Taking serious note of the incident where an RTI applicant, Sanjay Bhalika, was asked to pay Rs 1.3 lakh as photocopying charges for an RTI reply by an Adharwadi Jail official, the state inspector-general of police (prisons) has directed officials to inquire into the matter.  A source said two senior officers from the jail administration would look into Bhalika's allegation. The inquiry was ordered following media reports on the incident.  Speaking to...

A bidi-smoking petty contractor who suddenly bought two Boleros and a former newspaper hawker who zipped about Chhattisgarh’s jungles in a Toyota may hold the key to a question bugging the custodians of national security. What the police want to know is: are business houses paying off the Maoists to be able to operate deep inside central India’s mineral-rich guerrilla zones? Chhattisgarh police say that when contractor B.K. Lala’s bank account suddenly...

A police constable, allegedly beaten up by a group of miscreants who harassed his niece three days ago, died of injuries here on Sunday. Ashim Dam, a resident of Birati on the northern fringes of the city, died at a private hospital. His family alleged that although they had named the seven persons who perpetrated the attack, none had been arrested so far. “The incident occurred on the day of Holi [March 8]....

Another local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was beaten to death allegedly by supporters of the Trinamool Congress in a village in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on Sunday. Bimal Senapati, a prominent local CPI(M) leader in the Deepagram village in Keshiary police station area was beaten up. The family members alleged that the killing was the handiwork of Trinamool Congress activists, said police sources. According to the leadership...

In 1953, the authors of India's first-ever crime survey presented a grim picture of the state of the new country's police forces. “There has been,” authors of Crime in Indiareported, “no improvement in the methods of investigation or in the application of science to this work. No facilities exist in any of the rural police stations and even in most of the urban police stations for scientific investigation.” From the National Crime...