News on Agra & Current Affairs

VISHAL SHARMA AGRA. With the Taj Mahotsava coming to an end in Agra on Monday, the UP State Road Transport Corporation made a new introduction in its bus fleet, launching its first state-of-the-art AC sleeper bus service from the festival that was inaugurated by UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh’s son and Member of Parliament Akhilesh Yadav. According to Umesh Sinha, Managing Director, UPSRTC, this AC sleeper bus service is the first such innovation made by the UPSRTC in its fleet, which shall incorporate custom designed buses having a seating capacity of 31 passengers while functioning as a sleeper, this bus shall have 18 sleeper seats. According to Mr. Sinha, the bus service has been designed to provide passenger comfort comparable to journey in an AC III-tier coach on a train and initially, the bus shall run between Agra and Sarnath, completing the link between the Heritage and the Buddhist circuits for the benefit of the tourists who, till now, had to

VIJAY UPADHYAY Etah. At a time when trains all over the world are reaching speeds exceeding 550 kmph. and the rise in the speed by only a fraction makes its place in the news headlines in the country, a train in UP is still running at a speed befitting a snail. The Tundla-Etah train is making a record for being probably the slowest running passenger train in the plains of India. Covering a distance of 66 km in over four hours over a strainght, no-traffic track, the only train connecting Etah to the railway network at Tundla runs at an average speed of just 16 kmph, maintaining it ever since the track was inaugurated by the first President of India Dr Rajendra Prasad in 1959. Over 47 years have gone by the day when this train first reached the 150 acre railway station of Etah on January 18, 1959 but the track that could have become the lifeline of this extremely backward area of Uttar Pradesh, lies virtually unused, save for the only three-bogie train that makes a daily

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Agra administration and the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) are at loggerheads over a sensitive issue. Last Friday, the Agra administration unilaterally decided to permit namaz and anti-Denmark demonstrations at the local idgah despite specific ASI regulations prohibiting any religious activity at the idgah on days other than Eid. Over one lakh Muslims converged at the 416-year-old idgah for namaz and broke open the locks put by the ASI. They then conducted namaz inside the protected site despite objections raised by the Director General of ASI. The prayers were followed up by a series of demonstrations by Muslims against the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. The crowd at the idgah waved banners and black ribbons. The high-pitched slogan-shouting silenced all protests by the ASI staff posted there. The entire exercise received the full support of the district administration which reportedly refused to heed the repeated objecti

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/Agra. After almost a decade of remaining buried in red tape, the Agra Software Technology Park may get off the ground. A team of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) officials will visit Agra on February 24 and 25 to mark the land for the parks. Apart from Agra, STPs in two other towns of UP—Varanasi and Moradabad—are on the cards this year. According to STPI sources, an initial provision of Rs 4.25 crore has been made by the UP Electronics Corporation Ltd for establishing the Agra STP, of which Rs 1 crore will be spent on the purchase of 3 acres of land in Agra. Another Rs 1 crore has been earmarked for the purchase of equipment and the development of requisite technology. Rs 2.20 crore has been set aside for the construction of the STP in 3,000 square metres, while the remaining Rs 44 lakh has been marked for contingencies. According to sources, the STPI had received a proposal from the Agra Development Authority to setup the park on th

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/Agra. The UP government’s initiative to establish Land Assemblies in major cities of the state has begun to show results in Agra. Attracted by the construction boom in the local real-estate market, sixteen major construction companies of Delhi, Lucknow and Agra have applied for registration with the Agra Development Authority, to be granted a license to develop their projects in Agra. According to the officials in the Land Assembly project, the authority shall earmark its prime land available in the city for the construction of housing projects. These projects shall only be offered to builders registered and licensed by the ADA. According to official sources, Delhi-based builders registering for a license with the authority include Ansals, Nagarjun, Omaxe, Parshvnath, Uppal Housing & Rajshri, among others. Some local builders have also applied for registration though the majority of applicants are from outside the town. Sources said the final t

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/Agra. Uttar Pradesh has begun preparing for the possible outbreak of the Bird Flu in the state. According to the chief veterinary officer of Agra, Uday Shanker Gupta, the department has prepared a list of all the 47 major poultry farms in the district which bred almost 50,000-60,000 fowls per farm and teams had been dispatched to these farms to take blood samples of the birds in these farms. Besides, he said blood tests were made on migratory birds arriving in the Keetham bird sanctuary of Agra and so far, no cases of bird flu had been found in these birds.

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/Agra. With Agra seeing a record number of international flights this winter, the need for an airport of international status is being increasingly felt. According to the latest proposal being prepared by the Agra administration, the airport will require at least 1,700 acres of land for the construction of a minimum of two intersecting air strips and a terminal building of international standards having enough room to accommodate transit lounges, duty-free shops, customs houses, and passenger traffic. The proposed Agra international airport will be independent of the control of the Indian Air Force that presently governs entries and exits to the domestic airport located deep inside the Agra Air Force base, sharing air strips with the Air Force. The UP chief minister had announced the government’s plans to construct an international airport in Agra. Soon afterwards, Agra District Magistrate Sanjay Prasad had sent a detailed report highlightin

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It is often seen that any new satellite channel begins claiming its "record-breaking popularity" among the masses shortly after its launch, based on the Television Rating Points (TRPs) amassed by them through sample surveys among the viewers of some metropolitan cities. But if the data made available by the UP Entertainment Tax Department is to be believed, the satellite channels are still a long way from becoming the voice of the masses as these channels have virtually no viewership in Uttar Pradesh and most of the population still relies on the good old "Doordarshan" for their daily dose of entertainment. According to the official figures of the State's Entertainment Tax Department, Uttar Pradesh, with its gigantic population of 17 crore people, has a surprisingly low number of only 9 lakh cable television connections, amounting to nearly 0.05 percent of the State's population. Even Agra, despite being in close v

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/Agra. After taking the market with a storm with its diesel-based "Indica" cars, Tata Motors launched the petrol variant of Indica in Agra recently. The new car, named Indica V2 "Xeta" was unveiled at Siyaram Motors, the local dealership of Tata Motors by Sunil Agarwal, director, Siyaram Motors. On this occasion, Mr. Agarwal said that compared to other similar cars in the market, the new Indica V2 Xeta offered the best fuel economy and power ratio for a petrol car with an engine of 1396 cc. He said that the car had been specifically designed to cater to both the urban as well as the rural driving conditions, which made it ideal for the quality of roads that Agra and its surrounding towns had to offer and at a cost between 2.77 to 3.72 lacs, it also gave the customers the advantage of value for money.

The recent Beta release of Google Desktop 3.0 was downloaded and installed by a large number of PC users mostly unaware that the new software lays you bare to snoopy eyes and hackers, says Vijay Upadhyay Got a neat stash of images or secret love-letters hidden somewhere in your computer away from the eyes of your wife and the rest of the world? Then take care before you install Google's new desktop search software. After peering in your homes through its satellite imagery-based software, Google Earth that "de-classified" the classified satellite images of military installations around the world, is all set to peer into your computers connected to the internet. This new beta release of Google's software could pull these files out of your systems and place them on display, bang on your desktop or in the worst scenario, make them available for search to millions of hackers across the internet, if you install the software with all its default options enabled. Unless you

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. At a time when fake currency is in ample circulation in the market, probably the most interesting use of this currency was seen in Agra, when a local youth used a fake bank note to finance his sexual urge but was caught before he could succeed in his plan. Interrogation of the youth and his associates has revealed that this gang had been circulating fake currency in the local flesh market since a long time but it was only due to a sharp-minded prostitute, that this gang was finally brought to the book. According to Suresh Panwar, in-charge, Chhatta police station, Mohd Yusuf, a resident of Firozabad district, was a regular visitor of the local brothels in Kashmiri Bazar and for the past several weeks, he had been utilising the services of the prostitutes using a steady supply of fake currency from Nepal to finance his brothel trips. He said that the local shopkeepers in the area had been complaining since a long time about the high turn-up ra

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. In yet another twist in former Miss Agra Kamna Chowdhary's tale, the girl will now be living in a women's home inside the high-security Tihar Jail till the next hearing of her case by the Supreme Court. Talking to The Pioneer , Pt Parmanand Katara, the counsel for Kamna's father in the Supreme Court, said that an apex court bench, headed by Justice KG Balakrishnan and Justice Navlekar, has ruled that Kamna was not in the right frame of mind to record an uninfluenced statement and it was prudent to keep her in seclusion from both her so-called husband and her father to help her regain her mental balance. According to Mr Katara, the Court had ruled that Kamna shall be kept in the Nirmal Chhaya Women's Home inside Tihar Jail for a week and then she shall be again presented before the Court on February 24 for recording her statement. Mr Katara said during her stay in the women's home, neither her father nor her so-called husband He

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. With a number of complaints being lodged against the Agra Police for indiscriminately "flushing away" unidentified dead bodies over the past two years, the town's police force has come under the National Human Rights Commission's (NHRC) scanner, which has now served notices to the State police inquiring about the procedure followed by it for the identification of dead bodies. In an inquiry initiated by the NHRC, taking cognizance of a story "Agra police does a quickie with dead bodies", published by The Pioneer on 13th October 2005, the Commission has asked the local police officials to file a detailed report on the number of unidentified dead bodies discovered in the town over the past one year and the efforts made by it to identify these bodies. Notably, in the past two years, over 700 unidentified dead bodies were discovered in Agra that were cremated without identification

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Security agencies at the Taj Mahal were again faced embarrassment when a Korean tourist group staged a song and dance show inside the monument on Wednesday. It was even recorded on a video. Reacting late, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), in-charge of the monument's security, managed to confiscate the video camera of the tourists and the tape was destroyed before allowing the tourists to leave the monument premises. According to the CISF Deputy Commandant V. Khamo Singh, a group of about 45 Korean tourists entered the Taj Mahal at about 8.00 am. This group, being part of a cultural troupe of Korea visiting the town, was allowed to enter the monument after a perfunctory security check. The tourists proceeded towards the central tank of the monument and assembled on the tank in the form of a choir and began a song and dance sequence on the platform, that was being filmed by one of the tourists from the group, said the Deputy Com

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Advertisers relying on the TRP data of the channels could be in for a surprise. According to the latest data made available by the Uttar Pradesh Entertainment Tax Department, of Uttar Pradesh’s 170 million people, only 900,000 households have cable television connections. This constitutes barely 0.05 per cent of the state’s population. Talking to Business Standard, Mohan Swaroop, Commissioner, Entertainment Tax, UP said that the cable connection data available with the entertainment tax department had been recently revised after extensive door-to-door surveys conducted by the department in all 70 districts of the state, instead of mere sampling of data that was the usual practice elsewhere. He said in Agra, there were only two cable networks functioning currently over a population of about 27 lakh people, with barely 26,000 households connected to cable television that was a very minuscule number, considering that the town was qu

Vishal Sharma Agra. Close on the heels of the reprimand by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav over the slow-paced electrification of Agra villages, the Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Energy has hit another roadblock in its power distribution projects in Noida, Ghaziabad and Meerut. The UP Electricity Regulatory Commission has asked Reliance Energy to produce a no-objection certificate from the ministry of defence within a month to get a licence to operate a parallel power distribution network in these cities. Not that there is any opposition on principle. UP Electricity Regulatory Commission Chairman Vijay Kumar emphasised that for effective reforms in the power sector, consumers must have choice of power distribution companies. Talking to mediapersons in Agra after holding a meeting with Agra industrialists on Tuesday, Kumar said at the moment, the UP Power Corporation Ltd. was the running a monopoly in the state. As a result, it was imposing unreasonable r

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Justice Malviya commission, investigating the incident of the police lathicharge on lawyers in the Agra District Court, has served a showcause notice to former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh. Asked to file a counter-affidavit within three weeks in reply to the notice, Mr Singh also has also been asked to appear before the commission fixing his liability as the Chief Minister of the State during the incident. Notably, a large contingent of policemen had charged on a group of lawyers staging a demonstration in front of the Agra district court and had even entered the court premises pursuing the lawyers to their chambers and courtrooms. This incident had resulted in the total shutdown of the legal machinery in the State for several weeks and the State Government, headed by Rajnath Singh as the Chief Minister, had to form a commission headed by Justice Giridhar Malviya to investigate the

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. At a time when white cement is finding it hard to find a niche in the urban market, JK White Cement Works 151—one of the two leading white cement manufacturers in the country— has taken up the daunting task of exploring the rural segment. The company held a demonstration of the various uses of white cement, wall putty and water proof cement in the rural households in Lucknow during the Lucknow Agri Expo held from 11-14 February, that had been designed specially to draw the interest of the rural consumers who flocked the Ambedkar Park during the 5-day Expo. Talking to Business Standard later, Benoy Kumar Dutta, manager (application and development), JK White Cement Works said the rural consumer was the hardest to satisfy as they required the maximum return for the money they invested in any new product and through this Expo, the company targeted to increase the use of white cement among the rural consumers. He said JK White Cement was the only white cemen

Vishal Sharma Delhi/Agra. The drought for sponsors for this year’s Taj Mahotsava has finally come to an end only a week before its inaugural, as top Delhi-based property developers have come to the rescue of this Agra festival. According to the Agra Divisional Commissioner Ashok Kumar, this year Agra was celebrating the 15th Taj Mahotsava and for the first time, the festival was being participated by 42 state emporiums apart from the handicraft artisans all around the country but it was also the first time that corporate sponsors had not been forthcoming to sponsor the events in this festival. Talking to the mediapersons on Tuesday at the hotel Taj Khema, Kumar said the lack of sponsors could have seriously affected the festival’s ability to attract tourists and locals through mega-shows that had become customary for the festival in the past decade. He said to tide over the low number of sponsors for the festival, the Agra Development Corporation and Agra District Magistrate had

Govt cracks down on slow progress in rural electrification projects Vishal Sharma Delhi/Agra. Concerned over the slow progress of rural electrification in the state under the Accelerated Rural Electrification Programme (AREP), Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has fixed June 30 as the deadline for the completion of these projects by private sector companies. Even major players in the power industry, like Reliance Energy and IVRCL, have failed to achieve the electrification target. This has forced the state power corporation to issue an ultimatum last week, warning these companies that the contracts would be awrded to other players if they fail to complete the electrification before the deadline. According to sources in the corporation office, Reliance Energy Ltd, which had successfully bagged the Rs 84.35 crore contract to electrify more than 600 villages of four districts of Agra division including Agra, Aligarh, Hathras and Mathura, has so far been unable

Vijay Upadhyay Etah. An 18-year-old church in village Bhojpur in Etah district was finally transformed into a temple by Hindu activists and 300 dalit Christians given "Yagyopaveet". According to sources in the Hindu Jagran Vibhag (HJV), despite regular re-conversions by Hindu organisations in rural India, the number of Christian convertees is growing, especially in the rural parts of western Uttar Pradesh. Rajshwar Singh, provincial head, HJV, said his outfit had set up a team of 600 Hindu activists to investigate into the reasons for the growing number of dalit Christians in the region. This team recently submitted a report that pointed out the existence of a number of churches without a single Christian around. Accordingly, he said, a campaign was designed by Hindu organisations to wipe out these churches neutralise their effect, some of which came up 15-20 years ago. He said the presence of these churches was having a serious impact on the dalit commun

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. When trouble came calling for Agra MP and film star Raj Babbar over his vitriolic statements against Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh, it is his long-forgotten theatrical stint that has come to his rescue. Apart from the social and cultural organisations of his two-time parliamentary constituency, Mr Babbar is now getting an open support from his friends in the theatre, who have decided to hold Pol Khol street plays throughout the State, in support of Mr Babbar and in an effort "to reveal the true nature of Mr Mulayam Singh's regime under the influence of Mr Amar Singh". According to some artists belonging to the "Ahvan" theatre group of the town, the theatre artists shall roam all over the State, artfully criticising the high-handed manner in which Mr Mulayam Singh had dealt with Mr Babbar's criticism of Mr Amar Singh, without going into the depth of the issue. A meeting of the theatre artists of the city was held

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. When Agra senior superintendent of police Rajiv Krishna went on a week's holiday, hardly did he know that his computer operator would play his duplicate in his absence and effect transfers of policemen by scanning his signatures on to the transfer orders. However, as soon as Mr Krishna returned, the computer operator and eight policemen have been suspended from duty and a departmental probe ordered into all recent inter-station and inter-post transfers in the district within the past year. Talking to The Pioneer, SSP Krishna said when he went off on a week's vacation a few days ago, Darshanlal, his computer operator in collusion with seven constables manning the beat in police stations in rural areas of the district, forged his signatures with the help of a computer and scanner and prepared the transfer orders of these constables to police posts in the city. He said these transfer orders were directly sent to the various desired police posts b

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Latino singer Ricky Martin's much-awaited Agra concert will have to wait. The concert was scheduled for March 25 behind the Taj Mahal. Authorities have decided to wait for some time, as they feel the noise may cause damage to the environment around the Taj Mahal. The concert had already been postponed for a month for want of permission. The show managers have been given an option to hold the concert on a hillock in the premises of Hotel Taj Khema, which is located 500 meters outside the circle of restriction of the Taj. The concert, organised by the Eighth Wonder of the World Organisation and Media Moghul Louis J pearlman, for global awareness for children affected by HIV/AIDS. The concert will help raising funds for UNICEF and partners through arts and entertainment, which are to be held in ten different exotic locations in the world, semi-annually till 2010. The location behind the Taj Mahal had been planned as one of the venues. However, autho

Vishal Sharma State govt mulls Rs 8 crore Agra circuit project to cash in on natural diversity Agra. The Taj Mahal is once again in the centre of yet another tourism development project devised by the Uttar Pradesh government. This time, heritage tourism has been replaced by “eco-tourism”, with the state government planning an “Agra Circuit Project” around the Taj at Rs 8 crore to cash in on the natural diversity of the forests around Agra. In a project sent to the Union government for approval, the state government has planned to utilise the forest department’s 54 hectares lying unutilised in the Keetham birds’ sanctuary to develop a tourist hotspot that shall be linked with the Agra-Delhi national highway. According to K K Singh, director, social forestry, Chambal Wildlife Project, after the project was implemented, the Keetham lake will form a gateway for tourists to enter Agra willing to taste the thrill of water sports like boating, rafting, etc. in the Yamuna ri

Vishal Sharma Agra. The footwear industry of Agra could finally come around now, with the Indian Council for Leather Exports establishing an Indian leather desk in Milan, Italy, to help the footwear industry get the help of Italian technology in acquiring world-class footwear components. This will give a chance to export Indian shoes to Italy. According to the CLE sources, the India Leather Desk, established by the CLE on 1st January this year in consultation with the Embassy of India, Rome and the Consulate General of Italy, Milan, shall promote joint ventures in India besides giving an impetus to India’s leather product export to Italy, thereby improving Indo-Italian business relations in the Leather sector. On Monday, Mario Pucci, head of the India Leather Desk, held a meeting with the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber in Agra to discuss the various ways in which the Indo-Italian cooperation could be increased in the footwear industry. He said that desp

Vishal Sharma Agra. The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to give tax relief to the petha units of Agra, after almost a couple of years of discussion on the issue. A cabinet meeting will be convened soon by UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to exempt the Agra delicacy from trade tax. Around 700 cottage units in Agra make pethas and the turnover from these units comes out to over Rs 600 crore, which is a significant source of revenue for the state government. Petha units have resented this tax, terming it “unjust”, and its removal has been a long-standing demand. It was justified on the grounds that they were cottage units eligible for tax exemption. Talking to Business Standard, Ravi Prakash Agarwal, Vice-President, All India Udyog Vyapar Pratinidhi Mandal said that a delegation of the “Vyapar Mandal” and the Petha Association of Agra had met the UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and presented the case of the tax on “Petha” before the chief mini

VIJAY UPADHYAY AGRA. Essaying the role of a photo-journalist cost a wedding photographer his life in Agra last week when he shot the footage of some history-sheeter criminals dancing in a wedding procession. The criminals murdered him the same night in a bid to retrieve the incriminating video. This was the police's conclusion five days after the murder; now the groom's family is being interrogated for the names of the criminals who had participated in the wedding. According to Deputy Superintendent of Police, Etmadpur, MM Beg, Sunil Sharma, a resident of Fulatti Bazar area of Agra was murdered on Thursday at Sunil Singh's wedding. His video-camera was taken away by the unknown criminals. Mr Beg said upon interrogation of the groom's family which had been named by Sharma's family, the police realised that the deceased photographer met this fate after he shot a footage of some hard-core criminals, including a notorious history-sheeter of Etmadpur, op

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Controversy over three-time Samajwadi Party MP Raj Babbar's open accusations against SP supremo Mulayam Singh's "near and dear" Amar Singh appears nowhere near dying down with Agra's "hero" now being labelled as a "villain" by the party rank and file. Although Mr Babbar enjoys popular support among party workers and local leaders in Agra, the SP supremo's strong stance against him is now alienating the actor-turned-politician from his own party. Party leaders who would otherwise hover around Mr Babbar are now unwilling to speak on the issue, fearing party action. However, despite the Samajwadi Party hitting out at Mr Babbar hard for his alleged indiscipline, the people of Agra are coming out in favour of their "celebrity" MP, attributing developmental plans in Agra worth millions to Mr Babbar. Ashok Goyal, chairman of the Kshetra Bajaja Committee, a local NGO says the people of Agra would

Firm to produce a new range of pipes for carrying organic chemicals Vishal Sharma Agra. Atul Group of Industries, an ISO 9001:2000 certified group of Agra based companies has introduced an entire range of poly propylene random copolymer-based plumbing pipes, in technical collaboration with Reliance Industries. Talking to the media persons on this occasion, Sanjeev Mittal, managing director, Atul Group of Industries, said the group's production included diesel gensets, diesel engiens, PVC, HDPE and Asbestos pipes, besides water storage tanks. The group covers 70 per cent of Agra's total storage tank market. About PPRc pipes, Mittal said they were a new range of products in India and only a select few companies were manufacturing such pipes in the entire country. So far, the market share of Polypropylene pipes in the country have been restricted to merely 2.4 per cent of the total volume of pipes used for plumbing and other applications, with the entire m

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Usually, the month of February is considered the best time for bird watching in the Northern parts of the country with migratory birds from all around the globe preparing for their journey back home, with their newborns. For the connoisseurs of this hobby, three bird sanctuaries around Agra - Keetham, Ghana and Patna Bird sanctuaries offer the ultimate attraction of watching migratory birds arriving from Central Asia, Eastern Europe and as far as the Arctic circle. But this year, while these birds are still nesting in Ghana and Keetham sanctuaries, they have bid an early farewell to the Patna Bird sanctuary, located near Jalesar about 50 km. away from Agra, giving this lake a ghostly appearance without the ceaseless chattering of the birds. According to local residents, the birds had arrived very late in this bird sanctuary this year and they had not appeared to be interested in nesting in this region but they had experienced such cases of late arriv

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Film star and Samajwadi Party (SP) MP from Agra Raj Babbar feels that the party is close to its doom. He said that if the SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav did not do away with the "villainous company" he has been keeping, destruction of the party is imminent. Commenting indirectly on industrialist and SP leader Amar Singh, Mr Babbar said that the party has been invaded by people whose ideologies do not match the "Samajwadi" ideology. This invasion has also deviated the party leadership's focus from key issues that had been of prime importance to the party, he added. Mr Babbar has harboured resentment against the virtual take-over of SP by Mr Amar Singh for more than two years. He had also avoided attending the UP Chief Minister's public meetings and other functions held in Agra. However, on Thursday, when Mr Babbar stood on the same platform with the SP supremo's brother and SP parliamentary party leader Ram Gopa

Vijay Upadhayay Etah. Unable to satisfy his wife sexually, a man was set on fire by his wife in Etah, though the burning husband also gripped his wife before he collapsed. They are struggling for their lives in a hospital in Aligarh. The residents of Gangagarh, a village in the Soron area of Etah, were pulled out of their afternoon slumber recently when they heard the dreadful screams of Munesh Yadav, coming from his house. Arriving hurriedly at his door, the villagers found both Munesh and his wife Savita lying in the courtyard, badly burnt and on death throes. The couple was rushed to a local hospital where Mr Yadav, who had received almost 80 per cent burn injuries, revealed that his wife set him afire. He said Savita overpowered him in his sleep and tied his hands and feet with ropes, then set him on fire by pouring kerosene. Mr Yadav said that he married Savita in 2002 and since then they had been living in the village. Soon after the wedding, he realised he

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. A dancing sloth bear may pose as a charming sight for tourists travelling towards Fatehpur Sikri, but not for the UP wildlife authority, which has cleared the city roads of this interesting spectacle. After the "bear-dancing" licences of the Agra's Kalandar tribe were cancelled by the Supreme Court, the State Forest department has tightened its noose on this tribe to free over 400 sloth bears that are currently in the captivity of the Kalandars in UP. Out of these, the authoritys managed to get 36 sloth bears rescued in three days and now the search is on for the remaining four bears that have suddenly disappeared along with their "Kalandars". The authorities suspect that the bears could have been taken to Rajasthan, around 50 kms away from Agra. According to District Forest Officer SP Yadav, ever since the Supreme Court declared bear-dancing illegal and the licences of the Kalandars were revoked, the Forest department had been negotiating w

Vishal Sharma Agra. Most of us tend to discard our computers every 2-3 years, to replace it with a faster, better machine, but while the computer industry is making good business by cashing in on this tendency of computer users, there is also a group of businessmen in Agra who have literally "struck gold" by salvaging these "obsolete" PCs. The IT revolution in India that placed a computer in every middle-class household of the country has also served to transform the scrap salvage business of Agra and currently, at least 30 scrap dealers of this town have turned into traders of only obsolete computers and other electronic stuff, buying these computers straight from the internet by means of e-auctions and then hacking them down to their individual components. The Chhipitola area of Agra houses this town’s entire scrap market more than 500 scrap dealers that deal in anything from crude iron scrap to even broken down aircrafts and other military stuff