On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

-IANS   Custodial killings, police abuse including torture, and failure to implement policies aimed at protecting vulnerable communities marred India's record in 2011, according to the Human Rights Watch World Report. The global report released on Monday pointed out that immunity for abuses committed by security forces also continued, particularly in JAMmu and Kashmir, the northeast, and areas facing Maoist insurgency. However, the report found that killings by the Border Security Force (BSF)...

-TCN News   Forum for Student Democracy Convener and RTI Activist Afroz Alam Sahil on Friday was called by the administration of JAMia Millia Islamia for clarification of his stand on his own statement that he made two weeks ago on NDTV regarding alleged swindling of some funds by the varsity. JAMia had taken strong notice of his statement and sent him a legal notice worth Rs 50 lakh. In today’s meeting with...

While JAMmu and Kashmir government makes tall claims about the implementation of Right to Information (RTI) Act, on the contrary its departments are not furnishing the mandatory information to the State Information Commission (SIC), thereby affecting monitoring and reporting of the law. Informed sources told Greater Kashmir that majority of the administrative and field departments of the state are defaulters vis-a-vis submission of the quarterly and annual information to SIC on...

Health ministry deputes team to Mumbai; says neither WHO nor tuberculosis control programme recognise TDR-TB The Union ministry of health has denied the presence of totally drug resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB) reported in Mumbai. Researchers at the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai documented the presence of this strain of TB in India for the first time in the December 21, 2011 edition of the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases. Patients suffering from it are...