Though I know he is the man who committed the crime, I acquit him, giving him the benefit of the doubt.' Thus spoke Delhi's Additional Sessions Judge G P Thareja on December 3, 1999. He was delivering the verdict in the case of the rape and murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo.

Ten years after Priyadarshini Mattoo was raped and murdered by one Santosh Kumar Singh, the culprit still roams free and is infact a practicing lawyer in Delhi.

Justice For Priyadarshini, a group dedicated to getting justice for Priyadarshini, is organising a protest rally on July 23rd at India Gate (4:30 P.M.).

Be there. Be there for a Safer India

A few days back, 11th July bomb blasts brought the most happening city of India to a halt. A halt, which abolished lives and daunted humankind...a halt, which was mighty enough to agitate our spirits and made us lookup within ourselves. For looking up for the answer to the question, "for how long, this terrorism will keep terrifying innocent and scaring humanity?" The same feeling is expressed here in form of few poetic words here:

In the evening hours of bloodshed,
the lives were lost; air was red.
Satanic verses played cacophonies,
and stopped healthy lives' journeys.

It was cloudy today and the sky was blood red. The country is bleeding and the stars are witness. The country mourns silently. There is not one voice but a murmur of pain and discontent. Its grows louder and the sky rumbles in reponse. A crack of lightening, as if demanding some answers.

Read more of Parijat's beautiful prose here.

The government has now started to actively stop protests against reservations using police force. The most recently targetted where the JNU students trying to take out a protest march.

The walk that was supposed to go from JNU's North Gate to PVR Priya Complex was blocked at JNU's North Gate by Police Force.

It is a shame that the same government not only allowed but also protected pro-reservation sloganeers a day before- that too at India Gate!!!!!

Interestingly, the protest by Pukar was also stopped by the police on the grounds that the Chief Minister of Gurgaon was visiting.

Read more at Youth for Equality, JNU blog.

Net2Phone, one of the oldest players in the online telephony services industry, filed a lawsuit against another giant, Skype — the Global Telephony Company and its parent, ebay. Skype was alleged for violating the VOIP patent owned by Net2phone for last 6 years.

The lawsuit filed by Net2Phone on Thursday at New Jersey, claims the infringement of Net2Phone's patent number '704 by skype. The peer-to-peer protocol, used by Skype for its telephony services is considered to be the culprit for these allegations on Skype.

Further news can be read from ZDNet's Website

1. Most people from reserved categories passing out of IITs have lower competencies than their general category counterparts. Most of them perform badly in the internal exams and as a result when they pass out they neither have the confidence nor the skills to create or help build world class technology companies. When we talk about reservation we forget the 'social cost' of reserving that seat and just look at the single individual who gains through reservation. The 'social cost' of reserving a single seat in an IIT is that it compromises the ability of the country to create another Infosys or Wipro which in the long run would have generated hundreds of jobs many of which would have gone to people from the OBC sector itself. A similar argument can be made about how a more competent doctor can save more lives than a lesser competent one. Reservation benefits only a handful on individuals at the cost of hundreds of others, which is definitely wrong as a national policy.

The biggest consequence of the increase in the number of seats in IITs, IIMs and other educational institutes will be the increased burden on the existing faculty.

T V R Shenoy gives a detailed analysis on the current state of teachers in our best educational institutes and why many of them will leave once reservation is bought in.

Did anyone in the Manmohan Singh ministry actually talk to the teachers in the IITs, IIMs, or AIIMS before deciding to increase numbers wholesale? If you don't consult teachers in decision that directly affect them aren't you treating them as lackeys who must do as they are ordered? And why should someone labour away in a job that is not respected when there are greener pastures -- and Green Cards -- to be had?

Read the entire article on Rediff here.

Pukar is the corporate arm of the national movement against reservation, and is holding its first rally in Gurgaon on 5th of June, Monday.

Pukar is non-political organization formed by a large number of corporate employees in NCR and beyond to mobilize the opinion of the employees & management in the Indian corporate sector against the issue of caste based reservations for OBC’s in educational institutions.

Find more details about Pukar and the rally on their website corporate.pukar.googlepages.com.

Heeding to Supreme Courts threat, doctors and medical students in Delhi have called of the strike. Even though the medicos will resume work, but the protest is still on and engineering students are pitching in.

In another related development, the UPA has gone ahead at further pandering of 'lower caste' votes by hinting at the inevitability of reservation in private sector.

Supreme Court has issued notices to the government asking a detailed explanation of the rationale behind reservations for OBC's.

The court’s order came on the basis of petitions filed by advocate Ashoka Kumar Thakur and Shiv Khera challenging the validity of the Constitution 93rd amendment extending reservation for OBCs.

However, the supreme court has given the government 8 weeks to reply, and has also warned medicos to end strike.

...the court has now made clear it was taking the matter very seriously and that the doctors would face contempt charges if the agitation is not immediately called off.

YouthForEquality faces a difficult choice - if the strike is called of now, it will be very difficult to bring it back to its current status after a gap of 8 weeks. Going by past conflicts between the parliament and the judiciary, there is little reason to believe that the SC would be of any help in winning the war on reservation. On the contrary it might play a part in weakening the students movement.

For now however, the agitation is still on.