The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that government doctors defying the ban on private practice and charging consultation fee from patients in a clinic during spare time could neither be accused of indulging in trade nor be booked under the anti-corruption law. A bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra quashed the FIR lodged against two Punjab government doctors, who were charging Rs 100 per patient in an evening...

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered "disparaging," "harassing," "blasphemous" or "hateful." The new rules, quietly issued by the country's Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list...

NEARLY 80 km from Pune is Ralegan Siddhi village with about 3,000 people. It would have been one among the hundreds of nondescript villages in Parner taluk of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, had it not been for Kisan Baburao Hazare, 71, better known as Anna, or older brother, a title that was appended to his name after he made the village more than just a dot on the map. Until he was...

A court on Wednesday put on trial the first set of officials and businessmen indicted in the country's biggest corruption case, a multi-billion dollar telecoms scandal that has weakened the government and put off some foreign investors. The graft scandal is one of several to have emerged in the past few months, tarnishing the reputation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose government has gone on the defensive against an emboldened opposition. While...

Anna Hazare, the 72-year-old social activist and Gandhian, on Monday slammed Union Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal for reportedly saying that the Lokpal Bill will not eradicate corruption from India. Hazare said that if Sibal has no faith in the proposed Lokpal then he should resign from the committee that has been formed to draft a stronger anti-corruption law. "If Kapil Sibal feels that nothing will happen from Lokpal Bill, he should...