-The Indian Express   The Supreme Court has now indicated its willingness to examine recent examples of bail being denied to high-profile politicians and businesspersons, in contradiction of our higher courts’ established injunction that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception”. The matter came up in a hearing on Ashok Kumar Sinha, an associate of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, who has been in interim custody for two years...

-Yahoo.com   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today described India as the "dirtiest and filthiest" country in the world where people with mobile phones go out to answer the "call of nature".   The comment was the latest addition to the minister's repertoire of controversial statements on a gamut of subjects ranging from education and research to sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and sanitation. Ramesh, who last month said open defecation was a "blot" and a...

The enduring memory that he has of his father is when the police took him away from the dinner table as the family had just sat down to eat their food. “He had barely put the first morsel in his mouth when the police came to pick him up. After that day five years ago, it will be today that the entire family will again have food together,” 11-year-old Osama Raees...

The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine is a grey area: Justice Ganguly Supreme Court Judge A.K. Ganguly on Tuesday termed death penalty “barbaric,” “anti-life,” “undemocratic” and “irresponsible,” but “legal.” Expressing his “personal views” on the subject, Justice Ganguly said the constitutional guarantee of ‘right to life' could not be subjected to vague premises. The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine in death penalty cases “is a grey area as it depended on the interpretation of...

Wajahat Habibullah, chairperson, National Commission for Minorities, speaks to Kavita Chowdhury on reservation for Muslims, the RTI Act and the controversy over withdrawal of AFSPA in Kashmir. You had recently visited Rajasthan. In Bharatpur district’s Gopalgarh village, some members of the minority community, Mev Muslims, were killed and the state administration was accused of mishandling the matter. What is your view? A communal riot is an unpardonable crime. The state government has taken...