-Economic and Political Weekly Strict implementation of NHRC guidelines for investigation into fake “Encounters” is a must. The killing of five suspected bank robbers in Chennai on 23 February by police officers tasked with apprehending them looks suspiciously like yet another case of a fake “Encounter”. News reports following the killing have brought out various inconsistencies in the claim of the police that they fired in self-defence.   After directives from the National Human...

A close aide of Kishenji, she was with him when he was killed in an Encounter Senior Maoist leader Suchitra Mahato, a close aide of Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji, surrendered in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the State Secretariat here on Friday. “For all these days I believed in the Maoist politics and have spent long years in the forests. But...

Even as speculation that Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji, was killed in a fake Encounter refuses to die down, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee attempted to clear the air on Friday. “Kishenji's death was not something that we did knowingly. It was an incident that occurred,” Ms. Banerjee told journalists at the State Secretariat. Speaking to journalists after the surrender of leading Maoist leader Suchitra...

Trinamool Congress government’s policies in West Bengal are leading to suicides of small farmers, a reign of terror in the Jangalmahal area and a curbing of academic and trade union rights. Its student activists beat up students and teachers who do not profess loyalty to the party. Will the CPI(M) which led the previous Left Front government for 34 years and paid the price for its insolence and corruption...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...