-BoomLive.in/ Factchecker.in Crime rate for atrocities against scheduled castes (SCs) in Gujarat was 32.5% in 2016, above the national average of 20.4%, according to government data. “Gujarat is among states that witness minimum Dalit atrocities,” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah said on September 10, 2017, while addressing a youth town hall meeting in Ahmedabad. Shah is wrong, as the crime rate for atrocities against scheduled castes (SCs) in Gujarat was 32.5%...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Several military veterans have told the Prime Minister and chief ministers in an open letter that "dissent is not treason; in fact, it is the essence of democracy". "We can no longer look away. We would be doing a disservice to our country if we do not stand up and speak for the liberal and secular values that our Constitution espouses. Our diversity is our greatest strength," says...

-The Indian Express The batch of PILs has sought directions to various state governments as well as the Centre “to take immediate and appropriate actions against the vigilantes, who in the garb of Gau Rakshak Dals (cow protection groups) had been spreading violence..." BARELY A week after a man was killed, allegedly by ‘gau rakshaks’ (cow protectors), on suspicion of transporting cows in Alwar, the Supreme Court Friday sought responses from the...

-The Indian Express Preventive detention is being routinised as an instrument of state repression The recent preventive detention (PD) of Khurram Parvez, a Kashmiri human rights activist, and Jignesh Mewani, a Dalit leader from Gujarat, has turned the spotlight on the provision of PD and the purposes it is being made to serve. National Crime Records Bureau data released in September 2015 indicate that over 3,200 people were being held in administrative...

-PTI Vigilante groups target Dalits as they are "soft targets" while refraining from confronting those involved in cow slaughter: fact finding team. Ahmedabad: A fact finding team which visited Gujarat’s Una town in connection with the brutal assault of Dalits, has claimed to have found a new trend among ‘cow vigilantes’ to show bravado by making a particular Dalit community as their “soft target”. The incident of beating up of seven Dalit youths...