Under the World

Night out at Igatpuri

Igatpuri is a place where fog is so dense in the monsoon that you can hardly see beyond two metres. Police officers and personnel posted at the farmhouse of Laila Khan in Igatpuri never stray alone at night,even if it is to attend nature’s call. Floodlight illuminating the lone structure – the farmhouse – on a hill presents a scene straight out of a horror movie,they say. Almost all personnel deployed stay away from the backyard of the farmhouse at night where the skeletons were found,with the general consensus being that no security will be needed there. No policeman will ever want his colleagues to know he is scared,but would neither venture out alone to prove himself.

Waiting for a spar

A bitter standoff between the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress in Maharashtra was averted a week before the current dispute emerged in New Delhi,thanks to sheer chance. The NCP nearly attempted to engineer the collapse of a Congress party candidate for the just-concluded election to 11 Legislative Council seats. Senior NCP leaders admitted that a nomination form had been readied and plans discussed to rope in independent MLAs to back one of the retiring MLCs who were not being re-nominated – perhaps Syed Pasha of the BJP or Parshuram Uparkar of the Sena. The juicy plan to hand a shock defeat to one of the Congress candidates fell through when the NCP top brass objected. In another version of the same story,it was a group of rebel Congressmen reportedly keen to bring down a Congress candidate. While luck played its part,the Congress too played safe and chose not to field a fourth candidate,resulting in an uncontested win for all 11 hopefuls.

Birthday,not the right day

A judge may feel that a death sentence may be a fitting punishment for acts of terrorism but handing out the harshest punishment is no simple task. A judge once deferred the verdict in a case by a day because he,as sources told Newsline,did not wish to sentence anyone to death on his birthday. Punishing the guilty may be a judge’s job but by donning the judge’s gown,one does not cease to be human. The delivery of justice was in no way hindered but perhaps signing the order of the death sentence was a little less vexing a day later,at least for the judge if not for the accused.

Mono versus metro

That the media does not make space for minor accidents at the monorail construction sites but ensures thorough reportage of any accident at the Metro sites has been a standard lament of some officials closely associated with the construction of the latter. Just last month when reporters were gathering information about how a technical snag in a crane at the Metro site brought traffic in Andheri to a standstill,an official complained that the mishaps at the Monorail sites go unreported. On Thursday night,when strong rumours of a major slab collapse at the monorail construction site started spreading,the official sent urgent text messages to one reporter. The reporter had a tough time convincing the official that the accident was not related to the Monorail after all.

Police fund funda

In a first for the Mumbai Police,private auditors have been roped in to scrutinise its police welfare fund – a corpus from which funds are released for initiatives aimed at improving the living and working conditions and health of policemen in the city. The audit of the fund,which currently stands at around Rs 18 crore,is underway. Earlier,an internal audit revealed discrepancies that were quite unsettling. It was found that besides the official police welfare account,another account,meant for contributions from private parties such as builders and corporates,had been created without requisite permission from the state government and receipts and disbursals from this fund lacked transparency.