-TheWire.in Women, the report has found, would be molested and threatened with rape by male personnel. Trigger warning: The article contains graphic descriptions of physical and sexual torture which might be triggering to survivors. Electric shocks, bricks hung from private parts, threatened with rape, sexually assaulted, hung naked, hung upside down — these are some of the methods that Haryana Police has been undertaking in dealing with prisoners, both men and women, a...

-Down to Earth The amendment to the RTI Act does not deserve the assent of the President, writes former Central Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu in the second of this two-part series The Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions told the House that Parliament's competence to enact a law to give effect to the citizens' right to obtain information is located in Entry 97 of the Union List...

-The Indian Express The BJP, now in the opposition, has accused the Congress of “milking” the Mandsaur case for political gains. Bhopal: Two years after the death of five protesters in two incidents of police firing near Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, family members of the victims have said they are still waiting for justice. The death toll would later rise to six after one protester succumbed to injuries allegedly suffered in police custody. The...

-Hindustan Times It is also important to remember that both these laws were the product of sustained, grassroots-level social movements. Consequently, perhaps the surest remedy against possible future dilution may lie not in judicial challenges (although that remains important), but in popular mobilisation. With the 2019 general election yielding a decisive mandate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), attention will soon turn to the new government’s legislative agenda. As the government is...

-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ tribals from the forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” forest-dwellers. When we first heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...