| This week belonged to ThePrint’s large Ground Reports team of reporters. They travelled to Kathmandu, Gopalganj, Unnao and Hyderabad to bring some of the most wrenching stories of anguish.
Vandana Menon wrote about the dramatic, death-defying rescue mission of two Indian mountaineers who were stranded, buried under snow and even left for dead. Anurag Maloo is still in the ICU but has three miracles to thank. Baljeet Kaur is out and plans to go back on the trek soon. She said: “The mountains are like my family. I don’t fight with them — and I think that’s why the mountains saved me. I trust the mountains.”
Jyoti Yadav was the first to reach and speak to the driver of the murdered IAS officer Krishnaiah in Bihar. He was in the car with the officer in 1994 when a mob led by convicted gangster Anand Mohan Singh attacked them. “Saheb, don’t go out. Don’t go out,” driver Deepak Kumar had pleaded. Today, as Bihar CM Nitish Kumar socialises with Singh, he recalled: “There was blood all around. His face had been hit with stones multiple times, and bullets had been fired in his head.”
Mohana Basu’s investigative article this week brought out the enormous scam in academic publishing in India. An illegal industry of agents and touts are working in tandem with compromised peer-review boards to get substandard and sometimes completely fabricated research papers published in journals that are indexed by Scopus for as little as Rs 15,000. It threatens to hurt public trust and credibility of Indian researchers in the international academic arena.
Modi government’s ban on the regressive practice of triple talaq was hailed as the end to Muslim women’s woes. But Rishika Sadam reported from Hyderabad about how men are getting around this ban by forcing wives to ask for khula — by torturing and beating them. The women are so exhausted and battered that they are seeking divorce now.
Sagrika Kissu went to Unnao and brought us the horror story of a minor girl who was gangraped, forced to watch the rapist come out on bail, and the villagers celebrate his release. And then this month, the villagers burnt down her home and flung her infant into the flames.
Is there any strategic benefit to India from Pakistan’s current economic and political problems? Rajesh Rajagopalan wrote that it potentially gives India a breather for at least the immediate future from both the terrorist and a conventional war threat. It will prevent their military or political leaders from engaging in risky external adventurism.
Puranas were profoundly political texts, wrote Anirudh Kanisetti. Briefly but brilliantly, the Pancharatrins and the Karkotas of Kashmir seized the subcontinent’s centre stage, religion supporting the State, State supporting religion.
| | | | A team with 2 foreign mountaineers entered the crevasse, and found Anurag’s body under snow. They presumed he was dead. Read more... | | | | | | | CM Nitish Kumar's decision to amend Bihar Prison Manual and facilitate the release of ex-MP Anand Mohan, the only convicted killer of Dalit IAS officer G Krishnaiah, has scratched old wounds anew. Read more... | | | | | | | Editors of lesser-known Scopus-indexed journals offer to publish papers for Rs 5,000. And for the right price, ghost writers will write an entire research paper for a ‘client’. Read more... | | | | | | | The BJP in Telangana is confident the triple talaq ban has reduced cases of injustice and torture against women but the reality on ground isn’t that simple. Read more... | | | | | A 13-year-old in Unnao was gang raped and her parents attacked by her rapists. Now she is fighting angry villagers who have turned against the family. Read more... | | | | | | | Pakistan’s insecurity is understandable. But its choices in dealing with it have often been self-defeating and deeply damaging to itself. Read more... | | | | | | | The Pancharatrins and the Karkotas of Kashmir seized the subcontinent’s centre stage, religion supporting the State, State supporting religion. Read more... | | | | | | | | | Read more of ThePrintOpinion here. You are receiving this because you are a reader of ThePrint and posted a comment or signed up to receive this newsletter. We appreciate your feedback. | | | | |
