Like Bofors, set up JPC for Rafale deal: Digvijaya Singh to PM Modi
Indore, Jul 6: Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Tuesday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale fighter jet deal, like the one which scrutinized the Bofors deal in the 1980s.
The Rajya Sabha member alleged large-scale corruption in the form of payment of commission in the Rafale deal.
"France has started a probe in the Rafale case, but in India, where commission was paid, no inquiry is being conducted. If one compares the Rafale deal with the Bofors case, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had, on his own, constituted a JPC," Singh said.
"If Modi has courage, he should constitute a JPC. We have a lot of questions and will get opportunity to raise them," the Congress leader added.
Nobody could prove a single charge against Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case, he said.
The Bofors scandal related to alleged payment of kickbacks in a deal to purchase howitzer guns from the Swedish manufacturer Bofors AB.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently demanded a JPC probe into alleged corruption in the fighter jet deal.
A French judge has been appointed to lead a "highly sensitive" judicial probe into suspected "corruption" and "favouritism" in the Rs 59,000 crore Rafale deal with India, French investigative website Mediapart reported last week.
Singh, meanwhile, also hit out at the Centre over the rise in fuel prices, claiming it impacted the middle class severely at a time when the tax collection from industrialists and large corporate houses has gone down.
Modi is someone who takes decisions in haste and thinks later, he said, citing examples such as the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonetization and withdrawal of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
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Over 17,000 people went missing in Delhi in 2024: NCRB
New Delhi (PTI): A total of 23,058 people, comprising 9,482 men and 13,576 women, were reported missing in Delhi in 2024, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Of the total, 5,491 were children below the age of 18 — 1,571 boys, 3,920 girls.
The city recorded 17,567 fresh adult missing persons cases in 2024, comprising 7,911 men and 9,656 women.
According to the NCRB data, released on Wednesday, 14,637 men, 18,238 women and six transgender persons were still missing from previous years.
At the latest count, in 2024, Delhi had a total of 55,939 missing persons cases — 24,119 men, 31,814 women and six transgender persons.
In 2024, police traced or collected 28,392 missing persons, including 12,182 men, 16,208 women and two transgender persons.
Only half of the men and half of the women who went missing could be traced.
A total of 27,547 missing persons – 11,937 men, 15,606 women, four transgender persons — were yet to be untraced by the end of the year, the data showed.
The data also revealed that 5,352 children from previous years remained untraced at the beginning of 2024.
The number of still missing boys was 1,621, and the number of missing girls was 3,729. Two transgender children were yet to be found.
After adding the pending cases from previous years, the total number of missing children cases handled in 2024 rose to 10,843.
The police traced or recovered 6,762 missing children — 2,030 boys, 4,732 girls.
The recovery rate stood at 63.6 per cent for boys and 61.9 per cent for girls, while no transgender child was traced.
By the end of 2024, a total of 4,081 children remained untraced, 1,162 of them boys, 2,917 girls, and two transgender children.
