Indian politician charged with offering opium to guests
JODHPUR, Nov 3 (Agencies): A former Indian foreign minister has been accused of illegal drug possession after he allegedly offered guests milk laced with opium, a traditional drink in the country's north, said the lawyer who filed the complaint.
The minister, Jaswant Singh, has denied the charges and will face a special court hearing to determine whether authorities will order an inquiry into the incident.
The accusations were filed Friday by Om Prakash Bishnoi, a resident of Jodhpur in the northern state of Rajasthan who saw a photograph of the alleged incident in a newspaper, said his lawyer, Malam Singh Choudhry.
Under Indian law, ordinary citizens can file drug-related complaints to a special court that deals with illegal substances.
Singh could face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, said Choudhry.
On Saturday, Judge B.
Kumawat said the court would decide Monday whether to pursue the charges.
Singh allegedly welcomed a group of politicians to his ancestral village of Jasol in Rajasthan's Barmer district with the drink Wednesday.
Newspaper photographs showed Singh's guests drinking a brew out of his cupped hands, in keeping with local tradition.
Singh said the drink was made of tea and unrefined sugar and did not include opium.
In rural Rajasthan, opium consumption is common and opium-laced milk, called kesar, is often used at village celebrations.
The complaint named nine others who allegedly accepted Singh's drink, including three prominent members of the state's Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party.
Singh is a BJP leader as well.
India's government looking to old soldiers to save endangered tigers NEW DELHI, Nov 3 (Agencies): The Indian government wants to recruit retired soldiers to patrol tiger sanctuaries in the hopes of saving the last of the cats after an official report confirmed a drastic drop in wild tiger numbers.
Conservationists on Friday praised the decision, saying that even if it had faults, at least Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government were finally taking the plight of the beleaguered tigers seriously.
The plan was part of a report presented Thursday by the government-run Wildlife Institute of India to the National Wildlife Board, which Singh chairs, as part of a two-year survey on India's tigers.
The report confirmed initial findings that there are no more than 1,500 tigers in India's reserves and jungles _ down from about 3,600 just five years ago and an estimated 100,000 a century ago.
It called for appointing a senior police official to head the recently created Wildlife Crime Bureau, set up to halt the killings and punish poachers.
The report also recommended speeding up the relocation of villages from within reserves, filling empty park ranger posts and laying out "eco-tourism" guidelines to benefit local populations.
Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, was skeptical of the plan to recruit retired soldiers to beef up forces that patrol sanctuaries.
She said her group had found retired soldiers unwilling to join such a project.
"They seem quite happy to enjoy their retirement and pension," she said.
Conservationists said the major breakthrough was in Singh's reaction to the report.
"The real progress is that the prime minister sat for two hours and listened to us and realized that this is a real problem," said Wright.
Valmik Thapar, an independent film maker and tiger expert, said the measures could be the "beginning of a new era in wildlife conservation where the government, non-governmental organizations and individual conservationists work together." While these efforts could save tigers in sanctuaries, the study said prospects were bleak for those that roamed unprotected jungles and forests.
"One thing this report has found, very alarmingly, is that there are virtually no wild tiger populations outside the reserves," Wright said.
The majority of tigers that disappeared were killed either by poachers supplying body parts to the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market or by angry farmers and villagers competing with the tigers for the same habitat.
On Friday, forest rangers were forced to hunt a tigress that had apparently strayed from the Tadoba-Andhari sanctuary in the western state of Maharashtra, killing three people and mauling two others.
"Both humans and tigers are fighting for space.
It's a difficult situation," said B.
Majumdar, a wildlife officer who was coordinating the hunt.
Angry villagers stoned the rangers' vehicle, demanding they kill the beast.
"You must get rid of it or we will kill it," said Ganesh Deshmukh, a farmer.
"We are scared to go to our fields and can't send our children to school." Majumdar said rangers had tried several methods to drive away the tiger and were now going to try to trap or tranquilize the beast.
"Shooting," he said, "is the last resort." About us | Advertise | Other Publications | Subscriptions | Weather | Letters | Send Mail Disclaimer: Information is being made available at this site purely as a measure of public facilitation.
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information hosted on this website is accurate CHAIRMAN: VED BHASIN Kashmir Times Group of Publications Edited, printed and published by Prabodh Jamwal Editor-in-Chief, The Kashmir Times, Residency Road, Jammu, J&K, INDIA.
Executive Editor: Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal E-Mail: vbhasin@sancharnet.in, jmt_prabodh@sancharnet.in