Soldiers rerun desert battle of 1971 Indo-Pak war

Shemin Joy
Laungewala (Rajasthan), Feb 24, 2008 (PTI) The desert reverberated with heavy artillery fire today as soldiers recreated one of the most decisive battles of the 1971 Indo-Pak war when a handful of 'faujis' took on a 2,500-strong advancing column.
Witness to the replay of the "Laungewala Epic" of December 5-6, 1971, was Defence Minister A K Antony on his first visit to this historic spot.
About 120 soldiers of Punjab Regiment's 23rd battalion held back the 51st Infantry Brigade and 22nd Armoured Regiment of the Pakistani army until the IAF flew in and repulsed the first major attack on Indian soil.
Two Indian soldiers made the supreme sacrifice during the intense two-day battle which saw the Pakistani side lose over 100 soldiers and 37 tanks.
One Pak tank, battered and soot-covered, was on display during a 20-minute live presentation at the battlefield in Jaisalmer district, about 15 km from the border.
Highlights of the battle rerun were an intercepted message in which a Pakistani soldier tells his superiors about the worsening situation and the killing of three Pakistani officers who had come to assess their strength.
It also recalled the emotionally charged address of Area Commander Maj Kuldeep Singh Chandpuri to his soldiers not to run away from the battle and to fight to the finish.
"If some wants to run away, they can do it now," he had said.
Antony suggested that the presentation be made available for the public.
"By sheer determination and dedication, a 100 soldiers under the valiant leadership of Maj Chandpuri were able to defeat a large segment of the Pakistani Army in 1971," the Defence Minister said.
Addressing the soliders, he said the government was committed to their welfare and working towards ensuring accomodation for married couples in the forces.
Noting that the nuclear family has become the norm of the day, he said the first phase of construction of houses for married couples was expected to conclude this year.
"We have already moved a proposal for the second phase which is being scrutinised by the Finance Ministry. I have also written to chief ministers asking them to settle on priority basis the soldiers' problems," he said.
Interacting with journalists later, Antony expressed the hope that the Sixth Pay Commission will give the armed forces the best. "I hope the pay commission favours us," he said.
Asked whether he will argue for segregating service personnel from Central government employees in the pay panel, the minister said, "I am not here for an academic discussion."
On the modernisation programme, he assured the forces that money will not be a problem. "Because of a lot of controversies in the past, the modernisation process was slow. But in last four-five years, things have changed. Convince me (for procurement), money will not be a problem," he added.
He underscored the need to make the armed forces an attractive option for youngsters as the open market was a strong temptation.
"Armed forces are not the first or second preference of youngsters. If we want to attract the youth, we must give them a better deal," he said.
Antony also emphasised the need for an "effective deterrent" to safeguard the interests of the country.
"We have to modernise our armed forces. This is not to confront anybody. We want to safeguard the interest of the country and even for economic growth, we need an effective deterrent," he said.
"The GDP is growing and now we have to concentrate more on the modernisation of the armed forces," he said adding the government is committed to give the forces whatever modern equipment they need.

Youngsters not losing interest in arts

Shemin Joy
New Delhi, May 30, 2005 (PTI) Danseuse Yamini Krishnamurthy begs to differ with those who feel India's youth are less motivated to master classical Indian arts and are moving towards Western popular culture which is 'easier.'
"Please, don't tell me this. Some 200 children in Delhi alone came to my dance school. Why are they also going to other artistes to learn the arts?" asks the Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi exponent, who plans a comeback to the arangu (stage) this year.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Krishnamurthy dismisses the argument that the major stumbling block is the time required for mastering these art forms.
"It is ridiculous to say the time factor and hard work required are acting as a deterrent. I won't say more and more people are coming. But don't say youngsters are losing interest," she says and points out she has taught hundreds of students in the last two to three years.
The renowned dancer also refuses to accept that Western arts are dwarfing Indian classical arts. She categorically asks people to stop thinking "such nonsense."
Krishnamurthy, who had taken a sabbatical from her "passion" to attend to her "commitments", will be seen on stage in August or September this year. In her new "garland-like composition", she will "try to interpret" the Indian poets' understanding of Goddess Kali.
"Our poets dealt with Kali in different ways. Rabindranath Tagore's understanding was different from Kalidasa's as was Subramanya Bharati's," says the dancer, who had her arangetram (debut performance) in 1957.
"The choreography for my new show is almost complete. Now, the music is being composed. We are going to use a different kind of music," she says.
The dancer, who had been honoured with the Padma Shri in 1968 at the age of 28, says she was doing multiple things all these years which stifled the "creativity" in her.
"For many years, I have been a bit out of touch with the creative and performance aspects of dance. I gave all my energy to setting up my dance school in Delhi and teaching dance. Now, I want to return to the stage."
When asked why she abandoned the stage for so long, Krishnamurthy says she cannot have "two focal points. I cannot concentrate on performance and teaching at the same time. I have certain commitments to my students and I cannot leave them in the lurch, so I decided to be with them."
Krishnamurthy, who is the 'Asthana Narthaki' of the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam, feels dance is a personal experience and it is the duty of the teacher to help her student experience it.
"I concentrated on grooming the Yaminis of the future. I don't make any stars but I make as many dancers as possible. I believe every household should have a dancer," she says.
The dancer, who won the Sangeet Natak Akademi award way back in 1977, began learning dance at the age of five.
Rukmuni Arundale gave her first lessons in Bharatanatyam at the Kalakshetra School of Dance, Chennai. Then, she learnt the art from Kanchipuram Ellappa Pillai, Thanjavoor Kittappa Pillai, Dhandayudhapani Pillai and Mylapore Gouri Amma.
"I was lucky to learn two schools of Bharata Natyam -- Pandanallur, which sticks to the classical text and Kanchipuram, which is liberal," she says.
The dancer, who mastered Odissi under Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra and Guru Pankaj Charan Das, says she owes her success to her father M Krishnamurthy, who was a Sanskrit scholar.
Her grandfather was an Urdu poet and she was the first in the family to take up dance. "My father totally supported my pursuit and showed me the right direction."
She also learnt Carnatic vocal from M D Ramanathan and the veena from Kalpakam Swaminathan.
The danseuse, who knew from her childhood that she was moving towards a "fixed destiny," says, "dance wrested control of my life and I meekly surrendered to its power.
"I owe everything to my gurus. Whatever I have it is theirs. My mentors had insight and they trained me with affection," she says gratefully.

Noida cops ask Delhi counterparts for help in serial killings case

Shemin Joy

Noida, 02, 2007
Noida police have asked their Delhi counterpart to provide them with details of missing persons in their areas even as people are coming to Nithari village, where a gruesome tale of serial killing of children has come to light, in search of their missing kin.

Circle Officer (Noida) Dinesh Yadav held a meeting with SHOs of Anand Vihar and Vivek Vihar in East Delhi and requested them to give details of missing persons in their areas, including the complaints and their photographs.

More and more persons from nearby areas in the National Capital Region as well as from places like Muzaffarnagar are thronging Nithari village in search of their missing kin after the discovery of skeletal remains there.
Yadav said special arrangements have been made for people coming from outside Noida and a sub-inspector has been specifically assigned to listen to their complaints at Sector 20 police station.
One of the several parents who have come to Nithari village is Zaheer Khan, a motor mechanic from Muzaffarnagar in UP.
Khan's 12-year-old son went missing three years ago while he was staying at his uncle's house in Ghaziabad, which is not very far from the scene of the crime. "I have been searching for my son for the last three years and even lost my job," Khan said.
Phool Kaur came to Nithari fearing that her missing sister Hans Kaur, a resident of Kalyanpuri area of East Delhi, could be among the victims of the alleged serial killers Moninder Singh and his servant Surendra.
Hans Kaur had gone missing in January, 2003 and was last spotted in Sector 11 of Noida.
An FIR was registered in both the Sector 11 and Kalyanpuri police stations. "Police had called us a few days after the FIR was registered and said a body had been found. But it was not Hans," said Phool Kaur.
A large number of people have been coming to Nithari village with copies of FIRs and photographs of their missing kin since the serial killings have come to light.
Several parents brought photographs of their missing children and showed them to the police officials even as they braced themselves to hear bad news.
Yadav said a large number of people were approaching Noida police since the case came to light. The people were asked to provide with photograph, copies of FIRa filed earlier with relevant police stations and other details, he said.

Make pepper spray available at low price: Police study

New Delhi, Sep 20 (PTI) Making small bottles of pepper spray available at a very low price is a "key strategy" for enhancing the security of the fairer sex proposed by a police- backed study, which found that markets and colleges are the places where the capital's women feel most insecure.

This and many other recommendations form part of the study "How secure or insecure are women in the city of Delhi" conducted by the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science for the police think-tank Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD).

"Every girl should carry pepper spray and it should be available in a small bottle at a very low price ... Easily available in the market," said the study, for which 70 women each were interviewed in markets, colleges, railway stations, malls, ISBT, airport, slums and villages.

The study recommends that women should always move in groups if possible and should carry contact numbers of women helpline and police besides having "some basic knowledge" of law.

About 80.40% of women interviewed at market places said they felt insecure at the place while the figure for colleges was 72.10 per cent. Shopping malls came third where 60 per cent of respondents said they felt insecurity.

Level of insecurity was lowest among slum dwellers (8.70 per cent) followed by respondents from village (22.8 per cent).

Personal facts like low level of confidence and alcoholic spouses made slum dwellers (80 per cent of the respondents) insecure, the study said.

I want to teach men what their mothers didn't

Shemin Joy

New Delhi, Aug 29 (PTI)

"I am here to teach men what their mothers didn't teach them," declared Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chaudhury at a function in New Delhi on Wednesday. Chaudhury has been at the receiving end of numerous hate mails after taking certain pro-women initiatives.

"Women are the worst sufferers of verbal and physical abuse and they need protection," said Chaudhury. She added that she got the distasteful mails after the recent implementation of the Domestic Violence (Prevention) Act.

Chaudhury was speaking at a function to award the ISO 9001:2000 certificate for Delhi Police's Parivartan, an initiative to combat voilence against women.

The choicest abuses used by men during altercations are based on women and their relationships with them, she said, adding that pro-women initiatives aimed at teaching men what their mothers have not taught them.

"People say pro-women legislations are often misused and abused. Yes, there is a handful of them, but one thing that we should keep in mind is that millions of women also need help," she said.

Many men were "upset" at the implementation of the Domestic Violence (Prevention) Act, claimed Chaudhury. "Gauging by the number of e-mails I have received and their content, I think I need the maximum security in the country," she added in a lighter vein.

"You see many things in Hindi movies. It is okay in movies but not in real life," she said. Men often assume that women have always played second fiddle to them and will continue to do so, she added.

"Can you think of life without women? Now, it is the era of feminisation of the globe and you see women everywhere. They lead the struggle for a decent livelihood," said Chaudhury.

"It is not that we don't want men. We need their help and they need to understand that women are not mere objects," she said.

Contact details of police stations a click away

Shemin Joy

New Delhi, Sep 04 (PTI)

Are you searching for the telephone number of the Rangpo police station in Sikkim or the residence number of the officer-in-charge of Kiltan police station in Lakshadweep?

The contact details of the police stations and officials across the country are now just a click away, the first time in the history of policing in the country.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development, government's police think-tank, has already uploaded contact details of police stations of six states and four Union territories on its website www.bprd.gov.in.

The postal address of police station with phone and fax numbers and residential phone numbers of station in-charges can be accessed through the Internet now, a senior BPRD official said.

It also has the contact details of offices of assistant police commissioners and deputy superintendents of police of respective areas. Some police stations have provided their e-mail IDs also.

The contact details of Andaman and Nicobar (20 police stations), Daman and Diu (2), Dadra Nagar Haveli (2), Delhi (116), Lakshadweep (9), Goa [Images] (24), Meghalaya (30), Mizoram (37), Sikkim (26) and Tripura (58) are provided in the site.

"This is a beginning to get police stations connected through the Internet which will improve connectivity and access and making policing in the country transparent," Kiran Bedi, BPRD director general, told PTI.

Bedi said BPRD envisages a scenario when all police stations across the country could be connected through e-mails where people can sent information to investigators and lodge complaints.

"We should develop a software such that a mail, which is a complaint or information, received at the police station is acknowledged automatically," Bedi said.

Incidents like refusal by officials to file FIRs on missing children and women in Uttar Pradesh's Nithari could have been avoided if there was a "fool-proof" mechanism to ensure accountability, she said.

"We should utilise available technology to plug the loopholes in the system and open it up," she said.
BPRD feels that providing contact details of police stations across the country would bring people and police together.

"We are now providing postal and telephone contacts. We are looking at a time of e-connectivity and e-interaction, a time when common people can come on a group chat and interact with the local Station House Officer," she said.

The BPRD is expected to provide contact details of police stations in the remaining states and union territories soon.

If you are a woman, be ready to face problems in filing FIR

If you are a woman, be ready to face problems in filing FIR

Shemin Joy

New Delhi, Aug 8 (PTI) If you are a woman approachinga police station to get an FIR lodged, chances are that youmay go unheard or be ill-treated by the men and women inkhaki.

But if a person is accompanied by a group of socialactivists or local politicians, the treatment he or she getsat the police station is different, according to a studycommissioned by the Bureau of Police Research and Development(BPRD).

The pilot study on "Registration of FIRs by Police ina Metropolitan City" was conducted by Mumbai's Tata Instituteof Social Sciences.

"If a woman goes on her own then she is abused or notheard...foul language is sometimes used and uncomfortablecomments may be passed when a woman visits police station,"the report authored by Vijay Raghavan and Kavisha Mann states.

BPRD Director General Kiran Bedi says this trend isnot confined to a particular region or area. "You can see itall across the country. To get an FIR registered is aherculean task for anyone these days."

Advocating the need for reforms in police, Bedi toldPTI, "the common man is individually weak and FIR is a statemonopoly. Everyone cannot approach a magistrate to get his orher complaint registered and even organised groups have theirlimitations."

The study, which covered a number of police stationsin an undisclosed region in Mumbai, also says the behaviour ofwomen constables was "equally rude and not different" fromthat of their male counterparts.

The educational and social background of thecomplainant also influences the police in how they deal withthe case, says the report.

It also states political pressure from within thesystem not to file FIRs was "high" as the registration ofcrime was an indicator of the performance of the ruling party.

"One of the police personnel interviewed hinted thatthere is no freedom with the police at the ground level toregister FIRs as this leads to 'rising crime rates' which isfrowned upon by their seniors and political bosses," it says.

There were also instances that FIRs were not filedbecause the accused had a "very good rapport" with the policeand a "regular source of income" for them.

The study states police informers could also influencethe registration of case.

In one particular incident recorded in the report, aninformer got a woman arrested in a case of kidnapping, wherethere was a possibility that he was taking revenge for a fightthat took place between two parties.

"Factors such as overload of cases, under staffing,cumbersome procedures and red tape, mischievous and falsecomplaints, pressure from political masters to under reportcrime...(are) leading to the reluctance on the part of thepolice to register complaints," it says.

The Supreme Court, in its judgement last year, had said that it is the "statutory" duty of the police to registerand investigate a case on receipt of an information. PTI

(Photo: FIR on Indira Gandhi's assassination)