Chennai museum ‘fire prone’
The heritage Government Museum at Egmore in Chennai that has about 12,000 antiques and taxidermy exhibits lacks proper firefighting facilities, according to media reports.
A fire on April 26 that gutted the Museum of Natural History in New Delhi has raised concerns in Chennai. The Egmore Museum colloquially known as Setta College or college of the dead, was established in 1854 and is the second oldest in India.
Media claimed that the building is fire prone because of its wooden roofs and beams, ill-lit rooms and outdated electric wiring. Besides this, it has only fire extinguishers, alarm systems without sprinklers and no fire brigade on the premises. The museum has also not requested for a fire audit from the Heritage Conservation Committee for many years, the reports addeed.

Jayendra acquitted in assault case
A court in Puducherry acquitted last week the 80-year-old Hindu pontiff Jayendra Saraswathi of the Kanchipuram ashram in a 13-year-old assault case.
 Judge P Rajamanickam also acquitted nine others for lack of evidence. However the judge directed that Ravi Subramaniam, a key witness who turned hostile during the trial, be tried again.
The case relates to the assault of auditor Radhakrishnan, his wife Jayashree, and assistant Kannan in September 2002 at their house in Chennai. Radhakrishnan claimed that Jayendra targeted him because he had begun questioning about missing gold ingots donated to the Kamakshi temple in Kanchipuram.
Earlier in 2013, Jayendra Saraswathi walked free in another case relating to the 2004 murder of Sankararaman, a manager of the ashram’s temples.

Centenarians in voters list
There are 7,627 voters aged between 100 and 130 in Tamil Nadu’s voter list, according to officials.
The state has about 50mn voters of which about 597 centenarians are residents of Vellore district. However, every fourth voter in Tamil Nadu is in the 18-29 age group.
Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa is contesting the May 16 elections from the R K Nagar constituency in Chennai. Her political rivals are also fielding three female candidates in the same constituency.
The other candidates are Shimla Muthuchozhan of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), P Agnes of Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Vasanthi Devi of Viduthalai Chiruthai Katchi (VCK).

Two doctors commit suicide
Two doctors committed suicide in separate incidents last week.
A female dentist was found hanging from a ceiling fan at her clinic by a patient at Kelambakkam in Chennai.
In Dindigul, a 63-year-old anaesthetist and his daughter were found dead inside their car at R M Colony.
Somasundaram and his daughter Vanathi had left home in their car but did not return. His wife Umathangam alerted the police who searched the city and located the car. They also found a syringe and suspect that the duo injected themselves with drugs.

Girl buried alive
A 7-year-old girl was buried alive when her father unknowingly closed a pit into which she had fallen at their house at Maduravoyal in suburban Chennai last week.
Selvakumar, an auto-rickshaw driver, had reportedly dug the pit to build a septic tank. However he was unaware of his daughter playing nearby and closed it in the evening to prevent other children from falling into it. When he and his wife found the child missing that evening he opened the pit but it was too late.