-The Hindu With a dark and chilling feeling we recently read about the wrong Carlos who was executed in the United States for a crime he did not commit. An extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law professor and his team led to the revelation that due to a series of mistakes from investigation to trial, Texas executed Carlos De Luna for a crime committed by Carlos Hernandez. But it came too...

-The Hindu The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the West Bengal government to submit an affidavit within two weeks in response to a petition on the issue of athlete Pinki Pramanik’s mistreatment by the police. Pramanik’s gender has come into question following allegations of rape against her. A Division Bench comprising Justices J. N. Patel and Justice Sambuddha Chakrabarti heard the matter. The court has also directed the State to produce...

Only 22 compensated in four years, admits drugs controller during RTI hearing As many as 2,031 people in India have died because of the clinical drug trials they were subjected to in the past four years. Only 22 of them have been compensated. What's more, no action has been taken so far against any pharma company, ethics committee that oversees clinical trials or contract research organisation that conducts the trials, which...

The government and the MCI dither on a proposed course to provide better primary health care in villages. On February 27, the Delhi High Court slapped contempt notices on the Union Health Secretary and the Chairperson of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for their non-compliance with its order of November 10, 2010, to initiate measures to introduce a “Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC)” course of three and a half...

-PTI Land acquisition proceedings will become illegal if the Government fails to observe the mandatory requirement of issuing public notices to the affected parties, the Supreme Court has held, quashing the Maharashtra Government’s acquisition of a piece of land for a defence unit. A Bench of Justices H. L. Dattu and A. R. Dave said that besides notifying the acquisition in the official Gazette, the authorities were bound to notify the affected...