Sister Valsa John may have incurred the wrath of a group of local criminals for seeking justice for a raped tribal girl and that may have been the immediate provocation for her brutal murder on Tuesday. According to a senior Pakur district official, Valsa had sought an appointment with Pakur deputy commissioner after the Amrapara police refused to lodge an FIR against the alleged rapists a couple of days back. Deputy commissioner...

The public hearing held here to elicit the opinion of tribal people of various villages under Sarugudu panchayat of Nathavaram mandal in Visakhapatnam district, on the proposed laterite mining project, passed off peacefully on Thursday. The police, who were present in large numbers, and the officials were at ease as the project proponents seemed to have brainwashed the people located on the hills on the benefits that would accrue to them...

The Mamata Banerjee government has begun to explore the possibility of modifying a land-ceiling clause to accommodate some concerns of industry. If the proposals are accepted, more industries will be exempt from the land-ceiling rule and transfer of land acquired for setting up industry would be allowed without diluting the new government’s hands-off policy. The land and land reforms department has sent a letter to four departments — commerce and industries, urban...

-The Times of India   It was the sheer need for a livelihood that Ram Lal joined his elder brother Hakla in working at an asbestos mine at Netaji Ki Bara in Udaipur as a 12-year-old kid. Now at 34 years, Ram Lal suffers from acute respiratory problems and has been loosing weight constantly not to mention that his body is a skeleton, literally. His elder brother Hakla died in March this...

The contrast could not have been starker. On one side is an English teacher leading fishermen and villagers, using his unbridled oratory to spew propaganda against Kudankulam’s ready-to-start nuclear plant that will produce 1,000MW. Arraigned against him is a group of engineers who have devoted their lives to building nuclear power plants. Affable, soft-spoken and hurt that the world’s “safest” nuclear plant that they have built has not been allowed to...