-The Indian Express Conspiracy theories are a handy standby when one wants to avoid the effort of critical thinking. So Tavleen Singh would rather rely on “the foreign hand” — that old bogey out of Indira Gandhi’s box of tricks — than examine facts that reveal uncomfortable truths. Lamenting the closure of the Vedanta aluminium refinery at Lanjigarh, Orissa (‘Why India could remain forever’, IE, September 30), Singh asserts that, if...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Monday took serious note of a PIL alleging that there had been apathy on the Centre and Manipur government's part to bring to book the guilty among armed forces and state police, which allegedly were responsible for 1,528 extra-judicial killings in last 30 years. The impact of the magnitude of extra-judicial killings of innocent citizens in Manipur was visible on a bench of Justice...

-The Hindu Aggrieved women have received rations only thrice in the past five years Two semi-literate housewives, Beena and Mitra Devi, hesitantly but wilfully trail us, ration card in hand, on a hot Saturday afternoon. We are walking towards Fair Price Shop No. 7980 in Harsh Vihar near Delhi’s border with Ghaziabad. Though fearful of the ration shop owner and his toughs, these two women realise it is now or never. They...

-Outlook At least twenty one bodies, including those of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) personnel, have so far been found while eight persons are still missing due to flash flood and landslides in remote areas of North Sikkim, official sources said today. The dead include four from the ITBP, two of their family members, and 12 junior officers from the BRO. Other victims were casual labourers,...

-The Indian Express A group of teachers at Jamia Milia Islamia University has put together a compilation of terror cases that failed to hold up in court, all of these built by the Delhi Police Special Cell around youths they had arrested and described as terrorists. Titled “Framed, Damned and Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” and compiled from court judgments and media reports, the study by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity...