Says India is obliged under international law to protect right to life  Wants impartial inquiry into reports of excessive use of force by police ‘Force must be used in accordance with international standards' Amnesty International (AI) has urged the authorities in Orissa to halt immediately unnecessary and excessive use of force by police and private civil militias on Adivasi (indigenous communities) and peasants protesting against the acquisition of their lands and habitats...

RAJINDER SACHAR is one of India’s renowned civil rights activists. A former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Sachar has done pioneering work in enabling a legal framework to assist hundreds who stand accused by the police across India for waging war against the State, many of them with little or dubious evidence. Though 87 years old, Sachar continues to work tirelessly with one of India’s key rights groups,...

Villagers on dharna at Balitutha teargassed, lathicharged About 100 people were injured when police fired rubber bullets and teargas shells, and lathi-charged hundreds of villagers in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa on Saturday afternoon to help the administration acquire land for the steel project of Posco-India. The police took action after the villagers did not respond to their orders to move away from Balitutha, the main entry point to the site earmarked...

IN 2005, Gohana in Sonepat district of Haryana witnessed the torching of several Dalit homes by members of upper castes. Now Mirchpur, a village 58 kilometres away and located deep inside Hisar district, has met a similar fate. On April 21, as many as 18 homes belonging to Dalits from the Valmiki community here were set on fire by upper-caste youth over an alleged slight on the part of the...

Armed Maoists and People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities leaders have warned nearly 200 villages in and around Lalgarh not to provide information to census officials. After collection of data for Census 2011 began in Bengal on April 1, Maoists, with guns slung across their shoulders, and People’s Committee leaders swooped on villages in Lalgarh, Salboni, Belpahari and Jhargram and asked people not to “co-operate” with the census teams. “We have asked...