In the end, Gangula Tadangi succumbed to tuberculosis. The Kondh Adivasi’s life could have been saved if he had made it to the hospital on time. But he was in judicial custody at Koraput district jail in southern Odisha for allegedly “waging war against the Indian State”. During his last moments, Tadangi, 25, is said to have whispered something in Kondh. But nobody could make out anything because no one...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

The Indian government should drop sedition cases against rights activists Binayak Sen, Arundhati Roy, and others, the Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The international body has also urged the Indian parliament to repeal the colonial-era sedition law, as it has been used by the authorities to 'silence peaceful political dissent'. The authorities have pursued sedition charges against peaceful activists, despite a Supreme Court ruling that prosecution under the sedition law requires incitement...

A day after the arrest of the Mumbai-based Dalit activist and editor of Vidrohi magazine, Sudhir Dhawle (42), by the Gondia police in Wardha on charges of waging a war against the State, more than 150 human rights activists, social activists, writers and journalists protested here on Tuesday against the detention. Mr. Dhawle, also a freelance journalist, was arrested on charges of having links with the banned Communist Party of India...

The Supreme Court has said no person can be convicted merely because he was associated with a subversive organisation, unless he has shared its unlawful purpose or participated in its unlawful activities, in a judgment that could affect the fate of Binayak Sen and Maoist ideologues convicted by lower courts. Apart from being held guilty of sedition, Sen, a doctor, has been convicted for his links with Maoists. The judgment may...