-The Hindu   The absence of a comprehensive rehabilitation policy for surrendered militants has made life hellish for those who decided to give themselves up and join the mainstream Jammu & Kashmir's first "Surrender Policy" was floated by Governor Gen. (retd.) K.V. Krishna Rao's administration in 1995. It was almost identical to the policies introduced for militants involved in the North East and Naxalite insurgencies: Rs.1.5 lakh worth of fixed deposit receipts payable...

-The Hindu   "It deserves to be thrown into the dustbin" The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the magisterial probe report on the Tarn Taran incident, in which a girl and her father were beaten up by the Punjab police, as it justified the attack on the duo. A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and Kurian Joseph told Additional Solicitor-General Siddharth Luthra, appearing for the Punjab government, "the report does not have the value...

-The Indian Express A committee appointed by the Supreme Court to probe six cases of alleged extra-judicial killings in Manipur informed the court on Thursday that all the encounters were fake. The committee, comprising retired judge Santosh Hegde, former chief election commissioner J M Lyngdoh and former Karnataka police chief A K Singh, held that all the seven victims, including a 12-year-old boy, did not have any criminal background and had not...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-The Hindu "Animal behaviour," was the unusual language the Supreme Court deployed recently. The context for the cryptic remarks was the gruesome lathi-charge on protesting teachers, predominantly women, engaged on contract by the Bihar government, and the attacks on a woman who sought police intervention in a case of assault. The police carry a long and ignominious record of resort to indiscriminate force to quell peaceful protesters, which peaked in the...