Iqbal Masud, the civil servant and critic, supported the ban on The Satanic Verses in 1989. His reason was simple: if the book remained on sale in India, Muslims would march in protest, policemen would fire upon them, some of them would die, and no book, said Masud, was worth the life of a single protester. There were, he allowed, legitimate arguments to be made about incitement, about mobs marching against...

But claim of absence of evidence at odds with amicus report The Special Investigation Team probing Zakia Jafri's complaint has freed Chief Minister Narendra Modi of all charges in the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom against Muslims. In a “summary closure report” — filed before the magistrate's court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday — the R.K. Raghavan-led SIT said there was no “prosecutable evidence” against Mr. Modi, who was among 62 persons named in...

-The Telegraph A judge in a key Gujarat riot case today walked down the alleys where the Pogrom occurred a decade back, video-graphing the spots and talking to some of the 95 victims’ families. Jyotsna Yagnik’s visit to Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patia, where one of the worst episodes of violence unfolded during the 2002 riots, came at the request of defence lawyers. Mobs allegedly instigated by Mayaben Kodnani, a former minister in the Narendra...

The first judgment in a 2002 riots case and the SIT report on the Ishrat Jahan killing go against the Gujarat government. THE verdict in a crucial and long-running case involving a massacre and the investigation report in another case, of alleged encounter killings, both delivered in November, give hope to victims of the 2002 Pogrom in Gujarat that they will get justice, even if delayed. In the first case, the special...

Many people including members of Team Anna have expressed reservations about the way in which their campaign has been developing, and some have even resigned. This raises questions about the real aim of the leadership around Anna. Is it really what it is proclaimed to be? Is the aim to get the Jan Lokpal Bill passed by parliament? Team Anna has repeatedly stated that they have just a one-point agenda: to get...