-Outlook Most of the child victims of sexual assault in India face humiliation while undergoing medical tests apart from police who often do not believe their account, according to a Human Rights Watch report. The 82-page report, 'Breaking the Silence: Child Sexual Abuse in India', released today found government's responses were falling short in protecting children from sexual abuse and treating the victims. It asked the government to improve protection for children from...

-AFP Child victims of sex assaults in India often find themselves humiliated by the police and mistreated by doctors when they pluck up the courage to report abuse, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. In a report released amid continuing anger at the handling of sex cases in the wake of a deadly gang rape in Delhi, the rights watchdog said the authorities had to become more sensitive towards victims. "Children who bravely complain...

-Counterpunch.org     “The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”     BR Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943, Delhi. I. Arrest. States are clumsy with their enormous power. When it suits the modern state, it uses it immense apparatus to constraint those who make claims upon it or who say things that denigrate this or that section of society. A college professor in West Bengal draws a cartoon of...

-The Hindu It has seen action on several occasions, starting in 1990 during the riots in Bijnor in western Uttar Pradesh The Durga Vahini or Durga brigade appeared in the early 1990s at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement: its objective was to band together Hindu nationalism’s female “youth.” This organisation, like the Bajrang Dal, too, stresses defence — especially self-defence — of young Hindu women, including training in the use of...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Friday disapproved of social scientist Ashish Nandy's controversial remarks on corruption among backward sections at the Jaipur Literature Festival but gave him protection from arrest following a spate of FIRs in several states. Though the court entertained Nandy's petition and issued notices to the Union home ministry and states where police have registered FIRs — Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — it...