A new “fact-finding” report, taking a line similar to that of Union home minister Amit Shah, who has  termed  Delhi riots “pre-planned” and “part of a conspiracy”, has admitted that “the police and law enforcement agencies were on a back-foot” during the riots which have claimed more than 50 lives, rendering hundreds injured and thousands homeless.

  The top United States think tank, Freedom House, based in Washington DC, has sought a series of measures, including from top social media companies like WhatsApp, against the Modi government as retaliation against the alleged crackdown in the country’s only Muslim-majority state Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and the “discriminatory” citizenship amendment law, which has sparked nationwide protests, which are sought to be suppressed by Modi administration.

    In strong message to India’s powers-that-be, a new report by Freedom House, a high profile US organization, has rated the status of democracy in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) as equal to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Giving both J&K and PoK the same score, 28 on a scale of 100, and categorizing both as “Not Free”, the report rates 210 countries, including individual territories, in order to rate two sub-categories, political rights and civil liberties.

  Finding crucial relationship between what it calls “unpaid work” and sexual violence as a social norm in rural Rajasthan, a new study, carried out by high-profile NGO Oxfam India, has found that a whopping 54.4% of women it had interviewed were beaten up as and when they attempted to leave house without permission, while in 86.4% cases they were harshly criticized for this type of “disrespect” shown to their male folks in the family.

Neeta Mahadev, Gandhian activist, in Khambhat While the world watched how Delhi burned when President Donald Trump, on his two-day visit to India, was praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged religious tolerance, few noticed that when he was arlready addressing more than one lakh crowd, brought to Ahmedabad to “welcome” the US President on February 24, communal flare-up hit Khambhat in Central Gujarat.