-Globe and Mail Sister Valsa John wanted to go home. Living in self-imposed exile hundreds of kilometres away, she pined for the hut in an aboriginal village where she had built a life. She talked about the people she loved there, and the quiet of the nights. Then she added, in a voice both wistful and matter-of-fact: “If I go home, most probably they will kill me.” They did kill her. In...

A Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court on Wednesday reserved order till December 1 on the appointment of an agency for a fresh probe into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Since the State government did not press for handing over the case to the State police, the probe was now open to being assigned to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Investigation Agency, a reconstituted Special Investigation Team...

My attention was drawn to “An Open Letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal” which was signed by thirty members of the civil society of Kolkata and Delhi. What disturbed me was the tone and tenor of the language used in the letter in denouncing Ms Mamata Banerjee’s bold initiative in inviting the Maoists of Junglemahal for a dialogue after “ceasefire”. May I ask with all humility who among the...

-The Telegraph   Chief minister Mamata Banerjee today put responsibilities of governance before demands for payback by a section of civil society that described as “fascist” the denial of permission to hold a protest in the heart of the city to push for demands voiced by Maoists. “There are many who had supported me before the elections and have turned away since then…. It does not matter to me,” Mamata said today in...

The report of the Gujarat High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team that probed the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, make it clear that the so-called “encounter specialists” of the Gujarat police handled the post-encounter situation very shoddily. Perhaps driven by over-confidence, or may be lack of experience then, the police did not bother much to cover their footprints and the blunders it left behind made it easy for the investigating officers to...