-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has expressed concern over growing human rights violations in Chhattisgarh, a Maoist hotbed, with the Centre and rights activists blaming each other for the state's volatile atmosphere. Journalists, lawyers and civil rights activists have reported being targeted and hounded out of Bastar district after being branded Maoist sympathisers. Tribal activist Soni Sori, who had protested against an alleged fake encounter, had her face burnt with...

-The Hindu A systematic attempt is being made in several West Bengal districts to evict sharecroppers from land, despite the legal protection West Medinipur: At Jamirarah village, Srikanta Hansda points to two double-storey houses in the shadow of which his home — a rough mud dwelling with an asbestos clerestory roof — squats: “Those are the homes of the Ghosh family. They own Annapurna Bhandar, a well-known grocery store in Medinipur city...

-BBC Not so long ago, Birubala Rabha believed witches existed. Assam: Growing up, neighbours often told her about evil women, or daini (witches) skulking in the village. Ms Rabha was six when her father died, forcing her to drop out of school to help her mother, a farm worker in India's north-eastern Assam state. She was 15 when she got married to a farmer. Ms Rabha mostly stayed at home, weaving and looking after their...

-The Hindu Forging gram sabha resolutions clears the path to lucrative mining... Such fictions manufacture on file the legal requirement of villagers’ participation and consent. Over 12,000 villages across Odisha conserve their community forests, says a 2013 Odisha Jungle Manch study. In a visit last October to seven villages in Keonjhar district’s Gandhamardan range, Munda communities showed me their forest protection rosters. Each roster listed four villagers for every weekday to roam...

-The Indian Express Section 375 of IPC, which deals with rape, makes an exception for such instances within marriages. It holds that “sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape”. In her first statement following her ministry’s controversial reply to Rajya Sabha on marital rape, Woman and Child Development (WCD) Minister Maneka Gandhi has said that her ministry could...