Dear Reader,

Last week, on November 11, the Supreme Court of India ordered the acquittal of Surendra Koli in the final pending case related to the Nithari killings. The court allowed his curative petition, set aside his conviction, and ordered his immediate release, ending all criminal proceedings against him in the Nithari case series.

The Nithari case has a long history. In 2006, the grim discovery of skulls and bones of 19 women and children in a mass grave behind the D5 bungalow in Noida’s Nithari village exposed one of India’s most horrifying and baffling serial murder cases. As bodies of women and children were exhumed, attention swiftly focused on two men—Moninder Singh Pandher, the bungalow’s owner, and his domestic worker, Surendra Koli. Koli, a Dalit of poor means, was immediately branded a psychopathic, cannibalistic killer — a seemingly convenient villain on whom public anger could rage.

In a three-part series, The Reporters’ Collective revisits how a deeply flawed police and CBI investigation built its case on forced confessions, shifting narratives, and ignored leads — from possible organ trafficking to unexamined neighbours — while pinning everything on Koli. It traces how the judiciary responded — a 2009 death sentence for Koli and Pandher for the murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar. Over time, however, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in 12 of the 13 cases, calling the prosecution’s work “botched” and his confession coerced. Through detailed analysis of court records and interviews with legal experts and Nithari residents, the story raises painful questions: Was justice really done, or was Koli scapegoated to let deeper systemic failures go unchallenged?

Tamil Nadu has one of India’s strongest programmes for combating mosquito-borne diseases. In Coimbatore, for instance, dengue accounts for barely 1 percent of all treated cases among local residents. Yet, as The Migration Story notes, the state’s established protocol — visiting patients within 24 hours, eliminating breeding sources, and testing 50 to 250 contacts to curb transmission — rarely extends to migrant workers. With these services confined largely to local communities, people from outside the state face a disproportionately higher burden of vector-borne infections and far more limited access to public healthcare.

The situation worsens in factories where working conditions are harsh and health monitoring is minimal. In Pollachi, a town in the Coimbatore district, doctors conducting an informal survey among migrant workers at a coconut-fibre factory found deeply troubling numbers—four of twenty patients had dengue, and four of thirty had malaria — incidence rates far higher than those seen among locals. Language barriers further complicate diagnosis and treatment. Many migrants hesitate to share personal information, fearing intrusive scrutiny from employers, which in turn hampers officials’ ability to trace and manage cases. As the state dismisses concerns over higher infection rates as politically motivated, it risks missing the real danger—that unchecked transmission within migrant communities could spill over into the wider population if timely interventions are not made.

The morning calm in a village on the edge of the Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh was shattered when a resident, out to check on his tethered cattle, came face to face with a tiger. The animal lunged, dragging him several metres before retreating at the sound of nearby voices. The man survived with deep claw wounds and a fractured shoulder — injuries that underline both the power of the predator and the fragile balance in which villagers live each day. His story is far from isolated; it is a warning signal from a landscape where humans and tigers increasingly cross paths.

India holds 75% of the world’s tiger population, and with conservation successes in states like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, tiger numbers have rebounded sharply. But as populations expand, so does pressure on the buffer zones around reserves, creating conflict that often results in livestock loss, severe injury, and sometimes death. In the Pench landscape, villagers told Ground Report the lure of easy prey — cows and goats tied outside homes — often draws tigers close. Attempting to protect their animals, people risk deadly encounters, fuelling anger and mistrust toward forest officials, whom they accuse of releasing new tigers into the area. Yet the underlying problems run deeper. Wildlife corridors are shrinking rapidly. Roads, mining projects, and large infrastructure schemes such as the Ken–Betwa river interlinking project increasingly fragment these pathways, pushing tigers into human settlements. As conservation authorities and forest-dependent communities hold firm to their own urgent concerns, those left most vulnerable are the villagers living at the forest edge — and the tigers themselves, navigating a world that is closing in on them.

The Kudumbashree programme in Kerala’s Attappady, implemented under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, was designed to strengthen the Irula, Muduga, and Kurumba communities through women-led neighbourhood groups, community funds, nutrition programmes, and the revival of indigenous farming. By creating village-level institutions and supporting micro-enterprises, community kitchens, and skill training, the scheme aimed to address chronic poverty, malnutrition, and limited livelihood opportunities while restoring local autonomy and traditional food practices.

Yet, as Keraleeyam Masika reports, the project continues to face deep, systemic challenges. Political interference frequently distorts priorities and influences resource distribution, and audits reveal significant under-utilisation of funds meant for vulnerable families. Long-standing issues of land alienation, weak administrative coordination, and occasional corruption erode trust in the system. Meanwhile, skill training rarely leads to stable employment, and agricultural revival struggles against poor market access and inconsistent institutional support. These structural barriers limit the mission’s ability to deliver lasting, community-led development in Attappady.

For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.

Warmly,

Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF