-Deccan Chronicle   The first time I ever had to get back to my car within five minutes of stepping out to cover an event was on April 7 this year. Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav was visiting the riot affected areas of Shamli and was scheduled to address a rally as a part of his political campaign. Teenage boys on tractors, young men on the roof of buses, men in the...

-MainstreamWeekly.net   A fact-finding team, comprising Rajan Singh (Actionaid), Ram Kumar (Dynamic Action Group), Ramdular (National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights-NCdhr), Neetu (Humsafar Support Centre for Women), Shubhangi Singh (AALI) and Shilpi Aggraval (SAKAR Sanstha, Bareilly), visited Katra Sahadatganj village in Dattaganj Block in UP's Badaun district where the abduction, gang rape and murder of two minor girls allegedly by three brothers Pappu Yadav, Avdesh Yadav, Urvesh Yadav, sons of Vir Yadav,...

-Down to Earth   The Badaun rape incident shows how vulnerable women are to sexual violence when there are no toilets in homes The shocking incident of gang rape and murder of two minor girls in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district has drawn horrified reactions from leaders across the world. While most of the media attention has been on the apathy and insensitivity shown by the Akhilesh Yadav government and the police force, what...

-Al Jazeera   Activists and feminists seek implementation of law to check violence against women as new government is sworn in. New Delhi - Two days after Narendra Modi emerged victorious in India's national elections, Kiran battled the heat and crowd to see the man she had voted for in the ancient city of Varanasi. Modi, a leader of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, who took oath as the prime minister of India on...

-The Indian Express     Mumbai: It's been eight months since the state government launched ‘Manodhairya Yojana', a scheme to provide monetary relief and rehabilitation for rape and acid attack victims, including women and children. But with little advocacy, lack of counsellors in civic-run hospitals, poor post-trauma support as mandated by the scheme, and most importantly, policy apathy, ‘Manodhairya' risks being a laudable scheme just on paper. AAMIR KHAN and TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA speak...