Above the foldTop stories of the day
1. Union Minister of Culture Mahesh Sharma gives a clean chit to the Dadri accused, says nature of injury shows no desire to lynch even as primary investigations reveal the involvement of the son of a Bharatiya Janata Party leader.
2. Questions are being raised as to how Indrani Mukerjea ­– who is critical now – managed to overdose on her medication and why it took officials eight hours to shift her to hospital.
3. Nepal’s three biggest parties have put up a united front against India.
4. Paschim Banga’s civic polls saw a high level of violence allegedly led by the ruling Trinamool Congress’s workers.
5. The US bombed a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders) in the Afghan city of Kunduz.

Weekend reads
1. In Bihar, much of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s strategy rests on social engineering around the Yadav community, explains Mayank Mishra in the Business Standard.
2. In the Economic Times, Shantanu Nadan Sharma writes about how Nitish Kumar is battling to ward of an ascendant Bharatiya Janata Party.
3. In the Times of India, Swaminathan Aiyar demands his rights as a beef-eating Hindu.
4. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s response to the Dadri beef lynching is a sign that the party has learnt nothing from the experience of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, writes Ashok Malik in the Asian Age.
5. India needs more non-conformist members of parliament like Shashi Tharoor, writes Gopalkrishna Gandhi in the Telegraph.
6. In the Business Line, Rutam Vora about writes how the Patidar agitation has now become a pitched battle between the community and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
7. Religious fundamentalist groups have taken over life in the once cosmopolitan town of Mangalore.
8. What does a Bihari migrant’s death in Punjab reveal about the state? Ishan Marvel explores in the Caravan.
9. Guns have killed more Americans in the past 12 years than AIDS, war, and illegal drug overdoses combined, points out Zack Beauchamp in Vox.
10. In the New York Times, Jonathan Frenzen reviews Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation, which explores the art of conversation in the digital world.
11. [Video] In this TED talk, author Allain De Botton lays out a new vision of atheism that doesn’t reject the socio-cultural parts of religion.