Articles by K Balagopal

The Supreme Court's judgment on TADA in the Kartar Singh vs State of Punjab case has taken the law back to the pre-1978 days, though, to be fair, this is not the only occasion when the Supreme Court has set the calendar back JUSTICE Ratnavel Pandian's judgment (on behalf of the majority) in Kartar Singh vs State of Punjab has set the Constitutional sealon TADA. It is a poorly written judgment, poor in language

ANDHRA PRADESH A Year of Drought?
K Balagopal THE south-west monsoon is all set to leave the skies of Andhra Pradesh. Having played truant for the first six weeks and wilful for the next six it is finally ready to clear out. leaving the people estimating

Slaying of a Spirituous Demon K Balagopal Hitherto geographically and politically renjote places have moved to the centre of political discussion in Andhra Pradesh in the last two months. The context is the anti-arrack agitation that is shaking the state, upsetting complacent notions about the political apathy of the suffering masses and the inability of women to take their future into their hands without male leadership.

K Balagopal He woke up suddenly, prodded by a policeman's stick. There were five of them now in the cell, all in plainclothes and carrying sten guns... They were evidently drunk, but there was more than intoxication in their looks. There was rage an animal rage.. - Next day the superintendent of police was preparing for a press conference where he would give the full details of the attempted mining of the police, jeep, and the ensuing encounter with the naxalites which lasted two hours and a total of 300 rounds, leaving one unidentified naxalite dead.

K Balagopal One only has to contrast Guntur with the Rayalaseema districts to realise that Chundur happened not because the dalits of Guntur are more oppressed than elsewhere, but precisely because they have fought oppression and have put themselves on an unrelenting path of social and economic advancement and political autonomy ONE reason why Chundur caught the whole nation's attention is the magnitude of the massacre. Eight dead bodies were fished out of the irrigation canals and the drains of Chundur and surrounding villages within three days of the gruesome assault of August 6; the whereabouts of another nine men are not known to this day, six weeks after the killing, which means they too were killed and thrown into the canals but did not float up at the places that were searched. This makes a total of 17 dead. The number becomes 18 if one adds Mandru Parishudha Rao who died of shock the day after the carnage after seeing the mutilated dead body of his younger brother, 21 year old Mandru Ramesh. And it becomes 19 if one adds Kommerla Anil Kumar, an articulate young dalit who survived the massacre of August 6 to give a graphic account of the incident but was shot dead by the police on September 10 in the course of an attempt by the latter to remove a hunger strike camp set up by the daiits a Chundur. Such a large casualty figure is such a natural and sufficient reason for the attention Chundur has received that one does not search for other reasons, and therefore one does not see other Chundurs.