8 police personnel injured as ban on ritual triggers violence

July 20, 2012

salem

Salem, July 20: Villagers turned violent and indulged in stone-throwing when the police tried to stop ‘eruthuattam’ (bull dancing), an age-old ritual, at the annual festival of their village temple at Neikkarapatti, near here on Thursday.

Their action forced the police to resort to lathi charge and burst tear gas shells. Eight police personnel, including an inspector and a few village women were injured.

After first-aid, the injured were removed to the Salem Government Medical College Hospital for further treatment.

Traffic on the busy Salem-Coimbatore four-lane National Highway remained disrupted for nearly two hours in the morning when a group of miscreants staged a road blockade protesting the denial of permission for the ritual.

The police, after chasing them out amid a hail of stones, had to remove boulders, stones and tree branches placed on the highway for a distance of one km, to restore traffic.

Senior revenue and police officials, including Collector K. Maharabushanam, DIG Sanjay Kumar, SPs Ashwin M Kotnis (Salem), Ajithkumar Singh (Dharmapuri) and Kannammal (Namakkal), Salem RDO Prasanna Ramasamy and other officials held talks with villagers till late Thursday evening.

The villagers promised them that they would strive hard to restore peace.

They claimed that the police refused permission for the ‘eruthuattam’ ritual citing Supreme Court orders.

People from 18 villages had congregated on the temple premises to celebrate ‘eruthuattam,’ which, according to them, was an important ritual.

They said that the devotees had brought the bulls from various places. These animals, they said, would be taken out one by one for the ritual in front of the temple after tethering them to poles.

The devotees also claimed it was different from traditional ‘jallikattu’ (bull taming) sport, being staged in many southern districts, against which the Supreme Court had passed a set of stringent guidelines.

“Here neither the animal will be subjected to any form of cruelty nor will any life be lost,” said a temple trustee member.

Collector Maharabushanam refuted their claims saying permission was turned down to the ritual as per the Government Order based on Supreme Court guidelines that banned any acts of cruelty to animals. “The villagers accepted this and ensured peace,” he further said.

“We have detained 124 persons in connection with the violence so far. We maintained patience despite provocation and retaliated ‘mildly’ when the situation threatened to go out of control,” said SP Ashwin M Kotnis to The Hindu.

The police bolstered security in and around the village besides mounting a house-to-house search for troublemakers.


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Agencies
January 12,2020

Lucknow, Jan 12: The controversy over renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's iconic poem 'Hum dekhenge' may have caused an upheaval in the literary world but it has also helped in resurrecting the famous poet for the young generations.

Students and young professionals are making a beeline for books on Faiz, his biography and his poems and book sellers are ordering supplies of Faiz books.

"Earlier, we sold hardly one book in a month or on Faiz but after the controversy, people are curious to know more about the poet and his poems. We have placed orders for the entire literary range on Faiz Ahmad Faiz," said a leading book seller in Hazratganj in Lucknow.

The bookseller said that the highest demand was for books written in Devnagri script.

"Not many in the young generation can read or write Urdu so they prefer Devnagri," the book seller said.

In Kanpur, most of the leading bookshops have already run out of stocks and book stalls in the ongoing Handloom Expo are drawing huge crowds for Faiz books.

Suchita Srivastava, B.Ed student in Kanpur said, "I have never been fond of Urdu poetry because I do not understand much of the language but after the controversy, I want to read poems of Faiz to understand what he wanted to say. I am taking help of Google to understand difficult words in Urdu."

Krishna Rao, another student at the Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, said that since books on Faiz had been sold out, he had ordered a Kindle edition and was reading them.

"Reading his poems actually widens one's perspective of things and becomes even more precious if you take into account the time and context in which they were written," he said.

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Agencies
February 4,2020

The government suspended all the India-bound air travel from China and has declared all visas 'invalid', on Monday, due to the rapid escalation of cases of novel coronavirus outbreak which originated in Wuhan.

"Embassy and our Consulates have been receiving several queries from Chinese citizens as well as other foreign nationals, who are based out of China or visited China in the last 2 weeks, as to whether they can use their valid single/multiple entry visas to travel to India," tweeted the Embassy of India in Beijing, China.

"It is clarified that existing visas are no longer valid. Intending visitors to India should contact the Indian Embassy in Beijing ([email protected]) or the Consulates in Shanghai ([email protected]) and Guangzhou ([email protected]) to apply afresh for an Indian visa," it said.

Further, regarding the validity of visas, the embassy said, "Indian Visa Application Centres (http://blsindia-china.com) in these cities may also be contacted in this regard. Visa Section of the Embassy/Consulates of India in China can be contacted to ascertain the validity of visa before undertaking any visit to India."

"All those who are already in India (with regular or e-visa) and had traveled from China after January 15 are requested to contact the hotline number of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Government of India (+91-11-23978046 and email: [email protected])," the embassy said.

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Noida, Jan 6: A fire broke out at the ESIC Hospital in Noida on Thursday morning and firefighting was underway, officials said.

The blaze broke out in the basement of the seven-storey hospital building located in Sector 24, a police official said.

Fire tenders were rushed to the spot after the Fire Department was alerted about it around 8 am, the official said.

After that, a search was done to see if anyone was trapped in the building, he said.

The cooling process is now underway.

He said the fire had engulfed the ground, first and second floors of the building, except the basement.

Police said they received information about fire at Kaveri printing press at 2:45 am, when the manager Yogesh called them. The press owners have been identified as Atul and Anuj Goyal, residents of Sukhdev Vihar, they said.

The man who died in the fire has been identified as Phool Dev, from Bihar, who used to work as a help there. Dev went inside the building in the night to sleep before the fire started and died due to suffocation, the fire department official said.

The body has been kept at Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital and the post-mortem will be done once the family reaches here, police said.

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