As body count due to Delhi riots (some call it pogrom) rise above 45, it is essential to look at the official data related to communal incidents in the country. It is from the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), one gets information about the number of communal incidents in different years, apart from the number of persons injured and killed in those incidents. There is one...

-The Indian Express The Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019 makes mob lynching a cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable offence punishable with life imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 5 lakh. Bhopal, Jaipur: On Monday, the Rajasthan Assembly passed a new law against mob lynching. Another Congress government, in Madhya Pradesh, recently introduced a Bill that seeks to curb cow vigilantism. The State Law Commission in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, meanwhile, has...

-Newsclick.in In 2019, the Gujarat government revealed a 32% rise in crimes against Scheduled Castes between 2013 and 2017, and a 55% rise in crimes against Scheduled Tribes for the same period. On May 22, Jignesh Mevani, MLA from Vadgam, Gujarat, released a strongly worded statement on his Facebook page, following the killing of Rajesh Sondarva. Sondarva was a 21-year-old dalit murdered by upper caste Hindu men in Rajkot, Gujarat. Earlier in...

-The Indian Express Some spark a movement at the click of a keypad. Others trudge 10,000 km across the country for their stories to be heard, stories that were largely left out of India’s #MeToo movement. Ahmedabad, Dahod (Gujarat), Jhabua (MP), Ratlam (MP): The bus rumbles along to its final destination for the day. After traversing much of Madhya Pradesh over the last few days, it has just entered the eastern...

-Counterview.net Reclaiming the Republic, a civil rights network, has released a document prepared under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (retired) -- and backed, among others, by Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan, bureaucrat-turned-human rights activist Harsh Mander, economist Prabhat Patnaik, Right to transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj and social scientist Yogendra Yadav  (click HERE for full list) -- with the "aim" of putting forth policy and legislative reforms needed to “protect” and...