-The Hindu Made an accused by Jaipur Police in a counter case to hers against the police   The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted interim bail a paraplegic and alleged victim of custodial sexual torture from Jaipur. The girl had been made an accused by the Jaipur Police (District East) in a counter case to hers against the police. Justice C. S. Thakur and Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra of the Supreme Court, who heard...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

Only 18 per cent cases registered under dowry death charges end up in conviction, statistics available with the Delhi Police reveal. According to the Delhi Police figures, a dowry death is reported in the city every third day. Of the 681 people arrested under the sections of dowry death in Delhi, only 207 were convicted of the charges and sent to jail. Around four years ago, the Delhi Police had issued a...

-The Hindu If only laws could eliminate all that they prohibit, India would have been free of the scourge of manual scavenging decades ago. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Bill, which is to be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament, is another attempt to prevent employment of people in the cleaning, handling or carrying of human excreta. Despite the renewed stress on rehabilitation in the...

The National Advisory Council has asked the Centre to formulate a national policy to stem the declining sex ratio at birth that it believed was “located at the complex interface of the status of women in Indian society, patriarchal social mores and prejudice, spread and misuse of medical technology and the changing aspirations of urban and rural society”. The council’s draft recommendations — prepared by members Farah Naqvi and A.K. Shiva...