The wife of a leading Indian Human Rights activist who has been sent to prison for helping Maoist rebels has said she may seek "political asylum". Ilina Sen, wife of Dr Binayak Sen, told reporters that she and her family were "not feeling safe in India" after her husband's incarceration. Last month Dr Sen was found guilty of carrying messages and setting up bank accounts for the rebels. Activists say the evidence against...

Yes, you heard it right, private tuitions will soon become a punishable offence. Karnataka government, taking cover of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, is set to ban private tuitions run by school teachers — and that too, from this year onward s. Sources in the Department of Public Instruction told DNA that under the state’s draft rules of the RTE Act, private tuitions by school teachers would be an offence that...

Slamming the Central government’s stand on the use of toxic pesticide endosulfan as leading to “a grave violation of Human Rights”, the National Human Rights Commission has called for a nation-wide ban. India should also agree to a global ban, said the Commission, which also recommended higher compensation for victims. In its report submitted on Friday, the NHRC panel accused the government of ignoring the National Institute of Occupational Health’s study...

In a bid to win the hearts of forest-based communities, the government will decriminalise the collection of traditional 'livelihood items' from the forests. The move comes even as a joint committee set up by the environment and tribal affairs ministries found several state governments guilty of using the three-year-old Forest Rights Act to distribute forest land to individuals. The committee, headed by Naresh Saxena, development expert and former secretary to the government...

Many endosulfan sufferers in Kerala still not recognised NARAYANA Vokalliga from Belur village in Kasaragod breathed his last on November 20 just as his son was explaining how his father had suffered from exposure to endosulfan for 30 years. The former employee of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala used to spray the toxic pesticide manually in the corporation’s cashew plantations at Nanjamparamba estate. When the corporation switched to aerial spraying, Narayan prepared...