-The Hindu The National Commission for Women on Saturday decided to intervene on behalf of the 23-year-old acid attack victim Preeti Rathi who was assaulted recently in Mumbai. Preeti, a qualified nurse, had gone to Mumbai to join as a medical staff at the INHS Asvini Hospital in Colaba and was attacked at the railway station. The victim's vision has suffered partial impairment and she has extensive burns on her face and...

-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...

-The Hindu The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has expressed its deep concern at the utter insensitivity of the Uttar Pradesh police in dealing with two rape victims, including a 10-year-old, and called for reports from the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police (DGP) on the incidents. The approach of policemen to the rape victims was so horrible that one victim was put behind bars for 20 hours and the...

-Frontline Is there a shift in the attitude of Kerala society towards the value of daughters? Is son preference spreading in a State once known to be above extreme gender bias? A recent study on child sex ratio generates more questions than it answers. By R. KRISHNAKUMAR in Thiruvananthapuram ABORTION of female foetuses after parents learn of their gender using medical diagnostic techniques is believed to be one of the central reasons...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...