The accused is on the run while the victim is undergoing treatment at the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Durgapur city, officials said.

‘Women Negotiating for Family Housing & Work: A Study on Quasi-Live-in Domestic Workers’ examines the everyday lives and negotiations of a category of domestic workers, different from the mainstream, who barter work for obtaining family housing, and are referred to in the study as the ‘quasi-

The self-immolation by Charan Shah on the funeral pyre of her husband in a remote hamlet in Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh has elicited a spate of articles dealing with the practice of Sati. Of these, a number of articles by Ms.

Sterilization is the most popular method of contraception in India. The 1992-93 National Family Health Survey found that of the 36.2 percent of eligible couples using any modern method, most (30.7 percent) had been sterilized and only 5.5 percent were using temporary methods (IIPS 1995).

It was in Deorala village in Rajasthan on September 3, 1987 that the last incident of sati was reported. Then an 18-year-old Roop Kanwar had committed sati by jumping into the funeral pyre of her 23-year-old Rajput husband, Maal Singh.

It is unfortunate that a measure of confusion has set in about the precise nature and ramifications regarding the immolation - whether self, sati, or otherwise of the 55-yearold Charan Shah on the funeral pyre of her husband at Satpura in Uttar Pradesh on November 11.

The quinacrine trials raise a host of questions regarding the safety of this method of sterilization and the methodology used to assess this.

Otempora! O mores! This cri decoeur will perhaps be evoked in those reading the spate of reports lately, on surreptitious "trials" on the non-surgical sterilization of women with quinacrine, being carried out by NG0s and private doctors in a host of places in the country.

As with Bhanwari Devi, gross injustice was committed in the Roop Kanwar sati case, when yet another session court in Rajasthan, acquitted all 32 of the accused in October last year.

The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, is an Indian law enacted to prevent and punish the practice of sati, where a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre.