MP: RTI activist arrested for abetment after teacher burns himself alive over blackmail
Damoh: An RTI activist in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district, Jitendra, was arrested recently for allegedly harassing and blackmailing primary school teacher Rajesh Tripathi, which led Tripathi to burn himself alive in Hatta town on May 15. The middle-aged activist is accused of causing mental distress to Tripathi, prompting the tragic incident.
Since the arrest, more primary school teachers have come forward, filing complaints against the same RTI activist, as reported by The New Indian Express on Wednesday.
Jitendra had alleged that Tripathi secured his government job using a fake BEd degree. Police investigations revealed that the RTI activist was harassing and blackmailing Tripathi in the matter to regularly get money from him. “After forcing Tripathi to pay him around Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, Jitendra had recently started demanding that the school teacher pay him half of his salary every month,” TNIE quoted Damoh district police superintendent Shrutkirti Somwanshi as saying.
Burdened by over Rs 50 lakh in debts from bank loans and private money lenders for a house construction, and under constant pressure to pay Jitendra while facing threats of being fired from his job over the fake degree allegation, Tripathi took the extreme step to immolate self. He succumbed to his injuries while receiving treatment at the hospital.
Jitendra has been booked under BNS Sections for mentally harassing Tripathi and abetment of suicide.
Meanwhile, more than 20 government school teachers in Damoh district have been dismissed following a departmental investigation that revealed they had secured their positions using fraudulent degrees.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
