Good news for Imrana - the Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Bill, when enacted, will allow women to fight back against backwards fatwa and panchayat decrees that punish abused women. Take for example Imrana, who was raped by her father-in-law recently, and forced by a village panchayat to divorce her husband and marry her [...]
The Indian government is considering a proposal that would prohibit foreign news channels downlinking into India from carrying any material targeted towards an Indian audience, which would hurt broadcasters like the BBC and CNN who are trying to expand into the country. The idea, spearheaded by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is to differentiate between current [...]
Rather than face 10 years in jail, Pramod Kumar Saroj is free today after his defense found a technicality which made his arrest unlawful. Saroj, who was caught trying to sell 1100 grams of marijuana in Mumbai in February 2004, is free because the non-police witness in his trial failed to note that Saroj had [...]
A Delhi Juvenile Court found NDTV, Zee TV, and the Times of India guilty for revealing the identity of a boy who was involved in a multimedia messaging system sex scandal with a female student, claiming that the two stations and newspaper tried to sensationalize the story for commercial gains. The court fined them Rs [...]
Two people have been arrested in Kolkata for distributing flyers and selling coupons to raise funds for an organization called “Mujahadeen al-Qaeda Pacific International,” which accuses RSS, Bajrang Dal, and VHP of trying to “discredit Muslims after the July 5th armed attack on the makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya.” Police have remained tight-lipped about the [...]
In backwards news, a Jharkhand woman was declared a “witch” and killed with an axe in front of her son because she was believed to be responsible for a man’s illness. Salge Hembram of Ranikunder village in Jamshedpar was initially fined Rs 10,000 when she pleaded innocence to causing the sickness in a man named [...]
No word if it’s going to be our problem our our great-great-great-great grandchildren’s problem, but a new study by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggests that human impacts on the environment may eliminate monsoons on the Indian subcontinent. The basic science is that the hot weather creates low-pressure zones over the [...]
Calcutta’s famous rickshaws are about to banned on humanitarian grounds, according to Buddhadev Bhattacharya, chief minister of West Bengal. Stating that “nowhere else in the world does this practice exist and we think it should also cease to exist in Calcutta,” Mr. Bhattacharya said the rickshaws will be phased out in four to five months, [...]
Tomorrow, a celebration in Kozhikode will celebrate the city’s declaration of being “litter-free,” after a new program successfully rid the city of its fly-infested trash and overflowing garbage bins. In Kozhikode, a team of 730 “smartly uniformed” women driving autorickshaws pick up garbage from every home, shop, and office, handling 300 tons of waste within [...]
Indian officials warned about the presence of mosquitos in the Andamans following the recent tsunami that killed 5,500 people in the area. The cause for concern was that scientists found the anopheles sundaicus mosquito in the area, which carries the malaria parasite, and can lay its eggs in salt or fresh water. The dense population [...]