-The HIndustan Times There is concern again about missing persons and bodies found in canals in Haryana. Surfacing of such bodies in Punjab’s canals has figured in media reports for years. But neither Punjab nor Haryana police take interest in retrieving the bodies, as the recovery involves reporting it, then attempting to identify it and locating the kin, cremation and maintenance of a record. Pushing bodies downstream eliminates all this bother. But...

-The Times of India No survey official has visited the village of Phisami, not far from India's border with Myanmar in Nagaland, or parts of the Andaman and Nicobar islands as the sheer remoteness of these areas made them off limits for enumerators.  This will change in July, when the 69th round of the National Sample Survey Organization's (NSSO) enumeration of socio-economic indicators gets under way as all of India will be...

A bidi-smoking petty contractor who suddenly bought two Boleros and a former newspaper hawker who zipped about Chhattisgarh’s jungles in a Toyota may hold the key to a question bugging the custodians of national security. What the police want to know is: are business houses paying off the Maoists to be able to operate deep inside central India’s mineral-rich guerrilla zones? Chhattisgarh police say that when contractor B.K. Lala’s bank account suddenly...

-PTI   The entire North India shivered today as icy winds lashed the region claiming five more lives pushing the country-wide death toll this winter to 128. All the fresh deaths occurred overnight in Uttar Pradesh which has so far accounted for 88 fatalities. Chilly winds swept the state as mercury plunged to a low of 0.5 degrees Celsius in Najibabad area in Bijnor district. The national capital witnessed coldest day of the season recording...

-PTI   The entire north India shivered on Monday as 11 more people succumbed to the cold sweeping the region pushing the death toll to 39. Dense fog and dipping temperatures threw normal life out of gear at several places as nine deaths occurred in Punjab and two in Uttar Pradesh since last evening. The death count from the harsh weather has risen to 30 in Uttar Pradesh where Fatehgarh with a minimum...