Friday's murder of Brahmeshwar Singh, chief of the outlawed Ranvir Sena (a private army owing allegiance to the powerful upper caste Bhumihars) in Bhojpur, 71 km from Patna, could become a major test for the seven-year-old Nitish Kumar government's continued ability to maintain social harmony in Bihar. Within hours of the killing in the early hours, Singh's supporters went on the rampage, upsetting the delicate caste equilibrium in south Bihar,...

Prisoners of Jharkhand — a majority of them tribals — who are facing charges of waging war against the state may have reason to believe that they are no less equal before the law than the free man. Jharkhand High Court has constituted a committee headed by Justice D.N. Patel to monitor the trial of persons alleged to be members of banned outfits such as CPI(Maoist) and PLFI and speed up...

Terming a new law that raises the age of consent for sex from 16 to 18 years "undemocratic" and "regressive", a trial court feared it would act as a "tool for the police to harass minors". The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act ( PCSOA), passed by Parliament in the recently concluded session, criminalizes all sex by teenagers. "Such a move would open the floodgates for prosecution of boys for offences...

SURAT: His questions in RTI applications may irritate any government officer. Yet the officials nonetheless read the applications filed by RTI activist Kanu Shah, 75, with lot of interest and enthusiasm. "Normally, the applications are filed in a plain paper and have a simple format. However, Shah adds flavour to them. He uses colours, logos and scanned images to make them look beautiful," said Nagin Halpati, public information officer, District Education...

Why has there been such a silence from dalit leaders over the Bathani Tola judgment acquitting all those accused of killing 21 dalits? At the same time, what explains their loud protests over the Ambedkar cartoons in the textbooks? Has the elevation of Ambedkar as an icon relegated the dalit leadership to a politics of empty symbolism? Is the issue of a lack of accountability in the judicial system towards...