Maoists have apologized for killing MGNREGA activist Niyamat Ansari. In a release issued by Koyal Shankh zonal committee of the CPI-Maoist, its spokesperson Dinbandhu said the rebels owned up the responsibility for the killing in April, describing it as unfortunate. "He was killed not because of his role as an MGNREGA activist, instead he along with his associate Bhukhan Singh was found guilty of capturing forest land in Jerua village for agricultural...
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The Union Cabinet gets healthier by P Sainath
The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get. Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might...
More »Those discordant notes by KumKum Dasgupta
At the Independent People's Tribunal in Delhi last year, a young tribal man, Lingaram Kodopi, had a question: "My family is well off, but they [security forces] accuse me of being a Naxalite. Why can't we adivasis wear a good watch or drive a car without being picked up by the police?" In September 2009, 10 men with AK-47s entered Kodopi's home in Sameli, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. They wanted to know...
More »The life and death of Shehla Masood by Vandita Mishra
Stories abound in Bhopal of the life and death of Shehla Masood. But among those who knew her, there appears agreement on one point: something was so uncharacteristically passive, so un-Shehla-like, they say, about the dead body slumped in the driving seat of the silver-grey Santro on the morning of August 16, with no evident signs of struggle and a bullet hole in the neck. Some crude clues to the extraordinary...
More »Legislature alone can abolish death penalty: Supreme Court by J Venkatesan
“It is only the legislature which can abolish the death penalty and not the courts. As long as the death penalty exists in the statute Book, it has to be imposed in some cases, otherwise it will tantamount to repeal of the death penalty by the judiciary,” the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while confirming the death sentence on an accused for burning to death his wife and three children. A...
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