Murder, not suicide, behind deaths of 9 migrants in T’gana
HYDERABAD : Nine migrant workers who were found dead in a well on the outskirts of Telangana’s Warangal were drugged and killed by an acquaintance, state police said on Monday, rejecting a previous theory that the group had committed suicide.
The suspect allegedly killed the group in order to cover up another murder that he carried out in March, Warangal police commissioner V Ravinder said, identifying the accused as Sanjay Kumar Yadav from Bihar.
Yadav had allegedly earlier killed a relative of the latest victims, who recently grew suspicious of him and threatened to call the police.
“After ensuring that all of them were unconscious, Yadav dragged all the nine to the well one after the other and threw them into it between 12.30 am and 5 am on Thursday,” Ravinder said.
LUCKNOW/BHOPAL: For agriculture department so fut tar pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, dealing with swarms of locust is something new. Therefore, in addition to spraying pesticides, the local administrations have adopted unconventional--adndpotentially unproven -- methods such as sounding sirens, playing loud music and using drones to scare the insects.
Agriculture department officialsof the two states said that they have no records to show when the last locust attack took place in their states. “We have no record of the last major locust attack,” said sugarcane commissioner, Sanjay R Bhoosreddy, who is coordinating anti-locust activities in Uttar Pradesh.
Prayagraj district agriculture officer Ashwani Kumar Singh, said: “We have informed farmers that they can scare away locusts by beating tin drum, plates etc. Besides, they are also being advised to spray pesticides on their crops to protect them from locusts.”
Singh said that the police have been asked to blow sirens from their vehicles . “All village pradhans and farmers of Prayagraj have been alerted about the locust attacks and have been asked to inform district authorities if they spot a swarm through gram panchayat adhikaris and agriculture technical assistants who remain in touch with them locally so that appropriate steps can be taken,” he said.
The Agra district administration has deployed 204 tractors equipped with chemical sprays to keep the pests at bay. The Jhansi district administration has directed the fire brigades to remain on standby with chemicals and also to blow sirens to ward off the insects.
In Uttar Pradesh, locusts have damaged crops injh an si, la lit p ur and Hamirpur districts and 15 more districts such as Agra, Aligarh, Mathura, Firozabad and Etawah are under threat.
In Madhya Pradesh, principal secretary, agriculture Ajeet Kesari, said, “Our teams continue to track the swarms wherever they are going and spray chemical over them. However, their groups are smaller now -- say one or two ki lo metres in radius--unlike in the beginning when they were spread in the radius of 5 to 6 kilometres.”
Farmers in Hoshangabad, Ra is en, se ho re, sag ar, ch ha tap ur, Harda and several other districts too beat drums, tin cans, burst fire crackers and even arranged bone fires . “All possible ways are being adopted to keep locust away from crops. We have deployed police vehicles that blow sirens ,” said AK Nema, deputy director, agriculture, Sagar division.