The family of newly-elected Dalit sarpanch of Bapora — village of Army chief VK Singh — has been ostracized for participating in election despite the village deciding to boycott it on ground that all major panchayat and zila parishad posts had been reserved for Scheduled Castes. The ostracization has led to a situation in which the new sarpanch, a brick-kiln labourer and an SC, has been given armed security by...

Two sisters live in a clearing in the forest about 10 km beyond the abandoned houses and empty yards of Mukram village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district. A third young girl cowers in the courtyard of her aunt’s house in neighbouring Tokanpalli. Between 14 and 18 years of age, Kose, Rame and Hidme (names changed) say they fled their homes in Mukram after they were sexually assaulted by Special Police Officers...

Two events triggered widespread condemnation and protests  Satish Shetty, who was murdered, had targeted the land mafia Dattatray Patil's targets were the powers that be in Kolhapur While Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is proud that the State has an impressive 98.69 per cent disposal rate of requests under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the murder of two campaigners who used the law to good effect is a blot. First, it was...

26 years after the world's worst industrial disaster that had left over 15,000 people dead, a local court on Monday convicted all the eight accused including former Union Carbide chairman Keshub Mahindra in the Bhopal gas tragedy case. Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari pronounced the verdict in a packed court room convicting 85-year-old Mahindra, and seven others in the case relating to leakage of deadly methyl isocyanate gas in...

A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in jail over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984. The convictions are the first since the disaster at the Union Carbide plant - the world's worst industrial accident. The eight Indians, all former plant employees, were convicted of "death by negligence". One had already died - the others are expected...