Three persons of a family were sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Mahila Court here for abetting the suicide of a young woman, who was working in an IT company, by harassing her for dowry.
Vijayalakshmi, a graduate in computer applications, was working with Infosys in Hyderabad.
Later she shifted to its Chennai office after her marriage with S. Dineshkumar of Villivakkam in 2009. According to the prosecution, her parents gave the groom’s family 20 sovereigns of gold jewellery at the time of the marriage in Tirupur. Later, her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law demanded five more sovereigns of gold and a car. In 2010, Vijayalakshmi committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan in her bedroom.
On a complaint by Leelavathi, her mother, the police charged Dineshkumar, his parents, S. Sampath and S. Vasanthi under Sections 498(A) (Husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306(Abetment of Suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.
According to Leelavathi’s testimony, a few days before the suicide, her daughter had telephoned her to say the accused had taken her entire salary and that she had no money.
Thus, the accused were committing cruelty by demanding dowry. As Vijayalakshmi was telling her mother that her in-laws were threatening to kill her, the phone line got cut suddenly. Later, the girl’s family in Tirupur was informed about her death.
Convicting and sentencing the trio, Mahila Court Judge Meena Satheesh said, “The accused have harassed Vijayalakshmi and thereby induced her to commit suicide. Hence, this court is of the decided view that the offence of causing cruelty to deceased Vijayalakhmi and inducing her to commit suicide was proved by evidence.”
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With the Airline industry in recession, those training to be Pilots may not find a job after spending lakhs on their airborne dreams. Is there any hope ?
Chitra Vedak separated from her husband when her son was barely three months old.
A technician nurse at a private hospital in Mumbai, she brought up Pratik single-handedly.
Chitra recalls that as a child, Pratik always gravitated towards toy planes. All he ever wanted was to fly. So, his single mother worked hard to fulfil her son's dream, even mortgaging a house in Mumbai to pay for his pilot training in the US.
Pratik has been sitting it out on the bench for close to two years. He had to take a break as funds were running out.
The salary of a pilot averages a lakh a month. If Pratik was able to complete his course on schedule and if he had landed up a job, it would have taken around four years to pay back the 25 lakh loan.
Chitra's voice trails off when she says that she has to pay loan instalments of Rs 50,000 month after month. But that's not the half of it.
An office in the skies
Chitra had been told that they would have to shell out only 25 lakhs for the entire training and accomodation. Once the course started, they found that they would have to pay an additional 10 lakhs for the Commercial Pilot License (CPL).
The earlier amount only sufficed for a PPL (Private Pilots License). She has had to sell off jewellery and dip into their savings, just so he could continue. At this stage, dropping out midway would mean 25 lakhs gone in vain.
But spending a further 12 lakhs means selling the house and that still doesn't guarantee a job. It's a tough call. Pratik, 22, is one of thousands who bought into the dream of a career in the skies.
Airline boom effect
In India, being a pilot used to be a rich kid's dream. Popular middle class aspirations for wealth usually had something to do with higher education and not a life of adventure, especially in a place as high as the sky.
But somewhere in the last 10 years that has changed. The mid nineties saw private sector investment in aviation.
India saw unprecedented growth and riding the boom, were the airlines. This is also one of the only high paying sectors with low qualification barriers.
Unlike certificate-heavy options like engineering, software, or management, to be a pilot all one needed was Class 12 science. It was a profession defined not by qualification, but by skill.
An attractive proposition
Add to this, starched uniforms, beautiful people, soaring salaries, travel and the sheer appeal of a plane.
The plot is bought, hook, line and sinker. But unlike engineering or medicine where parents convinced their children, aviation saw children convincing their parents.
With the easy availability of loans, many families mortgaged or sold property to pay for the training. It was a way of breaking out and entering the next salary strata. When times were good many did so. But now the ground view is starkly different.
Effects of recession
The airline industry is in the grip of a recession. Most airlines are in the red. None of them are hiring. At present, there are close to 6,000 unemployed pilots in India. About 600 to 800 fresh pass-outs come in every six months. Very few of them will get jobs.
If you do a Google search and type in "unemployed pilots", you'll get close to two million hits. Chances are you'll also stumble onto a couple of Facebook communities and online forums.
Each day sees hundreds of posts on the problems faced by them. Though their stories are often sad, they put up a brave front. Humour helps.
One of the posts read: "We pilots are like Parle G biscuits, found even in a local paan shop, but no one cares to buy."
No backup plan
Most did not continue with their education beyond Class 12, the mandatory minimum to be a pilot. Not being a graduate, alternate career options are limited.
Many of them are biding time in call centres or working in malls. Each of them has spent upwards of 25 lakhs on training to be a pilot. It is a depressing scenario. Certainly not the life in the skies, they envisaged for themselves.
The rosy picture painted during boom times convinced families to part with their lifetime savings. The culprit, besides the times we live in is in the lack of information about ground reality.
A number of students blame a hyper reactive media that peddles success stories that made it seem like jobs were pouring from the skies.
Desperate measures
For every job that is advertised, there are 150 to 200 applicants. That's a very tough ratio to crack even for the best among them.
Like in any other industry, a small but significant percentage of those jobs go to the ones with some influence on the inside.
When the situation gets desperate, some are okay with paying a bribe. It is reasoned out as an extra cost to recoup the earlier investment. If this is what these times demand, so be it -- this seems to be the rationale.
According to sources that want to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, the going rate is 35 lakhs. However that is no guarantee for getting the job, as was the case with a Gurgaon-based Pilot.
A Kenyan court has temporarily stopped national carrier Kenya Airways from retrenching its employees until a suit brought by the workers' union challenging the layoffs is heard and determined.
The airline said this month it would shed staff through voluntary retirement, redundancies and outsourcing of non-core roles in order to contain soaring costs and protect its bottom line.
"The respondent (Kenya Airways) is hereby restrained by way of temporary injunction from proceeding with any negotiations or any staff rationalisation that may render members redundant pending the hearing," Judge Onesmus Makau said in court orders.
The Aviation and Allied Workers Union filed a lawsuit in the industrial court seeking to stop the airline's action on the grounds the management had breached the labour relations act that requires a firm to engage workers through their union before laying them off.
Both parties will return to the court on September 21 for direction on the case, said Leonard Ochieng, the lawyer representing the workers.
Kenya Airways, which is 26.73-percent-owned by Air France KLM, was forced to raise workers' pay in 2010 after a strike that paralysed its operations.
High costs caused the carrier's pretax profit to plunge 57 percent in the full year that ended last March.
The carrier, one of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa alongside Ethiopian Airlines and South African Airways, did not indicate the level of savings it was targeting or how many jobs would be lost in the exercise.
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Satwant Singh Kaleka, president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, would do anything for his beloved, tight-knit community, relatives say.
On Sunday, he died standing up to the horror of a gunman's attack on his house of worship in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek. Kaleka, 65, managed to find a simple butter knife in the temple and tried to stab the shooter before being shot twice near the hip or upper leg, his son said Monday.
Amardeep Singh Kaleka said FBI agents hugged him Sunday, shook his hand and said, "Your dad's a hero."
"Whatever time he spent in that struggle gave the women time to get cover" in the kitchen, Kaleka said. One of the women was his mother, who called police using her cellphone while hiding from the gunman.
Satwant Singh Kaleka was one of six killed in the massacre. The gunman, Wade Michael Page, injured three others, including a police officer, before another officer shot and killed him outside the temple. Page was a 40-year-old Army veteran who had more recently gravitated to white supremacist rock in the obscure skinhead punk scene, playing guitar in bands with names such as Definite Hate and End Apathy.
His motive was still largely a mystery. So far, no hate-filled manifesto has emerged, nor any angry blog or ranting Facebook entries to explain the attack.
Kaleka died defending what was his gift to the next generation. Relatives said he selflessly dedicated his life to the members of the Oak Creek temple, of which he was considered the founder. He was also one of the lead investors in the building's construction.
His nephew, Jatinder Mangat, said Kaleka was always willing to lend a hand.
"He doesn't care what he's wearing, what he's doing, he'll be there just for you," Mangat said. "We used to say 'It's OK, we'll have somebody else do it,' and he'd say 'No, no, I'll do it,' even if it (was) a dirty job. He'll do anything."
Mangat said his uncle, a father of two with three grandkids, frequently worked so hard that he looked like "a normal worker with dust over him, paint over him."
Another nephew, Gurmit Kaleka, also spoke of his uncle's willingness to serve.
"He was a great guy who always believed in social service. He was always willing to help anyone who came his way," Kaleka said.
Suveg Singh Khattra also was among those killed Sunday. He was a constant presence at the temple. Most days, his son, a taxi driver, would drop him off there to pray.
The 84-year-old and his wife moved to the United States eight years ago to join their son. On Sunday, the 84-year-old former farmer from northern India was shot and killed.
"He don't have hatred for anybody. He loved to live here," said son Baljinder Khattra, who moved from the family's farm in Patiala, a city in Punjab, in 1994.
Kulwant Kaur, the elder Khattra's daughter-in-law, hid with the other women in the pantry. When a SWAT team evacuated them, Kaur saw Khattra's body lying on the ground.
She tried to touch him to see if he was awake, but officers warned her not to touch anything, said Kaur's son, Mandeep Khattra.
"They told them to keep moving because they were priorities over the bodies," he said.
The elder Khattra spoke no English, communicating instead with neighbors and friends with his hands.
"He (was) very humble. He loved all peoples," Khattra said.
The gunman also took the life of Prakash Singh, whose was living with his wife and teenage children in the temple. Recently, they had moved from India to join the Sikh priest in Wisconsin.
Navdeep Gill, an 18-year-old temple member from Franklin, said Singh had rented an apartment nearby and his family was due to move in by the end of the month. Singh's son and daughter will start school soon; the daughter is in high school and the son is going to be a freshman in high school.
As a Sikh priest, Singh would have performed daily services, which may have included recitations from the religion's holy book, leading prayers and lecturing on how to practice Sikhism.
Gill said Singh had a fun-loving personality — "telling jokes and whatnot" — and looked nothing close to his age of 39.
The other victims were identified Monday as Sita Singh, 41, Ranjit Singh, 49, and Paramjit Kaur, 41.
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Sikh temple's president hailed a 'hero,' dies defending worshipers ...
www.foxnews.com/.../sikh-temple-president-hailed-hero-dies-defendi...6 days ago – Satwant Singh Kaleka, president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, would do anything for his beloved, tight-knit community, relatives say.
The Sikh temple shooting victims - CBS News
www.cbsnews.com/8301-201.../the-sikh-temple-shooting-victims/5 days ago – Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, managed to find a simple butter knife in the temple and tried to stab the gunman even after being shot twice near the ...
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Indiawest: Wisconsin Gurdwara President Died a Hero, Protecting ...
indiawest.com/.../5955-wisconsin-gurdwara-president-di... - United States3 days ago – Satwant Singh Kaleka, co-founder and president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, had long been a hero to his sons, well before he saved ...
Hero of Wisconsin – Shaheed Satwant Singh Kaleka « Uddari Weblog
uddari.wordpress.com/.../hero-of-wisconsin-shaheed-satwant-singh-k...3 days ago – DailyMail.co.uk Wisconsin Sikh Temple president killed after trying to fight off attacker Wisconsin, US: One victim was confirmed as the temple's ...
Sikhs Seek Peace After Murder of Satwant Singh Kaleka
www.opposingviews.com/.../sikhs-seek-peace-after-mur... - United States5 days ago – I, like most people, was deeply troubled by news of another mass shooting, this time at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, just outside of ...
Sikh temple leader, police officers hailed as heroes - World - CBC ...
www.cbc.ca/news/world/.../sikh-temple-shootings-victims-heroes.htm...5 days ago – Sikh Temple of Wisconsin president Satwant Singh Kaleka fought back with all his strength and a simple butter knife, trying to stab a murderous ...
