-PTI The presiding members of Lok Adalats must ensure that litigants are not "intimidated" or "misled" to give their consent to the decisions as they are final and cannot be appealed against, Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam said. Terming Lok Adalats as an effective mode of settling disputes, the CJI said they provide an "approachable" forum to the poor, weaker and less-informed sections and should not be allowed to be used...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A young lawyer, who had alleged that she was sexually harassed by a "retired Supreme Court judge", has stood by her earlier statements and interviews and repeated the charges against her alleged tormentor in her deposition before a three-judge fact-finding committee set up by Chief Justice P Sathasivam. In her blog post on 'Journal of Indian Law and Society' on Thursday, she said, "On November 12,...

-The Hindu The Gujarat snooping incident should be used as an opportunity to ask how the government has assumed the power to order such invasive, unchecked surveillance. On November 15, a pair of investigative portals released a set of audio transcripts depicting an extraordinarily invasive and scrupulous surveillance of a young woman by the Gujarat Police. Its implications, limited as they may appear to those who consider privacy a besmirched value, in...

-NDTV Sexual harassment and sexual assault are crimes no matter when or where they occur and those responsible must be held accountable under the law. When these crimes happen at the workplace and involve a senior person abusing his authority to put a female worker under pressure, the company concerned also has an institutional legal responsibility to investigate and take action. When that workplace happens to be a magazine, newspaper or...

-The Network of Women in Media (India) Recent developments at the weekly news magazine Tehelka demonstrate that media houses have a long way to go in ensuring safety for women media professionals. A journalist working with Tehelka revealed that she was sexually assaulted by the editor, Tarun Tejpal, on two occasions on 7 and 8 November 2013. The repeated harassment and assault over two days took place during Tehelka's "Think" festival in...