News stories by Sujoy Dhar, page 4

On a winter evening this January, Amarnath Pandey was returning home through a low-lit alley of a suburban town in India’s heartland state Uttar Pradesh when a motorcycle-riding gunman suddenly appeared and fired at him.

In the Himalayan Mountains of eastern India’s Darjeeling locals are coping with the economic fallout of tourists cancelling their holiday plans in the area.

'India has become the suicide capital of the world,' says Daya Sandhu, a counselling psychology professor at the University of Louisville in the U.S.

Instances of ‘honour killings’ in Indian communities still steeped in traditional beliefs continue unabated. Yet the government has not enacted tougher laws that will deal a decisive blow against this societal scourge.

Twenty-five years after an industrial gas leak from the factory of a U.S. multinational firm in this ancient India city killed thousands and impaired nearly half a million, victims are still crying for justice.

As India mourns for the victims of one of its worst rail accidents that occurred on Friday in eastern state West Bengal, the political class is divided on whether the Maoist rebels were behind the incident that left 148 civilians dead.

Almost a year on, Dipali Sahu still recalls with horror the day an operation by the policemen and paramilitary troopers began here in June last year to take back control of the vast swathes of eastern India captured by the Maoist rebels.

Despite the Indian government’s pledge to extend assistance, legal or otherwise, to the 17 Indian migrant workers currently on death row in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), human rights advocates have decried its alleged insensitivity to the prisoners’ plight.

After sitting out the slowdown in the art market until last year, Ambica Beri, owner of an upscale art gallery here in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, is cautiously hosting shows again this year.