The Central Bureau of Investigation arrested four persons from the Goaltore area of West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district late on Sunday for their alleged involvement in the killing of nine residents of Netai village in a firing incident on January 7. These are the first arrests made by the CBI after it took over the case from the State's Criminal Investigation Department on February 22 acting on a Calcutta High Court...

Promises action “to allay fears and insecurity Christians are experiencing” Chief Ministers will be asked to deal firmly with anti-Christian violence Promises to act on the Saldanha report on violence against minorities in Karnataka Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a Christian delegation on Saturday that he was trying to evolve a consensus on granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. He also said he would ask Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

Giving a new dimension to poor farmers whose land is acquired for public purpose, the Supreme Court has held that right to possess a land being a right to property cannot be taken away without conducting an enquiry under the Land Acquisition Act (LAA). Giving this ruling a Bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly said: “Admittedly the LAA, a pre-Constitutional legislation of colonial vintage is a drastic law,...

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 questioned clearances to industries on the basis of environment impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by private consultants in the pay of project proponents. A special bench of the court led by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, that is hearing a petition challenging approvals granted to the French company Lafarge to mine limestone, likened the practice to "paying the piper to call the tune." Kapadia’s bench noted that every report...