Rudrapur, an industrial town in Uttarakhand, witnesses large-scale rioting and clashes of a communal nature. THE Garhwal and Kumaon regions, which constitute the tiny hill State of Uttarakhand, were totally free of communal disturbances even when the entire country was in the grip of tension following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the Mumbai blasts in 1993. These regions had always maintained communal peace. But on...
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The Inconvenient Truth Of Soni Sori by Shoma Chaudhury
Why were two tribals and the Essar group framed by the Chhattisgarh police? Why are Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi being systematically silenced? This chilling story of one family reveals more about India's Naxal crisis than any official document can. AS I sit to write this, at 12.20 pm on 4 October 2011, an SMS pops up on my phone: “Soni Sori has been arrested by the Delhi Crime Branch.” The...
More »Saranda: den to showpiece by Basant Kumar Mohanty
As many as 56 villages in the Saranda forests, freed from over 10 years of Maoist dominance in a month-long offensive in August, is set to see a new era of development with the Centre planning to showcase it as a test case to prove that police action is no impediment to building social infrastructure. Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who visited the Jharkhand capital last week, has sent a...
More »Reversing reforms? by Malini Bhattacharya
The beneficiaries of the land reforms in West Bengal get pushed out of their land under the new regime. MOGHAI MUNDA is dead. No one is there to mourn him but his distraught parents and his young wife who seems to have lost her power of speech. But it is a significant death, even if it is ignored by the ubiquitous media and, therefore, by the world at large. Like the...
More »Mirchpur killings: SHO among acquitted
-The Times of India Eighty-two of the 97 people accused in the Mirchpur killing of a 70-year-old dalit and his physically challenged daughter were acquitted by a Delhi court for lack of evidence. The then SHO of the area, Vinod Kajal, was also acquitted by the court. All the arrested are from the Jat community, who allegedly killed Tara Chand and his 17-year-old handicapped daughter after they burnt down Chand's hut. The...
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