kolkata having grown a lot over the years, she sometimes finds it difficult to recognize the places. “Kolkata is where I have grown up, from the age of eight to 16 I’ve been in Calcutta,” Bipasha said, referring to the city’s former name that was changed to Kolkata in 2001.

“But the city has changed a lot, the way the city has grown with a lot of construction, I cannot recognize the places sometimes.”However, she said the crew of her films gorge on Kolkata food.”What attracts the rest of my people to Calcutta is the food for sure. We go to every city for promotion but in Calcutta we land up eating so much food,” she added.

Bipasha is in the city to promote her upcoming film “Aatma”.

vijender-singh

Fatehgarh Sahab SSP Hardyal Singh Mann on Monday said Vijender “refused” to give samples of his blood and hair during the process of questioning in Panchkula without giving reasons for doing so.

“As per the procedure, in the presence of two private witnesses, he was asked for his consent for giving his blood and hair samples required for forensic examination for investigation purpose, which he refused,” the SSP said in a statement.

It said, “He was examined by a DSP and Inspector of Punjab Police from 5.00 PM to 8.30 PM” in connection with the FIR filed in the case after the recovery of 26 kg of heroin worth Rs 130 crore from the residence of alleged drug peddler and NRI Anoop Singh Kahlon.

Mann said Punjab police tied up with Haryana police for questioning of Vijender, a DSP with the Haryana police.

“The team headed by a DSP and Inspector of Punjab police went to Panchkula to the office of Hardeep Singh Doon, IPS, SSP Crime & Telecommunication, Haryana and questioned Vijender Singh in his office regarding the drug case registered last week,” the SSP said.

Highly placed sources, however, said that the boxer was quizzed on his links with Kahlon and about the SUV registered in the name of his wife, Archana, found near the NRI’s residence.

Instead of asking Vijender to join investigations at Fatehgarh Sahab, where Ram Singh and seven others arrested are being questioned, the Punjab police team drove to a Haryana police set up located on the outskirts of Panchkula town on the Chandigarh Naraingarh Highway.

earthquake

Automated sensors initially reported the quake as a flurry of three tremors in rapid succession at magnitudes of 5.1 or higher, but seismic strength was quickly downgraded to between 4.6 and 4.7 before scientists determined that only a single quake of that size had actually occurred.

Susan Hough, a seismologist for the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, said the agency’s real-time quake-reporting system was “confused” by a 2.3 magnitude foreshock that preceded the main jolt by 16 seconds, and a 3.2 aftershock less than a minute later.

The main quake, which hit shortly before 10 am local time about 22 miles (35 km) south of the resort town of Palm Springs, ended up being followed by about 100 very small aftershocks, she said.

The principal tremor occurred about 6 to 8 miles (12 to 14 km) beneath the San Jacinto Mountains, a granite range towering over California’s southern desert, on a branch of an active fault line named for the mountain, Hough said.

Airtel launches free roaming scheme

“With this pack, Airtel prepaid mobile customers can now get up to 30 days of free incoming calls while travelling to Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand and West Bengal (except Kolkata) on a recharge of Rs 21,” Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

Airtel’s Delhi customer at present are charged Re 1 for incoming calls, Re 1 for local outgoing calls and Rs 1.5 paise for STD calls on roaming, the company said.

David Beckham

The former England captain will visit three times during the season from March to November to promote the sport in China and attract the global spotlight, the China Football Association said in a statement.

“Beckham will come to China to promote youth football and serve as ambassador to the Chinese Super League (CSL),” it said.

“His arrival will bring international attention to Chinese football and at the same time his personal involvement will be a good way to make Chinese football more international.”

State media, however, cast doubt on whether Beckham — currently with French club Paris Saint-Germain — could repair the image of a sport scarred by match-fixing and bribery scandals.

A three-year inquiry resulted last month in 33 people receiving lifetime bans and the former club of Didier Drogba, Shanghai Shenhua, being stripped of its 2003 league title.

The arrival last year of the Ivory Coast striker along with Nicolas Anelka, his former team-mate at English Premier League side Chelsea, signaled to some observers that Chinese football had turned a corner.

But both players have since left Shenhua, with Drogba going to Turkish league leaders Galatasaray in disputed circumstances and Anelka signing for Juventus on loan.

When news of Beckham’s appointment began to circulate last month, the People’s Daily online said the departure of two international stars had already hurt CSL’s reputation and “even Beckham would not heal the damage”.

“While spending loads of money hiring international stars like Beckham, the CSL should make efforts to improve the quality of its ‘products’,” it said.

Ponty Chadha

Rakesh Yadav, 36, a resident of Sanjay village here under Civil Lines police station, late on Wednesday night allegedly shot himself in head. No suicide note was found, said police.

Ponty Chadha and his brother were killed at a farmhouse in Chhattarpur in south Delhi in a shootout on November 17, 2012, allegedly over a property dispute. Yadav was still working in Chadha Group’s security cell and was deployed at Chadha’s farmhouse in Chhattarpur for more than three and a half years.

Yadav took voluntary retirement from the Border Security Force (BSF) before joining the services of Ponty Chadha. He returned after 11 PM on Wednesday night and shot himself after a tiff with his wife, said police.

“He was in inebriated condition. After a short quarrel with his wife over coming late in the night and drinking, he shot himself with his licensed pistol,” investigation officer Satender Kumar said.

“On the statement of his (Yadav’s) wife, a case of accidental death was registered at Civil Lines police station. He was part of Ponty Chadha’s PSO team for a long time,” Kumar said.

Yadav’s body was handed over to his family after the post-mortem exaamination. Yadav is survived with his wife and a minor son. “We will look into other angles, if needed,” another police officer said.

Ponty Chadha and his brother Hardeep Singh Chadha were killed on November 17, 2012, in a shootout at the farmhouse in Delhi’s Chhattarpur area following an altercation over their business interests.