-The Asian Age In granting anticipatory bail to Teesta Setelvad and Javed Anand on August 11, the Bombay high court noted: “A dissenting view cannot be said to be against the sovereignty of the nation.” Like several other recent rulings by the judiciary, the high court also reminded the state of its duty to protect a citizen’s right to criticise and disagree. Successive Indian governments have told the world proudly of the...

-Outlook More than 9,700 cases of atrocities against women, including domestic violence and rape, have been registered since April one this year, with Uttar Pradesh seeing the highest number of such cases, the government said today. These many cases have been registered with the National Commission for Women so far this financial year. Giving details in the Lok Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said reasons for violation of women rights...

-The Indian Express One of the criticisms of the proposed amendment is that it could, in one stroke, legalise the illegal detention of thousands of underage children by policemen across the country. As a potentially chaotic Rajya Sabha attempts to take up the contentious Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill 2015 — passed by the Lok Sabha and listed for the Rajya Sabha Wednesday — a number of legal...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday came down heavily on the Delhi government for pollution in the Capital and underreporting the number of trucks that enter Delhi. “The Centre says old diesel vehicles do not cause pollution, the Delhi government says vehicles from outside do not cause pollution either. Something must be wrong somewhere,” the bench stated after the Delhi government said that only 41 of 759...

-Hindustan Times When right to information activist Guru Prasad Shukla was beaten to death by fellow villagers last month, he became the 39th person to lay down his life for exercising the transparency law in its first decade. Another 275 people have reportedly been assaulted or harassed for invoking the law to raise uncomfortable questions before those in power. The 50-year-old Shukla had sought information about development work in his village and...