-Express News Service A team of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted searches at the house of an eyewitness in the murder of RTI activist Satish Shetty. The team conducted seaches the house of Vandana Murhe in Talegaon Dabhade and seized some documents on Monday. Shetty was murdered near a newspaper stall operated by Murhe on January 13, 2010. “Our teams spoke to Murhe and seized some documents from her residence today for...

One tweet that had many cracking up was: “Dear Mamata, normally the cartoonist tries to capture the subject. Not vice versa.” The allegation was that Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra has used email id of his neighbour Subrata Sengupta (70) to forward an e-mail containing a graphic with a humorous reference to Mamata Banerjee for replacing Dinesh Trivedi with Mukul Roy as Railway Minister. The graphic uses photographs of the three Trinamool...

-The Times of India Glaring lapses in the investigation of the case against Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra have come to light, which all but prove that the aim of the probe was to teach the academic a lesson. A senior police officer and a local Trinamool Congress leader literally engineered the case against Prof Mahapatra when none existed. A police officer who did not want to be named said Amit Sardar,...

Nothing illustrates the threat that the FIR raj poses to personal liberty more starkly than the arbitrary manner in which two complaints in the cartoon case were pursued. One complaint was filed against Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra by a Trinamul supporter, accusing him of emailing “obscene” content about the chief minister. The second was lodged by Mahapatra, accusing four persons with Trinamul links of assaulting him. The strikingly divergent police response...

-The Hindustan Times The anticipatory Bail petition of RTI activist Manoj Kumar Karwasra was dismissed on Friday by additional sessions judge, Hisar, Sant Parkash. Karwasra had been booked under IPC sections 419, 420 and 120-B on the complaint of BS Rana, president, St Sophia School Education Society. Karwasra allegedly misused BPL card of Jeet Ram to seek information under the RTI Act, as BPL card-holders can seek information free of cost. Police...