He was killed on Sunday for not returning Rs. 5,000 at his residence A day after 32-year-old Dalit sugarcane labourer Shahadev Tayad succumbed to burns, the accused Vashisht Dhake who allegedly burnt him was caught by the police on Monday, but the Tayad's family's efforts to come to terms with the loss have just begun. According to the police, Dhake burnt Tayad on January 8 for not returning Rs. 5,000 at his...

Police have booked former DMKlegislator B Ranganathan as the prime accused in the murder of a man who was fighting against land-grabbers in Avadi on the outskirts of Chennai.  S Bhuvaneswaran, 38, was hacked to death in the presence of his four-year-old daughter in Kolathur on Tuesday. Bhuvaneswaran had filed RTI applications to retrieve titles on about 18 acres of land belonging to his family and other acquaintances after the plots...

With the arrest of another Hindutva activist on Tuesday in connection with the hoisting of a Pakistani flag in front of the Tahsildar office at Sindagi in Karnataka on January 1, the number of persons held by the police for what they believe was a plot to foment communal strife has increased to seven. The arrested are members of Sri Ram Sene, a pro-Hindutva outfit. According to the police, they allegedly...

Three bills the Centre has lined up to regulate higher education have been described as “draconian” by private institutions, which fear their enactment will bring the segment under a “police raj”. Two of the bills provide for jail terms and stiff fines to ensure that colleges and universities obtain accreditation before — and not after — starting courses and refrain from making exaggerated claims to attract students. For instance, under the “unfair...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court has set aside a Manipur magistrate’s preventive detention order against a member of the banned Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup group, saying it had been passed “casually” based on fears he might get bail. The top court ruled that such orders couldn’t be passed just because the state apprehended that an accused might get bail from normal criminal courts or because a person had been charged with a...