-The Telegraph Guwahati: Gauhati High Court has taken up a suo motu PIL against the Calcutta-based Saradha Group and similar deposit collecting companies for allegedly duping scores of investors in Assam of their hard-earned money. Official sources said the high court recently took up the PIL (15/2013) after taking cognisance of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) general secretary and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi's letter to Chief Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel. Akhil had alleged...

-The Hindu   Asian Centre for Human Rights blames Centre, States for continuing assault There was a 336 per cent increase in child rape cases in the country between 2001 and 2011, a large number of the crimes committed in juvenile justice homes run and aided by the government. Citing National Crime Records Bureau statistics, the latest report on child sexual assaults in India says 48,338 rape cases were reported during the decade. Tip of...

-The Hindu Differing with his brother judges, Justice M.B. Shah had actually voted to acquit Bhullar His plea for mercy on the grounds of delay may have been rejected by the Supreme Court last week but there is one more argument his lawyers can make in their final push to save Devender Pal Singh Bhullar from the gallows: the two judges who confirmed the death sentence in a 2:1 split verdict...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-The Hindustan Times Far from the neatly trimmed lawns of India Gate that so often reverberate with cries for justice, far also from the corridors of power where ministries recently squabbled over the right age for consensual sex, lie 197 districts - yes 197, read the figure again - where children are regularly abused. In these districts -- all ridden by conflict -- words like illegal detention, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, torture...