FP The publishers permit sharing of the e-paper's pdf on WhatsApp and other social media platforms Vol. XLI No. 25 | INDORE | WEDNESDAY | JULY 3, 2024 | Pages 16 | ` 3 | Regd. No. Indore MP/ICD 216/2024-2026 | RNI No. 38281/83 FREE PRESS ESTD-1983 iii QUALITY @ VALUE www.freepressjournal.com Sports COPA 2024: US eliminated with 1-0 loss to Uruguay P.14 EDITIONS: INDORE UJJAIN PUNE BHOPAL NASHIK MUMBAI Money India’s macro sweet spot to extend into 2nd half of FY25 P.13 WORLD Thousands flee as Israel bombs southern Gaza Cinema One more FEATHER in their cap HATHRAS TRAGEDY | Devotees scrambled to leave the ‘satsang’ due to overcrowding and heat after the sermon concluded; 108 women among 116 crushed in mad rush Biswajeet Banerjee LUCKNOW A devastating stampede snuffed out the lives of more than 116 devotees, including 108 women and 7 children, at a religious gathering in Hathras district (UP). The tragedy occurred as the ‘devotees’scrambled to leave the venue which was swarming with people. The excessive heat and the overcrowding added to the impulse to rush out after a sermon by religious preacher Bhole Baba concluded. The incident has sparked widespread outrage and grief, with authorities launching an investigation into the causes of the stampede. The preacher is untraceable. There were heart-rending scenes at the district trauma centre. Victims, both unconscious and dead, were carted to the centre in ambulances, trucks and cars. A woman sat crying among five or six bodies in a truck, urging people to help her get the body of her daughter out of the vehicle. As the hours went by and the official fatalities jumped, the crowd outside the trauma centre and the mortuary swelled. 4Continued on | P6 Bhole Baba is not so bhole FP News Service HATHRAS Victims of the Hathras' stampede at a Trauma Centre at Sikandra Rao. HOW IT HAPPENED: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that after the event, when the preacher was coming down from the dais, a crowd of devotees suddenly swarmed towards him for his ‘spiritual’ touch. However, this is when the 'sevadars' stopped them and the situation veered out of control. Another version is that the stampede occurred when the sevadars stopped people from leaving the venue, so that the preacher and his retinue could leave first. fp Briefs NARAYANPUR CG: Five Naxals killed in encounter Five Naxalites were killed in an encounter with security personnel in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur district on Tuesday, police said. The gunfight took place in a forest under Kohkameta police station area in Abujhmad, a hilly forest area when a joint team of personnel from different security forces was out on an anti-Naxal operation, a senior police official said. BAHRAICH Two brothers killed after house wall collapses Two brothers lost their lives when the wall of a house collapsed due to heavy rains at a village in Payagpur area here, police on Tuesday said. Vishram (16) and Aman (10) were killed when the wall of a house collapsed at around 5 am in Parsoli Trikoli village, they said. Payagpur SHO Karunakar Pandey said the two bodies were taken out from the debris and sent for post-mortem. NEW DELHI Shed collapses at Delhi's five-star hotel A couple suffered minor injuries when a portion of a shed near a swimming pool at a five-star hotel in southwest Delhi collapsed and fell on them, police said on Tuesday. "A PCR call was received at around 8.56 pm (on Monday) in PS (police station) RK Puram about caving/falling of roof and injury to husband and wife, who were staying at Hyatt Regency," the police said in a statement. Bhole Baba – the selfstyled godman whose ‘satsang’ witnessed the stampede – claims to be a former employee of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Local residents, however, said he left his job in the state police 17 years ago to become a preacher. Suraj Pal, or Bhole Baba, as he is called by followers, hails from Bahadur Nagar in the Patiyali area of Kasganj district. According to a devotee, Bhole Baba had no religious mentor and soon after he took voluntary retirement, he had a 'vision;' since then he was engaged in spiritual pursuits. 4Continued on | P6 Five children die at shelter home, 34 hospitalised SDM reaches the facility, laughs out loud; removed and attached to election office Our Staff Reporter INDORE As many as five deaths of children in three days in the Bal Ashram of Shri Yugpurushdham NGO has sent the city officials on toes. Moreover, 34 inmates of the ashram were admitted to Chacha Nehru Hospital on Tuesday including Collector Asheesh Singh along with a team of doctors at Ashram Probe ordered CM expresses grief Collector Asheesh Singh said that a detailed investigation has been ordered, led by ADM Gaurav Benal, with assistance from the WCD joint director, the superintendent of Chacha Nehru Hospital, and a senior paediatrician of Chacha Nehru Hospital. CM Mohan Yadav expressed grief on the incident. He took on the X and stated, “The news of the untimely death of 4 innocent children of Indore's orphanage is heart breaking. I pray to Baba Mahakal to grant peace to the souls of the departed children. PM lashes out at ‘juvenile’ Gandhi Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar NEW DELHI The Lok Sabha on Tuesday witnessed unprecedented din on the Opposition benches marred by incessant sloganeering, a prime minister who ignored the cacophony and went on relentlessly, dwelling on what he dubbed were Rahul’s juvenile outpourings, even as a visibly livid Speaker tried to restrain an unbridled opposition. Ignoring the commotion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targeted the Congress and the INDIA bloc for having a divisive agenda and harped on its failure to win the Lok Sabha elections despite recourse to lies and a false narrative. In his reply to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address to both Houses of Parliament, PM Modi specifically attacked Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for churning out ‘‘lies’’ about the Agniveer scheme and mini- PM Modi uses wit and analogies to make his point mum support price. Winding up the two-day discussion, Modi charged that the Congress was brazenly “arrogant,” even though it had not been able to cross the threshold of 100 seats for the third consecutive time. In zest, he likened Gandhi to a child who celebrated his 99 marks, even though those were secured not out of 100 but out of 543. 4Continued on | P6 ON HINDU REMARKS: People will not forgive (them) for centuries… Hindu is tolerant. A conspiracy was hatched to falsely accuse Hindus. ON DISPLAY OF ICONS: Citizens are hurt by display of photos of the icons. They have insulted our gods. Jinke darshan hote hain, unke pradarshan nahi hote. JUVENILE CONDUCT: PM bemoans balak buddhi [child-like intelligence] of Gandhi without referring to him by name. eight of them in critical conditions. While the exact reasons for the deaths were yet to be ascertained, food poisoning and dehydration could be among the causes, the doctors said. The incident has shocked the city, leading to a comprehensive investigation and heightened concerns about the children's well-being at the ashram. Meanwhile, administration has constituted a high level committee to probe the matter along with mandating the health checkup of all the inmates in the ashram. 4Continued on | P6 Rahul Gandhi ‘expunged’ Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar NEW DELHI Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has in a letter to Speaker Om Birla protested against the expunging of some of his remarks made during the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address on Monday. He insists that his speech conveyed the “ground reality and the factual position” and charged that “taking off my considered remarks goes against the very tenets of Parliamentary democracy”. Gandhi had during his speech attacked the ruling BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and the government for the ham-handed manner in which it implemented the Agniveer scheme and failed to curb paper leak in NEET and other important examinations. Some of his remarks pertaining to all these issues were expunged. 4Continued on | P6 offgrid Horned frog found in Arunachal PTI SHILLONG Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have discovered a new frog species in Arunachal Pradesh's Tale Wildlife Sanctuary, marking a significant addition to India's herpetofaunal diversity, officials said on Tuesday. The new species is a for- est-dwelling horned frog discovered by a team of ZSI scientists from Shillong, Itanagar, and Pune. "The research, published in the current edition of the Zoological Survey of India, overturns an earlier erroneous report of the Maoson horned frog (Xenophrys maosonensis) in India, which was reported by ZSI researchers in Shillong in 2019," said Bhaskar Saikia, one of the scientists, to PTI. He explained that the revised conclusion regarding the species' identity came after further analysis re- E-paper INCLUDING TRANSPORTATION vealed substantial genetic disparities between the Indian specimen and X. maosonensis from Vietnam and China, prompting a reevaluation. Saikia, along with his colleague Bikramjit Sinha, also from ZSI Shillong, led the research. The team included KP Dinesh and A. Shabnam from ZSI Pune, and Ilona Jacinta Kharkongor from ZSI Itanagar. SEBI slaps notice on Hindenburg PTI NEW DELHI India's markets regulator SEBI has slapped Hindenburg Research with a show cause notice for alleged "unfair trade practices" in its 2023 broadside against the Adani Group a move that the US firm termed as 'nonsense' and an attempt to 'silence and intimidate' those exposing corruption. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the June 26 show cause notice charged Hindenburg of "deliberately sensationalising and distorting certain facts" in the damning January 2023 report on the Adani group as well as working with a New York hedge fund to make its bet. Hindenburg, which published the notice on its website, said it made just USD 4.1 million from its declared positions on Adani stocks and criticised the regulator for not focusing its investigation into the January 2023 report "providing evidence" of the conglomerate creating "a vast network of offshore shell entities" and moving billions of dollars "surreptitiously" into and out of Adani public and private entities. It said while SEBI was seeking to claim jurisdiction over a US-based investor. 4Continued on | P6 Budget to focus on infra, culture FM Devda to present it today Our Staff Reporter BHOPAL The state government is going to present the budget in the House on Wednesday. Finance Minister Jagdish Devda is presenting the fifth budget in a row. According to sources, the budget worth Rs 3.60 lakh crore focuses on urban development, tourism, culture and infrastructure. The government is going to set aside Rs 70,000 crore for infrastructure under which many construction works other than roads will be carried out. In the budget, provision may be made for metro train in Jabalpur and Gwalior after Bhopal and Indore. The government will pay special attention on religion and culture. The budget will have provisions for development of those areas associated with Lord Krishna, besides other religious places across the state. 4Continued on | P6 NURSING SCAM Opposition demands Sarang’s scalp, minister refuses to oblige House witnesses four-hour debate over calling attention motion Blames Congress and cry over the issue. Leader of Opposition Umang Singhar said Sarang was associated with the scam. He said the permission had been granted to 219 nursing colleges when the Covid-19 was at its peak during 2020-21. There was no election of Nursing Council, Singhar said, adding that the colleges were given permission through verbal orders. Replying to the allegations, Minister Vishvas Sarang said that the nursing scam had taken place during the 15-month rule of the Congress government. Laws to give permission to the nursing colleges were made after the BJP government returned to power, Sarang said. In 2020, when the Congress government was falling, 353 colleges were given recognition letter, he said. As Nursing Council is an autonomous body, the minister does not get any file, he said. 4Continued on | P6 4Continued on | P6 Our Staff Reporter BHOPAL It happened for the first time in the history of the state assembly that a debate was conducted over calling attention motion for four hours on Tuesday. The Congress demanded the then Medical Education Minister Vishvas Sarang’s resignation on nursing scam. Sarang, however, refused to quit. When Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla gave a clean chit to Sarang, the Congress raised a hue MP ECONOMIC SURVEY 2023-24 Per capita income increased four times Our Staff Reporter BHOPAL The per capita income of the people of the state have increased to four times from the base year 2011-12 to 2023-24, the fact came in Economic Survey released by state government on Tuesday. Deputy Chief Minister Jagdish Devda said that the Economic Survey underlines the excellent economic progress of the state. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav will set new milestones of economic prosperity in the state. According to the survey report progress has been seen all sectors including agriculture, production and in service sector. In the year 2011-12 the per capita net income was Rs 38,497 which increased to Rs 1.42 lakh which is around four times. The Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) on current price for the financial year had reached to Rs 13,63,327 crore. This shows the expansion of Emerges as pulses producer State emerge as pulses producer, in the year 42.62% growth has been seen in the pulses, the production of oilseeds have also increased by 7.32%, in the production of the other grains slight increase has been seen. Growth in vegetables has also seen the production increases to 242.62 lakh ton in the year in comparison to 235.41 lakh ton to last year. Production of fruits has also increased to in comparison of 95.10 lakh ton. the economy in the state. The increase in value of commodities and service has been seen in the year. In last financial year the SDGP was 12,46,471 corers the increase of 9.37% has been reflected in the current year. 4Continued on | P6 NEET-UG row: SC to hear batch of pleas on July 8 PTI NEW DELHI The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on July 8 a batch of pleas related to the controversy-ridden NEET-UG, including those alleging irregularities in the examination held on May 5 and seeking a direction that it be held afresh. According to the cause list for July 8 uploaded on the apex court's website, the batch of 26 petitions would come up for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. The National Eligibilitycum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country. The NEET-UG, 2024 was held across 4,750 centres on May 5.