Residents across Banbhoolpura region of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand are holding candlelight marches, sit-ins, and collective prayers to resist a High Court order authorizing the demolition of over 4,500 homes, ostensibly to make room for a railway. Behind this legal battle, some critics believe there lay political motives aimed at sweeping away the Muslim minority.
The latest report of the Housing and Land Rights Network on forced evictions in India has pointed to the new disturbing trend of “demolitions as a punitive measure” by various state governments.
Cheetahs are returning to India for the first time in seventy years, arriving from South Africa and Namibia. Never before have these striking big cats been allowed to repopulate a region from which they had once disappeared.
Mobile internet services have been suspended and orders banning public assembly imposed in some areas of Manipur, a small Indian state bordering Myanmar, in the wake of a blockade of two national highways organized by a students’ group, and a street battle on August 6 with police in West Imphal in which about thirty students were injured.
