Somehow India has become an easy place to commit a crime and escape for years. Politicians and highly influential people use the judiciary and its cumbersome procedures as a tool to manipulate the system in their favor. Even in those cases where there is justice eventually, the victim has to struggle for decades. Life threats to witnesses, money power, moving into foreign hideouts, producing false evidences, utilizing legal loopholes, muscle politics etc are all common. The recent Nithari trial is no exception. It appears that the CBI, the witnesses and the lawyers themselves have all been bought over. A year after truth began emerging from a death bungalow there is not even a small sign of justice.

One of the victim’s fathers, had earlier said,

I was present when the police first quizzed Moninder Singh Pandher. He had taken the police to an area beside his house from where the big knife was recovered by the police.

However, Nandlal, the father later changed his statement and accused his lawyer of giving wrong guidelines, under pressure. Many fighting parents accuse Nandlal of falling to money weight. Though the lawyer has denied the charge, one really wonders what do these lawyers now want to reap out of this saga?

Even the CBI seems to have forgotten its real duty. The agency has charged Moninder Pandher lightly for just immoral trafficking and not rape and murder. Moreover it is trying its best to conceal the statement made by the latter. Moninder had earlier confessed to the police,

When I could not get a girl at night, I could not sleep. I would then ask Surinder to make some arrangement. He would lure any boy or girl he found near the house. This way, I raped several small girls and boys in the last year or year and a half, for which I am sorry. Whoever I raped, I got (them) killed by Surinder so that the secret was never out. Please forgive me.

To turn a perfectly lawyer, the CBI is now producing ‘just bills without witnesses’ from outside Delhi to prove that Moninder was not in Nithari when the killings went on. Shouldn’t the CBI itself be charged now for not following proper procedures?

It is just in four cases that Pandher has been charged with rape and murder. There are 15 other cases too. What will happen to them? Will all these cases be lost as many others have in India? While the victim’s parents and relatives continue to hope for justice some day, these U-turns and delays are ample signs to the fact that somewhere, someone is erasing many many evidences.

News Source: NDTV

Image Credits: [1]

Sometime in Indian history an immoral practice called caste discrimination took birth. Starting with the kings who remained biased to a particular religion of their liking, to the top political leaders of today who subscribe to it secretly, deliberate isolation of a section of the population is not uncommon to find in our nation.

Dalits have remained ‘the dustbin‘ of this country, which boasts of having one of the greatest cultures in the world. One has to remember that phrases like ‘Incredible India’ or ‘High-Tech India’ or even the miserably failed political brand-makers like ‘India Shining’ and ‘Aam Aadmi’ conceal a great deal of truth, again deliberately.

Just when one thought that the evil would end with this generation of Indians, the naughty gene seems to have made some really dangerous inroads into the future. Children in a primary school at Bibipur in the state of Uttar Pradesh have boycotted their lunch because it was made by an untouchable and hence, unclean. Mrs. Phool Kumari Rawat, cooked food for around 300 children in this school. Last week the pupils in this school began the boycotts for the caste reason. One of them Shivani Singh Chauhan even said,’I will not eat anything cooked by that lady. I have heard my family members say that she is from some low caste. So I bring my own lunch box’. Clearly, the parental caste venom seems to have dissolved deep in innocent bloods. Even the local officials who initially stood by Mrs. Rawat are now all set to sack her, under the false reason that the quality of food prepared is poor.

Mrs. Rawat, a widow of three children, was a daily wage laborer before taking up this cooking job. Today, destiny is being very cruel to her and she would again end up in the streets, like a waste thrown into the bin. One would assume this is extremely unfortunate considering that the irony has unfolded in a state gifted with a charismatic Dalit Chief Minister. However, volunteers for the betterment of dalit rights have a different story to tell.

Ram Kumar, of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, said, “There are no equal rights in UP. We have a Dalit chief minister but more than 80 per cent of the bureaucracy consists of members from the upper caste. There are many villages in UP that are totally dominated by caste and there is not any chance of social equality.” Source

Hoping for a life without discrimination.

Dalits in our country have been fighting for a humane treatment for many centuries now. People would remember great souls like Bhimrao Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Jyotibha Phule and Pandit Nehru for their commending work for the dalit cause. Governments in India continue to make hundreds of laws for these so-called ‘low caste‘ people by providing reservation and political representation. However, the important point is that mere legal space will not empower these souls. An attitudinal change is the need of the hour. Those people who take pride in calling themselves ‘upper class‘ will need to remember that the time has come for them to start behaving like humans and to treat humans as humans. This has to be the last generation, I repeat, the last generation to remember caste discrimination. The moral deletion has to begin now.

Now is the mother who cooked food in this story worth being on the streets?

News Source: The Independent

How many of us have seen a green-covered land being converted into a residential or industry turn-round? Surely, most of us have. Inappropriately planned layouts are coming up everyday. Grades of apartments and teeming arrays of constructions filled with a disproportionate number of settlers lobbying into choked, hidden and doomed rooms, trying to live a life in the darkness of the earthly planet with night-lights, burn my eyes. Every-time a person gets some respectable currency in his pockets (specially, The Capitalist Currency), the next flashy thing sweeping his mind is luxury, a luxury in the form of an apartment, a luxury in the form of a vehicle and a luxury in the form of modern gadgets to fall prey to a thoughtless game of perfidy. In an era, where the natural resources are fast depleting, where deforestation takes top priority when it comes to creating residencies, a time when the global warming is running around ringing bells at every door, it is surprising how we could put natural conservation below the top priority.

Construction companies, passionately called ‘Developers’ acquire land in a large scale, mercilessly clobber down the bountiful green, clear the land for a layout and build apartments. Even lakes and ponds are acquired, water in them is discharged and the flora and fauna are thoughtlessly plundered. There is not one consideration made for the birds and insects that had made their homes in the complexes of those shattered trees. There is no thought given to the aquatic life in the ponds. Blind killing still endures, unchecked and without compunction. Batches of developers are doing exactly this in every city and town in our country and the world. Stark looking artificial edifices replace green-nature and bring in a brand of blind colonists, as if we still lead a life in a old tribal civilization. It is brutal rampage and profane draconian uninterrupted destruction of a legacy left behind by magnificent old time empires of the class of The Mughals and The Mauryans. It is sad that natural conservation is just on paper.

We humans have become a pest on the planet. We go different places where shelter is offered and root. We reproduce unbridled. We deplete the natural resources present in abundance. We kill other living beings for our own comfort. We stamp an illegal authority over nature. We try to tame the environment to suit our needs. Generations and species have collapsed owing to our activities. Many more are on-queue to extinction. How many of those big cats do we find in our jungles today? How many of those jumbos do we find in our forests today? For that reason, how much of forests do we allow to operate peacefully? Have we ever managed to care for the sanctity of the food chain? Sex ratios have reached alarming proportions. Cheetahs, elephants, tigers, many rare birds and trees have reached their extinctions. The next generation will not even have a specimen to demonstrate. Isn’t this hell?

Life on ‘Planet Earth’ will hardly survive a century this way........

We lead an untrue life to our selves. Every one of us knows the ill effects, everyone of us advice our kids on these, yet none of us practice what we preach. Aspirations which are correct only to ones own self, aims that have no social responsibility, ideas that never have a point of consideration for nature, morally corrupt competition, longing for monetary power, position, greed, personal pleasure, security and many more self-oriented thoughts have driven every single citizen (if one should really be called) ‘crazy’.

Humans have to learn to live in harmony with the nature. It is sheer responsibility and the utter duty of every single person on the planet to protect the bounty conferred upon us. Laws need to change for nature, people need to change for nature, attitude should change to live with nature and activities need to be shaped to grow with nature. A revolution needs to arise to save nature. We the sole protectors of nature need to wake up at least now. The policy makers need to lead from the front. Youth need to unduly shoulder the responsibility to save life on the planet. Every citizen is responsible.

Traditional dinosaur popularity was based on solitary instances of eggs being discovered in some parts of the world. Recently, research on this species has diversified with startling revelations by Schweitzer who scripted a paradigm shift in the dinosaur domain. This new paradigm with a strong base in molecular paleontology has already made sweeping headlines. Along with the emerging field of genetics, it could make an extinct species walk the future, while humans become the link.

It was in 2004 that Schweitzer saw a lifelike tissue inhabiting fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur skeleton. This tissue had many similarities with living creatures in today’s world. It was surprising that while the skeleton was fossilized, the tissue still appeared fresh. It also gave a characteristic corpse-like odor. Another breakthrough had come Schweitzer’s way much earlier when she had isolated blood cells. These were exciting discoveries for her, as they raised quite a few questions. The obvious ones were: Did dinosaurs rule earth much closer in time than we actually believe? How small is the bridge between the extinction of dinosaurs and the birth of humans? Is the earth itself not as old as many opine? The discovery has also put serious doubts over the length of time tissues could survive. Tissues are assumed by scientists to be completely lost in about ten thousand years after the death of the organism, but here was a ‘rebel’, likely to have lasted sixty-five million years!

Regarded as unconventional, Schweitzer’s study combines two different disciplines while forcing a shift in contemporary fossil and biological research. This new stream is molecular paleontology and could be a dangerous combination. Opinions from contemporary researchers have either been with Schweitzer or against her. While some have bluntly rejected her discoveries for no reason, another camp has used the word ‘dangerous’ while tentatively walking the ‘Schweitzer road’. The ‘fear’ behind the word ‘dangerous’ is that in the world of fast emerging genetic sciences, scientists could extract the DNA from the dinosaur blood cells available from Hell Creek (the last place on earth where dinosaurs are believed to have lived) and clone the extinct species in the future.

Schweitzer though has rejected the ‘fear’ factor, declaring that even if such species were to be created in the future, it would not survive as its life and immune systems were created for a different earth, a different environment with different temperatures than now.
Nevertheless, the future promises some unexpected surprises. The past could rally into the future.

Swamimalai

A three-kilometre walk along the ghat road to a very sparsely populated village ‘mangalam’ and then a four-kilometre journey up the densely vegetated hills leads one to the Swamimalai peak. At a height of over 1500 metres from MSL, Swamimalai lends an excellent trekking experience to amateurs. Extremely constricted rocky mud ways lead stealthily through the jungle up to the extremum. A rectangular view point built on top of the hill gives a vantage point to the visitors. A gentle drizzle would be sweeter. The Jungle, however, appears bereft of any wild species with the sole exception of snakes and a few bears. Some villagers testify to have seen small herds of spotted deer. The jumbos that once ruled the forests do not exist today, thanks to immense poaching and granite rock-blast activities.

Jagadamparai falls

Slim, nimble and beautiful, she flows silently between the hills. Like a kid lost in his own world of activities, like a woman with dawned beauty, like an angel in the silence, like the sole ray of hope to a sailor at sea, she spends her time flowing down the hills making the typical sloshing sound of the magnificent liquid on the planet. Be it the time of the brilliant sun or be it the opportunity for the amazing moon to show his resplendence, Jagadamparai is intensely involved in her work of washing away rocks. The Jagadamparai valley is worth a journey. A ten-kilometre down-trek from the Yelagiri hills to the hamlets at its base is a path very treacherous. As one came down the hills, the path gets steeper. At certain vantage view points, the dramatic sight of all the surrounding hills converging down to the bottom is fearsome. There are some plane areas where Jagadamparai flows with a lesser intensity. One could walk through her to the other side during the journey. A deafening silence flushes out the valley except for this woman, who spends all her time in the valley, alone. A 25 foot-tall ‘Shiva Lingam’ stands at the base of the hills. The five-headed snake, adiseshan, stands right up from the ground, providing shade to the black lingam. The temple is on the banks of the Jagadamparai. In the planes she irrigates the surrounding paddy and maize fields.

Bhiman falls

The Bhiman falls is a simple leisure site at a distance of 50 odd kilometres from Yelagiri. Located amidst the ‘Javadi Malai’, the Bhiman falls has quite some history to care about. It is believed that Bhima, one of the sons of ‘King Pandu’ bent down at this place often to worship the Sun God ’surya’, during his time in the forests. The government of Tamiznad has made significant efforts to promote tourism in the Javadi Hills along with the Yelagiri chain. Cemented pathways on both sides of the falls offer a spectacular view. Neatly watered and regularly attended gardens add to the bounty. Here and there, there are a few tree-top bamboo houses that offer a photographic view of the scene.

In a nut shell, Yelagiri provides a striking series of inviting treks and chilly falls in strong amalgamation with places of well necessitated leisure.