The Raipur sessions court judgment against civil liberties defender and health Activist Binayak Sen has provoked outrage. His two-year long detention had drawn protests from the world over. The only substantial charge against Sen is that he passed on three letters from Narayan Sanyal, an undertrial, suspected -- but not yet proved -- to be a Maoist, to the Maoist leadership. It takes several leaps of imagination, or nasty prejudice, to...

After a gap of five months, the West Bengal Information Commission held a meeting on Monday. But even as chief information commissioner (CIC) Sujit Sarkar promised to "streamline" things, the panel's performance since its inception in 2005 has been nothing to write home about. Among those who keenly studied implementation of the Right to Information Act, 2005, in Bengal is Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal. Findings by Kejriwal's Public Cause Research...

Yes, you heard it right, private tuitions will soon become a punishable offence. Karnataka government, taking cover of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, is set to ban private tuitions run by school teachers — and that too, from this year onward s. Sources in the Department of Public Instruction told DNA that under the state’s draft rules of the RTE Act, private tuitions by school teachers would be an offence that...

The wife of a leading Indian human rights Activist who has been sent to prison for helping Maoist rebels has said she may seek "political asylum". Ilina Sen, wife of Dr Binayak Sen, told reporters that she and her family were "not feeling safe in India" after her husband's incarceration. Last month Dr Sen was found guilty of carrying messages and setting up bank accounts for the rebels. Activists say the evidence against...

The US government was advised by its officials to start a military-style trade war against European countries that oppose GM crop cultivation, a new Wikileak release by the UK-based newspaper Guardian has shown. The US embassy in Paris in 2007, when France moved to ban GM corn by Monsanto, recommended that the US "calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility,...