Most software code has dependencies. Simple and reproducible methods exist for mapping and understanding the impact of these dependencies. Legal code also has dependencies –across court orders and within a single court order. And since court orders are not produced using a structured mark-up language, experts are required to understand the precedential value of a…
Unlike the 2012 Delhi gang rape, the violence meted out against women in India’s north-east has not elicited widespread calls on the government to act. The silence is proving costly. In early October 2014, the body of a young tribal girl was found facedown in Meghalaya’s East Garo Hills. Her body had been decapitated, charred,…
For a very long time, we have been guilty of something in our online lives. It isn’t trolling as a blatant exercise to establish power over another’s presence in the same space, but trolling because everyone else is doing it. Sociologist Erving Goffman called it ‘backstage behaviour’ — a presentation of one’s self to a…
Finland is to become the last Nordic country to legalise same-sex marriage. And Russia isn’t going to like it. Finland and Russia are next door neighbours and have a long shared history. But when it comes to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, the two countries are worlds apart. Finland has often sought to placate…
Just over a week after the Centre decided to extend the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to a much larger section of Arunachal Pradesh, the Chief Minister of the Congress-ruled state, Nabam Tuki, complained to the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday that the state had not been consulted about the decision. At…
Red sanders, lal chandan or raktachandan trees, with their heavy trunks darting into the skies, are not safe in the endangered list. The trees, valued for their rich red colour, are found nowhere in the world except in the Seshachalam forests of Andhra Pradesh. Furniture and musical instruments made of it are difficult to find…
With no word from the Prime Minister or the Union Home Minister on the alleged encounters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, differing views are aired by two Central Ministers M Venkaiah Naidu and P Radhakrishnan. While Venkaiah, who belongs to Andhra Pradesh, had not only supported the stand taken by the AP government that the…
A Syrian regime air strike hit a school in the main northern city of Aleppo today killing five children and four other civilians, a monitoring group said. “Military aircraft struck a school in east Aleppo city and killed five children, three female teachers and one man,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory…
PUCL strongly condemned the registration of FIR by the AP Forest Department against a team of human rights activists which visited the site of the encounter in Chandragiri Mandal in Chittoor district of AP where police shot dead 20 woodcutters. In a statement, the PUCL said it had learnt that the forest department officials booked…
Many people are not aware of the perils involved in entering the protected forests, say officials The Forest Department has slapped trespass case on the human rights activists who visited the spot of alleged encounter, located deep inside the Seshachalam forest on Saturday. A team of activists from Hyderabad, which landed at the spot on…