-The Hindu Supreme Court asks Chhattisgarh to pay doctor Rs. 5 lakh for mental agony The Supreme Court, coming down heavily on Chhattisgarh police officers for custodial torture of an Ayurvedic doctor in 1992, directed the State government to pay him Rs. 5 lakh as compensation for the mental agony and humiliation he suffered. It is to be recovered from the erring officers in equal proportion. Allowing an appeal from Mehmood Nayyar Azam,...

-The Hindu “Study these four men washing down the steps of this unpalatable Bombay hotel. The first pours water from a bucket, the second scratches the tiles with a twig broom, the third uses a rag to slop the dirty water down the steps into another bucket, which is held by the fourth. After they have passed, the steps are as dirty as before… They are not required to clean,” but...

-The Indian Express In Raipur hospitals, a joke doing the rounds these days is: “Soon, someone will file an RTI to know the number of uteruses left in Chhattisgarh.” What has prompted it is, however, no joke. If a series of media reports in the state is to be believed, the uteruses of thousands of women have been removed in unnecessary operations. These reports talk of doctors cheating BPL families by encouraging...

Supreme Court wants hazardous waste rules aligned with Basel Convention THE Supreme Court has directed the Centre to ban the import of hazardous waste. While hearing a 17-year-old case, the court also asked the government to amend the existing laws pertaining to toxic waste so that they comply with the Basel Convention, an international treaty that prohibits transboundary movement of toxic waste. India ratified the Convention in 1992. The court gave the...

-Live Mint Natco Pharma Ltd, which has started selling a generic version of Bayer AG’s patented cancer Treatment Nexavar in India at a fraction of the price charged by the German firm, plans to use the so-called compulsory licensing route to try and win the right to copy more patented drugs, said vice-chairman and chief executive officer Rajeev Nannapaneni. The Hyderabad-based company has already identified the patented drugs for which it will...