TWO HELD FOR KILLING CALF IN BIHAR VILLAGE
Two persons were arrested for animal cruelty and hurting public sentiments following protest by cow vigilantes, after a calf carcass was found on Sunday at Sahar block in Bhojpur district, 55 km west of Patna.
The arrested siblings — Kalam Qureshi and Fayaz Qureshi — confessed to killing the calf, police said. The carcass of the calf was found on the premises of the siblings’ house. The duo claimed to have killed the calf as it was sick for the last few days, Bhojpur SP Awakash Kumar told HT.
The recovery of the carcass sparked a furore as a mob gheraoed the siblings’ house at Sahar. With tension mounting, the siblings fled from their house, only to be arrested by the police a couple of hours later from a location near the banks of the Sone river, close to their house.
Eyewitnesses said a person, climbing a palm tree in the adjacent compound, spotted the carcass and informed the villagers. Soon a mob gathered in the area. The angry mob, which was demanding the duo’s arrest, also blocked the Ara-Arwal road for close to an hour .
Though the mob did not resort to vandalism, the crowd build-up prompted the district administration to seek reinforcement from as a precautionary measure. The SP claimed that the situation was peaceful and under control.
PRASHANT RANJAN
Data on deaths of children compiled by the Uttar Pradesh government show a sharp drop in casualty figures in the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur this year compared to those in the last three years.
According to the data compiled by the UP health department, made available to PTI, 1,317 children had died in the state-run facility so far this year.
The number of deaths stood at 5,850 in 2014, 6,917 in 2015 and 6,121 in 2016, the department data said.
The data showed the average daily deaths translating to 16 in 2014, 19 in 2015 and 17 in 2016 -- as against 5.3 a day till August this year. “This (death figure) is much lower than that in the previous years,” health minister Sidharth Nath Singh said.
Congress spokesperson Ashok Singh had charged the Uttar Pradesh government with failing to check the deaths in the BRD medical college.
“The toll is alarmingly high and the government has failed to check the casualties,” he had said.
Countering him, the health minister said “good work” was being done by the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.
“The reason (for the fall in death figures) is the good work done in the last five months. We have strengthened encephalitis treatment centres and taken various effective measures to check the dreaded disease so that more patients are treated at community health centre levels and do not just rush to the BRD medical college,” Singh told PTI.