KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-Factly.in In our first story on ‘hate speech’ cases, it was observed that the number of cases booked under Sections 153A & 153AA has been increasing over the years. While the cases have increased, the disposal rates of both the police & courts have come down leading to increased pendency. Even in cases whose trial is complete between 2016 & 2020, the Conviction rate was only around 20%.  In the previous story,...

-The Telegraph Madan B. Lokur expresses doubt whether a clause and a law dealing with sedition and terrorism would be scrapped altogether Justice Madan B. Lokur, the former Supreme Court judge, has expressed doubt whether a clause and a law dealing with sedition and terrorism would be scrapped altogether but has suggested measures to insulate them from misuse. Several former Supreme Court judges and a former high court judge on Saturday called the...

-Hindustan Times A perusal of UAPA shows how its terms — for example, “membership” of unlawful or terrorist organisations — can be stretched to a boundless degree, allowing the State to persecute individuals for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, possessing the wrong kind of literature, or meeting the wrong kind of people, without anything further. The recent judgment of the Delhi High Court (HC), granting bail to three...

-Caravan Magazine On 9 September 2018, five sanitation workers died due to inhalation of toxic fumes while cleaning a sewage tank in West Delhi. Several media reports regarding the incident noted that the men did not have any safety gear, indicating that the unavailability of equipment led to their death. The police reportedly registered a case against theengineer who was in charge of managing the sewage tank,under Sections 304 and 304A...