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Dear Reader,
Last week’s intervention by the Supreme Court against the 152-year-old sedition law was in response to a batch of writ petitions challenging its constitutionality. Five of these eight petitions were based on the sedition database compiled and created by grantee Article 14 – ‘The Decade of Darkness’.
The Article 14 database, an effort which took a year in the making, recorded 13,000 people charged with sedition between 2010 and 2021 -- a soaring and unprecedented rise in the last decade -- against “protests, dissent, social media posts and criticism of the government.”
Earlier, in the run-up to the apex court order, Supreme Court Observer created a timeline of key laws and cases in the long history of the colonial-era penal law. Among the names that the law was invoked against were Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and journalist Vinod Dua.
The News Minute argues that the split verdict in the Delhi High Court on the petition to strike down the exception granted to husbands under the rape law in the IPC ignores the lived realities of victims, where a majority of cases of sexual violence are perpetrated by persons known to the victim.
And, Down To Earth reports that ‘black thrips’ – a black-coloured and pinhead-sized pest, is ravaging and destroying hectares and hectares of chilli crops across 34 contiguous districts in six states – Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh -- since October last year, pushing farmers to the brink. Tragically, in some cases, forcing them to take their own lives.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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