Hoshiarpur LPG tanker fire: 4 more succumb to burns, toll rises to 7
Hoshiarpur (PTI): Four more people succumbed to burn injuries, with the death toll in the LPG tanker fire incident rising to seven, an official said on Sunday.
Hoshiarpur Deputy Commissioner Aashika Jain said Manjit Singh, 60, Vijay, 17, Jaswinder Kaur, 65, and Aradhna Verma, 30, all residents of Mandiala, died at a private hospital overnight.
Civil Surgeon Dr Pawan Kumar said the four, who had sustained more than 90 per cent burns, were on ventilator support.
On Friday, around 10 pm, an LPG tanker caught fire after colliding with a pickup vehicle near Mandiala Adda on the Hoshiarpur-Jalandhar Road.
The blaze spread rapidly, engulfing nearly 15 shops and at least four houses in the vicinity, police said.
Two people died in the immediate wake of the incident, while 21 others sustained injuries. One more succumbed to burns on Saturday.
According to the police FIR, the tanker was turning towards the Ram Nagar Dheha link road when it collided with the vegetable-laden pickup. Both vehicles caught fire.
Dr Pawan Kumar said that immediately after the incident, one person was brought dead to the Government Hospital, Hoshiarpur, while another succumbed at a private hospital.
The third died on the way to the Government Medical College, Amritsar.
On Saturday morning, hundreds of residents of Mandiala and adjoining villages blocked traffic on the Hoshiarpur-Jalandhar road for over three hours, demanding compensation and action against those responsible for the incident.
Deputy Commissioner Jain assured the protesters that the injured were being provided free treatment under the Punjab government's Farishta Scheme.
Political leaders cutting across party lines, including many Punjab ministers and MPs, have visited the injured at hospitals.
On Saturday, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann announced Rs 2 lakh each for the kin of the deceased and free medical treatment of the injured.
Punjab Governor and Administrator Union Territory Chandigarh Gulab Chand Kataria expressed their grief.
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2019 mud attack on engineer: Maharashtra court sentences BJP minister Nitesh Rane to one-month jail
Mumbai (PTI): A court in Sindhudurg on Monday convicted Maharashtra minister Nitesh Rane in a 2019 case of pouring mud on an NHAI engineer when he was in opposition, and sentenced him to one-month imprisonment, noting that lawmakers are not supposed to take the law into their hands.
Later, the court suspended Rane's sentence, allowing him time to appeal before a higher court, while acquitting 29 other accused in the case.
"Even though Rane's intention was to raise a voice against the poor quality of work and inconvenience faced by the people, he was not supposed to humiliate or insult a public servant in public," additional sessions court judge V S Deshmukh stated.
"If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the judge noted.
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Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".
Rane, a son of former Union minister Narayan Rane, was among 30 people charged under various offences, including rioting, assault to deter a public servant, and criminal conspiracy. He was in Congress when the incident occurred.
All the accused, including Nitesh Rane, were acquitted of these offences, as the court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims.
However, the court found Nitesh Rane guilty of an offence under section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace) and sentenced him to one month's jail.
Rane, then a Congress MLA, had called the Sub-Divisional Engineer of the National Highway Authority, Prakash Shedekar, to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.
According to the prosecution, Nitesh Rane and his followers, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, confronted the engineer. They poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public.
The court, after perusing the evidence on record, noted that the informant (victim) was holding a high post in the National Highway Authority.
"Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the court remarked.
The judge held that Rane compelling Shedekar to walk through the muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and provocation which will cause him to break the public peace.
