Rights activist Binayak Sen, accused of links with Maoists, was Friday convicted for sedition and conspiracy by a Chhattisgarh court and arrested soon after, leaving his family and fellow activists shaken and disappointed. District and Sessions Court judge B.P. Varma found Sen guilty on a variety of counts such as under 124 A and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code and also under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. Sen,...

In an almost identical case, the accused was given a total of 11 years in jail A couple of years for Union Carbide bosses and a life sentence for Sen: Arundhati Roy Scandalous, says Justice Rajinder Sachar As a crush of lawyers, reporters and policemen awaited the sentencing of Dr. Binayak Sen, Pijush Guha, and Narayan Sanyal on the ground floor of the Raipur Sessions Court, an almost identical case was under way...

In the end, Gangula Tadangi succumbed to tuberculosis. The Kondh Adivasi’s life could have been saved if he had made it to the hospital on time. But he was in judicial custody at Koraput district jail in southern Odisha for allegedly “waging war against the Indian State”. During his last moments, Tadangi, 25, is said to have whispered something in Kondh. But nobody could make out anything because no one...

Last month, a group calling itself the “Maa Danteshwari Swabhimani Adivasi Manch” circulated a pamphlet in Dantewada district, threatening to kill anyone perceived to be a supporter of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The pamphlet accused Dantewada's oldest journalist N.R.K. Pillai, Anil Mishra, Chhattisgarh Correspondent for Tehelka, and Yashwant Yadav, District Secretary of the Chhattisgarh Working Journalists' Union, of working for the Maoists and threatened them with dire circumstances. The...

Chandrababu Naidu has managed to do outside the Andhra Assembly what he couldn’t within its four walls — train the national spotlight on the plight of farmers crippled by successive national calamities and inadequate compensation. The Telugu Desam president, who has been on indefinite hungerstrike at the new MLA quarters since Friday demanding higher compensation for farmers, was today forcibly taken into custody in the wee hours after a seven-hour drama...