Umesh Kumar and his wife Satvati Devi were woken in the middle of the night by loud cries coming from the neighbouring house. "She was crying loudly. She was pleading, 'Kill me, but please don't hurt him.' She loved him and they wanted to get married," Ms Devi tells me. Two days after teenage lovers Asha and Yogesh were brutally killed, Swaroop Nagar colony on the north-western outskirts of the...

A Tripuri woman was beaten up and paraded naked through her village by panchayat members in Dhalai after a kangaroo court accused her of sexual misconduct last Saturday. The 30-year-old wife of a farmer, villagers said, “were spoiling young boys with sexual bait” in Jayanti Bazar village. Last Saturday, when the mother of two was feeding her children around 12pm, panchayat member Bangalaxmi Debbarma came to her house and asked her to...

The Prevention of Torture Bill fails to meet the minimum standards laid down in international law and betrays a contemptuous attitude towards Indian citizens.  Unless torture is inflicted for the purpose of extracting some information, the proposed law will refuse to take notice A court can entertain a complaint under the proposed law only if it is made within six months of the date of the offence The right against torture, quite...

A MARRIAGE hall in Kolkata is packed with 1200 of India’s poorest citizens. They have trekked here from all over West Bengal, from remote forests and dingy alleyways, from Howrah, East Midnapore, South 24 Parganas. They have come because there is a story to tell, a brutal story that may otherwise never be told. Finally, there are people willing to hear. These people may never bring justice; may never be...

Naxalites are India's worst human rights offenders, says a new report on Torture in India. But Maoist supporters maintain that the Naxals are fighting for survival. A report on Torture in India has made the startling revelation. The Asian Centre for Human Rights says that the Maoists are the worst violators when it comes to torture. For the first time ever, a top human rights group in India has accepted...