-The Hindu   Tension persists in Gopalgarh town of Rajasthan despite relaxation in curfew Amid the continuing tension in Gopalgarh town of Bharatpur district despite relaxation in curfew, the Rajasthan Government on Sunday categorically denied that the police had resorted to indiscriminate firing at the Jama Masjid or joined the violent crowd of Gujjars in lynching and burning alive the people praying in the mosque this past Wednesday. The denial issued through the State's...

This wedding season, anxious grooms from Parsa and Ghatburra, two villages in Chhattisgarh's Surguja district, were offered financial assistance from an unlikely source. Adani Mining Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, was handing out loans to all those who could prove that the money would be spent on marriage arrangements. “A company official took us to the bank, opened accounts in our names, and gave us cheques for Rs....

Opening a new chapter of charges against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, this time for attempting to subvert the judicial process, the noted danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai claimed that the Chief Minister had “bribed” her lawyers to derail her Public Interest Litigation petition before the Supreme Court on the 2002 communal riots in the State. Ms. Sarabhai told a hurriedly convened media conference on Sunday that an affidavit filed...

Stories abound in Bhopal of the life and death of Shehla Masood. But among those who knew her, there appears agreement on one point: something was so uncharacteristically passive, so un-Shehla-like, they say, about the dead body slumped in the driving seat of the silver-grey Santro on the morning of August 16, with no evident signs of struggle and a bullet hole in the neck. Some crude clues to the extraordinary...

-The Hindu   “Police should not have taken extreme step of firing” Latha Priyakumar, Member, National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), said that the lives of six Dalits could have been saved if police had handled the agitation in a proper manner. She was visiting Paramakudi and Ramanathapuram to enquire into the police firing at Paramakudi on Thursday. Describing the deaths as very unfortunate, she said the mishandling of the issue had claimed innocent lives. The...