The Don of Dhanbad
DHANBAD’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…
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Letter from the Editor
ONE of the lesser known areas of media responsibility is its relationship with the law. It is a relationship which is generally little understood, not…
Book Review: My Years in an Indian Prison
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the…
AQUINO AGAIN ON DEFENSIVE AFTER HONASAN ESCAPE
3 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 3, Reuter – Coup leader Colonel Gregorio Honasan’s escape from captivity on Saturday…
READING THE BAR CODES
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp” STRANGE HOW time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
Gender Gag
Sexual harassment can be crude and overt or very subtle, but you know you are being sexually harassed when you experience it. Those around you…
BIHAR PRESS BILL-BATTLE CRY
Whatever else the government is butter-fingered at doing, it is adept at keeping the results of its impetuosity in a state of continuing suspense’. The…
A BATTLE SUPREME
Titled Judiciary: At tacks and Survival, the speech had been long in coming, the speaker delayed, first by an attack of diabetes in March and…
CLEARED BY THE COURT
The majority of Justices Islam and Mishra agreed with Solicitor-General Parasaran that Thakur nursed a grudge against Jagannath Mishra. “Remand for tri I will a…
MYSTERIOUS U-TURN
Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…
PRISONERS- FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE
The salaried middle classes have time and again fallen prey to the Government’s more capricious economic decisions. But, one group that has suffered the most…
JAGANNATH MISHRA-CLEARED BY THE COURT
HE INDIA-RUBBER man, Jagannath Mishra, had done it again. For months, the Bihar chief minister’s political fate had hung in the balance while the Supreme…
CHEATING THE HANGMAN
Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…
ENDS OF JUSTICE
Gauhati and Jorhat and small batches people took out processions in protest against the decision to hold the elections. Even political parties opposed to the…
Suppressing Dissent?
EVERY dissenter is in a minority of one, and K. Ashok Rao, 36, deputy manager in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), is discovering what it…
HANGING FIRE
The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…
AN HEIR SPLITTING LEGACY
The story is as complicated as the whorls on a fingerprint, a ready-made screen-play bursting with grandeur, feudalism, pretension, and the tattered remnants of pomp…
SNAG IN THE ROPE
Anticlimax has become the boon companion of the Supreme Court. When the court reopened on July 18 after its summer vacation, it was shadowed by…
FOR WHOM THE BILL TOLLS
One of the misconceptions spawned by the Bihar Press Bill is that it will emasculate Bihar’s journalists. The truth is that Bihar’s journalists have already…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
Scrabbling Away From the Abyss
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
