A broad coalition of 55 civil society groups from the US, Britain and Canada are coming together to demand the immediate release of jailed Indian rights activist Binayak Sen, who was recently given a life sentence by a Chhattisgarh court. In a statement, the coalition on Thursday demanded the repeal of alleged 'draconian laws' giving arbitrary power to the State that infringe on the fundamental rights of free speech, and the...
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“Withdraw FIR against Ilina Sen”
The Indian Association for women's Studies (IAWS) has demanded immediate withdrawal of the First Information Report (FIR) lodged against Ilina Sen, professor and wife of human rights activist Binayak Sen, by the Nagpur Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) at Sewagram in district Wardha on January 24. In an open letter to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday, the IAWS protested against the FIR and alleged that the Nagpur ATS had launched a...
More »Chennai safest for women, crime bureau data shows by Revathi Ramanan
women in Chennai can feel safer about venturing out alone; government statistics are on their side. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report on crime in India in 2009, Chennai ranks 34th among 35 cities across the country when it comes to crimes and offences committed against women. While Delhi, Hyderabad , Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Mumbai take the top five slots, Chennai is penultimate on the list, followed by...
More »India's silent genocide by Samar Halarnkar
I remember being disturbed enough to stop watching the 2003 Hindi movie Matrubhumi(motherland). Set in the future, it depicted an Indian village populated only by men. It gets that way after a man, yearning for a boy, publicly drowns his newborn girl in a vat of milk, sparking a custom that wipes out women. So the men watch porn, fornicate with farm animals. A father marries his five sons to...
More »Foreigners Act wrongly invoked against Ilina Sen? by S Arun Mohan and Siddharth Varadarajan
IAWS contests police decision to file FIR against her The Indian Association for women's Studies (IAWS) has strongly contested the Maharashtra police decision to file an FIR against .Ilina Sen, wife of Binayak Sen, for her alleged failure to inform the police about the participation of foreign delegates at an academic conference organised by the IAWS and the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Vishwavidyalaya (MGAV) in Wardha last week. Prof. Ilina Sen, who...
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