Accused No 1 Noor-ul-Huda, 26 Labourer, Arrested on October 22, 2006 A month after the Malegaon blasts in September 2006, two policemen walked up to the house of Noor-ul-Huda at Jaffer Nagar on a Ramzan evening. They took Noor with them, telling his father they would send him back in 10 minutes. “Five years have passed. How long is their 10 minutes?” asks Noor’s father Shumshuz Zoha. This wasn’t the first time Noor...

-The Telegraph   Mamata Banerjee today sprayed a cocktail of petrol price and other grievances on the Centre, warning that the Trinamul Congress could pull out of the UPA government if it “did not think about the masses” and listen to her party. Oil firms said they had little option but to roll back the price increase if the Centre issued such a directive. However, till late this evening, the Prime Minister appeared...

-PTI The Supreme Court Friday granted the Centre three weeks to spell out its stand on the extent of immunity enjoyed by Army personnel under the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and other laws for fake encounter killings. The bench passed the direction on CBI's application for vacating the stay granted by the apex court on the trial in a J&K court relating to the killing of six youth by...

-The Economic Times   Home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has said that the CABinet last year decided to review the implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir. This brings his views in line with those of J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, who has recently demanded the scrapping of the Act from parts of the state. We welcome these views and strongly suggest the repeal of the Act.  Since...

-The Economist   A maverick minister lays into a hallowed programme IT LOOKS like risky politics for Jairam Ramesh, who runs India’s biggest civilian ministry, in charge of rural development, to lash out at his own government’s flagship welfare scheme. Mr Ramesh, who got his CABinet post in July, has sparked a row in the past week over corruption and poor results within a public programme that guarantees 100 days of paid work...