-PTI India's human rights record in 2011 got a thumbs down from a leading global rights group for its "failure" to protect vulnerable communities and rapped the government for custodial killings, police abuses, including torture. Human Rights Watch also criticised the Indian government for its inaction in repealing the controversial armed forces act and for remaining silent on the "gravest abuses" in countries like Syria. In its World Report 2012, Human Rights Watch...

-IANS   Custodial killings, police abuse including torture, and failure to implement policies aimed at protecting vulnerable communities marred India's record in 2011, according to the Human Rights Watch World Report. The global report released on Monday pointed out that immunity for abuses committed by security forces also continued, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir, the northeast, and areas facing Maoist insurgency. However, the report found that killings by the Border Security Force (BSF)...

The return of peace and normalcy in Kashmir is a reality. And to ensure a durable and lasting peace, a humane approach to handle the law and order situation may be required. In a vibrant, democratic country, authoritarian ways of suppressing people’s voices prove to be counterproductive. It may be recalled that the law and order situation in Kashmir worsened in the aftermath of unfair and rigged assembly elections of 1987,...

When Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from certain areas areas in Jammu and Kashmir, it was a political move with many objectives. The government, however, had to put the plan on hold. Though the Home Ministry has been in favour of a withdrawal, the plan came under severe criticism from the Army, which argued that a withdrawal, even if partial, would hamper...

Police officers of Chhattisgarh would have us believe that people fall inside bathrooms at police stations deliberately to break their own heads or backs and later blame it on custodial torture. They say that’s what happened with Soni Sori, an ashramshala teacher from Jabeli village in the Maoist-affected Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, on October 10. In pain, drifting in and out of consciousness, benumbed by the ‘good cop, bad cop’...