In 1953, the authors of India's first-ever crime survey presented a grim picture of the state of the new country's police forces. “There has been,” authors of Crime in Indiareported, “no improvement in the methods of investigation or in the application of science to this work. No facilities exist in any of the rural police stations and even in most of the urban police stations for scientific investigation.” From the National Crime...

Despite sustained campaigns and legalchanges, convictions have declined steadily From the near-illegible notes scrawled by investigators at the Prasad Nagar police station, we know this: ever since 2005, the young woman who walked in through their doors last month had been stalked by her brother-in-law, given flowers and chocolate and beatings. There was the time, a bottle of rat-poison in his hand, he threatened to kill himself if she did not declare...

-Economic and Political Weekly Strict implementation of NHRC guidelines for investigation into fake “encounters” is a must. The killing of five suspected bank robbers in Chennai on 23 February by police officers tasked with apprehending them looks suspiciously like yet another case of a fake “encounter”. News reports following the killing have brought out various inconsistencies in the claim of the police that they fired in self-defence.   After directives from the National Human...

Women and impoverished, illiterate tribals fall prey to Madhya Pradesh’s overweening family planning zeal Birth Control 1951 Family planning as a policy is launched in independent India 1978 Rechristened Family Welfare after the emergency 2000 National Population Policy aims at stable population by 2045 2010 Madhya Pradesh launches targeted family planning NPP says sterilisation should be last resort in family planning. *** When Shyam Lal* walked into a primary health centre at Rewa, a dusty little town in...

Funding agency for rural NGOs may be on its last legs IT IS a government agency that was set up specially to fund non-profits working on rural development. But of late the Council for People’s Action and Advancement of Rural Technology (CAPART) has been plagued by allegations of corruption and inefficiency. After a few failed attempts to reform CAPART, the government has now decided to overhaul the agency which has close...