-The Times of India As political parties learn to set up central war-rooms in their headquarters during elections to civic bodies, state assemblies or the Lok Sabha, they are increasingly depending on private detective agencies to collect and collate data in order to gauge people's mood, select prospective candidates and know rival strategies. Sniffing a business opportunity, private players have come up with specialised services of providing ground report to political leaders....

-The Hindustan Times   Rambai, a lean and sprightly 34-year-old, has never been the quiet sort. So when her neighbours at the Rokra hamlet were asked to choose a community health worker (CHW) — called Mitanin (friend) in Chhattisgarh — they knew that Rambai would be an ideal candidate. “We selected her because she could communicate well and interact with officials with ease, even though she has studied till Class 5,” said...

-Bhaskar News A protest rally organized by tribal villagers in the city turned violent after they were stopped by police on Monday. The police used lathicharge to control the violent mob of tribal villagers who were on their way to protest outside Vidhan Sabha in the city. A mob of angry tribal villagers took out a procession rally as part of their protest against the government demanding adequate rights for the tribes...

There is a new twist to the alleged suicide of Bilaspur SP Rahul Sharma. One of the officer’s closest friends has said that a week before Sharma allegedly shot himself, he had fretted about being made to do “begaar” (literally, forced labour), and that he had been given a “target” for “election expenses”. Sharma was found dead at the Bilaspur police officers’ mess on March 12. A day later, IG G...

A bidi-smoking petty contractor who suddenly bought two Boleros and a former newspaper hawker who zipped about Chhattisgarh’s jungles in a Toyota may hold the key to a question bugging the custodians of national security. What the police want to know is: are business houses paying off the Maoists to be able to operate deep inside central India’s mineral-rich guerrilla zones? Chhattisgarh police say that when contractor B.K. Lala’s bank account suddenly...