The report of Raju Ramachandran, the amicus curiae in the Zakia Jafri case, has laid the ground for Narendra Modi to be charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom. The report is still confidential, though it has now been shared with the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute cases stemming from the 2002 Violence in which more than 1200 persons...

-The Hindu   Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Saturday criticised the Central government for seeking to reduce States into the status of “glorified municipal corporations.” In her address to the National Development Council, which met in New Delhi, the Chief Minister, whose speech was read out by Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam in absentia, said that the NDC was a forum to consult with State Chief Ministers, as equal partners in the process...

Police officers of Chhattisgarh would have us believe that people fall inside bathrooms at police stations deliberately to break their own heads or backs and later blame it on custodial torture. They say that’s what happened with Soni Sori, an ashramshala teacher from Jabeli village in the Maoist-affected Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, on October 10. In pain, drifting in and out of consciousness, benumbed by the ‘good cop, bad cop’...

Rudrapur, an industrial town in Uttarakhand, witnesses large-scale rioting and clashes of a communal nature. THE Garhwal and Kumaon regions, which constitute the tiny hill State of Uttarakhand, were totally free of communal disturbances even when the entire country was in the grip of tension following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the Mumbai blasts in 1993. These regions had always maintained communal peace. But on...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today reached out to India’s civil society and sought to be in sync with the restive public mood worldwide. Singh warmly appreciated “Anna Hazareji’s movement”, condemning the physical attacks on Team Anna members in recent days, sympathised with the sentiments of the Occupy Wall Street protests and praised the role of the judiciary as central to India’s democracy. In a wide-ranging interaction with journalists on his flight home...