Seven months after the National Integration Council (NIC) meeting in September “discussed and dumped” the National Advisory Council (NAC)-drafted ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill, civil society activists from across the country representing more than 50 organisations came together to pronounce the Bill as “dead.” They also demanded that the Union government come up with a new draft of the Bill focused on “making public...

Why kill over a people’s dietary preference for beef? “The university and all teaching systems that appear simply to disseminate knowledge are made to maintain a certain social class in power, and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.... The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack...

-PTI A local court today acquitted 40 accused, including senior BJP leaders, in the first ever communal riots case in the state, which had occurred in the twin towns of Curchorem-Sanvordem in 2006. The sessions court at Margao acquitted 40 accused, including BJP general secretary Satish Dhond and senior leader Sharmad Raiturcar. The accused had been charged with unlawful assembly, mischief and criminal trespass. Riots had erupted after a mob demolished a madrassa...

-The Times of India   The city police have launched a manhunt for four persons belonging to the Hindu community who they suspect triggered the communal disturbances in Old City last Sunday by hurling a piece of beef on the walls of the Hanuman Temple at Kurmaguda in Madannapet. All the four are residents of Kurmaguda and in their late twenties, police said, and claimed that the accused would be nabbed within...

-The Economic Times   The special court's verdict in the communal killings in Ode and the Special Investigation Team's (SIT) closure of investigation in the Gulberg Society massacre - after finding no evidence to prosecute CM Narendra Modi and top political leaders, bureaucrats and police officers - highlight the laboriousness of delivering some measure of justice to the victims of the carnage in Gujarat in 2002.  The SIT's report is by no means...