Asking questions can cost your life in India - even if the right to solicit information is protected by law. Amar Nath Deo Pandey is luckier - in less than a week, he appears to have escaped two attempts on his life in a nondescript town in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. More than five years after the introduction of a landmark law that allows Indians to access information held by...

India will have 20% more men than women in the next two decades, thanks to sex-selective abortion and craze for male child in some states, according to a new study. Conducted by Dr Therese Hesketh and co-authors from the UCL Centre for International Health and Development, London, and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Tuesday, the study says easy access to sex-selective abortions, has led to significant imbalances in...

Let Aruna die? No, with her alive, there’s more power, media attention. Hence, the politics of mercy in medicine. Lucknow airport. Late ’90s. Khushwant Singh and I are waiting for our flights, we talk about Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee mentioning my book Once Was Bombay in a speech on collapsing cities. He suddenly asks, “You wrote that book on the woman who neither lives nor dies, you still see her?” I...

A person attempts suicide in depression He needs help, not punishment The Supreme Court on Monday recommended to Parliament that it consider the feasibility of deleting Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code (attempt to commit suicide) from the statute. Making this recommendation, a Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra said though a Constitution Bench in Gian Kaur's case had held Section 309 IPC constitutionally valid, “the time has come...

India's Supreme Court has rejected a plea to end the life of a woman who has been in a vegetative state since 1973. Aruna Shanbaug suffered severe brain damage and has been paralysed since a brutal rape in 1973. But the court said the medical evidence suggested that she should live. However, in what correspondents are calling a "landmark" judgment, the court also said some cases of euthanasia could be sanctioned if doctors...