A U.S. State Department report has panned the Indian government over alleged human rights violations, citing the police case against activist Teesta Setalvad and encounter killing of eight suspected SIMI activists in Madhya Pradesh.
The report on ‘Human Rights Practices in India for 2016’ also referred to restrictions on foreign funding of NGOs, including some whose views the government believed were not in the “national or public interest”, female genital mutilation and dowry-related deaths as human rights problems in the country.
The State Department report also mentions the rejection of renewal of government permission to 25 NGOs to receive foreign funds, including senior lawyer Indira Jaisingh’s ‘Lawyers Collective’ and U.S.-based Compassion International’s two primary partners, noting that several voluntary organisations said these actions threatened their ability to continue to operate in India.
