A week after The Hindu first published allegations that security forces burnt close to 300 homes, sexually assaulted three women and killed at least three men (two are still missing) in three villages in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, the State government finally broke its silence and blamed the atrocities on Maoist guerillas. Speaking in the Vidhan Sabha, Home Minister Nankiram Kanwar admitted that 327 troopers of the Chhattisgarh Police and the Central...

Women's organisations rise up against a petition that seeks an amendment to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. A PETITION that alleges the misuse of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which has been admitted by the Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions, has become an object of concern among leading women's organisations in the country. The petition claims that the law, dealing with dowry-related torture and acute domestic...

Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme. When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing...

Three women assaulted, three men killed, hundreds rendered homeless in course of five-day operation The operation began in the early hours of March 11 when about 350 heavily armed troopers marched into the forests of Dantewada. They returned to their barracks five days later, with three villages aflame, about 300 homes and granaries incinerated, three villagers and three security personnel dead, and three women sexually assaulted, the victims and several...

The Latehar district administration has sent a report to the Union home ministry, highlighting the possible reason of the murder of MGNREGA activist Niyamat Ansari. Ansari, a social activist and an associate of socio-economist Jean Dreze, was beaten up by an armed group of Maoists and members of Van Raksha Samiti on the night of March 2 after he was dragged out of his house at Jerua village in Manika block...