Fiza’s body found at home,had been dead 4 days

Given the advanced stage of putrification,authorities are waiting for the autopsy report to ascertain the cause of death.

Satpal,an uncle of 39-year-old Bali,said he had spoken to her last on the phone on August 1 and she had asked him to come over the next day. He said he had been calling her for the past four days but got no response.

“I came to her house last evening and called out her name but she didn’t respond,” said Satpal. Interestingly,the uncle claimed that he found the door open,but rather than raising an alarm,he went to sleep on the first floor. “She usually doesn’t get up before noon,so I wasn’t particularly alarmed,” he added,saying he only started getting worried around 11 this morning when she again didn’t respond to his calls. Satpal said he finally pushed open the door of her bedroom and was overpowered by a foul odour from within. Bali had hit national headlines when she had eloped with Chander Mohan,the then deputy chief minister of Haryana,in December 2008. The two had resurfaced as “Fiza” and “Chand”,and claimed they had converted to Islam and got married as per Muslim traditions. However,within 20 days,the marriage had fallen apart after Chander Mohan was renounced by his father Bhajan Lal for the “shame he had brought upon the family”. In January 2009,‘Chand Mohammad’ had annulled the marriage and gone back to being ‘Chander Mohan’.

Chander Mohan refused to react to Bali’s death today. Reached with great difficulty,he told The Indian Express: “Don’t write anything from my side. It was over three years ago and since then there was no contact.”

A friend and former colleague Rohit Mahajan said Bali,a former assistant advocate general of Haryana,could not have chosen to kill herself. “It is odd that she went to sleep in the ground-floor bedroom as she always slept on the first floor. In the past seven years,she had become very brave and a drastic step like suicide would be unexpected of her,” he said.

“Clarity on the cause of death will be clear after the postmortem report,” said Senior Superintendent of Police,Mohali,Gurpreet Singh Bhullar.

Neighbours said it was not surprising that Bali’s death went unnoticed as she did not have any friends in the colony and kept to herself. “The only times we saw her was when she had an argument with someone. She swore unabashedly and was prone to violent outbursts over as trivial an issue as children playing in the park in front of her house,” said a neighbour.

In fact,Bali had been arrested recently by the Mohali police over assault on children in her neighborhood. Following the spat with her neighbours,she had sought police protection. When it was denied,she had reportedly hired two private security guards.

\Another neighbour claimed to have last seen her on August 2 at 2 pm,when she reportedly came out to feed the dogs. “Since that night though,she hadn’t switched on the decorative lights she had put in her balcony,which she usually did. Instead,the front lamps at her house were permanently switched on. We assumed she had gone out somewhere.”

Lightning Bolt strikes doubters,wins gold

Showman sprinter defends Beijing 100 m title,sets sight on 200 m race

August 6

Usain Bolt obliged several people on Sunday. As he stood at the start line with the cameras on him,he made the gesture of a haircut for a buddy,an inverted bunny for another. “They asked me to do it,so I did,” he said. “Crowd pleasing is important for me. I did fool around at the start,and later. But that’s what they came to see me do also,” he said. Anything indeed,to please his audience.

And then,for 9.63 seconds — just for those 9.63 seconds — he focused his attention on the race that everyone had been saying wasn’t won until it indeed was. He kept it short,shorter than the rest at any rate,with an Olympic record,for a title defence that had seemed far from assured.

“The London crowd today played a big part in my race. I was slightly nervous,but when I heard the crowd cheer me,I was suddenly ready,” Bolt said.

That was greatness seeking reassurance from crowds he never fails to charm. Bolt competes in the rarefied stratosphere of sport,but seeks guarantees of faith from the nameless,faceless masses of the audience. On Sunday,as he won the fastest Olympic 100-metre dash in which six others clocked under 10 seconds,he thought it his duty to look at the cameras and give ticketbuyers their money’s worth.

The start was under the scanner,and the champion admitted that the Daegu 2011 Worlds,where he jumped the gun and stayed out,had played on his mind until the final seconds before he got on to the blocks. For up to around 40 metres,Bolt was with the group — his training partner Yohan Blake and Americans Tyson Gay and Justin Gatlin.

Then,about halfway through the race,the big,loping strides took over,and the field,made up of some of the greatest sprinters in history,was left behind.

“I’d worked with my coach on the starts,and though I knew it wasn’t perfect,I knew I’d finish strong,” Bolt said. “There’d been a lot of talk and doubting. But I defended my title,I’m still the best.”

And yet,he was reluctant to call it a “perfect race”. “Because if you ask my coach he’ll say it wasn’t perfect.”