-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court had recently said security forces had no inherent right to shoot people, which suggests that yesterday's killing of the eight Simi operatives by Madhya Pradesh police went against that ruling. The court had held that even if a person was seen carrying weapons in a "disturbed" area, it did not automatically give the security forces the right to shoot him. Even the army had no blanket...

-The Indian Express A decade after ‘Prakash Singh’ judgement, police reform remains undone. Anniversaries and birthdays are joyous occasions. The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Prakash Singh case should be one of them — a reason to look back with pride at the court’s seven directions in its September 22, 2006, verdict aimed at propelling police reform. The judgement was intended — but perhaps not expected — to...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government has refused to divulge information about riot control weapons and ammunition used to disperse protesters, saying this was “sensitive defence information” and making it public could jeopardise the country’s security. A Delhi-based rights activist Venkatesh Nayak had filed a right to information (RTI) request asking the Ordnance Factory Board for details on the sale of weapons and ammunition, particularly pellet shotguns that have injured thousands of...

-Hindustan Times The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) conceded on Friday that its crime statistics for 2014 and 2015 had misreported cases registered under Section 66A, a cyber law under the Information Technology Act that was scrapped by the Supreme Court last year. The NCRB’s ‘Crime in India’ report released last month had put the number of people arrested under Section 66A at 3,137 in 2015 and 2423 in 2014. This implied...

-The Hindu The number of FIRs registered against personnel is few and far between, show new data from NCRB New Delhi: India may not have enough safeguards to protect its citizens from human rights violations by the police, official data suggest. As many as 35,831 cases were registered against the police with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2015-16, a figure that experts say is highly under-reported. And only 94 first information...