Pinjore village: Stepfather held for double murder

PANCHKULA: A 65-year-old vegetable seller charged with killing two of his stepdaughters and trying to rape the third, a minor, was arrested on Wednesday night, hours after the double murder in a Pinjore village.
Police caught the accused from the Kalka railway station around 9pm when he was looking to flee. Deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Kamaldeep Goyal said: “In the preliminary interrogation, the man told us that on the evening of May 13 (Monday), he had tried to molest his youngest stepdaughter, 16, at home when her mother was away. The child’s elder sisters had come to know.”

The attempt to molest the minor was made around 7am on Monday. Around 8.30pm, she confided in her sisters and told them this was the man’s usual behaviour when she was home alone. When the child’s sisters confronted the man, it flipped him into rage and he thrashed them. The sisters used to work in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The man’s wife returned from her hometown in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday and came to know about the beating.
On Wednesday, when the elder sisters, 18 and 22, refused to break their Ramadan fast with the man over the incident, he is said to have pulled out a knife he used to keep under his bed and slit the throat of the eldest stepdaughter. At this, the other two siblings tried to flee.
Deputy superintendent of police Goyal told the media that: “The man caught the middle stepdaughter and kept stabbing her in the neck until she died.
‘Each dist should have brain death certification panel’
It was suggested that it must be made mandatory for all the ICUs to give free access to designated grief counsellors and transplant coordinators to check GCS (Glasgow coma score: common scoring system used to describe the level of consciousness). And doctors must provide clinical information about such patient to coordinators. It was said that all hospitals must display signs outside ICUs, mentioning brain-dead certification is mandatory for patients in coma or brain stem death cases.
The committee has also appealed to the high court to define the word “consent” as its members had divergent views on it. There should be formation of a brain death certification committee for each district with doctors based in the same district. This committee must be attached to the CMO.
The court was informed that no brain death has ever been certified in the medical colleges across Punjab and Haryana. Hospitals with minimum of 25 beds, ICU and clean operating theatre must be designated as affiliated hospitals for organ harvesting. The brain dead patients can be admitted there in case local hospitals are unable to provide end of lifecare.
It was also recommended to involve certified NGOs to create positive awareness about organ donation. There should be a national registry of voluntary organ donors and it should be made public. It should have names of people, who, in their lifetime, had expressed willingness to donate organs and this may be taken as a formal consent after their death.
While filing the PIL in the HC, the petitioner had said that there were very few government hospitals in Punjab and Haryana where organ transplants took place. He said the procedure was highly technical and private hospitals did not have enough instrument and machinery to deal with such operations.