-The Hindu By hanging Afzal Guru secretly so that he could not approach the courts, and ignoring the pending case that could have affected his sentence, the Home Minister acted illegally On March 6, 2013, in response to an RTI request, the President’s Secretariat made available documents pertaining to Ajmal Kasab’s mercy petition. People from across the country and the globe had written to the President asking that he use his clemency...

-The Telegraph Sex offenders in prison often find themselves positioned on the lowest rungs of a hierarchy of inmates, which exposes them to particularly bad treatment from fellow prisoners, psychologists who have studied jail violence have said. They say the phenomenon is believed to be widespread and, in some countries, has prompted law-enforcement authorities to segregate sex offenders from other inmates in prisons where they are viewed as vulnerable to physical attacks. Delhi...

-The Indian Express In the first detailed manual for medical examination of rape victims, the Health Ministry has advised doctors not to use the word rape as it is "not a medical diagnosis but a legal definition". It has also asked them not to identify a victim as "habituated to sexual intercourse" as this amounts to unlawful interference in her privacy and therefore a violation of her human rights. "Rape is not...

-The Hindu Criteria have not been met and blatant attempt to saffronise higher education, say academics and student bodies From a tiny room on the first floor of a small building in a quiet area of Basaveshwaranagar, the Harsha Kriya Foundation runs its affairs. The Foundation has recently got the green signal for setting up the Amrutha Sinchana Spiritual University, first of its kind in Karnataka. Speaking to The Hindu in an office...

-The Indian Express Setting up women-only banks overlooks the reasons for their exclusion The women-only bank mentioned in the finance minister's budget speech is like flowers and chocolates — a sweet thought but just as unsubstantial. Financial exclusion of women is a real problem. It deserves far greater effort than sops like a women-only bank. Such a bank also runs counter to the logic of mainstreaming, rather than ghettoising, gender issues. It is...