-The Hindu To say human being is untouchable is to deny God: Asra Garg The Madras High Court Bench here on Thursday appreciated Madurai Superintendent of Police Asra Garg (31) for efforts taken by him in putting an end to long pending hostility between Caste Hindus and dalits of Villoor near here through talks. Justice D. Hariparanthaman recorded his appreciation for the SP and his team of policemen while closing a writ petition...

-The Hindu The acquittal of 23 people convicted by a lower court in the gruesome Bathani Tola massacre case is a shocking indictment of the country's criminal justice system. The mass murder of a group of 21 dalits and Muslims, most of them women and children, by the notorious caste militia, the Ranvir Sena, took place in Bihar's Bhojpur district in 1996 in broad daylight. The basic facts about the ghastly...

The National Advisory Council will ask the Centre to focus the ongoing socio-economic caste census on enumerating and classifying denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, or DNTs. The plan is to give these groups priority while issuing unique identity cards and introducing laws that will grant them explicit recognition on the lines of the 1992 statute on minorities. The NAC said special directives must be issued to the housing and urban poverty alleviation...

-The Economic Times Last week's acquittal by the Patna High Court of all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre of 1996 - in which 21 dalits, including women and infants, were killed by members of an upper-caste/landlord militia called the Ranvir Sena, in this area of central Bihar - is shocking testimony to the ineptness, and worse, of the police and the administration in prosecuting the guilty. Given the fact that...

Overlooked and ignored, the problem of untouchability continues to be practised and perpetrated in the country. It is a lifetime of misery and humiliation, unimaginable for the relatively privileged but a daily reality for over one-fifth of the country’s 120 crore-plus population, as revealed succinctly in 22 short and easy to view videos under the Article 17 Campaign launched on April 14, 2012 by India Unheard, which claims to be...