Call records lend weight to Sanjiv Bhatt's claimed presence at meeting with Modi Telephone records accessed by The Hindu lend credence to a crucial affidavit filed by a journalist backing senior police officer Sanjiv Bhatt's claim to have attended the controversial 2002 meeting at Narendra Modi's residence where the Gujarat Chief Minister allegedly said Hindus should be allowed to vent their anger against Muslims in the wake of the Godhra carnage. The...

Two days after a mob of 300 Trinamool workers and supporters stormed a police station in the heart of Kolkata, assaulted policemen and vandalised government and private vehicles, the police have filed a preliminary report of the rioting — and indicted their own men. The mob, comprising members of two clubs in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s south Kolkata neighbourhood, fought street battles with policemen from Bhowanipore police station who had asked...

-The Indian Express   West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has not adapted well from a life in opposition to being the head of her state’s government. Yet even by her standards, and those of the hollowed-out administrative machinery of the state now in her care, her recent actions have been shocking. On Monday, a religious procession passed through a section of south Kolkata dotted by hospitals, including one for cancer patients...

A river of bows and arrows slid through the urbane lanes of Raipur civil lines, coming to a startling stop outside the chief minister's gated and guarded residence in the autumn air of November 1st, the founding day of Chhattisgarh. As the police whisked them away, the tribal protestors told journalists they were asking for the most basic constitutional right: proportional reservation in government jobs. Eleven years ago, the sprawling state...

-Express News Service   A special riots court awarded life sentences to 31 people, mostly landed Patels of Sardarpura village in this district, for killing 33 Muslims who were employed as their farm labourers and were their neighbours, to avenge the Godhra train burning of February 27, 2002. Of the dead, 17 were women and 11 children. Principal District Judge S C Srivastava convicted them for murder, rioting and promoting enmity between different...