The first judgment in a 2002 riots case and the SIT report on the Ishrat Jahan killing go against the Gujarat government. THE verdict in a crucial and long-running case involving a massacre and the investigation report in another case, of alleged encounter killings, both delivered in November, give hope to victims of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat that they will get justice, even if delayed. In the first case, the special...

-The Hindustan Times   Five of the six civil society members appointed by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to bring the rebels to the dialogue table withdrew themselves from the job on Monday, citing unfavourable conditions in Jangalmahal. This has come four days after CPI(Maoist) central committee member Kishenji was killed by the security forces on Thursday. "We have expressed our helplessness and inability to the chief minister," said a statement signed...

Varavara Rao says it was a fake encounter; CRPF terms it an ‘absolutely clean operation' A day after Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji was gunned down by the joint security forces in the Burisole forest in Paschim Medinipur district, Maoist sympathisers and security forces on Friday traded allegations and came out with counter-claims on whether he was killed in a “fake encounter.”  While revolutionary poet...

What is our national aim? To my mind, our national aim must be to make India a highly prosperous country for its citizens, and for that it is necessary to have a high degree of industrialization.  Even setting up and running a single primary school requires a lot of money, e.g. for buying land, erecting the school building and providing for the recurrent expenditure for salaries of teachers, staff, etc. We...

-The Hindu   Civil society groups have demanded an apology from the former Home Secretary of India, G.K. Pillai, for his “insensitive, sexist slandering” remarks on Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in a fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004. “Stung by the Special Investigation Team report, which concluded that Ishrat was executed in cold blood, Mr. Pillai — hard-pressed to defend his affidavit to the Supreme Court that Ishrat was a Lashkar operative...