Nine years since acid attack, still Sonali mukherjee begging for justice

Sonali Mukherjee before and after acid violence

In 2002, Sonali Mukherjee, a 19-year-old girl from Jharkhand, topped her college and was aspiring to be a professor someday. But less than a year later, her world fell apart when three men, whose advances she had been spurning for a while, threw acid on her. Today, nine years since the incident, Sonali and her family are still struggling from day to day to pay for her treatment. She has now appealed to the state for help.

"The pain and the torture of the last nine years I can't even describe in words. I am appealing to the state to help me, get me justice, otherwise I don't want to live," she says.

On April 22, 2003, the three men who had been making advances came late at night and poured acid all over Sonali, who was fast asleep on the terrace of her house in Dhanbad, Jharkhand. With 72 per cent burns, she was lucky to have survived, but lost her sight, her face, her body and life as she knew it. Each day since then has been a struggle for her.
Sonali's family, which does not have much to begin with, has sold every last thing they owned for her treatment, but she is far from okay - both physically and emotionally.

Her attackers included a 40-year-old married man, and an 18-year-old. The teenager was let off on account of being a juvenile, the other two were convicted for nine years, but appealed to a higher court and got out in just four, while Sonali continues to struggle to put together the Rs. 15 lakh she still needs for her treatment.

"Everything we owned has been sold, including cows, but till today I'm fighting," said her father Chandi Das Mukherjee.

Sonali's family says they can't do it alone anymore.

"I am appealing to everyone through you to help me... I am really desperate," she says.

How you can help:

Send your cheques to: Chandi Das Mukherjee

Account Number: 0612000103217964
Punjab National Bank, New Delhi

Or contact her brother at: +91 9437638600

Indian minister tells bureaucrats it's OK to 'steal a little ...

Shivpal Yadav

Shivpal Singh Yadav, in charge of housing and construction in northern Uttar Pradesh state, on Friday hastily withdrew the offer he made a day earlier during a meeting with government employees, which was also attended by journalists.
Yadav is an uncle to the state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, whose Samajwadi Party stormed into power on an anti-corruption platform in elections held in Uttar Pradesh in March.
"If you work hard, you can steal a little, but don't behave like bandits," Yadav as saying at the meeting in Etah town, about 124 miles from capital Lucknow.
The comments drew flak from political opponents, prompting Yadav to retract his offer and accuse journalists of sneaking into the gathering.
"I have taken back those words," he told reporters in Lucknow on Friday. "Why are you raking it up? I don't know why the media is targeting me," he said.
Shame !! Shame !! Shame !!!!!!!!!!

Iran quake death toll hits 250, with over 2,000 injured, six villages leveled

A 6.4 -magnitude earthquake killed at least 250 people and injured over 2000 others in northwestern Iran on Saturday,
Iran's main news channel said the quake hit the towns of Ahar, Haris and Varzaqan in East Azerbaijan province at 4:53 p.m. local time (GMT 12:23), also damaging hundreds of homes.
The TV quoted Khalil Saei, local Crisis Committee chief, as saying that 30 people were killed in Ahar, 40 in Varzaqan and 17 others in Haris.
The broadcast said at least 60 villages sustained damage ranging from 50 to 80 per cent, while 4 other villages had been totally levelled to the ground.
 At least three aftershocks — measuring 6.0, 4.7 and 4.1 — jolted the same area and were felt in a wide region near the Caspian Sea.
Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one earthquake every day on average, although the vast majority are so small they go unnoticed.

Usain Bolt becomes living legend at London 2012 Olympic

“I won’t let Yohan beat me over 200 metres,” he said. “In the 100 maybe, he might have a chance, but the 200 is my favourite event. I’ve worked hard to perfect it over the years. I told him already that I won’t let it happen.” Last night Bolt was true to his word, even having the audacity to look across the line to check whether his friend had kept up with him. It was a performance that ended all the arguments about who is the greatest sprinter on the planet.

Yet, when he reflects on his achievement of becoming the first sprinter to win the Olympic double-double, Bolt will know just how big a contribution his 22-year-old understudy made to his history-making week in London, for it is impossible to overstate the impact Blake has had on Bolt’s return to his best, all-conquering form.

Bolt said as much after his 100m triumph at the olympics last Sunday, when he admitted that his training partner had jolted him out of his complacency by beating him not once, but twice at the Jamaican Olympic trials in June.

“The trials woke me up,” said Bolt. “Yohan gave me a wake-up call. He knocked on my door and said, 'Usain, wake up! This is an Olympic year.’”

Jism - 2 Official song Yeh kasoor

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India blackouts leave 700 million without power

More than 700 million people in   India  have been left without power in the world's worst blackout of recent times, leading to fears that protests and even riots could follow if the country's electricity supply continues to fail to meet growing demand.
Twenty of India's 28 states were hit by power cuts, along with the capital, New Delhi, when three of the country's five electricity grids failed at lunchtime.
As engineers struggled for hours to fix the problem, hundreds of trains failed, leaving passengers stranded along thousands of miles of track from Kashmir in the north to Nagaland on the eastern border with Burma.
Traffic lights went out, causing jams in New Delhi, Kolkata and other cities. Surgical operations were cancelled across the country, with nurses at one hospital just outside Delhi having to operate life-saving equipment manually when back-up generators failed.
Elsewhere, electric crematoriums stopped operating, some with bodies left half burnt before wood was brought in to stoke the furnaces.
As Delhiites sweated in 89% humidity and drivers honked their horns even more impatiently than usual, in West Bengal the power cut left hundreds of miners trapped underground for hours when their lifts broke down. All the state's government workers were sent home after the chief minister announced it would take 10 to 12 hours for the power to return.  
First to fail was India's northern grid, which had also collapsed the previous day leaving an estimated 350 million people in the dark for up to 14 hours. It was quickly followed by the eastern grid, which includes Kolkata, then the north-eastern grid.
An estimated 710 million people live in the affected area, ever more of whom require electricity as they snap up the air-conditioning units, flat-screen TVs and other gadgets that have become status symbols among India's burgeoning middle class.
India has five electricity grids – northern, eastern, north-eastern, southern and western. All are interconnected, except the southern grid. The northern grid covers nine regions: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Chandigarh.
At least six states are covered by the eastern grid: West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Sikkim; the north-eastern grid connects Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.