The report of the Gujarat High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team that probed the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, make it clear that the so-called “encounter specialists” of the Gujarat police handled the post-encounter situation very shoddily. Perhaps driven by over-confidence, or may be lack of experience then, the police did not bother much to cover their footprints and the blunders it left behind made it easy for the investigating officers to...

My attention was drawn to “An Open Letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal” which was signed by thirty members of the civil society of Kolkata and Delhi. What disturbed me was the tone and tenor of the language used in the letter in denouncing Ms Mamata Banerjee’s bold initiative in inviting the Maoists of Junglemahal for a dialogue after “ceasefire”. May I ask with all humility who among the...

-The Hindu   SIT says 2004 killing of Ishrat by Gujarat police was staged A Special Investigation Team appointed by the Gujarat High Court has concluded that the sensational Ishrat Jahan encounter of June 15, 2004 — in which the Ahmedabad police claimed they shot dead four Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi — was entirely staged and the teenaged girl from Maharashtra and the three men who died with...

After the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter of 2005 — which the State CID (Crime) had found to be “fake” — and the Central Bureau of Investigation concluding that the killing of Sohrabuddin's accomplice, Tulsiram Prajapati, a year later was also a fake encounter, the Ishrat Jahan murder case will add further embarrassment to the Narendra Modi government in the State. For the moment, the key issue is who will investigate the murder...

-EPW   With laws like the AFSPA, when will truth and justice prevail in Jammu and Kashmir? Like all Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) chief ministers after the dreadful years of president’s rule from 1990 to 1996, Omar Abdullah too stands discredited, especially in the wake of the 2010 uprising of the “stone pelters” which was later brutally suppres­sed. A widely held opinion in the Kashmir Valley is that the chief minister, whether of...