BJP leaders have proposed setting foreign equity limits on satellite channels. Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code empowers state authorities to declare a state of emergency, restrict free assembly, and impose curfews. Authorities occasionally use Section 144 to prevent demonstrations. In recent years, authorities have forcibly suppressed protests against foreign-sponsored power projects. In April, Human Rights Watch reported that in recent months police and hired thugs had beaten and arbitrarily detained villagers who were protesting their forced relocation from the sites of two World Bank-supported power projects in central India.
Police occasionally react to demonstrations that turn violent by opening fire on protesters.
Nongovernmental human rights organizations generally operate freely, but face harassment in rural areas from landlords and other powerful interests. In June, a court released on bail Rongthong Kuenley Dorji, the exile-based Bhutanese opposition leader. Authorities had arrested Kuenley in 1997 in response to a Bhutanese government extradition request. Each year, dowry disputes cause several thousand women to be burnt to death, driven to suicide, or otherwise killed, and cause countless others to be harassed, beaten, or deserted by husbands. Although dowry is illegal, convictions in dowry deaths are rare.