Mass wedding on Jaya’s birthday

All India Anna DMK general secretary J Jayaalitha on Sunday celebrated her 60th birthday by conducting free weddings for 60 poor couples at a function here even as partymen across the State distributed sweets, burst crackers, offered special prayers at temples and fed the poor, reports DHNS from Chennai.

Senior BJP leaders L K Advani and Shiv Shankar Prasad and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi conveyed their greetings to her over the telephone.

The wedding was performed by the Jayalalitha Peravai, a wing of the AIADMK. Along with these couples, five more from the AIADMK family also got married with the blessings of Ms Jayalalitha in the same venue. For the poor couples, Ms Jayalalitha gave 60 gifts ranging from utensils to wrist-watches, dhotis and saris. She also presented a cheque for Rs 10 lakh from her personal account for the MGR School for the Deaf and Dumb at Ramavaram.

Usha Uthup hits back at Vijayan

Singer Usha Uthup is no mood to climb down from her criticism of CPM State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan who had recently associated her shows with drunkenness.

On Sunday, the pop icon who is married to a Keralite said she was extremely hurt by the comments, reports DHNS from Thiruvananthapuram.

“It was no ordinary remark and it has hurt me. Responsible people like him should not make such remarks. I have no political agenda. My agenda is only music and through it to make people happy,’’ she said here.

Mr Vijayan’s remarks came at a public meeting last week which was the culmination of the party state conference at Kottayam that re-elected him party secretary for another term.

18 detained over vigilantism

Eighteen people were detained on Sunday in connection with thrashing of a youth who fell prey to vigilante justice after he was arrested for fatally stabbing his friend, reports PTI from Hajipur.

College student Ravi Kumar, who stabbed his roommate Om Prakash to death for using a mobile phone, was on Saturday forcibly snatched by a violent crowd from policemen who were escorting him.

The youth, who was in handcuffs, was dragged outside the hospital, kicked and mercilessly hit with bricks, official sources said.

Hajipur is the headquarter town of Vaishali district, which had shocked the nation when 10 suspected thieves belonging to the nomadic ‘nat’ community were bludgeoned to death at Dehelpurwa village on September 13 last year.

Drunken driving kills two in Delhi

Two students, including a girl were killed and two others injured in an alleged case of drunken driving when the car they were travelling in went out of control and hit a tree here on Sunday morning, reports PTI from  New Delhi.

The speeding car in which the four were travelling hit a tree and turned turtle twice near the periphery of India Gate killing two occupants sitting in the back seat of the vehicle instantaneously, they said. The dead were identified as Sneha Kapoor (20), a student of Amity University and Anirudh Rawat (21), a student of Shaheed Bhagat Singh college under Delhi University.

The injured, Satyajit (19) and Gaurav (25), a businessman, were under the influence of alcohol, and the latter was driving the car when the accident took place at around 4 am in the morning, police alleged.