-The Indian Express A sound whistleblowers' protection law is long awaited. It languishes in Parliament at the system's peril Nandi Singh, a resident of a remote village in Assam, was brutally attacked with axes in September 2012 as a result of a complaint filed by him regarding irregularities in the functioning of fair price shops supplying rations under the public distribution system. He succumbed to his injuries on the way to the...

-The Economic Times The CBI manual contradicts the government's stance that it did no wrong in vetting the draft status report of the agency's probe in the coal allocation case, say legal experts, former CBI officials and activists. The manual says while CBI's superintendence is vested in the central government, its supervising authority is the Central Vigilance Commission in case of investigation of offences alleged to have been committed under the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved proposed amendments in the Prevention of Corruption Act, providing a safeguard to retired government officials from unnecessary prosecution for any bona-fide mistake and also broadening the definition of bribery to make a commercial entity liable for failing to prevent bribery of an official. The proposed changes - Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, 2013 - also provide for allowing confiscation of...

-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court has held that criminal cases, particularly corruption-related, cannot be quashed because of prolonged delay in trial. The recent ruling assumes significance against the backdrop of a pile-up in cases and a perception fuelled by time lag that those charged with corruption usually get away lightly. The Supreme Court's decision came while it refused to quash a 27-year-old graft case filed by the anti-corruption bureau against the then deputy...