The Border Security Force has ordered an internal inquiry into allegations that BSF soldiers in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district tortured villagers into confessing that they were Maoists. The allegations were levelled by Sunita Tulavi, 19, in a story published in The Hindu on September 11. A resident of Aloor village, Sunita said she was illegally detained, blindfolded and electrocuted in the BSF camp at Durgkondal, Kanker, on September 5 and released four...

Thousands of people have been evacuated from low-lying areas near the Yamuna river in the Indian capital, Delhi. The city is battling renewed flood fears as water levels in the Yamuna have crossed the danger mark. Incessant rainfall and release of water from the Hathnikund barrage upstream in Haryana state have raised the level of the river, officials say. In late August too, the river touched the danger mark after days of heavy...

Amipur may be a small dot along the national highway from Patna to Nawada, but its ambitions are big. In the 50-odd households in the village, sparsely populated and rife with an uneasy quiet, most men have left for work outside Bihar. Siyaram Chauhan is the one who returned. He was rescued last month by the state government officials from a brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich where he worked as...

Sujatha Sundaran, 25, sits on a rickety bench and points to a rubber nursery that was a helipad about a decade ago in Mundakkai colony in the heart of Kerala’s northern district of Kasargod. Local children used to watch with awe as the choppers flew overhead and sprayed the insecticide endosulfan on the cashew groves of the Plantation Corp. of Kerala Ltd, a state government undertaking. She was eight when she...

Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is often feted for development work. But it seems the progress has not reached the remote, rural areas of the state — certainly not the tribal district of Jhabua. At least 46 children have reportedly died of malnutrition and starvation in the district since last October. But the authorities refuse to even acknowledge the problem, let alone take any action. Most of the deaths have been...