Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death since November 2000 demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, is continuing her fast, to the chagrin of the government, even after her release on Thursday. Detained on the charge of attempting suicide, she can be legally held only for one year at a stretch and has, since 2000, been ritually released on the completion of each...

Let Aruna die? No, with her alive, there’s more power, media attention. Hence, the politics of mercy in medicine. Lucknow airport. Late ’90s. Khushwant Singh and I are waiting for our flights, we talk about Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee mentioning my book Once Was Bombay in a speech on collapsing cities. He suddenly asks, “You wrote that book on the woman who neither lives nor dies, you still see her?” I...

India's Supreme Court has rejected a plea to end the life of a woman who has been in a vegetative state since 1973. Aruna Shanbaug suffered severe brain damage and has been paralysed since a brutal rape in 1973. But the court said the medical evidence suggested that she should live. However, in what correspondents are calling a "landmark" judgment, the court also said some cases of euthanasia could be sanctioned if doctors...

People's Union for Civil Liberties leader and paediatrician Binayak Sen on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in a Maoist-linked sedition case, in which he has been sentenced to life imPrisonment. Sen's petition challenges a February 10 decision of the Chhattisgarh High Court refusing bail during the pendency of his appeal against conviction and sentence. A Raipur additional district and sessions court had on December 24 convicted Sen and Kolkata businessman...

Bant Singh, a scarred survivor of class violence in rural India, has an indisputable claim to be a voice for India's impoverished and muted millions. The folk singer lost both arms and a leg in an attack five years ago after he dared to challenge high-caste landlords in his area of the northwestern state of Punjab who had raped his 17-year-old daughter. Set upon by a gang armed with iron bars, he...