-The Telegraph   Dispur will step up its fight against land grabbers in the city with chief minister Tarun Gogoi making it his government’s top priority for 2012 and the Kamrup metro administration activating a helpline from tomorrow to make itself directly accessible to victims. Gogoi, in his third term as chief minister, today said Dispur would lay “special focus” on implementing the Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2010, because the problem is...

A late-night crackdown by the police and paramilitary forces on anti-mega dam protesters in Lakhimpur district triggered raging protests at several places in Assam on Monday. The police arrested more than 200 protesters, who since December 16 had been blocking vehicles transporting equipment and construction materials, through National Highway 52, for the NHPC's 2,000-MW Lower Subonsiri hydroelectric project at Gerukamukh in Arunachal Pradesh. To protest the police action, five organisations, including the...

The Supreme Court has rejected a five-decade-old perception built on the basis of several reports of Commissions of Inquiry that during communal violence the police were generally biased against minority community and arrested the victims instead of the assailants. "No one can perhaps dispute that in certain cases such aberrations may have taken place. But, we do not think that such instances are enough to denounce or condemn the entire force,...

-The Times of India   Even though the residents of Guwahati have to buy their greens at exorbitant rates, farmers in the countryside are living in dire straits as the price at which they sell the vegetables have touched rock bottom. Last week, farmers in Barpeta, one of the vegetable-producing districts of the state, had to jettison cartloads of cucumbers on the street when the price of the produce touched 60 paise per...

As many as 1,574 people were killed in custody in the past year, according to the data released by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 331 deaths being reported in both police and judicial custody. The data was submitted in the ongoing session of the Rajya Sabha in response to MP H K Dua’s query to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The record number of 316...