Police will now have to file an FIR on every complaint, the Union home ministry said today, ending the decades-old practice of lodging general diaries that allowed the law-keepers to sit on complaints without investigation. The move is a fallout of the high-profile Ruchika Girhotra molestation case where Haryana police had initially refused to file an FIR (first information report), apparently because the accused was a senior officer. The ministry is expected...

From next year, on swearing allegiance to the Queen, all members of Britain’s House of Lords will be required to sign a written commitment to honesty and integrity. Unexceptionable principles, one might say. But, until recently, it was assumed that persons appointed to advise the sovereign were already of sufficient honesty and integrity to do so. They were assumed to be recruited from groups with internalised codes of honour. No...

People of dalit communities in the Gadarwara sub-division of district Narsinghpur in Madhya Pradesh are on the brink of starvation as they are facing harassment, economic sanctions and social boycott because they have refused to remove animal carcasses. A fact finding team of civil society organisations says that dalits at many places have been ‘imprisoned’ in their own houses as all entry and exit points have been blocked by the...

Over 300 of them participate in a discussion organised by him on defending tribal rights  Discussion on ‘Who will defend the defenders of tribal rights?’ ‘State machinery trying to crush peaceful movements against oppression’ MUMBAI: The corridors of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) rang with the songs of tribals from the Betul, Harda, Hoshangabad and Khandwa districts of Madhya Pradesh on Friday. Over 300 of them came all the...

The UPA government has come under severe criticism for trying to hurriedly pass the Land Acquisition (amendment) and the Resettlement & Rehabilitation Bill during the ongoing Parliamentary session. Both the bills have been dubbed as anti-poor as their provisions are seen to promote forced dispossession of farmers’ land as well as large scale displacement of rural people. The haste with which the two Bills are being promoted could be assessed...