Nearly a year after Tadmetla in Dantewada hit national headlines with the massacre of 76 CRPF jawans, grief-stricken villagers in Dantewada alleged that security forces burnt down more than two hundred homes, sexually assaulted a woman and took away two men on March 16. Tadmetla has been scorched and reduced to rubble by the police, they said. In detailed and gruesome accounts given to journalists, the tribals alleged that five days...

As intermittent jubilation spreads through the crowd of 5,000-odd farmers at Moti Buru, outskirts of Ahmedabad, where the 'Jal, Jameen Jungle bachao padyatra' was on Saturday, Dr Kanubhai Kalsariya is quick to assert that this is not the final victory and that the fortnight-long yatra will continue till Gandhinagar as per schedule. The people's mass protest that has brought them this victory is spectacular in its own right. Fatigued from the...

Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death since November 2000 demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, is continuing her fast, to the chagrin of the government, even after her release on Thursday. Detained on the charge of attempting suicide, she can be legally held only for one year at a stretch and has, since 2000, been ritually released on the completion of each...

The gruesome murder of NREGA activist Niyamat Ansari has shocked the progressive civil society and political groups in the country. According to reports (one, two), Niyamat Ansari had exposed a case of corruption in NREGA and an FIR was lodged against a former BDO and another Panchayat Sevak of Manika block, Latehar (Jharkhand). On 2nd March 2011, Niyamat Ansari was picked from his house and beaten to death. The reports...

The Rajasthan government on Sunday suspended a drug inspector and an employee of the government Umaid Hospital in Jodhpur, where 13 women have died of excessive bleeding during childbirth in the past two weeks. It announced an ex gratia of Rs.5 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased, besides blacklisting two pharmaceutical and surgical equipment firms. The decisions were taken at a high-level meeting convened at Chief Minister Ashok...