Reopen cases against Augustine: Tandon

LUCKNOW: Housing and urban development minister Lalji Tandon has ordered the police department to reopen cases against John Augustine, principal of St Mary School. The minister, along with officials of the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), the district administration, the Jal Sansthan and the chief medical officer (CMO), visited the Para Road on Tuesday.The minister got down from his car at the railway track where thousands of schoolchildren and residents were mercilessly beaten by police personnel during their agitation. Though residents kept voicing their anger against the principal, surprisingly, none came forward to narrate the plight of locality. Residents and shopkeepers on the Para Road informed the minister about the misdeeds of John Augustine and how he had incited the schoolchildren to sit on the railway track. Tandon, while addressing the residents, came down heavily on the principal saying that a priest could not be expected of indulging in such a crime, making innocent children his pawns, adding that such a malicious person had no right to be a principal, who should be a role model for the school. The minister ordered to constitute a team to look into the land scams rampant in Para Road locality. Ajay Tiwari, an employee of the Housing Board, was suspended by the minister for his alleged involvement in provoking the Para residents against government officials during the demonstration. The minister announced that if Tiwari did not plead for forgiveness in writing from the DM, his services would be terminated. Tandon also ordered a probe into the utilisation of corporator quota of fund by Jaishree Yadav, the local corporator. Tandon also went into the Para village to meet the woman who had claimed to have lost her unborn child because of the cane-charge. But, before the woman could utter a word, her husband told the minister that she had lost her child in a mishap. Talking to Times News Network later, Tandon tried saving the skin of police by saying, If police caned the woman on the agitation day, the foetus would have been aborted then and there and not after one week. Tandon also criticised media reports on Para Road violence, which said that residents were a hapless lot due to poor civic amenities. Nobody came to me complaining about the amenities except principal John Augustine, he told this reporter.