-The Telegraph Chhattisgarh police today admitted that the 18 victims of yesterday’s anti-Maoist operation included children and women but sparked fresh controversy by claiming they were all rebel cadres. The admission came after the bodies were laid out in front of a police station to facilitate identification — a routine procedure — and journalists took photographs. It was clear that several of the victims were children and at least one seemed a...

Many were civilians caught in the crossfire, says Agnivesh The Chhattisgarh police and the Central Reserve Police Force claim to have killed 20 guerrillas of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in two separate incidents in the State’s Sukma and Bijapur districts in the early hours of Friday. But, sources in the State police and inter-faith activist Swami Agnivesh said many of those killed in Bijapur were civilians caught in the...

Indications are that many civilians were killed in the counterinsurgency operation In the early hours of Friday, about six hundred troopers from the Central Reserve Police Force and the Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) commando unit conducted an operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district in which 18 tribal villagers were killed and six CRPF troopers injured. Two suspected Maoists were killed in Sukma in an unrelated incident the same day. As per the...

SRINAGAR: Court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM) in Srinagar has allowed the Indian army authorities to try its five officers for the Pathribal fake encounter case in year 2000. In March 2000, following the Chittisinghpura massacre of 36 Sikhs, according to a CBI probe, the Indian Army killed five innocent Kashmiri civilians in a fake encounter at Pathribal in Anantnag district. Rajeev Gupta, CJM in his order on Wednesday, allowed the army...

The State finds a handy tool in a colonial law to quell dissent Wrong Arm Of The Law   Why ‘sedition’ rings hollow in India 2012 The law Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code, 1870; non-bailable offence The definition Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government...