US NEWS
SiddharthaMukherjee’swinningmoment
Lee Bollinger, president,
Columbia University,
A CORRESPONDENT
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee received his Pulitzer Prize, the
top award in America for achievements in newspaper and
online journalism, non-fiction, literature and music, May
23.
Mukherjee won the award in the general non-fiction category for his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A
Biographyof Cancer, which focuses on the history of cancer as well as his experiences in treating it.
Like all Pulitzer functions, this year’s event was a quiet
affair with 260 people attending the event held over lunch
at the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library in Columbia
University, New York City. Mukherjee shared a table with
Sreenath Sreenivasan, dean, student affairs and professor,
Columbia Journalism School.
Anne Marie Lipinski of the Pulitzer Prize board and a
winner herself, while stressing the need for humility, discussed how her grandmother had mentioned Lipinski’s
winning of the award in the middle of some humdrum
COURTES Y : THE PULI TZER COMMI T TEE
details, and how her husband had put a safe driving award
along with her Pulitzer citation. She said that while the
Pulitzer board was not infallible, the idea was to ensure an
effort was made not just to win a Pulitzer, but to write every
story so as to try and win it.
Lee Bollinger, president, Columbia University, handed
out the awards.
Mukherjee becomes the fourth person of Indian origin
to win the award, after Gobind Behari Lal (1937, for his
coverage of science at Harvard University’s tercentenary),
Jhumpa Lahiri (2000, for her fictional work, Interpreters
of Maladies) and Geeta Anand (2003, for explanatory
journalism in stories about scandals in corporate
America).
Teen arrested for killing
Mohan Varughese
A CORRESPONDENT
The police arrested Jeffrey Little, 19, for the murder of
Mohan Varughese, 23, a Penn State-Abington senior, May 9.
Little was placed under house arrest two months ago, but
cut off his electronic monitoring device. After a tip from an
anonymous source, US Marshals and the police arrested
him from a friend’s home in north Philadelphia.
Varughese had been visiting his girlfriend, a Temple
University student, a few blocks from the campus. The cou-
ple were sitting on the front steps when a man, who the
police have identified as Little, held a gun to Varughese’s
face and demanded the keys to his motorcycle, the police
said.
When Varughese refused, Little shot him in the face and
chest, and fled the scene without taking the motorcycle.
Little was arrested twice in drug cases last year. He plead-
ed guilty to drug possession and was placed in a diversion-
ary program aimed at non-violent drug offenders. As part of
the program, he was sentenced to six months of house
arrest, community service and two years of probation. He
was also ordered to attend outpatient drug treatment.
Little received his electronic monitoring device March 14,
according to Robert Malvestuto, chief probation and parole
officer. They received an alert that Little had cut off the
device, March 28. He was placed on ‘absconder status,’ and
a warrant for his arrest was entered into the police and
court-date systems.
Varughese, of Bustleton, was due to graduate with a
degree in psychology two days after his death. On gradua-
tion day, Varughese’s brothers accepted his diploma after a
moment of silence for the slain student.
Jeffrey Little
‘I have been blacklisted
because I supported the
Khalistan movement’
;Page A26
blacklist, said, “I expect the government to do what it had
been doing all along — punishing innocent people. I have
been blacklisted because I supported the Khalistan move-
ment and supported all kinds of fight for justice against the
Indian state.”
He alleged that Indian consulates avoid giving visas to
Diaspora Sikhs.
“I cannot trust corrupt India,” said Bhinder, who was born
in Malaysia. “They are putting dust in people’s eyes.”
The blacklist, he alleged, is to cut the Sikh community off
from India.
Another Sikh senior, who did not wish to be named, point-
ed out that many Sikhs who fled India during the govern-
ment’s crackdown against Sikh militants are now naturalized
US citizens, and most of them live in California. “What is the
assurance that no action will be taken against them?”
Ashok Kumar Sinha, consul, community affairs, Indian
consulate, San Francisco, said in an e-mail that the consulate
had not received a formal communication from India in this
regard and, therefore, was not in a position to give a mean-
ingful reply.
Gurudev Sandhu, planning commissioner, Milpitas,
California, welcomed India’s decision to remove 140 names
from the blacklist. The removal of the names (many of them
associated with the Sikh militancy), he said, was the result of
concerted efforts by the Sikh Diaspora. But he feared that
such people could be arrested if they travel to India. “They
can (also) and kill you,” he added.
