The curative petition and other legal remedies still available to Yakub Memon are part of his rights as a prisoner condemned to death. Does the Maharashtra government want to deprive him of these rights, asks Jyoti Punwani.
There would have been no controversy if the convicted rapists were by now punished according to law and sent to meet their maker, in short hanged! But our criminal justice system remains dysfunctional. Ultimately besides the genuine social reform and gender equality it is the lack of effective laws that are at the root of women's insecurity, says Colonel (Dr) Anil Athale (retd).
'India had nothing to gain by the talks except for some brownie points from the US for being reasonable. Pakistan desperately needed the talks to get arms and money from the Americans,' says T P Sreenivasan.
'Knowing him personally, I can safely say that the usually soft-spoken, qualified medical doctor would not have said what he was 'caught' saying if only he had realised that he was stepping on a political landmine across the emotional LoC, says Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
The year threw up quite a few shockers, some rather rude one. Below are Rediff.com's 12 picks that made us sit back and think, 'Did that really happen?'
An economist from J&K and a popular face from the RSS/BJP sat together to craftily weave an alliance in what is one of the most difficult agenda-setting exercises in recent history.
It is rare for communal riots to spread to rural areas. The UP riot is the first time after the September 1969 Gujarat riots that a rural area have been affected. Electoral politics which divide society in majority/minority, going on since the early 1990s, is a major contributing factor to this heightened tension between communities, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale in the first of a two part series.
'Counter terrorism does not appear to be good guys fighting the bad ones; it is about people being picked up, detained and charged with crimes they did not commit.'
