-The Hindu The conviction by a Gujarat court of BJP legislator Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi along with 30 others for their role in the Naroda Patia massacre is the strongest judicial affirmation yet that large-scale communal violence is almost always a product of pre-meditated political planning and calculation. An estimated 95 Muslims, many of them hapless women and children, were hacked to death in Naroda, a minority...
More »SEARCH RESULT
The MLA, the Bajrangi and the others the judgment touched
-The Indian Express Firebrand leader who rose swiftly till downfall She rose swiftly through the ranks, having made her mark as a firebrand leader who had saffron politics as part of her legacy. Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, convicted of murder, conspiracy and spreading communal hatred, is the daughter of a staunch RSS worker who had suffered the pains of Partition, moving from Tharparkar in Sind province to Deesa in Gujarat. Kodnani, the first sitting...
More »Where law wins out
-The Indian Express The arc of history may finally be bending towards justice for the victims of communal violence that gripped Gujarat in 2002. Thirty-two people, including Maya Kodnani, formerly women and child development minister in the Narendra Modi government, and Babu Bajrangi, a Bajrang Dal leader, were convicted by a special court in Gujarat for their roles in the Naroda Patiya massacre in Ahmedabad. This is the first time, after exhaustive...
More »16,000 ‘illegal’ hysterectomies done in Bihar for insurance benefit -Santosh Singh
-The Indian Express Patna: Over 16,000 hysterectomies (surgical removal of the uterus), most of them “unnecessary”, have been reported at private hospitals across Bihar during the last one year allegedly to “avail insurance benefit” under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna. The RSBY was launched by the Centre in April 2008. Preliminary investigation by Samastipur, Madhubani and Chhapra district authorities, which reported the maximum number of complaints, showed 10,000 hysterectomies took place in these...
More »Chhattisgarh eliminates farmer suicides by fudging death data -Supriya Sharma
-The Times of India RAIPUR: The sky is overcast, the fields lush with paddy. A good harvest beckons and to complete the picture of a rural idyll, Chhattisgarh has posted 'zero' farmer suicides for 2011. For a state that has consistently reported the highest rate of farmer suicides in India, with 1,773 cases in 2008; 1,802 in 2009; and 1,126 in 2010, eliminating farmer suicides would be a thundering achievement. But...
More »