Human Rights

The Karnataka mining scandal provides a useful case study of the broader problems affecting India’s mining sector as it juxtaposes astonishingly serious regulatory failures with a relatively high level of capacity on the part of state governments. The assertion has been made in a 70-page damning report - Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday. It said, “The mining scandals in Karnataka reveal the...

The ire of hacktivist group Anonymous that was directed at the government over blocking of sites like vimeo.com and Pirate Bay may not have been justified - the ban on these sites, in fact, was not ordered by the Department of Telecommunications. In response to a RTI query made by the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), the department replied, “As per available information no blocking instruction to block websites like Pirate-bay and Vimeo etc. has been issued by the Department of...

It’s more than an irony. It’s, in fact, tragic that the city once known as a pensioner’s paradise today ranks first when it comes to abuse of the elderly. A recent study on the state of the elderly in nine cities conducted by HelpAge India found that abuses are reported the highest in Bangalore (44%), compared to the national average of 22%. The other eight cities in the survey were Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Chennai, Patna and Hyderabad. Though 84% of the elderly surveyed in...

State governments across the country have been both callous and tardy in implementing the Forest Rights Act. Claims are being rejected on flimsy grounds, with the rejection rate in as many as 11 states being over 50%. Karnataka stands fourth in the rejection rate with 95.66%, according to a compilation released on Monday by the Delhi-based Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network (AITPN). As of January 31 this year, 31,68,478 claims have been received and 27,24,162 (85.98%) disposed of. In...

A major social media campaign is building up seeking justice for a Manipuri student who died under suspicious circumstances last week. While the police have described the death as the fall-out of a two-wheeler accident he had met with two days earlier, friends of the victim insist that the 19-year-old Manipuri succumbed to injuries he suffered on being severely assaulted by seniors at college the previous night. Richard Loitam, a second semester student of the Acharya NRV School of Architecture...

From lodging girls in boys’ homes to inmates of juvenile homes being abused by the very people who are meant to protect them, the situation of juveniles in Karnataka is not only appalling, it is in fact scary. The situation in the juvenile justice homes in the state are so atrocious that many of the children in conflict with the law and those in need of care are either committing suicide or making valiant efforts to do so. The glaring facts have emerged from a hard-hitting report, The State of...

More than four persons per day were killed in police and judicial custody in India between 2001 and 2010. The total of 14,231 persons includes 1,504 deaths in police custody and 12,727 deaths in judicial custody from 2001-2002 to 2009-2010 as per the cases submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights in its report, Torture in India 2011, released today said that a large majority of these deaths were a direct consequence of torture in...

The state government in Manipur is forcefully evicting families living on Loktak. Since Tuesday, the state police has used brute force to chase alleged illegal settlers away from their homes, including burning nearly 200 huts. It is being alleged that the eviction is in fact a security operation, and not to preserve the environment under the controversial Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, as claimed. State government officials started burning down floating huts, khangpokshang, built over...

The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights has ordered an inquiry into the allegation that a coercive circular by the Kerala government to its public education department was meant to deploy an online school management software called “Sampoorna” in schools across the State in a manner that it would violate the right to privacy and dignity of children in the state. In a letter to the Secretary of the Education Department, Govternment of Kerala, the NCPCR on Friday asked the...

A 30-year-old woman was repeatedly gangraped by security forces for a week during August in the Saranda forests of Jharkhand. Jawans of the anti-Naxal Cobra force captured her house, and made her to live with and cook for them. Today, she does not dare speak out against the barbarity since the jawans subsequently arrested her son for being a Maoist. She fears more for the life of her son, than speaking out against the atrocity that was heaped on her. This woman’s story is not an isolated one...