-The Times of India This flies in the face of the spate of growing abuses against children. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) - mandated to monitor child rights' violations and armed with quasi-judicial powers - has received only 51 complaints of sexual and physical abuse of children from across the country in the last five years. Even more shocking is that it has filed FIRs in only...

-Down to Earth They turn a blind eye to laws overriding tribal rights, complains national commission GOVERNORS of states with sizeable tribal population have come in for indictment over not performing their special administrative roles. To ensure partial autonomy in tribal areas, the Constitution entrusts governors with immense powers to supervise the administration and governance in such areas. They can allow or disallow any law or development programme in tribal areas to...

-PTI BHUBANESWAR: Former Odisha minister Raghunath Mohanty and his wife were arrested from neighbouring West Bengal in a dowry torture case slapped by their daughter-in-law, police said on Saturday. "Mohanty and his wife Pritilata Mohanty were arrested from a place in Howrah district of West Bengal by a team of human rights protection cell of Odisha police," highly placed police sources said here. Acting on a specific information, a "crack" team of HRPC...

-The Hindu   The government needs to open its eyes and realise that the technological utopia it envisions in the low-cost tablet is no cure for poor education, poverty or inequality The last few days have brought the Aakash tablet back into the media limelight. Last Friday, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister M.M. Pallam Raju said that troubles with the manufacturer could doom the project. But the next day, former HRD Minister Kapil...

-The Hindu     The circumstances surrounding the custodial death of a Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu in 2002 serve as a reminder of the difficulties in securing justice when the offenders are government functionaries This is a case of justice being awarded after a decade. Last month, the Ramanathapuram Sessions Court sentenced eight policemen to rigorous imprisonment, for up to 10 years, for the 2002 custodial killing of Karuppi, a poor Dalit woman,...