It seeks statement fromthe Special Task Force chief The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to answer certain questions relating to the 2000 Pathribal encounter case in Jammu and Kashmir initiated by it. The CBI has initiated a case against five Army officers involved in an alleged fake encounter since the Army did not take any action under the Army Act and also did not allow the criminal...

There can be little quarrel with the argument that India requires a comprehensive policy to prevent sex selection as put forward by National Advisory Council members Farah Naqvi and A.K. Shiva Kumar in The Hindu (“India & the sex selection conundrum,” January 24, 2012). That the use of sex selection technologies to abort female foetuses is linked to the increasing devaluation and disempowerment of women is well known. It is...

-The Times of India   It will be illegal for government employees in the state to go on strike or hold rallies if chief minister Mamata Banerjee has her way.  In a decision that has sent ripples down both camps, the government wants to take away the employees ' right to association, leave aside strike, that the Left Front government had bestowed upon them.  The bold step - once approved by the Cabinet -...

Home ministry accepts UIDAI’s biometrics; in case of overlap, National Population Register will prevail The Aadhaar project, which has been in the eye of a storm for its dispute with the home ministry’s National Population Register (NPR), received a shot in the arm on Friday, with the Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) extending its mandate to collect biometrics for a total of 600 million residents of the...

The Jaipur Literary Festival, a giddily chaotic celebration of the written word set on the grounds of a Rajasthan palace, ended in misery and embarrassment today, with the organizers bowing to pressure from local security forces and scotching plans for Salman Rushdie to “appear” at the festival, finally, by video link. Rushdie had already been forced to cancel plans to come to Jaipur after he had received intelligence reports—bogus intelligence,...