The "dreaded" Maoist captured by joint forces on Wednesday the only one apparently caught alive at the encounter site where eight rebels lay dead is a 20-year-old mute and mentally challenged youth from Duli village. No wonder, police haven't been able to make him speak. In what may cast a shadow on the way the police are rounding up suspects, Rameshwar Murmu has been branded a hardcore Maoist and slapped...

Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha and PUCL talks to Jyoti Punwani about Chhattisgarh, where the Centre has announced the start of its offensive against the Maoists: What news of the offensive? When Operation Green Hunt began in September, notice under Section 95 of the CrPC (which includes Sedition) was served on newspapers for publishing the Maoists' press releases, which said that the only persons to have been...

Laxman Choudhury, a newspaper reporter based Gajapati (in the eastern state of Orissa) who has written about alleged local police links with organised crime, has been detained for more than three weeks on a Sedition charge in Bhubaneswar, the state capital, on the grounds that he was sent Maoist leaflets in the mail. “Choudhury’s arbitrary and unjustifiable arrest by the Gajapati police violated the Indian constitution,” Reporters Without Borders said....

  KEY TRENDS   • According to the CMS-India Corruption Study 2018, among states, 73 percent households in Telangana, 38 percent in Tamil Nadu, 36 percent in Karnataka, 35 percent in Bihar, 29 percent in Delhi, 23 percent in Madhya Pradesh; 22 percent in Punjab and 20 percent households in Rajasthan experienced demand for bribe or had to use contacts/middlemen, to access the public services @@    • According to the CMS-ICS 2017 study, the states where...