Two inmates playing 'vaanars' in Ram Leela flee Haridwar jail while 'searching for Sita'
Haridwar, Oct 12: Two dreaded criminals including a murder convict escaped from Haridwar district jail, officials said on Saturday.
Six jail personnel including the jailer were suspended with immediate effect for their negligence following the incident and a detailed inquiry has been ordered into it.
The incident took place on Friday night when a 'Ramleela' was being staged at the jail, they said.
Many of the cosplayers are convicts or undertrial prisoners serving time at the facility. On October 10, they were acting out a scene from Ramayana where the Hanuman-led army of monkeys searches for Sita, who is abducted by Ravana during her 14-year exile with Lord Rama and his younger brother, Lakshmana.
Two of these Vanaras headed out during the act, giving their unsuspecting audience the impression that they were on a mission to find the protagonist. However, in truth, the prisoners were executing their escape.
According to officials, Pankaj and Rajkumar escaped the premises using a ladder that was brought for construction purposes.
A search has been launched to nab the duo, the officials said.
Those suspended include Superintendent in Charge/Jailer Pyare Lal Arya, Deputy Jailer Kunwar Pal Singh Day Head Warder Premshankar Yadav, Head warder incharge Vijay Pal Singh, Badirakshak In Charge Construction Site Ompal Singh and Head Warder incharge gatekeeper Nilesh Kumar. They were suspended for negligence towards duty, officials said.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has given instructions for a detailed investigation of the incident after which further action will be taken.
The Deputy Inspector General of Prisons will investigate it and submit a report, officials in Dehradun said.
They said that Pankaj hailing from Roorkee in Haridwar was serving a life sentence for a murder while an undertrial prisoner, Rajkumar was from Gonda in Uttar Pradesh.
On Saturday, Senior Superintendent of Police Pramendra Singh Doval and District Magistrate Kamendra Singh visited the jail to conduct an inspection, they said.
A forensic team and a dog squad were also called on the spot to inspect the scene and collect clues, they added.
A Ramleela performance was underway at the Haridwar jail when two monkeys, sent out to search for Mata Sita, failed to return.
— Rishabh Rajput (@_RishabhRajput) October 12, 2024
Upon investigation, it was discovered that the two had escaped by leaping over the prison boundary.
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Global Hunger Index 2024 ranks India under ‘serious’ category
London, Oct 12: The Global Hunger Index (GHI), a tool used by international humanitarian agencies to measure and track hunger levels with GHI scores based on under-nourishment and child mortality indicators across 127 countries, has ranked India 105th, which places it under the “serious” category of the analysis.
The 2024 report, now in its 19th edition, is published this week by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide and German aid agency Welthungerhilfe to highlight that hunger levels will remain high in many of the world’s poorest countries for several decades in the absence of more progress in measures to tackle the issue.
India is among 42 countries that fall within the "serious" category, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan, with other South Asian neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka showing better GHI scores to be listed under the “moderate” category.
“With a score of 27.3 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index, India has a level of hunger that is serious,” reads the index entry.
India's GHI Score is based on the values of four component indicators: 13.7 per cent of the population is undernourished, 35.5 per cent of children under five are stunted with 18.7 per cent of them being wasted, and 2.9 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday, the report notes.
For the purpose of the index, undernourishment is defined as the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake, stunted as the share of children under age five who have low height for their age to reflect “chronic” undernutrition, wasting as the share of children under five who have low weight for their height due to “acute” undernutrition, and mortality refers to the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.
Based on the values of these four indicators, a GHI score is calculated for each country on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst.
Based on its analysis, the report concludes the chances of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 are looking very unlikely.
“Despite the international community’s repeated emphasis on the importance of the right to adequate food, there remains a troubling disparity between the standards established and the reality that in many parts of the world the right to food is being blatantly disregarded,” the report concludes.
Globally, around 733 million people face hunger each day due to a lack of access to a sufficient amount of food, while about 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Some of the African nations are on the extreme ends of the GHI spectrum under the "alarming" category, with wars in Gaza and Sudan being highlighted as having led to exceptional food crises.
Conflict and civil strife are also generating food crises elsewhere, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Mali and Syria, it added.
