-The Hindu ‘They are free and we are trapped,' says a resident, as many villagers share her fear that they may be targeted again LAXMANPUR BATHE (BIHAR): On Wednesday night, Baudh Paswan kept tossing and turning in bed, his appetite and sleep gone. "I feel they will come back again," he murmured. As they did on the night of December 1, 1997 and began a killing spree. Armed with firearms and swords, members...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Fellowship of apathy-Sreelatha Menon
-The Business Standard The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows are being pampered with funds to serve for just two years The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows scheme, announced two years ago, sounded like a novel way to connect educated youth to the problems of backward rural areas hit by Maoist Violence. But it is now surrounded by questions as its financial size is now larger than the problem it seeks to solve...
More »Muzaffarnagar riots: A munshi has his hands full writing FIRs -Aniruddha Ghosal
-The Indian Express Muzaffarnagar (UP): At Muzaffarnagar, FIRs are piling up. A total of 177 FIRs pertaining to riots were handwritten in three days at a single station. Over a hundred still remain. Dealing with this deluge of complaints is one man entrusted with the task of going through each complaint and processing it into an FIR. He (he did not want to be named) was brought in specifically for rendering...
More »Bhagalpur, Bhajanpur test State’s claims of neutrality -Prashant Jha
-The Hindu ‘Victims of communal carnage still struggling, socially and financially' Forbesganj/Bhagalpur: Bhajanpur village is a few kilometres off Bihar's showcase ‘four-lane,' as drivers call the highway, a far cry from the State's back-breaking roads of the past, near Forbesganj town. Residents tell us that those affected by the kaand incident, of two years ago, live a little ahead, in the Ansari basti. A bumpy ride across the village leads to Ale Rasool...
More »Why capital punishment must go-Satyabrata Pal
-The Hindu When a death sentence is given to satisfy the "collective conscience of the community," it raises troubling questions about the fairness of the trial The verdict of death for the bestial gang rape in Delhi last December is based on Supreme Court judgments, which stipulate that capital punishment will be imposed in "the rarest of rare" cases, where the community's "collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the...
More »