On Saturday, over 40 hours after the “biggest encounter” involving security forces and Maoists in Chhattisgarh, bodies of 19 alleged “hardcore Maoists and Jan Militia members” lay outside their huts in the three villages of Sarkeguda, Kottaguda and Rajpenta in Bijapur. Villagers alleged no government official had spoken to them or visited their homes, and no autopsies had been carried out on the bodies. Several bodies appeared to have been brutalised. This...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Nithin Gollamudi, a city student dreams to be a doctor and secretly wants to be the state topper in medical entrance examination. Belonging to an economically and socially backward family, the 12-year-old who was helping his father in a masonry shop in Chotuppal till two years ago even while going to a nearby government school says that it would have been impossible for him to dream...

The government plans to roll out a nationwide free medicine scheme by November, which will offer quality essential drugs to all the patients in state-run hospitals and treatment centres, a senior health ministry official said. LC Goyal, additional secretary in the ministry of health and family welfare, said the scheme would offer 348 essential drugs as well as their combinations to patients. These drugs account for about 28 per cent of...

The State finds a handy tool in a colonial law to quell dissent Wrong Arm Of The Law   Why ‘sedition’ rings hollow in India 2012 The law Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code, 1870; non-bailable offence The definition Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government...

The Supreme Court has asked doctors to reconsider a strike that began today. The judges said they do not expect doctors to resort to strikes, and have asked them to explain their stand within four weeks. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has asked doctors across the country to skip work in protest against alleged attempts by the government to curb the Association's autonomy.  The Association is opposed to the government's plans...