-The Times of India Normally, a cartoon makes us smile. But that's changing now, as the arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on charges of sedition has provoked angry criticism across society. The arrest contravenes the Indian citizen's right to freedom of speech and expression. Importantly, this is a right the Constitution, constructed by the founders of an independent Indian republic, guarantees. Sedition, on the other hand, is a repressive colonial law,...

-The Hindu “Take again Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code,” Jawaharlal Nehru said during a parliamentary debate centred around freedom of speech in 1951. “Now as far as I am concerned that particular Section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place…in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” Ironically, the sedition clause not only remains on...

-The Hindustan Times As news filtered in of extended life sentences for 31 persons for the brutal slaughter 10 years ago in Naroda Patiya, a working-class suburb of Ahmedabad, my eyes clouded over. I remembered my first meetings with the traumatised survivors of the massacre in the crowded relief camps in the city, a full decade earlier. I was heartsick and stunned by their stories of incredible cruelty. I wondered if...

-The Hindustan Times Amid the din of the discordant notes in Parliament and outside on scams, a significant decision by the Union cabinet went almost unnoticed. Earlier this week, the Cabinet amended the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act (CLPRA), 1986, and renamed it as the Child and Adolescent Labour Prohibition Act (CALPA). When Parliament passes the important amendments, CALPA, along with the Right to Education (RTE) Act, it is likely...

-The Hindu 13 men face death penalty even though the Supreme Court says they were erroneously sentenced Over six weeks after a Maharashtra court ruled that Ankush Maruti Shinde was wrongly sentenced to death, as he was a juvenile when the crime was committed, he is still stuck in the death row ward of a Nagpur jail. In fact, the Supreme Court itself had ruled that the judgment was rendered per incuriam...