On a Wednesday in September, an elderly chief executive walked into a Singapore courtroom to face the consequences of a long, quiet deception. Goh Kim San, 69, also known as Melvin Goh, was the head of Eurosports Global, a listed luxury car distribution company. For years, he had been using not only his own trading accounts but also the accounts of friends and a former employee to buy and sell the company’s shares. The goal was not to make a fortune from price swings. It was simpler and more personal: he wanted to make the company’s stock look alive. The…

A quiet university campus is not usually where issues of state power, student protest, and personal freedom get thrashed out. But Gautam Buddha University in Greater Noida has become the centre of exactly such a controversy. A student, Akshat Tripathi, was issued a notice by an executive magistrate after the police submitted a report accusing him of spreading “anti-government information” and instigating students to join the recent CJP protests. The notice asked him to explain why he should not be required to furnish a personal bond of ₹5 lakh, along with two sureties of the same amount, as a condition…