SOMETIMES, TO accentuate the intransigence of the present, one must revisit the past. So first, a flashback. The year is 2006. An ordinary November evening in Delhi. A slow, halting voice breaks into your consciousness. “How shall I explain? It is not a punishment, but my bounden duty…” A haunting phrase in a haunting voice, made slow with pain yet magnetic in its moral force. “My bounden duty.” What could...

A fact finding team of many civil society organizations has reported widespread occurrences of murders, tortures and cases of police atrocities in Chhattisgarh in the name of combating Naxalism. It is also being alleged that in the name of their own security, journalists are being stopped from going to so called “combat zones” where security forces have launched an Operation Greenhunt to flush out armed Maoists.  Fifteen members of the...

It is rare nowadays to come across people of unflinching and unquestionable integrity. It is even rarer to find in such people a strong sense of personal and intellectual honesty that demands that they interrogate their own actions and arguments with as much sincerity as they turn on others. And it is rarest of all to find such people engaged in public life, where they would constantly have to face...

The death of a human rights activist is rarely a lead story of newspapers, especially in Andhra Pradesh. However, that has what happened when K Balagopal died in Hyderabad on Thursday night. All the three leading Telugu newspapers in the state, Eenadu, Saakshi and Andhra Jyothi, carried the news prominently in the front page either as lead or second lead. The New Indian Express also carried it as a lead...

KEY TRENDS    • The total number of civilians killed and injured during police firing in 2016 was 92 and 351, respectively. The total number of civilians killed and injured during police lathi-charge in 2016 was 35 and 759, respectively #$   • In 2015, the NCRB recorded over 73 lakh complaints of cognizable crimes. Cognizable crimes are relatively serious offences for which police officers do not need a warrant from the magistrate to investigate, such...