Expressing shock over awarding of life sentence to rights activist Binayak Sen on charges of sedition, over 80 intellectuals including Noam Chomsky today demanded that his appeal be heard "expeditiously" with "enlightened reason" and sought his immediate release on bail. They claimed that Sen never resorted to violence or incited anyone else to do so. On the contrary, as a doctor and a human rights activist he stood up in defence...

“Conviction sets a dangerous trend for judiciary” It has ominous undertones: All-India Milli Council Three days after a Chhatisgarh court convicted Binayak Sen of treason and sedition, the sense of disbelief seems to be growing, with more and more members of the civil society joining in to protest the judgment and urging fellow citizens to start a campaign for the release of the paediatrician and civil rights activist. The voices were unanimous in...

A pair of burly hands affixes several lengths of masking tape to an open brown bag. Then the same hands are shown to belong to an officer of the Chhattisgarh police; one hand holds the bag open as the other riffles through the bag's contents. “This is what we have taken,” says a voice in Hindi. When the police leave the house of Binayak Sen, an award-winning physician and human rights...

The testimony of a cloth merchant appears to have sealed the case against Binayak Sen, the doctor and civil rights activist sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of criminal conspiracy and sedition. Sen had been accused of passing seditious letters from jailed Maoist ideologue Narayan Sanyal to Piyush Guha, a Kolkata businessman. Both Sanyal and Guha were handed down life terms along with Sen. A close reading of the 92-page...

West Bengal businessman says he was illegally detained and interrogated for five days before his arrest was staged on May 6, 2007 Defence maintains that all evidence was planted by Chhattisgarh police Discrepancy in SLP is a typo, says investigating officer S.S. Rajpoot At 10.45 a.m. on May 1, 2007 Pijush Guha checked into the Mahindra Hotel here and vanished. The hotel register indicates that he checked out at 8.45 p.m. the same...