Nine villages with a combined population of 1,000 were out of the reach of the rescue effort in North Sikkim till this evening, injecting a fresh sense of urgency into a task force blasting past and working around boulders blocking roads in the region. The cut-off villages are located in Dzongu, the protected area of the Lepchas, the indigenous tribal community of Sikkim. The villages have been identified as Shipgyer, Bey,...

‘It is correct that... Kopa Kunjam tried to save me from the Naxalites,’ said Jhadi Nagesh in the sessions court of Bijapur, Bastar. Maoists kidnapped two men on June 2, 2009. One, Punem Hoonga, was killed the other, Jhadi Nagesh, was released. On December 10, Kunjam was arrested for the murder of Hoonga, who the Maoists killed. Nagesh, the man who was released unharmed by the Maoists, testified in court that...

The 2002 Gujarat riots victims gathered at Naroda Patiya and sent an open letter to Narendra Modi seeking justice. Here's the full text of the letter: Dear Narendrabhai Why do you have to undertake this Sadbhavna Mission by observing three days upvaas?? No other Chief Minister of the 26 States in India has to do such a prayaschit to earn sadbhavna! Have you finally realized after about a decade that all the...

-PTI   A BJP team which visited Paramakudi, the scene of the September 11 police firing in which seven persons were killed, today said the incident was a result of "police excesses" and could have been avoided. The team, which included BJP national spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman and Lok Sabha MPs Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kirit Solanki, condemned the firing and claimed that even after the incident people were targeted by police during the...

-The Hindu   Rattled by the emerging evidence that police resorted to indiscriminate firing at a mosque, the Congress-led government removed the Bharatpur Collector and the Superintendent of Police and decided to hand over the inquiry into Wednesday's violence in Gopalgarh to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot also announced a judicial inquiry into the incidents in the eastern Rajasthan town by a retired High Court Judge at a high-level...