After the recent murder of Nadeem Saiyed, an RTI (right-to-information) activist and key Witness in a major communal riot case in the city, one more whistle-blower has been attacked in a village near here. Poonam Solanki,  who is also a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in neighbouring Daskroi taluka, was assaulted by supporters of Popat Solanki, ‘sarpach’ of Bakrol village and chairman of a local co-operative organisation on...

A report of the National People's Tribunal on the 2008 riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, is out. The report that runs into 197 pages points out that the brutality of the violence falls within the definition of 'torture' under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.   According to the tribunal, headed by Justice A P Shah, communal forces used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation...

Disability is widely recognized as a cross cutting developmental issue that has relevance to all dimensions of social exclusion. Even today, if we link up disability to developmental issues, it raises serious concerns where people with disabilities are at a double burden of marginalization. Disability has been seen as both the reason for and the consequence of poverty. Trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, people with disabilities are denied...

-The Hindustan Times A 45-year-old cotton grower tried to end his life by consuming pesticide at the election meeting of the chief minister Prithviraj Chavan at Dhamangaon in Amravati district, some 200 kms from here in western part of Vidarbha, on Sunday. According to reports reaching here this evening, the incident occurred when the chief minister was addressing an election meeting for the ensuing municipality elections at Dhamangaon on Sunday afternoon.  The...

-EPW   Will the blatant discrimination against Muslims in the administration of justice ever end? The word secular was inserted into the Preamble of the Indian Constitution by the 42nd amendment in 1976; later on, the Supreme Court, in S R Bommai vs Union of India, held (in 1994) that secularism was an integral part of the basic structure of the Constitution. And yet, it has been a long time coming – Indian...