The Supreme Court has rejected a five-decade-old perception built on the basis of several reports of Commissions of Inquiry that during communal violence the police were generally biased against minority community and arrested the victims instead of the assailants. "No one can perhaps dispute that in certain cases such aberrations may have taken place. But, we do not think that such instances are enough to denounce or condemn the entire force,...

A late-night crackdown by the police and paramilitary forces on anti-mega dam protesters in Lakhimpur district triggered raging protests at several places in Assam on Monday. The Police arrested more than 200 protesters, who since December 16 had been blocking vehicles transporting equipment and construction materials, through National Highway 52, for the NHPC's 2,000-MW Lower Subonsiri hydroelectric project at Gerukamukh in Arunachal Pradesh. To protest the police action, five organisations, including the...

-The Times of India   Bapi Sarkhel, in the eye of a storm since the December 14 violence near Poscoproject site in Jagatsinghpur, said on Thursday certain politicians seeking his arrest had benefited from him in the past, but turned against him as they saw him as a threat. Police has booked him on charges of fomenting trouble in the proposed Posco steel plant site and attacking anti-land acquisition villagers in the...

-The Times of India   Police have arrested four persons on Wednesday for their alleged involvement in the murder of Dyurdhan Swain, a construction company worker, during a clash at the proposedPosco project site near Dhinkia in Jagatsinghpur district last week, said OIC (Kujang police station) Gupteswar Bhoi. The accused were identified as Lalita Bhujabala, Sanatan Mohanty, Loknath Swain and Chandrasekhar Patanaik of Paradip. They were reportedly aides of Bapi Sarkhel, the controversial...

RTI activists and social workers are protesting the murder of a prominent RTI activist, Ram Vilas Singh, in Lakhisarai district last fortnight. They have demanded a high-level probe into the murder, which was very much apprehended, and arrest of the people who had been identified by Singh as threat to his life. "Singh was murdered in broad daylight on December 8 at his village Babhangawan even though he had informed the...