-The Hindustan Times The Union mome ministry is actively considering ordering an independent inquiry by National Investigating Agency (NIA) to verify the claims and counter-claims of Delhi and Jammu Kashmir Police over the “arrest” of alleged Hizbul Mujahideen militant Syed Liyaqat Shah and the subsequent recovery of AK-47 rifles and ammunition from the Walled City in Delhi. Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has asked the Centre to order an independent...

-The Hindu The Sunday Story India's police forces are generally hostile and corrupt. They are also often brutal, as the recent beating of unarmed people in Tarn Tarn and Patna demonstrated. The Indian Police Act of 1861, a colonial relic, needs to be replaced with a law that befits a free country. The former Border Security Force (BSF) Director-General, Prakash Singh, refers to his favourite game of ping pong whenever he has...

-The Hindu India accounts for the largest number of deaths of infants primarily because it has failed to provide them and their mothers access to critical health care India loses 4,200 children under the age of five every day. This figure is certainly unacceptable for any emerging country. The collective ache of losing so many newborns is worsened by the realisation that many of these deaths are preventable. The country accounts for nearly...

-The Hindu After the recent gubernatorial changes, as many as 15 of those now ensconced in Raj Bhavans are former civil servants, police officers or Army officers; four of them are ex-IAS officers, eight are former IPS officers, and one is an ex-Army chief. With the appointment of the former Central Bureau of Investigation boss, Ashwani Kumar, and ex-National Security Guards chief Nikhil Kumar as Governors of Nagaland and Kerala last week,...

-The Hindustan Times Enacted in 1958 to deal with the Naga uprising in the then composite state of Assam, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) was reviewed by the Justice BP Jeevan Reddy Committee in 2005, which recommended that it be scrapped.   The Reddy report remains untabled in Parliament, despite the recent outcry, triggered by the Justice Verma Committee’s view that the Act needs to be reviewed (in the light...