A two-year-old child was killed and around 60 people were hurt in a stampede after three elephants ran amok at the “aarattu” rituals on the concluding day of the Irinjalakuda Koodalmanikam temple’s annual festival on Sunday.
The incident happened at 9.30 am when the police were to give the ritualistic royal salute and present arms to the deity before it left for the aarattu procession to Koodapuzha river in Chalakudy. On hearing the gun shot, one of the elephants, Kalakuthu Kannan, turned restive and ran amok. Two other elephants, Cherppulaserry Ayyappan and Thirumaram Kunnummal Parasuraman carrying the idol, followed it. There was commotion and the huge crowd that gathered to witness the festival finale began to run for life. The motorcycles parked outside made the movement difficult and a stampede followed, in which two-year-old Yadukrishnan of Kombara died. Though a police team rushed the toddler to a hospital, it was declared brought dead.
More than 60 people, including women and children, were hurt in the commotion. The condition of eight, admitted to private hospitals in Irinjalakuda and Thrissur, is said to be critical.
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Drdo: removal of u.s. curbs only on paper
New Delhi, May 13: Two years after US President Barack Obama announced the removal of Indian entities from the sanctions list, DRDO has said that this has remained only on paper and the impact is not even ten per cent in terms of implementation. DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat, in an interview to PTI, said there was a dispute between India and the US over the definition of dual use technology.
“Today on paper, we have been removed for that list. On paper, instead of denied companies, they have us on the list of positive companies. But in practice, this change has not made any great difference. “When it comes down to actual implementation of this policy, the impact is very very poor. In terms of gain to defence, I can say it is not even 10 per cent,” he said.
During the visit of Obama in 2010, the US department of commerce’ bureau of industry and security had announced the removal of the nine Indian space and defence-related organisations from the Entity List. — PTI