-The Hindu Hundreds of undertrials languish in overcrowded south Chhattisgarh prisons even as their trial proceeds sluggishly, says an RTI reply With most information regarding prisons closely guarded in the country, in conflict zones — some north-eastern States, Kashmir or Chhattisgarh — it is even more so. The only information about prisons that percolates to public space is about how inmates are becoming master painters, singers or dance drama designers. While those...

PTI Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, whose four family members were tortured and murdered at Khairlanji in Bhandara district in September 2006, on Tuesday asked the Maharashtra government to hand over the land promised by it in the aftermath of the killings, which sparked nationwide protests. Mr. Bhotmange, who met Home Minister R.R. Patil, told reporters at the Vidhan Bhawan that he was yet to get the promised land. Mr. Patil spoke to Social Justice Minister...

-The Hindu By hanging Afzal Guru secretly so that he could not approach the courts, and ignoring the pending case that could have affected his sentence, the Home Minister acted illegally On March 6, 2013, in response to an RTI request, the President’s Secretariat made available documents pertaining to Ajmal Kasab’s mercy petition. People from across the country and the globe had written to the President asking that he use his clemency...

-First Post It’s so brutally ironical that Ram Singh, perhaps the most hated man in India today for allegedly masterminding the Delhi gangrape, became a victim of rape himself. We still don’t know how he died, but his father has made it public that Singh had been raped in jail. Not just him, even his co-accused had been raped as well. Retributive justice, some say, because the accused had been made to realise...

-The Times of India Two months after questioning the rationale behind commuting death sentences of five rape-murder Convicts to life imprisonment during then President Pratibha Patil's tenure, a Parliamentary committee has now suggested that the mercy petitions should not be by and large considered for such criminals. Though the Committee is not in favour of completely knocking out the provision of mercy plea for Convicts like those on death row, it wants...