-The Hindu   In a historic first, a special court in Gujarat has convicted and awarded life sentences to as many as 31 mostly high caste, landed Patels for burning alive 33 Muslims — the majority of them women and children — of Sardarpura village in Mehsana district. The village was among numerous Muslim habitations targeted across the State by irate Hindu mobs as part of a pogrom ruthlessly executed in the...

-The Times of India Given the impunity generally enjoyed by perpetrators of communal violence, the imposition of life sentence on 31 rioters for burning alive 33 Muslim victims in Sardarpura in the 2002 Gujaratriots is a milestone in India's history. If the signal goes out that those responsible for heinous communal massacres do not enjoy immunity from prosecution, that in itself will have a salutary effect in curbing their incidence. It's...

The Army today opposed any move to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from peaceful areas in Jammu and Kashmir, arguing that the current lull in violence could be deceptive. “There cannot be islands of peace,” senior army commanders were said to have argued at the Unified Command HQ meeting today. If Srinagar and Budgam are peaceful, it does not mean they can be separated from the larger situation...

-DNA   Around 50 RTI activists, many of whom had come from other places after having driven for 5-6 hours, held a silent protest on Sunday in the Juhapura locality of Ahmedabad. A day earlier, Nadeem Saiyed, an RTI activist and riot case witness, was hacked to death in this very locality. Strangely, very few people of Juhapura took part in the protest despite the fact that Saiyed was a resident of this...

When Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from certain areas areas in Jammu and Kashmir, it was a political move with many objectives. The government, however, had to put the plan on hold. Though the Home Ministry has been in favour of a withdrawal, the plan came under severe criticism from the Army, which argued that a withdrawal, even if partial, would hamper...