BARAMULLA
The 2.15 minute video clip uploaded on Facebook shows two Kashmiri youth, apparently detained for stone pelting during 2010 unrest, humiliatingly stripped and beaten by cops. Almost everybody including some middle rung police officials are clearly seen as the detained are still alive and kicking in Baramulla. The clip has generated a lot of interest and also a police action that has registered an FIR in Baramulla police station. The hunt seems to be against the person who uploaded the clip and not who usually should face the music. Messenger has survived as an enemy throughout!
Jammu
India’s biggest beauty pageant Pond’s Femina Miss India has finally moved to the city of temples. In the audition held last week, two Jammu girls Phalguni Manhas and Manjeet Kaur bagged entry into the contest after they set the ramp on fire by their sizzling performance. They were among100 girls who had come for the audition. As the beauty contests in Jammu are being professionally managed, conservatives hopes it will mark an end to the raw contests that actually triggered scandals. One former Miss Jammu Florence was kidnapped and recovered by police after 18 months and she got her ex-serviceman father arrested for rape. Another Miss Jammu Anara Gupta triggered a huge crisis and finally landed in Bollywood.
Chadoora
For a change, Cupid has changed his address. Now it is a village in Budgam where early last century a boy and a girl fell in love and married against the wishes of their parents. They lived life happily but were childless. They performed Haj but had nobody to take care of. They had a pet cat. Last week Haji Ali Mohammad Bhat died in the afternoon at 70. As the funeral bath was being performed, Khurshi his wife also breathed her last. Villagers offered them joint funeral prayers and they were actually laid to rest in a single grave with separate spaces. The cat followed them to the last journey.
SRINAGAR
Chief Judicial Magistrate Srinagar, Rajeev Gupta created history by sentencing a woman to two months rigorous imprisonment besides imposing a fine of Rs 7 lakh on her for issuing a bank cheque that bounced. Nighat, the convict, had issued the Rs 215200 cheque on July 23, 2005 to Nazir Khan and it bounced. The latter fought in the court of law. Of the Rs 7 lakh fine, Khan would get Rs 6 lakh as compensation.
KARGIL
Finally, the small carrier Air 
Mantra landed its 17-seater at snow clad, war-ravaged Kharbatang plateau runway of Kargil when it froze at -20 degrees. During winters when Kargil was flying in army’s courier AN-32 twice a week to Srinagar at Rs 1500 per trip, the residents have been terming it a rescue service. They sought a private carrier to get in and finally Air Mantra, already flying between Jammu and Chandigarh, managed to start its flights from Jammu. But a one-way flight costs Rs 10,000 and residents said they couldn’t think of flying in it. Now Soz and Omar are back to Delhi: Please foot the bill!
PARI MAHAL
The NSG detachment that stays in Kashmir since they were summoned in wake of Rubia Sayeed kidnapping in 1989 and housed in spacious huts in the Zabarwan foothills are shivering in cold. Power department has snapped supply lines because JKTDC does not foot the Rs 1.30 crore bills. Kashmir in the last nine months has paid Rs 402 crore power tariff as Jammu registered Rs 613.73 crore.
