-The Hindu ‘Al vida’, said Afzal Guru to his executioner, who had himself bid him good bye with the same words a few seconds earlier. And then as the executioner pulled a lever, Afzal’s frame hung from the gallows. “He was dead in a minute, though”, as per the jail norms, the body was kept hanging for a full half hour, said an official who witnessed the hanging. Thereafter Afzal’s body was...

-The Hindu Wasn’t it? Yesterday I mean. Spring announced itself in Delhi. The sun was out, and the Law took its Course. Just before breakfast, Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament Attack was secretly hanged, and his body was interred in Tihar Jail. Was he buried next to Maqbool Butt? (The other Kashmiri who was hanged in Tihar in 1984. Kashmiris will mark that anniversary tomorrow.) Afzal’s wife and...

-The Hindu Complaints by Pakistan of executions, beheadings in secret cross-border raids by Indian forces In classified protests to a United Nations watchdog that have never been disclosed till now, Pakistan has accused Indian soldiers of involvement in the torture and decapitation of at least 12 Pakistani soldiers in cross-Line of Control raids since 1998, as well as the massacre of 29 civilians. The allegations, laid out in confidential Pakistani complaints to the...

-The Hindustan Times The tempest of public anger and revulsion against violent attacks on women in the nation's capital must catalyse long-delayed changes in laws and their implementation for a more secure and humane world for girls and women to grow up in. The students and young people who faced water cannons and tear gas shells are right in settling for nothing less. High on the list of reforms demanded - and which...

-The Hindu The cavalier approach of the police, especially in Delhi, to terror investigations has long hampered the country’s fight against terrorism. In many cases, the real culprits remain at large even as responsibility is wrongly fixed on persons who are either innocent or only peripherally connected to a particular incident. The terrible consequences of this unprofessionalism were revealed on Thursday when the Delhi High Court ordered the acquittal of two...