Citing lack of evidence, Jharkhand High Court today acquitted four alleged Maoists, sentenced to death for opening fire on spectators of a football match in Giridih in October 2007 and killing Babulal Marandi’s son and 18 others. A division bench of Justices R.K. Merathia and P.P. Bhatt heard the appeals filed by accused Jeetan Marandi, Manoj Rajwar, Anil Ram and Chhatrapti Mandal and gave them the “benefit of doubt” after citing...

In U.P., where 70 per cent of the people depend on agriculture, FDI in retail does not produce any cheer. ON a misty Monday morning in early December in Muradnagar, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, nuMerous tractors and trucks, loaded with jaggery and driven by farMers themselves, lined up in front of the smallest grain mandi (market) of the region. With unusual patience, the drivers waited for their...

Strengthening the arms of the Right to Information Act in a manner that thwarts the government’s procedural antics to stall information regarding corruption and human rights violations by investigation agencies under the garb of confidentiality, the Supreme Court has ruled that a notification issued by a state for that purpose in mind can’t be made effective from retrospective date. In a significant judgment on Monday, the apex court held that the...

-ANI The statistics for farMer suicides in India are as striking as they are shameful. One farMer suicide every 30 minutes in 2009, screamed a NYU School of Law report earlier this year. If one accepts that many suicides also go unreported, even this shocking statistics is perhaps an under-estimation. Why, then, would another three suicides, this time in Madhya Pradesh's Hoshangabad District, be newsworthy? For one, the suicides took place during the...

Lack of adequate credit - the lifeblood for any company is threatening to derail fledgling attempts by hundreds of dalit entrepreneurs to overcome deep socio-economic barriers and break into mainstream business.  Without credit, such entrepreneurs would also struggle to cash-in on the Rs 7,000-crore business opportunity opened up by the central government's new dalit-friendly sourcing plan, unveiled last month.  Credit disbursements to dalit entrepreneurs through 20-odd schemes run by the Ministry of...