Till Tuesday, Jayanti Patel, 46, was farming to earn a living, having secured bail. On Wednesday, he worried not only about his mother, wife and children but also about his father, elderly and ailing, who has been sentenced to life with him. Jayanti and his his father Mangal Patel, a paralytic, are among the 31 sentenced to life. So were at least three of their relatives, Amrat Somabhai, Bhikha Joitabhai and...

-The Hindu   One more debt-ridden farmer reportedly committed suicide in Wayanad district on Tuesday morning. The Meppadi police identified the deceased as Varghese alias Raju, 45, of Pulparambil at Nedumbala Pallikkavala near Meppadi. The family members found him in a critical condition in his house on Monday night. Though he was rushed to a private hospital, he died. The police said Varghese may have consuming poison out of disappointment over crop loss. His relatives...

Two days after a mob of 300 Trinamool workers and supporters stormed a police station in the heart of Kolkata, assaulted policemen and vandalised government and private vehicles, the police have filed a preliminary report of the rioting — and indicted their own men. The mob, comprising members of two clubs in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s south Kolkata neighbourhood, fought street battles with policemen from Bhowanipore police station who had asked...

-The Indian Express   West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has not adapted well from a life in opposition to being the head of her state’s government. Yet even by her standards, and those of the hollowed-out administrative machinery of the state now in her care, her recent actions have been shocking. On Monday, a religious procession passed through a section of south Kolkata dotted by hospitals, including one for cancer patients...

A river of bows and arrows slid through the urbane lanes of Raipur civil lines, coming to a startling stop outside the chief minister's gated and guarded residence in the autumn air of November 1st, the founding day of Chhattisgarh. As the police whisked them away, the tribal protestors told journalists they were asking for the most basic constitutional right: proportional reservation in government jobs. Eleven years ago, the sprawling state...