While the government is planning to set up two maternity hospitals in Jammu and Kashmir to provide better medical facilities to women, a labour hospital, established to ease the pressure of patients at the Valley’s lone gynaecological hospital – Lal Ded, has not recorded a single birth in last fourteen years.

This maternity home, in uptown Sanath Nagar, is bordered by numerous industrial plants and residential houses. Locals say the hospital was initially a dispensary with two doctors, a...

As lawyers, clerks moved in and out of the Chamber 16, she remained unmoved. A bunch of papers in her right hand, she kept on looking at her son Mohsin Majid Shah. The papers were certificates proving her son, arrested from the Old City, here, last Sunday, is a minor. She is mother of one of the Kashmir's handcuffed children.As a group of reporters and photojournalists waited for her to speak, she, unlike the last hearing, was reluctant. After some persistence from the media, she spoke, but...

The five children looked distraught. Handcuffed, burly policemen hushed them inside the court premises Tuesday afternoon. They looked pale and had visible torture marks. People, many of them lawyers, inside the premises just gazed in distress as the children moved.

Mohsin Majeed Shah was one among the detained minor boys. He had a torture mark on his forehead, right between the eyebrows. His tiny hands cuffed as a policeman pushed him between the groups of men who stood gazing in...

As standard 10th students rush towards their examination centre at the historic Islamia School in the heart of the Old City, Shahbaaz Manzoor Khan, 16, who is also appearing, is brought handcuffed like a ‘criminal’.

Shahbaaz, who hails from Gojwara, has been in police detention for over a month before the annual 10th standard examination began in the Kashmir valley.

On the morning of September 8, this year, when Shahbaaz was still asleep, a pose of 75 police vehicles stood outside the...

Even if powers have been recently transferred to sarpanch and panches in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, there are certain pockets in the Valley where Panchayat had started taking ball in their court much earlier.

Buren, located few kilometers from Srinagar-Baramulla-Muzaffarabad road in Pattan falling in district Baramulla, is one such example. Panches and Sarpanch in Buren in North Kashmir started resolving issues pertaining to domestic violence and related matters, and issues concerning...

Diesel cars that had received a cold response in Kashmir owing to their jittery start in winters are now the most sought out in the small car segment. While automobile engineers have worked on the engines to avert the jerky start, dealers says amid the exponential rise in the fuel prices, car owners are clearly prefering the diesel variants.

The latest diesel models, particularly in the small segment, not only have better engines now-a-days, but also added pick-up with better...

The forests in Jammu and Kashmir state are under tremendous pressure due to increasing demands from growing population for timber, fuel wood, grazing needs and demand for forest land for ongoing developmental activities. Also forests and wildlife in the state are under pressure due to illegal encroachments, timber theft, smuggling, deforestation, air and water pollution, forest fires, soil erosion, developmental schemes and expanding demand of timber, fuel-wood, fodder etc.

Moreover the...

Well known canoeing and kayaking coach Bilquis Mir has added another feather to her cap after she became the first Indian to be appointed as an international technical official at 10th All Africa Games 2011 that were held at Maputo, Mozambique in South Africa from September 3 to 18.

Bilquis, a local Kashmiri girl hailing form Lal Bazaar area, was selected by the International Canoe Federation as a technical official of canoeing events held at the games.

Commenting over her achievement...