NJ mom charged with murder in son’s beating death

A New Jersey woman has been charged in the fatal beating of her 21-month-old son.

Tia Welles, a 23-year-old Willingboro resident, was being held in the county jail on $750,000 cash bail after being arrested Thursday morning on a murder charge.

Prosecutors say Collins Bulluck Jr. was found unresponsive in Welles’ home on Sept. 10 and died the next day at Cooper University Medical Center in Camden. An autopsy determined that the child was beaten to death, but further details were not disclosed.

A prosecutor’s office spokesman did not immediately return a telephone message asking if Welles had retained a lawyer. She is scheduled for a first court appearance on Monday.

India outrage over girl molestation sentence

Outrage is growing in India over a six-month jail sentence handed out to a former senior police officer convicted for molesting a 14-year-old girl.

Ruchika Girhotra complained in 1990 that she was assaulted by SPS Rathore.

After Mr Rathore used his influence to harass the Girhotra family, Ruchika committed suicide three years later.

Earlier this week, a court found Mr Rathore guilty, but Ruchika’s family and activists say he has got away with a “very light punishment”.

Mr Rathore sentenced in jail for six months and ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 rupees ($20).

He is currently on bail and has said he would appeal against the order.

‘Living in fear’

“This six-month punishment is not enough, it has hurt us, what kind of justice is this?” Ruchika’s father Subhas Chander Girhotra asked reporters in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh on Thursday.

“We want exemplary punishment for him so that Indian children can be safe in future. My daughter is dead, but at least no other girl should meet the same fate,” he said, sobbing.

“All these years, we have stayed underground due to harassment. We would got knocks in the middle of the night. He was the director general of police – who could we turn to for help?

“We are still living in fear.”

Television footage, showing a laughing and unrepentant Mr Rathore following the court order, has angered many civil rights groups.

Campaigners say he should be tried for “abetment of suicide” which carries a much longer jail sentence.

Analysts say Ruchika’s case is a classic example of misuse of official power by a police officer who used his influence and contacts to escape punishment for nearly two decades for his crime.

Ruchika was a budding tennis player when she was assaulted by Mr Rathore, a senior police officer and president of Haryana state Lawn Tennis Association.

After her family lodged a complaint with the Haryana chief minister, the state police chief RR Singh was asked to investigate the case.

In his report, Mr Singh said there was credible evidence in the allegations and ordered the police to file a case against Mr Rathore.

This was just the beginning of nightmares for Girhotra family as Mr Rathore used his influence to harass them.

She was thrown out of school for “late fee payment” and her 14-year-old brother Ashu was falsely charged with theft several times until the Punjab and Haryana high court intervened and ordered an end to his harassment.

Unable to deal with the trauma, Ruchika committed suicide in December 1993 and her family went into hiding.

In 1997, the case was handed over to the federal police, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which concluded Mr Rathore was guilty and formally pressed charges in court in 2000.

In the meantime, Mr Rathore was promoted to the head of Haryana police.

In a case that took 19 years to reach a conclusion, Ruchika’s family and friends say they are disappointed by the verdict and will continue campaigning to get justice.

A candle-lit march will be held in Delhi on Thursday in a bid to mobilise support for their campaign.

Aradhana’s father, Anand Prakash, says, “We will see to it that justice is done.”

Baby-swapping mothers held at Chennai hospital

CHENNAI: In a curious case of mutual consent, two women at a government maternity hospital in Egmore tried to swap their newborn babies, but got caught in the act. One of them, who already had two daughters, wanted a male 

child, while the other, who had a son, wanted a girl. They had struck a deal to swap infants. But while walking out with the infant, one of the women was stopped by an ambulance driver. On police interrogation, both women confessed they had planned the whole thing.

S Thangam (34), a native of Alandur, was rushing out of the hospital with a baby boy at 7 am on Friday when ambulance driver Muthalagan stopped her on suspicion and reported her to the duty nurse. Asked for an exit pass with details of her discharge, Thangam fumbled. Around the same time, the staff heard another woman from the post-operative ward screaming that her newborn boy was missing.

Thangam was handed over to the police. The mother of the newborn boy, B Ammu (30), a native of Thiruvallur, was also summoned. On questioning, Ammu confessed that the exchange was carried out with mutual consent and that she had raised an alarm to avoid blame after learning that hospital authorities had busted their plan.

Thangam told cops that after raising two girls, she longed for a boy, and was depressed to find that her newborn too was a girl.

IIM-Indore professor found murdered on campus

INDORE: A professor of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Indore was found murdered at her residence in the campus here early Friday, police  said.

“Amrita Panchauli, 32, was found lying in a pool of blood at her residence in the institute campus. She appears to have been stabbed with a knife or some sharp-edged weapon,” an official at the Indore police control room said.

The campus has been sealed and heavy police force deployed.

Amrita’s neighbours informed the police in the morning when they saw that the doors of her house had not been opened till 8am. The professor used to usually leave the house early in the morning for work.

She was last seen at 8.30pm ON Thursday by a neighbour.

Amrita, who belonged to Udaipur in Rajasthan, had been working at IIM-Indore for one and a half years.

Baby rescued from kidnapper nurse in Puducherry

CHENNAI: Four days after she was kidnapped by a nurse, one-and-a-half year old Amsalakshmi was rescued by the Chennai police from Puducherry bus terminus on Saturday night. Thenmalar, the 25-year-old nurse, told the police that she took away the baby to blackmail Amsalakshmi’s father Kudiyarasu (34) into marrying her. Police arrested Thenmalar and a couple who had sheltered her in Perambur.

The baby, which went missing from her house in MGR Nagar on Wednesday, was found to be healthy and unharmed. On questioning, Thenmalar told police that she was having a relationship with Kudiyarasu for the last seven months and she wanted to get married to him though he was already married. Police had received information that Thenmalar and the child were in a house in Perambur on Friday, but minutes before a team reached the house, she slipped away with the child.

“Thenmalar’s friend Priya, a software engineer, and her partner Manikandan were hiding her in their house in Perambur. We have taken the couple also into custody. We traced Thenmalar to Puducherry, where she had gone to take the help of another friend. A police team with the photographs of the nurse and the child spotted them at the Puducherry bus terminus and brought them to Chennai,” T Nagar deputy commissioner of police G Sampath Kumar told TOI.

It has now turned out that Thenmalar had disappeared with the baby for two days three months ago, but the parents did not prefer a complaint then. Thenmalar, a resident of Ayanavaram, used to visit Kudiyarasu’s house and take care of Amsalakshmi when her mother Vani Sree (25), a call centre employee, would be away at work. According to Thenmalar, she has been having an affair with Kudiyarasu, a supervisor with the electrical department of HCL, where she was working with a medical team. She said she was initially not aware that Kudiyarasu was married and fell in love with him. She claimed that he agreed to take her as his second wife after she took away the baby three months ago, but he did not keep his word.

On Wednesday, when Kudiyarasu and his wife were away, Thenmalar who was to take care of Amsalakshmi, disappeared with the baby on her two-wheeler. Inquiries revealed that Thenmalar, a native of Kancheepuram, came to Ayanavaram a few years ago and stayed in a working women’s hostel. She got a job in a private hospital, where she met Manikandan when he was taking care of his ailing father, and later his girlfriend Priya, who was working with HCL. Thenmalar got a job in HCL through Priya and there she met Kudiyarasu.

Thenmalar, Priya and Manikandan were remanded in judicial custody after being produced before a magistrate court on Sunday.

Boy steals Rs 8 lakh from dad, buys car in driver’s name

CHENNAI: Gone are the days when children used to pocket coins from their father’s wallets to buy candies. With changing times and aspirations, as  well as peer pressure, the amounts stealthily pocketed are getting larger and, of course, candies are no longer what children want.

Recently, a rich businessman’s son, a plus-one student, stole Rs 8 lakh from his home in Anna Nagar and purchased a car in the name of his father’s driver. It was the driver who finally blurted out the truth, and the family ended up with egg on its face.

The businessman, who kept large amounts of money at home, found Rs 8 lakh missing from the locker. There was no sign of a burglary, but he preferred a police complaint.

Investigations revealed that the driver had purchased a new car, and he was taken into custody. When police grilled him, he revealed the truth — his employer’s son had stolen the money to purchase the car, which was registered in the driver’s name. The shocked businessman then requested the police to drop the case.

Sources told  that the boy had stolen the money a few weeks ago, but his parents learnt about it only last week. “They seemed to have kept a lot of cash at home. The boy took the money to purchase a Swift Dzire car. He used the vehicle to go partying with his friends and for long drives. He would park the car by the roadside to prevent his parents from noticing it,” a police official said.

“When we questioned the boy, he said many of his classmates drove posh cars and that they all had girlfriends. It was to attract female attention that he stole the money to purchase the car. Since he was not old enough to get a driving licence, he knew his parents would not get him a car. So, he took the easy way out,” the official added.

 

Cops: N.C. woman lay dead in bed for 8 months

Caretakers visited house daily but body was never reported

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The body of an elderly woman remained in her bed for up to eight months even though caretakers paid daily visits to the house and kept it tidy, authorities said Wednesday.

Sheriff’s deputies were investigating the suspicious death of Blanche Matilda Roth after the corpse was found in her suburban home in Wilmington, on the Atlantic coast, on Tuesday following a call to authorities.

New Hanover County Deputy Charles Smith said Roth likely died in May, before her 88th birthday in September. Her body was found after the caller, whose identity was being withheld by authorities, reported that an elderly woman in the home was unconscious and not breathing.

Smith said caretakers had been going in and out of the house on a quiet cul-de-sac on a daily basis. He would not specify if the caretakers were family members but said they were not nurses.

Failure to report a death is a felony in North Carolina.

Smith said the residence was very well-kept. He said police hadn’t received any calls requesting welfare checks on Roth.

Officials are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

“They were quiet and stayed to themselves all the time,” neighbor Ray Taylor, 72, said of the home’s residents.

Martin Pedersen, another neighbor, said he had no idea Roth had died. “You think they would have smelled it or something,” Pedersen said.

Pedersen said four other family members, a married couple and two sons, lived in the house and that a younger son went to school every day.

Pervert targets boys at restaurants

Cops suspect Delhi girl’s death an honour killing

A day after 21-year-old Neha Jindal, daughter of an assistant sub-inspector of police, was found dead with burn injuries, police said they suspected it to be a case of honour killing and were probing it from all angles.

Neha was found dead in a police quarter inside the Sarai Rohila police station Tuesday evening. The quarter is allotted to her mother Vimla, posted with the president’s security. Her father Shyam Jindal, who runs a grocery store, found her body.

“We are investigating the matter from all possible angles including honour killing and suicide. We are waiting for the post-mortem examination and then would launch investigations,” a police officer said.

Police said Neha reportedly had an affair with a boy and her parents were opposed to it.

Some half-burnt papers were also recovered near her body.

“We can’t say whether it is a suicide note. We have sent all these papers for forensic examination,” the officer said.

Neha’s family and friends claim that the deceased was afraid of fire and could not have set herself ablaze. They also alleged that it was a planned murder.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Sagar Preet Hooda said no case has been registered yet. “The body has been sent to the Sabzi-Mandi mortuary for postmortem — a case will be registered only after the report comes in.

There was no eyewitness,” he said.

An officer said a special team of four doctors from Lok Nayak Hospital will conduct the postmortem on Thursday.

Her father, Sunder Jindal, said he had left home at 6 pm on Tuesday to pick up his wife Vimla, a Delhi Police sub-inspector posted at Parliament Street, and Neha’s sister Bhavna left home for tuition classes half-an hour later.

“I returned home around 7 pm and went to the backyard to collect dry clothes from outside when I found something burning,” Jindal, who runs a business in Tri Nagar, North Delhi, said.

“I assumed it was a log and threw a bucketful of water to extinguish the fire.
“I looked closer and found it was my daughter’s body.”

According to the police, the upper torso was burnt. Charred pieces of paper were also found nearby, and the police are investigating whether it was a suicide note.

Neha’s brother, Amir Jindal, who works with a bank in Gurgaon, in fact, said his sisters were “targets (and) it is not the work of a single man”.

Trashing the suicide theory Neha’s friend Garima said, “She was afraid of fire. She could not have immolated herself. Whoever says she committed suicide is cooking the story up.”

Neha’s family also said her father had received threat calls from two different phone numbers in July and August, and two complaints were also forwarded to the police. While the police confirmed the calls, a senior police officer said they were not related to Neha’s death.

Four of Neha’s relatives are Delhi Police officer — her mother Vimla Jindal, is a sub-inspector at the Parliament Street police station. Her aunts, Meena and Nirmala are assistant sub-inspectors posted in West and Outer Delhi and her uncle, Shiv Charan is posted in the security wing of the Delhi Police.

Neha graduated from Laxmi Bai College this year.

Principal peeps into toilet, molests student

A school principal in Mumbai has been arrested for a strange habit – peeping into girls’ toilet. But things went too far with he molested a student. He has been arrested.

Mumbai principal walks into girls’ toilet, molests student

The principal of a school in Kurla in Mumbai, who allegedly molested a 11-year-old student, was arrested by the police Wednesday.

The girl, who is a standard V student of the Kartika High School in Kurla West, was allegedly sexually abused by the accused on Tuesday on the school premises, according to police. After the victim complained to her parents, they long with some political actvists stormed the school, nabbed the principal and banded him over to the police.

“We have registered a case f molestation against school principal Ravindra Nair. According to the girl’s complaint, Nair would walk into the girls’ toilet and sexually abuse the students,” said Senior Police inspector Krishna Choudhari of V B Nagar police station.

Parents of a few other students of the school, who had also assembled at the police station, also raised similar allegations against Nair. The victim has been sent for a medical check-up.

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