-The Indian Express From amendments to the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and criminal laws dealing with sexual violence against women to immediate steps to check trafficking of women and children, the three-member Justice J S Verma Committee Wednesday presented a detailed roadmap of steps the Centre and states should take to prevent sexual crimes against women. The panel, however, left the maximum penalty in rape cases to life imprisonment but...

-Outlook A parliamentary panel, probing road safety issues in the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape case, has expressed serious concern over cases of a large number of buses and autorickshaws in Delhi being registered under fake addresses. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, headed by CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, felt that criminals got away easily taking advantage of the duality and multiplicity of the policing and security system in the national capital. It...

-The Hindu In the television newsroom, the promoter’s fancies and political preferences have taken precedence over editorial judgement The Zee “extortion” case in which the news network is alleged to have demanded Rs.100 crore in return for rolling back its campaign against steel tycoon Navin Jindal’s “misdemeanours” in coal block allocations (for the family owned Jindal Steel & Power Limited or JSPL), is a deeply layered story that deserves a closer look...

-The Hindu When a senior Delhi Police officer was recently asked to disclose the reasons for so many rape victims turning hostile, he silently pointed towards a bundle of papers lying on the side table delivered to him through dak. These were court documents pertaining to rape cases that had been recently disposed of and in almost all of them the judge had remarked that the prosecutrix had turned hostile and the...

-The Hindu NHRC directs U.P. govt. to give Rs. 5 lakh to kin of Dalit girl killed by constable; The constable had murdered and hanged a Dalit girl after a failed rape attempt The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to provide a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to the family of a 14-year-old Dalit girl, who was murdered by a police constable after a failed rape...