A sessions court in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district on Monday convicted five persons and acquitted 35 others in connection with a 2016 case in which seven Dalits were assaulted in the town of Una, The Indian Express reported.

Additional Sessions Judge Jignesh Pandya of the court in Veraval convicted Ramesh Jadav, Rakesh Joshi, Nagjibhai Vaniya, Pramodgiri Gausvami and Balvantgiri Gausvami. The court will pronounce the punishment on Tuesday.

On July 11, 2016, more than 40 men from the upper caste Darbar community had assaulted seven members of the Sarvaiya family for skinning a dead cow in Una town in the district. The Sarvaiyas were leather tanners and skinning dead cattle was part of their traditional occupation.

However, the assailants accused them of cow slaughter.

During the attack, four of the Sarvaiya brothers were stripped, tied to the back of a car and beaten with sticks and iron rods, while some of the attackers filmed the assault.

The Criminal Investigation Department, which investigated the case, had filed charges against 41 persons, The Indian Express reported.

The charges included attempted murder, criminal conspiracy, attempting to cause grievous hurt, dacoity, kidnapping, assault or criminal force against a woman with intent to outrage her modesty, wrongful confinement, rioting, unlawful assembly, among other offences.

Provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act and the Information Technology Act were also invoked.

Among the 41 accused facing trial were four police officers from the Una police station. One of these officers, former police inspector Nirmalsinh Zala, died during trial. The other three have been acquitted.

VC Mavadhiya, one of the defence lawyers in the case, told The Indian Express on Monday that the five men accused in the case have been convicted under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, voluntarily causing hurt using dangerous weapons or means and criminal intimidation.

They were also convicted under Section 3(1)(10) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act. This section is related to the intentional insult, intimidation or caste-based abuse against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes members.

Noting that several persons had been accused in the case, Mavadhiya also told the newspaper that the prosecution could not establish who did what either in its complaint or in its testimony before the court.

“Therefore, the court has not found the offence against the rest of the accused proved,” The Indian Express quoted the lawyer as saying.

Vashram Sarvaiya described the ruling as “sad” and said that it will be challenged in the Gujarat High Court.

Also read: How the Una protests reflect Ambedkar’s great wisdom in the Constituent Assembly

Trinamool Congress MPs walked out of the Rajya Sabha to protest against the Election Commission’s decision to replace several top officials in West Bengal shortly after the schedule for the Assembly election was announced.

Among those removed from their posts by the poll panel were Director General of Police Peeyush Pandey, Kolkata Commissioner of Police Supratim Sarkar and Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty.

The Election Commission directed that those transferred out of their positions should not be posted in any election-related assignment till the polls are completed.

The election will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The result will be announced on May 4. Read on.

The Haryana government told the Supreme Court that it will not grant sanction to prosecute Ashoka University Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad in a case related to his comments about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi then quashed the criminal proceedings against Mahmudabad, but cautioned him to act “prudently” in the future.

The state’s decision, described as “one-time magnanimity”, was communicated to the court by Additional Solicitor General SV Raju.

Mahmudabad had been booked in May for a social media post highlighting the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who had represented the Indian Army during the press briefings. He was arrested on May 18, but was granted bail by the Supreme Court three days later.

Of two cases filed against him, one was filed based on a complaint by Yogesh Jatheri, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state Yuva Morcha, while the second was based on a complaint by Haryana Women’s Commission Chairperson Renu Bhatia. Read on.

Flights at Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates were temporarily suspended when a drone struck one of the fuel tanks in its vicinity amid the conflict in West Asia. Later in the day, the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority announced the “gradual resumption of some flights” to selected destinations.

Some flights were diverted from the Dubai International Airport to Al Maktoum International Airport on the outskirts of the city.

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates ordered the arrest of 25 persons, including 17 Indians, for posting allegedly misleading or fabricated videos on social media amid the conflict. This is in addition to 10 persons, including two Indians, who were arrested on Saturday for similar offences. Read on.

Ten patients died and several were injured after a fire broke out in the trauma care intensive care unit of the Srirama Chandra Bhanja Medical College and Hospital in Odisha’s Cuttack. The fire was reported at about 3 am.

While the exact cause of the fire has not been confirmed, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said it may have been triggered by a short circuit.

Around 23 patients were admitted in the unit and an adjacent intensive care unit at the time of the incident, Majhi said. Many of them were on ventilator and oxygen support, making it difficult for the authorities to shift them quickly after the blaze erupted.

SCB Medical College and Hospital is the largest government healthcare facility in Odisha. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Monday refused to intervene in a petition filed by journalist Ravi Nair against a notice issued to him by the Gujarat Crime Branch in connection with an article that he co-authored about Adani Ports and SEZ Limited, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta asked Nair to move the Gujarat High Court instead, The Hindu reported. It then allowed him to withdraw the petition

The journalist had moved the Supreme Court against a Gujarat Crime Branch notice issued on February 12 in connection with an article published in October 2025 in The Washington Post titled “India’s $3.9 billion plan to help Modi’s mogul ally after US charges”, Live Law reported.

The article had been authored by Nair and Pranshu Verma, former New Delhi bureau chief for The Washington Post.

The notice issued to Nair on February 12 summoned him to the office of the Gujarat Crime Branch on February 19 for a preliminary enquiry in connection with the article and one of his posts on social media.

In his petition against the notice, Nair said that the The Washington Post article “revealed how Indian officials drafted and pushed through a proposal in May 2025 to steer roughly $3.9 billion in investments to Adani Group businesses from the Life Insurance Corporation of India, a state-owned entity primarily responsible for providing life insurance to poor and rural families”, The Hindu reported.

It claimed that the Gujarat Crime Branch notice sought to “criminalise journalistic work carried out in good faith, after due diligence, and in the public interest”. Nair contended that the crime branch’s actions threatened his constitutional rights to equality, freedom of expression, and protection of life and liberty, the newspaper reported.

The state government authorities were “illegally indulging in a roving and fishing inquiry against the petitioner without jurisdiction”, the petition claimed.

During the proceedings in the Supreme Court, Nair’s counsel argued that industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Group had initiated three cases against the journalist and added that he was repeatedly being harassed, Live Law reported.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited is a part of the Adani Group.

However, the bench asked why a petition was filed under Article 32 instead of moving the jurisdictional High Court. In response, Grover said that it is “a fundamental right”.

Article 32 guarantees the right to directly approach the Supreme Court for the enforcement of fundamental rights.

Earlier case

On February 13, Nair was granted bail in another criminal defamation case filed by Adani Enterprises Limited in connection with a series of posts on the social media platform X.

A magisterial court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar also suspended for a month the one-year prison sentence awarded to him.

The court had convicted Nair on February 10 and sentenced him to one year of imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 5,000.

The case pertained to a series of social media posts by Nair from October 2020 to July 2021 about the Adani Group, including allegations by United States short seller Hindenburg Research and a strike against the proposed privatisation of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

The case was based on a complaint filed by Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of Adani Group, alleging that Nair published and disseminated a series of posts on X containing false and defamatory statements intended to damage its reputation.

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday told the Delhi High Court that an order discharging all 23 accused persons, including Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, from the liquor policy case should not remain on record “even for a second more than what is necessary”, Live Law reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made the statement after N Hariharan, the lawyer for Kejriwal, said that the AAP chief has approached the Supreme Court against a High Court order staying the trial court’s adverse observations about the CBI.

Mehta said that while it was Kejriwal’s right to challenge the High Court order, if the plea in the top court was being cited as a reason for adjournment, then he must ensure that the petition is listed this week, according to Live Law.

The solicitor general contended that seeking a reply from the AAP leaders was not necessary as the entire record of the trial court was available, PTI reported. He demanded that Kejriwal and the other respondents should not be given more than a week to file their responses.

“We seriously object to the order,” Mehta told the High Court, according to Live Law. “It cannot remain on record even for a second more than what is necessary.”

Mehta contended that the order discharging all the accused persons was “perverse” and its existence constituted a prejudice to the system.

However, the High Court granted the respondents two weeks to file their replies.

The trial court had passed the order discharging all the accused persons on February 27. The court had criticised the CBI for implicating Kejriwal and AAP leader Manish Sisodia without any cogent material and said the chargesheet contained several gaps not supported by witnesses or statements.

The trial court had also said it would recommend a departmental inquiry against CBI officials who made a public servant the accused number one in the case. It had said that there was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent behind the excise policy.

The CBI has filed an appeal against the order.

Kejriwal had urged the High Court to transfer the case from Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma to another bench. However, the High Court’s Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay rejected the request, according to Live Law.

Also read: Why a court held CBI’s corruption case against Kejriwal was so flimsy it could not even go to trial

A day after the schedule for the Assembly elections in West Bengal was released, the Election Commission on Monday removed the state director general of police and the Kolkata police commissioner, PTI reported.

The poll panel appointed Indian Police Service officer Siddh Nath Gupta as the new director general of police, the news agency quoted an unidentified official as saying. Gupta will replace Peeyush Pandey in the post.

The official added that Kolkata Police Commissioner Supratim Sarkar has been removed and Ajay Kumar Nand has been appointed in his position.

Additionally, Natarajan Ramesh Babu has been named director general of correctional services, while Ajay Mukund Ranade has been appointed additional director general (law and order), the Hindustan Times reported.

In an earlier notice, the poll panel had removed Nandini Chakraborty from the post of chief secretary, appointing Dushyant Nariala in her place, The Indian Express reported. Home Secretary Jagdish Prasad Meena was replaced by Sanghamitra Ghosh.

The official also told PTI that the Election Commission has directed that all the orders be implemented immediately and that the state government submit a compliance report by 3 pm on Monday.

Those transferred out of their positions should not be posted in any election-related assignment till the completion of the polls, the poll panel added.

The West Bengal election will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29 in the state. The results will be announced on May 4.

Trinamool Congress walks out of Rajya Sabha

In the Rajya Sabha on Monday, Trinamool Congress MPs walked out in protest against the Election Commission’s decision to remove top officials in the state, hours after announcing the schedule for the Assembly elections.

Raising the issue ahead of the Zero Hour in the Upper House, Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien said that “in the dead of night, the chief secretary, the principal secretary, the home secretary have been removed by the Election Commission”.

O’Brien added that the poll panel had all the power to do this. “They can also say that I am wearing a blue shirt and not a white shirt,” he said.

“In protest against what the chief election commissioner is doing, the Trinamool Congress is walking out for the day,” the Rajya Sabha member said.

Trinamool intervenes, registers protest in Rajya Sabha, walks out

VIDEO

"In the dead of night, the Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary, Home Secretary of Bengal were removed by the Election Commission

EC have all the power to do it. They can (misuse their power). I am wearing… pic.twitter.com/uDLYegkOSY

— Derek O'Brien | ডেরেক ও'ব্রায়েন (@derekobrienmp) March 16, 2026

The Haryana government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it will not grant sanction to prosecute Ashoka University Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad in the case pertaining to his comments about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor, Live Law reported.

The decision, described as a “one-time magnanimity” was communicated to the court by Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi then quashed the criminal proceedings against Mahmudabad.

The court, however, cautioned the professor to act “prudently” in the future.

“Sometimes writing in between the lines creates more problems,” Bar and Bench quoted Kant as saying. “Sometimes the situation is so sensitive that we all have to be careful. Petitioner being a highly learned person shall act in a prudent manner in the future.”

Mahmudabad, who heads the political science department at Ashoka University, had been booked in May for a social media post highlighting the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who had represented the Indian Army during the press briefings.

He had said that the optics of the press briefings by Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh were important, “but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy”.

“Perhaps they [commentators] could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hate mongering be protected as Indian citizens,” he had said.

Mahmudabad was arrested on May 18 but was granted bail by the Supreme Court three days later.

However, the court had at the time declined to halt the investigation against him. It had also instructed the Haryana Police chief to form a special investigation team to look into the meaning of the words used by Mahmudabad.

The first case in the matter was filed based on a complaint by Yogesh Jatheri, general secretary of the BJP’s state Yuva Morcha, invoking provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to promoting enmity, prejudicial assertions affecting national integration and acts endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity.

The second FIR, lodged by Haryana Women’s Commission Chairperson Renu Bhatia, invoked provisions pertaining to public mischief, deliberate actions aimed at insulting the modesty of a woman, and endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity.

On August 25, the Supreme Court restrained a magistrate from taking cognisance of the chargesheet filed by the Haryana Police’s Special Investigation Team in the first case. It had also quashed all proceedings in the second first information report against Mahmudabad based on a police closure report.

On January 6, the Supreme Court had urged the state to reconsider the matter and decline prosecution.

The professor has maintained that his remarks had been “completely misunderstood” by the women’s commission and that its notice failed to explain how his posts were “contrary to the right of or laws for women”.

Also read:

• Why Ashoka University professor’s arrest has no legal basis

• Harsh Mander: The message from the persecution of Ali Khan Mahmudabad

Nineteen Indians were among 35 persons whose arrest has been ordered in the United Arab Emirates for posting allegedly misleading and fabricated videos on social media amid regional tensions due to the West Asia conflict, PTI reported on Sunday.

Ten persons, including two Indians, were ordered to be arrested on Saturday, while the arrest of the remaining 25, including 17 Indians, was ordered on Sunday.

The accused persons have been referred for an expedited trial.

UAE Attorney General Dr Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said in a statement that the action followed rigorous monitoring of digital platforms to curb the spread of fabricated information and artificial content intended to incite public disorder and undermine stability.

He added that “publishing such clips, whether real or fabricated,” could “affect public security and create confusion,” and also provide “hostile media with material that could be used to distort facts, undermine confidence in the competent authorities and potentially reveal aspects of the country’s defensive capabilities”.

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28 after Israel and the US launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government.

Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

Iran has fired more than 1,800 missiles and drones at the UAE, more than any other country targeted by Tehran in the conflict, upending travel plans in the financial hub despite its air defence intercepting a vast majority of the projectiles, Reuters reported.

Ten patients died and several others were injured after a fire broke out in the trauma care intensive care unit of the Srirama Chandra Bhanja Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack on Monday, ANI quoted Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi as saying.

The fire was reported at about 3 am, The Indian Express reported. While the exact cause of the fire has not been confirmed, the chief minister said it may have been triggered by a short circuit.

Around 23 patients were admitted in the trauma intensive care unit and an adjacent intensive care unit at the time of the incident, Majhi told ANI. Many of them were on ventilator and oxygen support, making it difficult to shift them quickly after the blaze began, The New Indian Express reported.

Majhi said that seven patients died while being shifted during the rescue operation, while three others later died during treatment, ANI reported.

Eleven hospital employees, including private security guards involved in the rescue, were also injured by fire and smoke and are receiving treatment, The Hindu reported.

Firefighters, including the college’s unit and personnel from the Cuttack Fire Station, responded with three tenders and more than 30 personnel to control the blaze and assist in rescues, the newspaper reported.

SCB Medical College and Hospital is the largest government healthcare facility in Odisha.

Majhi announced an ex gratia payment of Rs 25 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund to the next of kin of each of those who died and ordered a judicial probe into the incident.

#WATCH | Cuttack: 10 people died in the fire in the Trauma Care ICU of SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack.

Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi says, "...The fire broke out probably due to a short circuit. 23 patients were under treatment at the trauma ICU, the ICU adjacent to… https://t.co/0l3TrFlra5 pic.twitter.com/WpAunajOok

— ANI (@ANI) March 16, 2026

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh should face targeted sanctions for its responsibility for and tolerance of violations of religious freedom in India, a US panel has recommended to the Donald Trump administration. The sanctions could include freezing the organisation’s assets and barring entry to the US.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the Narendra-Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party government in India.

The recommendation was made in the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2026 annual report, released earlier this month.

The commission is an independent American government agency that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion and makes policy suggestions to the White House. These suggestions are not binding.

In an India-specific issue update released in November, the commission had noted that the “interconnected relationship between the RSS and BJP allows for the creation and enforcement of several discriminatory pieces of legislation, including citizenship, anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws”.

In the 2026 annual report, the commission also recommended that India’s Research and Analysis Wing be among the individuals and entities facing sanctions for their tolerance of religious freedom violations. The Research and Analysis Wing is the country’s foreign intelligence agency.

In 2025 as well, the commission had recommended sanctions against the agency over its alleged involvement in assassination plots against Sikh separatists, Reuters reported.

Among the commission’s other recommendations was that the Trump administration designate India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. This is the seventh time the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has made this recommendation.

India has not responded to the latest report. However, in March 2025, the Ministry of External Affairs had said that the commission has a “pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments”.

India is among the 18 countries that the commission recommended for designation as “countries of particular concern”, along with Afghanistan, Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

‘Religious freedom continues to deteriorate’

In the latest annual report, the commission noted that in 2025 “religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities and their houses of worship”.

“Indian authorities also facilitated widespread detention and illegal expulsion of citizens and religious refugees and tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities,” the report said.

The Union government continued to use anti-terrorism laws to imprison religious minorities and those advocating on their behalf, it added.

The report noted that activists “Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and several others involved in the 2020 [Citizenship Amendment Act] protests remained in prison for the fifth year without trials”.

“Throughout the year, Hindu nationalist mobs across several states harassed, incited, and instigated violence against Muslims and Christians with impunity,” the report said. “Throughout 2025, violent mobs attacked Muslims under the guise of protecting state-level cow slaughter laws.”

It also noted that 12 of India’s states have anti-conversion laws, and that several state governments strengthened or introduced new legislation in 2025 with broader definitions of “religious conversion” and harsher penalties.

Two men were arrested in Karnataka on Sunday for allegedly attempting to bribe MLAs from the Odisha unit of the Congress a day ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections, the Hindustan Times reported.

Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of trying to influence the legislators as part of “Operation Lotus” by offering them Rs 5 crore to cross-vote in favour of a candidate backed by the party, PTI reported.

“Operation Lotus” refers to the alleged attempts by the BJP to orchestrate defections and poach legislators from Opposition parties by offering them bribes and other incentives.

On Thursday, eight Congress MLAs from Odisha were moved to a resort near Bengaluru amid concerns about possible cross-voting in the election for four Rajya Sabha seats from the state.

Shivakumar added that two of the four persons allegedly involved in Sunday’s incident were apprehended at the resort, PTI reported.

Odisha Congress leader Ashok Kumar Das filed a complaint with the Bidadi police station in Karnataka naming the four persons as Birendra Prasad, Suresh, Ajit Kumar Sahu and Simachal Mohakud, the Hindustan Times reported.

Das also alleged that when the legislators rejected the alleged offer of Rs 5 crore each to cross-vote in the Rajya Sabha election, the individuals threatened to kill them if they returned to Odisha, India Today reported.

The BJP rejected the allegations.

Anil Biswal, a spokesperson for the party in Odisha, described the claims as “baseless” and said they had been made after the Congress realised it was facing defeat in the Rajya Sabha elections, the Hindustan Times reported.

“The Congress has a habit of cross-voting,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Four Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha are due to fall vacant on April 2 and elections are being held on Monday to fill them. In total, polls for 37 Rajya Sabha seats in 10 states are scheduled for the same day.

In the 147-member Odisha Assembly, the BJP has 79 MLAs and the support of three Independents, giving it 82 votes. The Biju Janata Dal has 50 MLAs, though two are currently under suspension, leaving it with 48 effective votes. The Congress has 14 MLAs and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has one.

Under the voting formula for Rajya Sabha elections, a candidate requires at least 30 first-preference votes to win.

BJD, Congress issue showcause notice to 3 MLAs

The Opposition BJD and the Congress on Sunday issued showcause notices to three MLAs for allegedly violating party whips ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections, PTI reported.

The BJD issued showcause notices to two MLAs: Chakramani Kanhar, who represents the Baliguda constituency, and Naba Kishor Mallick, the legislator from Jayadev.

In a statement on Sunday, BJD chief whip Pramila Mallik said that the two MLAs had been absent from meetings convened by the party leadership for the past three days, the news agency reported.

The Congress also asked its MLA from Mohana, Dasarathi Gomango, to present himself before the party.

In the showcause notice, the Congress Disciplinary Committee said that Gomango had remained incommunicado and accused him of “deliberately going into hiding at a critical juncture, raising suspicions of potential cross-voting or defection that could undermine the party’s strategic alliance”, PTI reported.

The Supreme Court’s “unease” with the 2023 Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes is reportedly driving its push to frame new guidelines, but this risks undoing decades of progressive jurisprudence on gender justice and reflects an institutional discomfort with confronting gendered and caste-based power structures in judicial reasoning.

The handbook, intended as a tool to help judges identify and avoid stereotypes that frequently appear in judicial reasoning, was released in August 2023 during the tenure of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud.

On February 10, the Supreme Court issued an order to form a committee of experts and frame new guidelines. During the hearing, Chief Justice Surya Kant described the handbook as “too Harvard-oriented”. This criticism is misplaced.

A month on, a report in The Indian Express, published on March 9, indicates that the handbook’s description of the use of sexual violence to maintain caste dominance appears to be among the factors that sparked a push to reexamine the guidelines.

The report, citing sources within the court, points to two main areas of concern among some judges. These are: first, the handbook’s discussion of gender stereotypes includes an illustrative list of assumptions often applied to men and women in cases involving sex and sexual violence, along with explanations of why such assumptions are flawed.

Second, the handbook references stereotypes surrounding caste-based sexual violence, including that “dominant caste men do not want to engage in sexual relations with women from oppressed castes”.

The handbook notes that rape and sexual violence have historically been used as tools of social control and domination, particularly to reinforce caste hierarchies. According to the Indian Express, some judges were concerned that such sweeping generalisations risk “painting targets on entire communities”.

But, as the handbook explains, these stereotypes are drawn directly from the language and reasoning found in the judgments of the Supreme Court, High Courts and District Courts.

By compiling and analysing these examples, the handbook simply holds up a mirror to the legal system. It demonstrates how assumptions about the behaviour of a “respectable” woman, the credibility of survivors of sexual violence or the supposed improbability of certain forms of violence have found their way into judicial discourse and led to unjust outcomes.

Highlighting the patterns

Critiquing stereotypes in judicial decisions is a necessary step toward ensuring that courts do not reproduce the social prejudices that can shape legal reasoning. Indeed, identifying and questioning such stereotypes has long been recognised as a marker of progress in gender-sensitive jurisprudence. The handbook merely highlights these patterns so that judges can consciously avoid repeating them.

Similarly, the example relating to caste-based sexual violence reflects reasoning that has appeared in a real judicial decision. As the handbook notes, this was highlighted from the trial court’s judgment in the Bhanwari Devi gang rape case, where the accused were acquitted in 1995.

Among the reasons cited by the court was the assumption that oppressor-caste men would not rape a lower-caste woman. This reasoning starkly illustrated how caste prejudice could shape judicial decision-making.

Bhanwari Devi, a grassroots worker with the Rajasthan government’s Women’s Development Programme, was gang-raped in 1992 after she attempted to stop a child marriage in her village. The trial court’s acquittal of the accused and the reasoning it employed generated outrage and ultimately led to the landmark Vishaka ruling in which the Supreme Court laid down the first binding guidelines on workplace sexual harassment.

Thus, the handbook’s discussion on caste stereotypes in sexual violence cases does not “paint targets” on communities. Moreover, sociological and feminist scholarship has consistently demonstrated how sexual violence is often used as a tool of social control against marginalised communities.

In Castes in India, BR Ambedkar had theorised how control over a woman’s sexuality helps maintain the caste system by regulating marriage. The patterns that emerge in caste-based gender violence cases prove this. Recognising this structural reality is an attempt to understand how power operates in society, and does not vilify any community.

The discomfort with this analysis also shows the judiciary’s misplaced priorities. The appeal in the Bhanwari Devi case that prompted this discussion has been pending before the Rajasthan High Court for nearly three decades. The case has been unheard for several years. Yet, the judiciary found time to express “unease” about institutional critiques of judicial reasoning, instead of the delay in resolving such appeals, raising deeper questions about institutional priorities. If anything should cause institutional discomfort, it ought to be the continued denial of timely justice in cases of gender and caste violence.

This “unease” is also difficult to reconcile with the structure of the Indian Constitution. The Constitution is built on the recognition that Indian society is marked by deeply entrenched structures of power, particularly those rooted in caste and gender, and that the law must actively work to dismantle them.

Invisible hierarchies

When scholarship, handbooks, or judicial training materials identify patterns within these systems, they are attempting to illuminate the structural dynamics through which power operates in society. Ignoring these patterns merely allows entrenched hierarchies to remain invisible within legal reasoning.

Educational tools that encourage judges to reflect critically on social realities are not ideological or partisan exercises. They are essential to prevent the law from unconsciously reproducing prejudice.

Without conscious reflection, stereotypes and assumptions embedded in society can easily find their way into legal judgments. A justice system that is unwilling to confront the social structures within which crimes occur risks retreating into an ivory-tower, detached from the society it claims to serve.

Anurag Bhaskar is a faculty at OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, and a visiting professor of law at NALSAR, Hyderabad. He was a part of the team that prepared the Supreme Court’s Gender Handbook in 2023.

India’s direct talks with Iran have “yielded some results” in allowing Indian ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz amid the conflict in West Asia, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the Financial Times on Sunday. He, however, added that there is no “blanket arrangement” with Tehran for Indian vessels to move through the strait.

In an interview to the newspaper, Jaishankar said that each movement of Indian ships through the strait is being handled individually.

“I am at the moment engaged in talking to them [Iran] and my talking has yielded some results,” Jaishankar told the Financial Times. “This is ongoing. If it is yielding results for me, I would naturally continue to look at it.”

The Union government on Saturday confirmed that two Indian-flagged vessels carrying liquefied petroleum gas – Shivalik and Nanda Devi – had crossed the Strait of Hormuz.

Jaishankar said that the passage of the ships showed what diplomatic negotiations could achieve.

He added: “From India’s perspective, it is better that we reason and we co-ordinate and we get a solution than we don’t…So if that sort of allows other people to engage, I think the world is better off for it.”

The remarks came after United States President Donald Trump on Saturday urged other countries to send warships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

In the interview, Jaishankar also said that the discussions with Tehran were continuing as several Indian vessels were still waiting to pass through the strait.

“These are still early days,” he said. “We have many more ships there. So while this is a welcome development, there is continuing conversation because there is continued work on that.”

He added: “India and Iran have a relationship. And this is a conflict that we regard as something very unfortunate.”

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

The International Energy Agency on Thursday said that the fighting has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.

Global oil prices have surged since the conflict began. The benchmark Brent crude oil price has crossed the $100 per barrel-mark. The price was about $72.8 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict began.

The disruption has also affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

Months before United States President Donald Trump announced Reliance Group’s investment in a Texas oil refinery, the group spent $1.49 million (Rs 13 crore) on lobbying the White House and other US government departments on energy and trade policies, “sanctions” and “tariffs affecting oil”, records filed with the US Senate show.

More than half the amount – $760,000 – was spent between October 1 and December 31, 2025.

On March 11, Trump announced that Reliance Group would back a new oil refinery at the Port of Brownsville, Texas, to be built by America First Refining. Trump called it the first American refinery in 50 years and pegged the deal at a staggering $300 billion (Rs 27.7 lakh crore).

Reliance is yet to comment on the deal.

In a statement, America First Refining said that in February, it had received a “9-figure investment from a global supermajor at a 10-figure valuation”. Without identifying the global firm, it added that it had signed a binding “offtake term sheet” with the firm to purchase, process, and distribute energy from American shale oil.

Scroll sent questions to the Reliance Group about the deal and its spend on lobbying in the US. No response has been received by the time of publication.

In 2025, the Mukesh Ambani-led conglomerate had found itself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration over Russian oil imports. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said that some of India’s richest families were profiteering from New Delhi buying and reselling cheap Russian oil.

In August, the Trump administration hiked tariffs on Indian goods from 25% to 50% over the oil imports. By December, the Reliance group had to cut down its purchase of Russian oil. In February 2026, Trump waived the additional 25% tariff.

Four lobbying firms

Lobbying to influence government policy is a legal activity in the US. It is done through specialised firms.

In addition to three lobbying firms already representing it, in 2025, Reliance hired a new firm, Checkmate Government Relations. The North Carolina-based firm has old ties with the Trump administration. One of its lobbyists, Fritz Vaughan, was a treasury official in the first Trump administration.

For $330,000, Checkmate Government Relations was tasked with discussing “issues regarding international energy policy” with the US State Department and the intelligence-focused National Security Agency.

Reliance spent another $480,000 through Ballard Partners for lobbying the Department of Commerce and the State Department – which manages American foreign policy – on the same issues.

The group gave $80,000 to AND Partners to lobby on its behalf with the US Senate on diesel swaps, an arrangement where a company trades with a sanctioned country without exchanging money.

The highest spending – $600,000 – however, was directed towards discussions on “US trade policies, sanctions, and tariffs affecting oil” with the White House, US Senate, House of Representatives, Department of Commerce, Treasury Department and the Department of Energy. This was done via a lobbying firm called Eversheds Sutherland.

In addition to Reliance, records show that Element Fuels Holdings LLC, the firm that operates America First Refining, spent $450,000 (Rs 4 crore) in 2025 to lobby with Trump’s office over the “production of hydrogen technology”. For this, it engaged Washington-based Continental Strategy LLC, which is run by Carlos Trujillo, an official who served in the first Trump administration. This was its highest-ever spending on lobbying.

A new record

Reliance has lobbied US governments in the past, but never on this scale. In 2009 and 2010, it spent Rs $760,000 (Rs 3.7 crore) each year on “strategic counsel on issues related to trade”.

In 2020 and 2021, it spent $1.2 million (Rs 9 crore) each year to lobby the State Department and the US Senate over sanctions. According to Bloomberg, the group was trying to get the US to loosen its sanctions on oil from Venezuela.

Chevron, an American multinational pushing the same issue, had spent $6.8 million in lobbying in 2021, records show.

Apart from Reliance, 2025 saw the Adani Group spend $160,000 to lobby the US State department, Department of Homeland Security, and the House of Representatives over “US-India trade relationship”, “green energy” and “related criminal and civil matters”. In 2024, a US court had indicted the group for bribing Indian officials to convince them into buying electricity from its units.

The same year, records show that the Tata Group spent $920,000 on lobbying the US Senate and the House of Representatives over “education, innovation, and research programs and federal funding for STEM education”. In 2025, Tata Consultancy Services was among the Indian information technology firms that faced headwinds in the US as the Trump administration threatened to charge businesses a steep fee for H1-B visas, three-fourths of which are secured by Indians.

The West Bengal Police’s Special Task Force on Saturday arrested a third Bangladeshi citizen in connection with the killing of Bangladeshi activist Sharif Osman Hadi, The Hindu reported.

On March 7, the police had arrested two Bangladeshis, Rahul alias Faisal Karim Masud and Alamgir Hossain, near the Bongaon border area, on charges of illegally entering and staying in India.

The third man arrested on Saturday, Philip Sangma, had allegedly helped the two persons enter India illegally through the Haluaghat-Dalupara border area in exchange for money, according to the police.

Investigators said that Sangma later entered India to evade arrest in Bangladesh and travelled to several locations in the country, PTI reported.

He remained in contact with the other two men and was attempting to return to Bangladesh when he was apprehended, the news agency quoted an unidentified officer as saying.

“During initial interrogation, Philip Sangma admitted that he operates as a border tout and facilitates illegal migrants to cross the border,” The Hindu quoted the police as saying.

The police statement added that Sangma allegedly admitted to facilitating Masud and Hossain’s entry into India.

Sangma was produced before a court on Saturday and remanded to police custody for further investigation.

Hadi was a prominent leader in the 2024 student protest that led to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government at the time.

He was shot on December 12 while he was leaving a mosque in Dhaka. He died on December 18 at a hospital in Singapore, where he had been flown for treatment.

Hadi’s death had led to unrest in parts of Bangladesh, during which the offices of newspapers The Daily Star and Prothom Alo were attacked.

The Bangladesh Police had at the time alleged that Masud and Hossain had crossed into Meghalaya with the help of Indian residents and had taken refuge there. India’s Border Security Force had, however, denied the claim.

The Bangladesh Police have claimed that Hadi was killed on the instructions of leaders linked to the Awami League and its student wing, the Chhatra League. It alleged that the killing was the result of “political vendetta”.

Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will head for Assembly elections in phases starting on April 9, the Election Commission announced on Sunday. The results in all states will be announced on May 4.

The polling in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry will take place in a single phase on April 9.

In Tamil Nadu, the voting will take place in a single phase on April 23.

In West Bengal, the polling will take place in two phases on April 23 and April 29.

The Model Code of Conduct came into force with the poll schedule being announced.

The code is a set of guidelines issued by the poll panel that political parties, candidates and the government must follow during an election. It sets guardrails for speeches, campaigning, meetings, processions, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.

More than 17.4 crore electors will be eligible to vote in the polls.

Bye-elections

The poll panel also announced bye-elections to eight Assembly seats in Goa (Ponda), Gujarat (Umreth), Karnataka (Bagalkot and Davanagere South), Maharashtra (Rahuri and Baramati), Nagaland (Koridang) and Tripura (Dharmanagar).

The voting in Goa, Karnataka Nagaland and Tripura will be held on April 9, and in Gujarat and Maharashtra on April 23. The counting of votes will take place on May 4.

The bye-polls were necessitated by the death of the legislators.

Revised voter lists

The final voter lists in the four states and the Union Territory have been published following the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The process is still underway in West Bengal with several voters “under adjudication”.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, indicating the exclusion of more than 61 lakh voters.

About 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remain “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

The names of those approved by judicial officers will be added to the rolls through a supplementary list.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

Four days later, the court allowed judges from Odisha and Jharkhand to also be deployed to decide on the claims and objections raised during the process.

The 2021 results

In West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has been in power since 2011. The main Opposition in the state over the years has shifted from the Left parties to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In 2021, the BJP managed to win 77 seats in the 294-member Assembly. The Trinamool had won 215. The other alliance comprising the Left, the Congress and some smaller parties, despite securing a 10% vote share, had won just one seat.

In Assam, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had won a clear majority. It won 75 seats of the 126-member Assembly. The Opposition Mahajot alliance comprising the Congress, the Left and the All India United Democratic Front had won 50 seats.

After the polls, BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma had become the chief minister, replacing Sarbananda Sonowal.

In Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led alliance, which includes the Congress and the Left, won 159 seats in the 234-member Assembly. The NDA, comprising the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the BJP, had won 75. DMK leader MK Stalin had become the chief minister.

In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front had broken a 44-year trend of incumbents losing power. The alliance picked up 99 seats in the 140-member Assembly. The Congress-led United Democratic Front had won 41.

In Puducherry, the NDA, comprising the All India NR Congress and the BJP, had defeated the United Progressive Alliance of the Congress and the DMK. N Rangaswamy of the NR Congress became the chief minister.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi on Saturday sealed and demolished portions of 70 shops in a drive against alleged encroachments in Uttam Nagar, days after a man died following a clash in the area during Holi celebrations.

Tarun Bhutolia was severely injured in a clash on March 4 that began after a water balloon accidentally thrown by an 11-year-old girl from the third floor of a building fell on a Muslim woman standing below. The incident had led to an argument between the two neighbouring families from different religious communities.

The 26-year-old man had succumbed to his injuries the next day.

Bhutolia’s killing had sparked tensions in the area. Several vehicles were damaged and some were set on fire during protests by residents, following which police and paramilitary personnel were deployed.

On Saturday, the municipal authority said that the demolition drive had been undertaken to remove what it stated were unauthorised platforms, stairs and temporary sheds in front of the shops to “ensure smoother pedestrian movement and better traffic flow”.

Team MCD in West Zone carried out an encroachment removal drive at B-Block, JJ Colony, Hastsal, reclaiming public space and restoring order in the area.

Unauthorized thadas, stairs and temporary sheds in front of 70 shops were removed, clearing about 380 metres of road… pic.twitter.com/Gd14ONll5P

— Municipal Corporation of Delhi (@MCD_Delhi) March 14, 2026

The drive targeted a row of eateries next to the Uttam Nagar police station, a few hundred metres from Bhutolia’s house, The Hindu reported. The lane serves as the entry point to the Hastsal locality of Uttam Nagar.

Deputy Commissioner Colonel Vinod Atri told the newspaper that no permanent structures were demolished.

The action came days after the municipal corporation on March 8 demolished allegedly illegal portions of a property linked to a person accused in Bhutolia’s death.

On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court restrained the municipal body from demolitions for a week of houses belonging to persons allegedly involved in the clash, The Hindu reported.

There are no provisions in Indian law that allow for the demolition of property as a punitive measure. However, the practice has become commonplace in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In November 2024, the Supreme Court held as illegal the practice of demolishing properties of persons accused of crimes as a punitive measure.

Also watch: How a clash between two families on Holi in Delhi became a larger flashpoint

We were in Bihar on our way from Narendrapur to Patna. Narendrapur is a village near Jiradei, the birthplace of India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad. I was returning after taking part in a reflective workshop on Mahatma Gandhi at the campus of an organisation called Parivartan. Our car had entered the road through Siwan.

As we drove along, I tried to look for familiar landmarks because this was the very road on which, from childhood through adolescence, I had spent countless hours every day. The road was narrow and crowded with people. Our car crawled forward slowly. On both sides of the road, there were women wearing hijabs and burqas.

“So many Muslims in Siwan!” the driver said.

A faint air of tension entered the vehicle, although the driver was merely describing what he saw. He had not expressed an opinion. But it surprised me that the sight of Muslims in Bihar should elicit a comment like this. The community forms nearly 17% of the population, and there is hardly any part of Bihar that Muslims do not live.

“Yes, there is quite a sizeable Muslim population here,” I replied. “I used to live here. I spent my childhood in a Muslim locality, Sheikh Mohalla.” I added, almost defensively, “Everyone used to live together.”

“Living together is a good thing,” the driver agreed.

I felt my back relax a little against the seat.

But the conversation had not ended.

“But sometimes Muslims do mischief,” he said.

Living together was a good thing, yes. But perhaps the driver wanted to explain why, in India, such togetherness often breaks down – or why it could not last. I straightened my back again in my seat.

He offered an example in support of his point: “Just look at what happened in Delhi. A girl merely threw a colour-filled balloon. It hit a Muslim woman. Then her family came with swords and sticks and beat one of the men from the girl’s family so badly that he died. Killing someone over such a small matter cannot be right.”

There was no anger in the driver’s voice. Yet the conclusion he wanted to lead me toward through with this example was clear.

He was referring to the horrific incident in Delhi’s Uttam Nagar on Holi relating to the murder of a young man named Tarun Kumar. The information the driver was giving me was precisely the information most of us had until a day after the incident.

Everyone had been shocked by the news. How could a man be killed merely because a coloured balloon had struck someone?

An argument on Holi spiralled into a clash and eventually led to the death of a man in Delhi's Uttam Nagar. Soon, Hindutva groups alleged that it was a communal hate crime. https://t.co/l7VV3YNWbX@sighyush & @raghavKakkar30 visit the locality to find out what really happened. pic.twitter.com/vhBAoRjkDF

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) March 13, 2026

I began to think about all the clips I had seen on social media of how Holi has come to be celebrated. Many scenes were joyous and festive, involving the sprinkling of bright colours and throwing of coloured water.

No one thinks that throwing a balloon filled with colour at someone might injure them. But when a balloon is hurled at a person, the intention is rarely to give the target any pleasure. In fact, the shock experienced by the target gives the person throwing the balloon a certain thrill. The real objective is not to invite someone to join the festival of colours.

In recent years, another element has been added to this practice: choosing Muslims as the target – forcing Holi on them.

After Tarun Khatik’s murder, I watched a video of a Hindu boy repeatedly throwing colour-filled balloons at a Muslim woman. The woman staggered. Her bag fell to the ground. Other people were walking beside her. Yet the boy continued to aim only at the Muslim woman.

Where did he learn that the real fun of Holi lies in hurting Muslims?

Similar incidents may perhaps have taken place across the country on Holi. In most cases, the targets quietly ignored the action. After all, this is part of Holi revelry.

Before Holi, we did not see the police issuing instructions that the festival should not become an excuse for inflicting violence on others. On the contrary, one police officer was heard, with a smile, warning that those who did not wish to celebrate Holi should remain indoors that day.

Friday prayers take place 52 times while Holi is celebrated once a year. If anyone in the Muslim community feels use of Holi colour on them is profanity, it's better they don't step out of the homes: UP Police DSP Anuj Chaudhary in Sambhal. pic.twitter.com/COUtt8knSh

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) March 6, 2025

But I also watched a video in which a police officer asks Muslims to celebrate their festivals within the confines of their homes. Even there, they cannot pray. They can be arrested if they are praying on their own property.

The implication is unmistakable: during Holi, mischief – even a degree of aggression – enjoys a certain licence. It is assumed to be part of the festival.

That is why old rivalries are often settled under the cover of Holi. This year alone, for instance, five people were reportedly killed in Odisha on Holi. There were dozens of other violent incidents in which people were injured. Last year, six killings were reported from the same state during the restival.

In those cases, both the perpetrators and the victims were Hindus.

Similar reports of killings and violence came from other states as well.

On Holi, bhang, alcohol, and other intoxicating substances are consumed with abandon. Violence is sometimes committed under the cover of intoxication. When a deliberate killing is described as an act committed in drunkenness, the gravity of the crime – and the punishment it attracts – becomes lighter.

In most such cases, both parties are Hindu. Yet we rarely see community organisations or crowds taking to the streets to protest these incidents.

In addition, under the cover of the festival, sexual harassment is not uncommon, Yet society rarely condemns this strongly. Most of the women who suffer such violence are Hindus. The perpetrators, too, are Hindus.

Gang Rape on Holi in Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon

Five men, including 03 minors, gang-raped a 19 y/o woman in Kondagaon on Holi, after entering her home under the pretext of applying colours and sending her mother away to buy a liquor bottle. All five accused have been arrested. pic.twitter.com/TcQtW2F6G9

— زماں (@Delhiite_) March 7, 2026

Tarun Khatik’s brutal murder became a national story, as it should have. Many reports emphasised that he was Dalit. However, the same day, another Dalit man was also killed because of Holi. In a village called Begariya near Lucknow, a 22-year-old Dalit youth named Suraj Gautam was killed by Brahmins from his village, seemingly because he had dared to wish them “Happy Holi”.

According to reports, a woman from a Brahmin family stabbed him in anger. Yet the news of Suraj Gautam’s murder had not reached our driver. That act of violence did not evoke popular anger.

No one is demanding justice for Suraj Gautam. But across social media, there have been frenzied demands that the killers of Tarun Khatik be punished. The chief minister of Delhi visited Tarun Khatik’s family to express her condolences.

Soon after the killing, as has become something of a custom in India over the last ten years, the home of the accused man was demolished. Before that, Bajrang Dal goons are alleged to have looted the home and burnt a motorcycle, as the police stood by silently. It has now become customary to justify Hindutva violence as an expression of hurt Hindu sentiments.

Gradually, more details emerged. It turned out that the families of Tarun Khatik and the accused Muslim men had an old dispute. The balloon had not been thrown by a little girl but by a man. There had been an exchange of abuse afterwards, but the matter had apparently calmed down.

Later, Khatik returned from the gym with several others and a fight broke out. During that fight, he was struck on the head, leading to his death. People from the Muslim side were also injured in the clash. According to their lawyer, a boy named Rizwan is badly injured and missing. The police have not provided any information about him.

Many members of the Muslim family are in jail. The Hindus who the Muslim family claim attacked them are free.

Demolition begins at the residence of accused in the Delhi murder where young man identified as Tarun was killed following altercation between families of two different communities over throwing of colour balloon on Holi. pic.twitter.com/V3tyJkvJ0E

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) March 8, 2026

Our driver in Bihar did not know these facts. Millions of Hindus like him do not know them either. When I shared these details with him, he admitted that his information had come only from television and the mobile phone. He agreed that in light of the new facts, it would be difficult to hold only one side entirely responsible.

For Hindutva organisations, spreading hate propaganda is necessary for their anti-Muslim politics. But why is the media uninterested in the truth? Why is it manufacturing “facts” designed to produce hatred against Muslims?

How will Muslims defend themselves against such relentless propaganda?

After the incident, speaking to Hindus in that neighbourhood gives the impression that many of them do not harbour personal hatred toward Muslims. But the Muslim family’s home been looted without their participation – or at least their silent consent?

Since Tarun Khatik’s death, incidents of violence against Muslims have increased in Delhi and elsewhere. Neither the government nor the police has issued clear warnings that such violence will not be tolerated. No action has been taken against those spreading false news and propaganda.

We can see that the media and the government want hatred against Muslims among Hindus to grow deeper, to reduce, and eventually eliminate the spaces where the two communities still share life.

But what do we want?

Especially those of us Hindus who like to see ourselves as conscientious and vigilant – what do we want?

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi in Delhi University.

Exactly 80 years ago, a trial began that starkly brought out the brutality of war.

Captain Nirpal Chand of the 2/17 Dogras was one of 62,000 soldiers of the colonial Indian Army defending Singapore from the Japanese who became prisoners of war in February 1942 when the island surrendered.

Forty thousand of these soldiers volunteered for the Indian National Army. which had been formed a few weeks before by General Mohan Singh with Japan’s support. But Singh soon became sceptial about Japan’s commitment to arming the force to liberate India. He was arrested on December 29, 1942. The Indian National Army was disbanded.

A little while later, it was resurrected by Rash Bahari Bose and handed over to Subhash Chandra Bose when he reached Singapore in July 1943.

Chand had joined Mohan Singh’s Indian National Army but refused to participate in the reconstituted force.

A few months after Mohan Singh was arrested, the first of 17,000 Indians were shipped by Japan to forced labour camps in Papua New Guinea. At least 10,500 men died, most from starvation, sickness or overwork. Dozens were shot escaping. But the officers that protected them as long as they could.

Chand’s men were among the 3,000 sent to the island of New Guinea. They arrived there in May 1943. Later that year, he angered the Japanese by leading a hunger strike to demand better conditions. In early 1944, American troops invaded parts of the island, and in April the Japanese decided to move to a new camp 300 km away. With the men already emaciated, it was a death sentence for most.

At a halt midway, on April 22, 1944, Chand refused to allow his men to move as they were getting further away from the Americans and the possibility of being rescued. After tense negotiation and many threats, he refused to budge, so the Japanese commandant, Captain Mitsuba Hisaneo, decided to execute him.

Mitsuba and three other Japanese soldiers took Chand away from the other prisoners of war. While one of them kept watch to ensure the Indians could not see their actions, the second sat on his stomach, while Mitsuba held his hands down. Then the fourth, using Mitsuba’s samurai sword, thrust it into Chand’s throat.

Chand died a few minutes later. They buried him there.

After the war, Australian troops rescued the Indians. On the island of New Guinea they found only 11 survivors of the 3,000 who had been sent there. They nursed the men back to life and investigated the atrocities. Two survivors had been part of Chand’s group and identified the Japanese involved – these former guards were now themselves prisoners of war.

The trial began on March 15, 1946, in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. There were four army officers as court members, a prosecutor and a defence officer both with legal qualifications, and a civilian Japanese interpreter.

As the members of the court did not have legal experience, a judge advocate explained the nuances of the law. In a way, he acted as the judge, while the court was in effect the jury. Unlike most other trials where the Japanese disputed the evidence, here they agreed to the facts – they had killed Chand.

Their defense was that the Indians were not prisoners of war but their allies, as they had been in the Indian National Army. They had applied Japanese military law, under which the execution had been legal, they contended.

Captain Mistuba Hisaneo was in command when Chand was beheaded. Describing what had happened, Mitsuba said that on the way to the new camp, Chand refused to move further and instigated his men, armed with sticks, stones and machetes, to threaten the Japanese.

Mitsuba tried to reason with Chand but he retorted, “If you want to kill me, you can kill me.” As Mitsuba had been ordered to take disciplinary action if there was trouble, he decided to behead Chand. “I carried out the execution of Nirpal Chand myself,” he told the court.

According to the Japanese military code, when there was violence by a mob in the face of the enemy, mutineers could be executed without trial. “I firmly believed my actions were lawful in this instance,” Mitsuba said. “There was no other way out”

The evidence from the three other Japanese present – two officers and a lance-corporal – was similar.

There was one statement that was not commented upon then but later used by the prosecution to devastating effect. Asked what they had done when the Indian prisoners of war instigated by Chand had armed themselves with machettes, Lance-Corporal Hibino Kazuo said they had been confiscated.

For the closing, Lieutenant DGE Hill put up the best defense possible. Besides emphasising key aspects of Mitsuba’s statements, he added that it was irrelevant whether the Indians were in the Indian National Army.

Even as prisoners of war, their treatment should be judged by Japanese law as Japan had not ratified the Geneva Convention. Under their law, Chand’s mutiny meant death. Of the three officers, they were platoon commanders in the field who had been told Japanese law applied to the Indians.

“Their belief was a reasonable one considering the circumstances and their knowledge as junior officers,” Hill said.

The prosecution, Captain JD Steed, was equally passionate. He said what had been done was illegal even under Japanese law. Execution without a trial was permissible in “the face of the enemy”, but he said the American troops were nowhere near. He also latched onto Hibino’s statement that the machetes had been taken away from the Indians and the mutineers disarmed. There was also no imminent possibility of insurrection, he said.

The Judge Advocate, Captain JH Watson, said that the onus was on the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The court had to decide if the beheading of Chand was murder. The killing should have been unlawful, voluntary, deliberate and with malice. If there was any doubt about this, the accused must be acquitted.

If the Indians were considered prisoners of war, international law applied. On the question of whether the Japanese were following orders, the advice was that only legal orders could be followed.

Taking all this into account, the court must disregard their own opinions, Watson said, and judge the evidence as per rules outlined.

The court took 28 minutes to decide. Their verdict was – the three officers were guilty but not Lance-Corporal Hibino. In a further 23 minutes they announced the sentences – 20 years for Misuba and the second officer who had done the beheading and five years for the third who had assisted.

Mitsuba was also charged with killing or ordering the deaths of other Indian prisoners of war. He did so, he said, as some had stolen rice, others had quarrelled and disturbed work. He also shot some who were too sick to march. On March 21, 1946, he was sentenced to be hanged. He received the same sentence in another case on March 22, and a third time on April 4.

On April 13, 1946, Mitsuba committed suicide. He was brought to trial on a fifth case but was already dead by then.

Throughout the trial, the memory of Captain Nirpal Chand shone through. He had given his life protecting his men.

Gautam Hazarika is a Singapore-based researcher and the author of The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II (Penguin Random House India & Pen & Sword UK). His email address is ghazarika70@yahoo.com.sg.

The Union government on Saturday said that it has barred consumers with piped natural gas connections from retaining, obtaining or refilling domestic liquefied petroleum gas cylinders under an amended supply order.

The amendment also prohibits government oil companies from providing LPG connections or refills to consumers who already have PNG connections, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said in a notification.

This came amid disruptions to LPG supplies in India due to the West Asia conflict.

Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

India imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

On Friday, the Union government acknowledged that the supply of LPG in the country was a “matter of concern”, but added that no distributor had run out of stocks.

“LPG is a matter of concern for us as most of our imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz,” Sujata Sharma, joint secretary (marketing and oil refinery) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, had said. “But despite this, no dry out has been reported at any of our 25,000 distributors.”

The official urged citizens not to believe in rumours and to refrain from panic buying. However, she urged consumers who can shift from LPG to piped natural gas to do so immediately.

Sharma said that there are currently 60 lakh households who can make the shift.

Also read:

• The Iran war is starting to hit India’s small manufacturers

• From weddings to funerals, Iran war has hit life in India

In the 2024 general elections, Indians voted to elect a National Democratic Alliance government. But despite a democratic mandate for a Narendra Modi-led administration, it seems the government that actually took power was controlled by a rather mysterious entity – sources.

When a gas crisis hit India as a result of the joint United States and Israeli attack on Iran, it was not Modi or one of his ministers who kept Indians informed about the situation. Instead, ANI, a news wire seen to be close to the administration, ran updates on gas and petroleum stocks quoting unidentified sources in the government.

On March 3, three days after the war began, ANI quoted “government sources” to say that India was “scouting for alternative sources for importing crude oil, LPG and LNG”. Three days later, “government sources” told ANI that India was “in a comfortable position in crude oil, oil products and LPG”.

Ten days later, it’s now clear that the “government sources” were not telling the entire truth. Liquified petroleum gas shortages are widespread across India right now.

It was nearly a fortnight after the war began and panic started to spread throughout the country that India’s elected ministers at last started to speak on the record. On Thursday, Prime Minister Modi and Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri attacked the “panic” around the gas shortages and appealed to Indians not to spread “rumours”.

This was, of course, darkly ironic because this panic had been caused directly by the fact that senior government ministers did not have the courage to face the press and reassure Indians right at the start of the war.

Part of the blame should also lie with media outlets eager to employ anonymous sources to carry the view of the government. Of course, the use of anonymous sources does have a part in journalism – in exceptional circumstances. It allows journalists to publish information from people who could be persecuted or punished for their views and would otherwise not speak to the press.

But the idea of using anonymous sources to communicate a government’s official view makes little sense. The only thing this achieves is that it allows powerful ministers to evade accountability – the very opposite of what journalism is meant to achieve.

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

Judicial decision. The Supreme Court directed the Centre, the state governments and universities to not assign three experts, who were involved in drafting a chapter about “corruption in the judiciary” in a now-withdrawn textbook, responsibilities involving public funds. This includes other curriculum projects.

An affidavit by the National Council of Educational Research and Training said that visiting professor Michel Danino had supervised the drafting of the chapter, and educator Suparna Diwakar and legal researcher Alok Prasanna Kumar were also involved in the process.

The court said that either the three did not have “reasonable knowledge about the Indian judiciary”, or they knowingly misrepresented facts.

Manipur tensions. Two Kuki men who had been missing since Wednesday were found dead in Manipur’s Kamjong district. The bodies were found in a forested area of Thawai Kuki village.

The Kuki-dominated authority of Shangkai village alleged that the two men had been abducted by persons belonging to the Tangkhul Naga community. The village authority said that the public had stopped vehicles plying along the Ukhrul road “out of deep concern for the safety of the detained and missing villagers”.

Amid the tensions, several Tangkhul Naga persons travelling along the Ukhrul-Imphal route had been abducted allegedly by Kuki persons on Wednesday. They were released on Thursday morning.

Meghalaya violence. The April 10 elections to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council in Meghalaya were postponed after two persons were killed in suspected police firing in the West Garo Hills district amid clashes between tribal and non-tribal groups.

The ethnic faultline widened after the council issued a notification barring non-tribal persons from contesting the polls. Protests erupted on Monday, when the nomination process began, against non-tribal persons being allowed to contest the elections.

On Wednesday, the Meghalaya High Court set aside the notification that made a Scheduled Tribe certificate mandatory to contest the polls.

Passive euthanasia. The Supreme Court allowed life support to be withdrawn for a 31-year-old man who has been in a permanent vegetative state since 2013. This was the first instance in which the court’s directions on passive euthanasia, laid down in a 2018 judgement, have been applied.

The bench passed the order on a plea filed by the family of Harish Rana, who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in August 2013 after falling from the fourth floor of a building in Chandigarh. Rana’s family had approached the court seeking permission to withdraw life-sustaining treatment.

The court also recommended that the Union government bring in comprehensive legislation on passive euthanasia.

Also on Scroll last week

• From weddings to funerals, Iran war has hit life in India
• ‘Tired and frightened’: How Iranians are facing the war
• Despatch from Dubai: Don’t believe Indian TV news – we are safe and secure
• The farmers preparing for the day Punjab runs out of water
• Why Punjab stands in solidarity with Iran
• Why domestic gig workers in India are unhappy despite the better pay
• Why Bengal’s new governor is sparking talk of president’s rule
• No lights for Eid, closed universities: Bangladesh moves to save fuel amidst West Asia conflict
• Geeta Gandbhir interview: We don’t make art to please everyone, we make art to make a statement’
• Hariharan interview: ‘Independent music is becoming stronger than film music’

Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won’t get: spam.

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A few days after fresh instances of censorship (an actor’s claim of being disinvited from a university event for his anti-establishment views and the cancellation of a scheduled discussion on political prisoners by a prominent Mumbai cultural festival), India hosted a flamboyant visit by French President Emmanuel Macron amidst the fanfare of the Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit 2026 which was held in New Delhi. Most people would say there is no connection between the suppression of dissent and India’s staging of these high-profile events.

For many years now, it has been widely held that the relentless erosion of civil liberties in the country (seen in recurring attacks on minorities, the arrest of civil rights activists, tax raids on media houses and threats to cartoonists and stand-up comics) is attributable to the authoritarian personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his powerful appeal as a fundamentalist Hindu leader. Conventional wisdom within the liberal intelligentsia, articulated in numerous books, documentary films and media columns has it that the Hindutva rhetoric of historical injustice and hurt pride has turned millions of Indians into adulators of Modi and the promise he holds out for majoritarian rule.

I have long argued that this explanation, axiomatic for many, is erroneous. The diminution of democratic freedom and of secular rights in present-day India is undeniable. But their cause is far more complex than is commonly suggested.

My perspective, as a writer who combines journalistic research with deep scholarship, is based on a close observation of the socio-political trajectory of post-liberalisation India and a focused study of the western state of Gujarat which has often been described as a laboratory for Hindutva. I visited the state frequently between 2005-2010 to look into its recent socio-political history for causes of the brutal mass communal violence of 2002. I was distracted from my purpose by something peculiar taking place in the commercial capital, Ahmedabad. Every few weeks when I went there it seemed something new had come up: a giant convention centre, a luxury hotel, a flyover, a mall, a highway. A modest, provincial city was transmogrifying before my very eyes.

To call what I was witnessing “development” would have been a misleading way of communicating the complex set of strategies that were at play there, of which the physical structures were only manifestations. It was a new kind of politics being practiced by the state’s then controversial chief minister that I sensed would catapult him to national prominence and find replication at the Central level. I decided to continue looking at Gujarat’s recent past but to change my focus and study this phenomenon.

This was not as simple as it seemed. The backdrop to this unconventional politics was the mandate for development signalled by the 1991 structural reforms programme, a key component of which was the International Monetary Fund-World Bank-propelled push towards urbanisation (cities are the “engines of growth”).

Programmes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission provided the basis for the hyper development of a city like Ahmedabad. To make sense of the emerging politics of this developmental model I realised that I had to step outside familiar political frameworks and look instead at the substantial global scholarship on the evolution of the urban form in the neoliberal era at the turn of the 21st century.

Keeping this in mind, I studied the unusually fast-paced construction underway in Ahmedabad and found that what had struck me so vividly on my visits to the city was not a coincidental coming together of random projects but a planned operation. After the ebbing of violence in 2002, Narendra Modi had presented the adverse coverage of the riots in the national and international media to Gujaratis as a calamity, a blow to the state’s asmita, or pride, that needed to be redressed. He asked the state’s people, particularly its business community, to join him in an exercise aimed at changing the negative perception of the state.

In Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein describes how leaders often exploit a crisis to introduce potentially unpopular free market policies counting on the fact that populations may be too traumatised to participate in or resist the change. Sometimes this is done in tandem with developers keen to profit from the mandate for reconstruction.

India’s 1991 shift to a capitalist economy was propelled by a fiscal crisis which required an emergency loan of $2.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund. In 2001, development and government agencies flocked to build a new modern city of Bhuj from the rubble of an earthquake. A couple of years later, Modi embarked on an ambitious exercise to package Gujarat as an attractive business destination. The exercise involved measures such as a biannual “Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit” for potential investors, the refurbishment of ports and highways in the state and, most conspicuously, the makeover of Ahmedabad.

Hansalpur, Gujarat: PM Narendra Modi says, "The major initiative to realize the industrial potential of the India-Japan partnership began right here in Gujarat. I remember, when we started the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 20 years ago, Japan was a key partner. Just think, a small state… pic.twitter.com/JfnnyJyg1y

— IANS (@ians_india) August 26, 2025

The atmosphere of fear and grim uncertainty following the protracted mob violence of 2002 and the mythology it built around Modi enabled the packaging exercise to be pushed through with minimal oversight and resistance and with a speed that would have been unimaginable in other circumstances. In 2014, glowing claims about this exercise paved the way to his prime-ministership.

These claims were made most visibly by national television anchors in the lead-up to the 2014 parliamentary elections where they referred repeatedly and with breathless awe to the “Gujarat Model”, painting it as a picture of a high-growth, hyper-capitalist model – albeit with poor indices on conventional measures, such as health and nutrition. Had the media done a more in-depth study or looked at available scholarship on the subject, it would have found that the Gujarat Model was not only about “roads, highways and GDP”, as it vaguely claimed, but a much more elaborate global process.

Place marketing is a process evolved in the neoliberal era of making spaces, particularly cities, attractive to people and companies with money to spend, mainly transnational corporations, business travellers and tourists. Scholars have identified a number of strategies that are associated with the process, the most common of which is gentrification. Airports are made over, select neighbourhoods are beautified, and special business enclaves and recreational areas with nightclubs and cafes are created. There are several other strategies that cities use to market themselves, including staging large cultural events, sprucing up historical sites or monuments to attract tourists and fostering a service or industrial specialisation.

By 2005, Ahmedabad had acquired the status of a megacity. The state government increased the area of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation from 198 square kilometres to 500 square kilometres by merging seven municipalities and expanded the total area of the urban agglomeration to 1,300 square kilometres. Eleven-kilometre-long concrete banks with plans for highways and residential blocks came up alongside the river that snaked through the city.

A Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (“double the size of Paris’s La Défense and eight times more built up than the London Docklands”) was conceived. Ahmedabad’s pharma industry and its hospitals, some established as charitable institutions by local philanthropists, were reoriented to brand Ahmedabad as a destination for medical tourism and its old walled city was refurbished to successfully bid for Unesco World Heritage certification in 2017. Some of the projects were already discussed or underway when Modi became chief minister but by bringing them under his ambit and clubbing them with new projects he created an impression of a wide-ranging developmental plan under his leadership.

The Ahmedabad makeover borrowed every rule from the place marketing playbook. But there was a twist in that every element in the Ahmedabad makeover was infused with a Hindutva ideal. For instance, a high street emerging as the new centre of the expanding city acquired a distinctly Hindu ethos while Muslim ghettos on the city margins swelled with refugees escaping mixed neighbourhoods from the city after the 2002 violence. Public space was commodified with a distinct bias towards the Hindu middle class. A new Heritage Walk focusing on violence in the freedom struggle subtly questioned Gandhi’s legacy. Even the city’s name was differently spelt to rid it of its Islamic associations.

The remaking of Ahmedabad suggested that the key to explaining Narendra Modi was through his ideological commitments. He is committed to the Hindutva ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. And he is committed to neoliberalism. And he is committed to both at the same time.

Conventional thinking in the mainstream media projects India’s economic liberalisation programme and Hindutva as two opposing tendencies. The former is perceived as being outward- and forward-looking, cloaked in the accoutrements of modernisation and promises of economic growth and world connectivity, while the latter is seen as being insular and primitive in outlook, peopled by saffron-robed acolytes reliving a mythical past. This construct of economic liberalisation/liberalisation-led development and Hindutva as opposites in the popular media is a false binary.

Hindu nationalism made its presence felt in the early decades of the 20th century but made little headway politically for several decades. It was only in 1989 that the Bharatiya Janata Party won 86 seats in Parliament, marking an upward trend which continued in subsequent years enabling it to form governments in various states and at the Centre.

The congruence between the timeline of the political ascendancy of the BJP and the onset of structural reforms is not a coincidence. That is when the middle class, the BJP’s traditional support base, grew in size from 2.5 million households in 1990 to nearly 50 million in 201. Television freed from government ownership emerged as the trumpeter of this new consuming class which also came to be culturally defined in upper-caste Hindu terms. The communitarian underpinnings of socialism, which provided a logic to secularism by implying that the weak (minority) were entitled to the protection of the strong (majority), were overturned by a vigorously rapacious individualism.

Economic liberalisation provided a favourable climate for Hindutva to grow. And in turn, I suggest, the rise of Hindutva and the climate of religious conflict have played a critical role in realising the project of economic liberalisation.

Three of the country’s most pro-capitalist leaders (Rajiv Gandhi, Bal Thackeray and Narendra Modi) consolidated power on the back of citywide riots. The shaping of Mumbai into a world-class city beginning in the late 1990s saw mill workers forced out of the city, fishing communities displaced, the poor pushed into informal work and large stretches of coastal mangroves destroyed.

Workers of the Shiv Sena and other Hindutva affiliates maintained an atmosphere of intimidation through those years by attacking vehicles and television studios and whipping up a fury with their angry rhetoric over a perceived threat to Indian culture and national security from sources such as a Michael Jackson concert, Pakistani cricketers and Valentine’s Day celebrations.

As Zoya Hasan claims, resistance to the new economic policies of liberalisation was displaced by Hindutva adherents “from the realm of concrete economic policy to a confrontation with the cultural politics of globalization”.

Violence in a restructuring society then is a far more complicated business than it appears to be. The celebrated makeover of New York in the early 1990s, for instance, was preceded by a war against homeless people, panhandlers, prostitutes and unruly youth by then mayor Rudy Guliani. Urban geographer Neil Smith called Guiliani’s politics “revanchist”, recalling nationalist reactionaries in 19th-century Paris fighting to reinstate the bourgeois order and to wreak revenge on the working class which had “stolen” their vision of French society from them. Revanchism creates a hierarchy of claims on citizenship.

Justus Uitermark and Jan Willem Duyvendak write in their article “Civilising the City: Populism and Revanchist Urbanism in Rotterdam” that “Revanchism ... is predicated on a belief system that naturalises as universal the interests and cultural codes of the White middle class while at the same time it essentialises marginalised individuals into subjects who cannot be reformed.”

The dehumanising of those whose fortunes are destined to decline in the new economy is a common feature of restructuring. And it explains why Modi emerges stronger rather than weaker from allegations of extreme insensitivity, beginning with his harshness towards victims of the 2002 violence to his apparent unconcern for migrants forced to trudge miles after his sudden declaration of a lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Every display of callousness magnifies his aura as a capitalist moderniser and empowers him to act without blowback. He feeds off bellicosity and usefully extends it to a growing list of targets: protesting farmers, students, civil rights activists and political opponents.

As Ajay Gudavarthy wrote for Scroll: ‘The BJP views the defeated Opposition as prisoners of war. They are deliberately ignored, they are insulted, they are sermonised to, and they are dealt with unfairly. This is an essential feature of the script. … Behaving unfairly towards minorities is an essential strategy for majoritarian consolidation.’

Much of the commentary on India under Narendra Modi is either about the violence against members of religious minorities and Dalits by Hindutva activists or about the administration’s intolerance of dissent and the use of state agencies to punish political opponents and other critics. These align with perceptions of Modi himself.

Astute political analysts are thrown by his arbitrary diktats and his obduracy towards petitioners. Modi’s effusiveness in greeting foreign leaders, his love for the media glare and his penchant for buying bullet trains and building gigantic statues provoke ridicule. The Central Vista project which revamped the historic colonial era Central administrative area in Delhi had one commentator comparing him to a mid-20th century African autocrat with a vanity project; another compared him to Mungerilal, a 1980s Indian television soap opera character based on the chronic daydreamer Walter Mitty. A picture emerges of a fanatical, capricious and megalomaniacal leader, a self-aggrandizing man who is so consumed by bigotry that it is impossible to know what he will do next.

It is a compelling image but it is a myth.

Modi is not a conventional Indian politician. He belongs to the league of capitalist-modernisers like China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro. His motivations are systemic not opportunistic (for the most part) and cannot be understood through the familiar matrix of short-term economic gains and losses and electoral politics that is routinely applied by political analysts.

If we apply the paradigm of the remaking of Ahmedabad, which I would suggest constitutes the Gujarat model to Modi’s leadership of India, we can perceive phenomena such as Modi’s frequent foreign visits, his “Make in India” and similar campaigns to encourage manufacturing activity and his passion for the bullet train (a shiny symbol of speed) as elements of a place marketing exercise to sell India to the world.

Prime Minister Modi took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Sendai alongside Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.

Gujarat to welcome its first Japanese bullet train around 2027. pic.twitter.com/k9iuRbSRy4

— Riccha Dwivedi (@RicchaDwivedi) August 30, 2025

All of Modi’s political moves and programmes, including demonetisation, schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana to expand the reach of banking and even huge political leaps, such as revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s special status within the Indian Constitution, become steps (ordering, enumerating, expanding opportunity, extending the formal economy) in a project of neoliberal transformation.

Some borrow directly from Gujarat: the 2014 Swachh Bharat or Clean India mission extended the logic of a 1997-1998 USAID programme in Ahmedabad to improve hygiene and create green spaces to aid the circulation of capital and healthy labour. The hasty beautification of Delhi before the G20 Summit is another instance of the neoliberal preoccupation with appearances. And Modi’s partiality to industrial giants such as the Ambanis and Adani corresponds to the heroic, entrepreneurial role marked out for the ultra-rich by Friedrich Hayek, the grandfather of neoliberalism.

The recurring violence and violent rhetoric against minorities serve to consolidate the hegemony of the majority even as Hindutva ideals find expression in the architecture of an emerging India. And Modi’s reliance on media advertising is of a piece with the surging role of marketing in the public space. One can say that if analysed through the correct framework, Modi’s thinking, far from being arbitrary and erratic, is formulaic and predictable.

India’s democratic backslide too is hardly unique in today’s world. Over the past four decades as country after country has fallen into the embrace of neoliberalism, a new mindset has taken over the world. An economic ideology which projects the market as the answer to mankind’s diverse needs and holds profit maximisation as its motto subsumes all other priorities. The state as the medium facilitating the neoliberal dream has demanded a strengthening of its powers and large enough numbers have lustily cheered it on.

Across the world environmental protections and human rights are being weakened or withdrawn. Reports of violence against racial minorities and refugees and the brazen killings of journalists from various places and an unravelling of civil rights in Donald Trump’s America confirm the fact that citizens’ rights once thought to be intrinsic to democracy are being eroded everywhere, even in the world’s leading democracy.

In India, the line of causation for these phenomena is routinely and unthinkingly drawn to majoritarianism. The widely talked about sociopolitical consequences of neoliberalism, which even filtered into an influential journal of the International Monetary Fund, the bulwark of the free market in 2016, rarely enter into the reckoning. For instance, inequality, which is raging in the world and is currently as high in India as it was in the days of the Raj, according to a recent study by Thomas Piketty and others for the World Inequality Lab.

Indeed, outside of a limited circle of academics and developmental activists, neoliberalism finds hardly any mention. The media and ordinary Indians talk blandly of “development” and “privatisation” as if they are standalone activities, not part of a powerful, multidimensional ideology favouring unfettered marketisation and a top-down approach currently dominating the world.

Most Indians, particularly the country’s fast-expanding middle class – expected to rise to 715 million in 2030-’31 – are in love with Western modernity, a feature they share with other post-colonial societies. It is a powerful dream: of unmitigated prosperity through capitalism, an infrastructure equal to the West, the efficiency of the private sector in the public realm and glossy cities resembling Asian favourites Shanghai and Singapore.

A “new” India, kickstarted by the Congress and grown with intensified zeal by Narendra Modi is coming into being. Ports, bridges, transportation facilities and buildings being constructed or upgraded at a rapid pace. Cities are exploding with towers made up of astronomically priced apartments. India’s road network is now second only to the US and seven bullet train projects are in the planning. And crores of rupees are being spent on extravagant beautification projects.

The widespread fanatical faith in the benefits of “development” means that no discussion is possible on priorities for public spending. And scant attention has been paid to consequences and the steep costs, both financial (the scale of borrowings), environmental and human, of infrastructural development is possible.

Nor has there been much said about aspects of form and aesthetics despite the powerful cultural and symbolic possibilities of place marketing and branding. The absence of public engagement has left a vacuum that Hindutva has stepped into, as one can see from initiatives such as India’s successful lobbying for the United Nations to designate an International Yoga Day and from the birth of a new tourist circuit connecting the temple towns of Ayodhya and Varanasi to Kevadia in Gujarat, the site of the Statue of Unity, a 182-metre-high state of Sardar Patel, an iconic national leader appropriated by the BJP.

Ahmedabad continues to be strategically significant as the stream of world leaders (Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump) and plans for staging the 2030 Commonwealth Games in the giant stadium bearing the prime minister’s name shows. But the city and its remaking in the early 2000s also provides a key to understanding the political thinking shaping the country’s present.

This piece draws the author’s introductory essay to the December 2025 paperback edition of Ahmedabad: A City in the World (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Amrita Shah is a writer, journalist and scholar based in Mumbai.

The Union government on Thursday ordered the blocking of YouTube channel 4PM News, citing concerns about national security and public order.

The editor of the channel, Sanjay Sharma, alleged that the government had been repeatedly banning the portal because of its sharp criticism, The Wire reported.

A message on the homepage of the channel reads: “This content is currently unavailable in this country because of an order from the government related to national security or public order.”

Sharma said that he received an email from YouTube on Thursday morning informing him about the government’s decision. “Is speaking the truth now a crime in a democracy?” he asked in a social media post. “Is asking questions to the government now anti-national?”

The editor of 4PM News told The Wire that the email from YouTube did not provide a detailed explanation for the channel being blocked. However, he said that the decision may have been due to his recent interview with Iranian professor Abbas.

Sharma said he had recently asked on his channel why the Centre was adopting a particular approach towards Iran even though it was a friendly country, according to The Wire.

The channel’s editor noted that this was not the first time that the government had acted against his channel.

In April as well, the Union government had blocked the YouTube channel of 4PM News. At that time too, the government had cited “national security or public order”.

The channel had uploaded several videos criticising the Narendra Modi-led Union government after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.

On Friday, commenting on the blocking of 4PM News’ YouTube channel, Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh said that his party stands with the channel and with Sharma. “Silencing impartial voices in the name of national security – what is this if not thuggery”

Singh remarked: “The button that suppresses the truth has not been invented yet.”

लोकतंत्र में सवाल पूछना गुनाह कब से हो गया? नेशनल सिक्योरिटी के नाम पर निष्पक्ष आवाजों को खामोश करना गुंडागर्दी नहीं तो और क्या है? हम @Editor_SanjayS और 4PM के साथ खड़े हैं। सच को दबाने वाला बटन अभी तक बना नहीं है! https://t.co/Py6OoEwlCv

— Sanjay Singh AAP (@SanjayAzadSln) March 13, 2026

Indicating that India-bound vessels could soon receive safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s ambassador to India on Friday said that Tehran will try its “best to remove the problems”, The Indian Express reported.

“I think you can expect good news in the near future,” the newspaper quoted Mohammad Fathali as telling reporters in New Delhi about whether Iran would allow India-bound ships safe transit through the strait.

“India and I are friends…We have common interests, we have common faith,” Fathali said. “Suffering of the people of India is our suffering and vice versa. And for this reason, the Government of India helps us, and we should help the Government of India…”

Since the conflict in West Asia began on February 28, Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. The narrow waterbody that connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and is the world’s biggest oil chokepoint. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through it.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• About 1.7 lakh passengers have returned to India from West Asia since the conflict started, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Saturday.
• United States President Donald Trump on Friday said that Washington had bombed “every military target” on Iran’s Kharg Island. The island is an 8-km stretch of land off the Iranian coast that handles about 90% of the country’s crude exports. Trump also threatened to attack the island’s oil infrastructure if Iran continued blocking ships from traversing the Strait of Hormuz.
• “Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every military target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump said. “Our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen not to wipe out the oil Infrastructure on the Island.”
• In India, IndiGo airline said it will levy fuel charges ranging from Rs 425 to Rs 2,300 on domestic and international flight tickets from Saturday, citing the rise in the price of jet fuel. The charges will be Rs 425 for domestic flights and those within the Indian subcontinent, Rs 900 for flights to West Asia, Rs 1,800 for South East Asia, China and Africa, and Rs 2,300 for Europe.
• Akasa Air also said that it will introduce a fuel surcharge ranging from Rs 199 to Rs 1,300 on domestic and international routes for booking made from Sunday.
• Lebanon condemned an Israeli strike on a primary healthcare centre in Burj Qalawiya in the southern part of the country that killed 12 medical staff, Al Jazeera reported. The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health also reiterated its “condemnation of the ongoing violent approach against health workers, which contradicts all international humanitarian laws”, Al Jazeera quoted the country’s National News Agency as saying.
• A missile struck a helipad inside the US embassy compound in Baghdad, AP quoted two security officials from Iraq as saying. The embassy complex, which is one of the largest US diplomatic facilities in the world, has been repeatedly targeted by rockets and drones fired by Iran-aligned militias.

The conflict

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28 after Israel and the US launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government.

Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

The joint attacks by Israel and the US on Iran came amid tensions between the three countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance.

Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

Also read: The Iran war is starting to hit India’s small manufacturers

The Union government on Saturday confirmed that two Indian-flagged vessels carrying liquefied petroleum gas have crossed the Strait of Hormuz.

The ships, which crossed the strategic waterway on Friday night and Saturday morning, are expected to reach ports in Gujarat by March 17, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways said.

The ships Shivalik and Nanda Devi were among the 24 Indian-flagged vessels stranded in the Gulf after the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28.

Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

#WATCH | Delhi: Rajesh Kumar Sinha, Shipping Ministry, GoI says, "All Indian seafarers in the Persian Gulf region are safe, and no untoward incidents involving them have been reported over the last 24 hours. There were 24 Indian-flagged vessels in the Persian Gulf, situated to… pic.twitter.com/YY9DWZhy9J

— ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2026

On Saturday, Rajesh Kumar Sinha, special secretary at the ministry, said that the two ships that had crossed the strait are together carrying 92,700 tonnes of LPG.

India’s daily LPG consumption is about 80,000 tonnes, according to The Hindu.

The official added that one of the ships will arrive at the port in Mundra on Monday and the other at Kandla on Tuesday.

Twenty-two Indian-flagged vessels, with 611 seafarers onboard, remain in the region, the ministry said.

The ministry further said that of these 22 Indian vessels, six are carrying LPG, four crude oil, one is a liquefied natural gas tanker and one has chemical products. Three are container ships and two bulk carriers, or vessels that carry large quantities of unpackaged dry cargo.

One is a dredger and one is an empty ballast ship, or a ship without cargo. The remaining three are at dry docks, or under maintenance, the ministry added.

On Friday, the Union government acknowledged that the supply of LPG in the country was a “matter of concern”, but added that no distributor had run out of stocks.

“LPG is a matter of concern for us as most of our imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz,” Sujata Sharma, joint secretary (marketing and oil refinery) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, had said. “But despite this, no dry out has been reported at any of our 25,000 distributors.”

The official urged citizens not to believe in rumours and to refrain from panic buying. However, she urged consumers who can shift from LPG to piped natural gas to do so immediately.

Sharma said that there are currently 60 lakh households who can make the shift.

On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to India indicated that India-bound vessels could soon receive safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, adding that Tehran will try its “best to remove the problems”.

“I think you can expect good news in the near future,” Mohammad Fathali told reporters in Delhi when asked about whether Iran would allow India-bound ships safe transit through the strait.

“India and I are friends…We have common interests, we have common faith,” Fathali said. “Suffering of the people of India is our suffering and vice versa. And for this reason, the Government of India helps us, and we should help the Government of India…”

Also read: The Iran war is starting to hit India’s small manufacturers

The Allahabad High Court has said that it is the duty of the state to ensure that every religious community is able to hold prayers peacefully at a designated place of worship or on private property without any permission.

A bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Siddharth Nandan made the observations in an order on February 27 while rejecting the decision of the administration in Uttar Pradesh to restrict the number of persons offering namaz during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan at a mosque in Sambhal district, Live Law reported.

The bench said that the officials should either resign or seek a transfer if they are unable to enforce the rule of law.

A petition had been filed in the court by a person alleging that he was being prevented from conducting prayers during Ramzan at a plot where he claimed a mosque existed.

In its order on February 27, the bench noted that the petitioner had not submitted any photographs of a mosque or a place of worship within which prayers are supposed to be offered.

The court said that the state government had disputed the ownership of the plot during the proceedings. It added that the authorities had submitted that it had granted permission for only 20 persons to offer namaz at the premises on account of the “perceived law and order situation”.

However, the bench rejected the contention by the state government. “It is the duty of the state to ensure that the rule of law prevails under every circumstance,” the court said.

It added: “If the local authorities i.e. superintendent of police and collector feels that the law and order situation could arise because of which they want to limit the number of worshippers within the premises, they should either resign from their post or seek transfer outside Sambhal if they feel they are not competent enough to enforce the rule of law.”

It said that a previous order issued by the court had already “settled that it is only where prayers or religious functions have to be held on public land or spill over [to] the public property that the involvement of the state is essential and permission must be sought”.

The bench listed the matter for further hearing on Monday.

It directed the state government to respond to the petition. The petitioner was asked to bring on record photographs and revenue records showing where prayers are to be offered.

A police officer in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut on Friday warned Muslim worshippers not to offer namaz on roads, saying that the passports of those who violate the guideline would be cancelled, The Times of India reported.

“There should be no namaz on roads, and if someone is still found flouting the rule, their passports will be cancelled, among other actions, against these violators,” Meerut Senior Superintendent of Police Avinash Pandey was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Pandey said that there are 544 mosques and 146 eidgahs in Meerut district and the management committees of all of them have agreed to comply with the rules.

The senior superintendent of police said that while there was no provision on the cancellations of passports, the police could “conduct inquiry against the violators about their criminal antecedents, which can lead to the cancellation”, The Times of India reported.

Meerut, Uttar Pradesh: SSP Avinash Pandey says, "...Prayers will not be allowed on roads. Strict action, including passport cancellation and whatever possible legal action can be taken, will be initiated against violators..." pic.twitter.com/MevTzudTNd

— IANS (@ians_india) March 13, 2026

Pandey later told the newspaper that he had not said anything new, but had only reiterated orders from previous years.

The Meerut senior superintendent of police’s statement came days after Sambhal Circle Officer Kuldeep Kumar triggered a controversy by saying at a peace meeting that those bothered by the conflict in West Asia should go to Iran and fight there, The Indian Express reported.

In a video that was widely shared on social media, Kumar was heard saying: “I am saying that many people seem to be itching over this issue – there is a conflict going on between Iran and Israel, yet they are trying to poke their noses into it. If it bothers you so much, then go ahead and board a plane.”

“When the plane goes to bring back the Indians stranded in Iran, you can sit in it, go there, fight from Iran’s side, and then come back,” he had said.

Kumar had said that no slogans should be shouted or placards held against any country during Friday prayers, and that global conflicts were for the countries involved to resolve, according to The Indian Express.

The Sambhal superintendent of police has sought an explanation from the officer for his statement, the newspaper reported.

"Lot of people have itch over Israel- Iran war and they are poking the issue. If you have problem, board the flight rescuing stranded Indians and fight for Iran," Sambhal DSP Kuldeep Kumar to Muslim locals while reviewing law and order preparedness ahead of Eid. pic.twitter.com/NUDvBjeomf

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) March 12, 2026

Commenting on Kumar’s statement, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi said that the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and asked whether the police would make such statements about pro-Israel protests.

So who is running away from the United Arab Emirates? I spoke to several blue-collar workers and they literally laughed me off. Said Bishajit, a driver of 15 years, “The war here is being handled. Problem is at home these news channels scaring our families so much they are saying we should fly back at once.”

There’s a lot of anxiety being shovelled from screen to home to expats. The pressure would be comical if it was not so tragic.

Their mood, already tempered by the usual stresses of expatriate life, is now fraught with a new, profound anxiety – not just for their own safety, but for the psychological weight of reassuring families back home who are consuming non-stop news, often alarming and fake.

One marketing expert said that Indian TV media is permanently on steroids. They are not journalists but C-grade actors hashing out masala on screens to a mind-numbing level.

And yet no one switches off their TVs or YouTube channels because they have become used to seeing and consuming garbage. TRP’s should stand for Totally Rubbish Publishing.

Indians in Dubai gathered in large numbers to watch the India cricket final with New Zealand, showing strong support for Team India even as tensions continue in parts of the Middle East. Members of the Indian community said they feel safe and secure in the UAE, expressing… pic.twitter.com/MU81KrK2gR

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) March 8, 2026

One of the elements that gets little play is the emotional upheaval that social media causes in the lives of these stoic and hardworking bread earners.

Most of them go home only once in two years – on an early trip to get married and, having impregnated the newly minted wife, are now back in harness waiting for the delivery from afar, witness to the progress long distance, by audio-visual.

For instance, Srini from Telengana is worried about his wife stressed through concern for him in the fifth month of her pregnancy to the point of having suffered complications.

Across the six states that are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, there is an army of such expectant fathers now handling an extra layer of worry, besides the standard pressures coming from aging parents, land problems, loan repayments, errant siblings and nasty relatives and neighbours.

This recent escalation of the US-Israel-Iran conflict has sent tremors far beyond the immediate blast zones, resonating deeply in the homes and hearts of millions in India. It is that much more palpable in the communities connected to the 10 million Indian workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, particularly the nearly 4.4 million in the United Arab Emirates.

Do the maths. If a modest 10 people per expat are directly impacted, that is a 100 million people and counting.

Ground Report | Amid Iran’s attacks and travel disruptions, Indians in Dubai are coming together to help stranded people with shelter, food, and support. Ashutosh Mishra shares this #GroundReport#Exclusive #GroundZero #ITVideo #IranWar #UAE #Dubai | @SnehaMordani @JournoAshutosh pic.twitter.com/lhdO8WZ6E1

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) March 10, 2026

The scale of the Indian presence in the United Arab Emirates is staggering. Constituting nearly 38% of the UAE’s population, Indians are the backbone of its construction, retail, hospitality, and logistics

This human bridge is also a financial superhighway. India receives over $150 billion in remittances annually, with the Gulf Cooperation Council accounting for 38% of these inflows. The UAE alone contributes about a fifth, making it the second-largest source for India globally.

This money is not for luxuries: it sustains families across states such as Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, funding food, education and healthcare. As a consequence, the current crisis isn’t just a geopolitical story. It is a direct threat to the economic stability of family members on the home front who totally depend on this lifeline.

Following the scare at Dubai Marina last weekend, many are spreading fear online instead of showing solidarity with the city that has helped Indians build lives and businesses, writes @stylesuj https://t.co/8jijoyh51m

— Mint Lounge (@Mint_Lounge) March 10, 2026

On Tuesday afternoon at the Sonapur labour camp in Dubai, Osman simply shruggred in response to my probing. He works on a construction site just 6 km from where drone debris fell near the Fairmont Hotel.

“I am a little nervous, but my family is much more worried,” he said. “My mother calls me several times a day, they don’t believe me.”

Mohammed Ibrahim is on his phone cajoling, raising his voice, pleading. “They don’t understand that we are safe here,” he said. “These damn [several expletive] newswallahs, they tell lies.”

There is a concerted effort by authorities and a visible reality on the ground in much of Dubai and Abu Dhabi to maintain normalcy. The UAE’s advanced air defense systems intercepted the vast majority of projectiles, and while some hit soil and caused tragic casualties, the impact was not city-wide devastation.

As of March 9, the UAE Ministry of Defence had intercepted and destroyed 233 ballistic missiles and 1,359 drones launched during recent attacks, along with eight cruise missiles. The attacks have caused four fatalities and 117 minor injuries, all of it from falling debris.

In many parts of these cities, life continues with normalcy. Malls are open, businesses are operating, and the infrastructure remains functional. There is no shortage of essentials. For many white-collar professionals and those in areas far from the targeted ports and military installations, the crisis is something they watch on screens rather than experience directly.

The mood of Indian workers in the UAE is thus a tapestry of contrasting threads: the resilience born of economic necessity, the fear of visible danger, the exhaustion of pre-existing expat struggles, and the heavy, new burden of being a pillar of strength for a terrified family thousands of miles away.

Bikram Vohra is a columnist and media consultant in Dubai.

The Union government on Saturday said it has decided to revoke the detention of Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act.

Wangchuk has been in jail for the past five-and-a-half months.

The Union home ministry said that the Ladakh activist had been detained “in the backdrop of the serious law and order situation that arose in the peace-loving town of Leh on 24 September 2025”.

On that day, protesters demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution had clashed with and thrown stones at security personnel, injuring several of them. Four persons were killed in police firing.

The Sixth Schedule guarantees certain protections for land and a nominal autonomy for citizens in designated tribal areas.

Wangchuk was detained on September 26 and taken to a jail in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur. The Union government has alleged that the activist was the “chief provocateur” of the September 24 violence and that the protests in Leh came under control after he was taken into custody.

On Saturday, the home ministry said the government “remains committed to fostering an environment of peace, stability, and mutual trust in Ladakh so as to facilitate constructive and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders”.

It added that it had been “actively engaging” with several stakeholders and community leaders in Ladakh with “a view to addressing the aspirations and concerns” of the residents of the region.

“However, the prevailing atmosphere of bandhs and protests has been detrimental to the peace-loving character of the society and has adversely affected various sections of the community, including students, job aspirants, businesses, tour operators and tourists and overall economy,” it added.

The revocation comes amid the Supreme Court hearing a petition filed by Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali Angmo, challenging the activist’s detention. The bench is scheduled to hear the matter next on Tuesday.

At the previous hearing on February 16, the court questioned the Union government about the accuracy of transcripts of videos relied upon to detain Wangchuk under the National Security Act.

The bench also said it wanted the transcripts of Wangchuk’s statements after advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Angmo, submitted that several words attributed to the activist were never spoken by him.

On January 13, Sibal told the court that Wangchuk cannot be seen in the videos relied upon by the authorities as grounds for his detention under the National Security Act.

During another hearing on February 4, the court also verbally asked the Union government to rethink Wangchuk’s detention considering that his “health is not that good”.

However, the Union government said that Wangchuk cannot be released from detention on medical grounds, adding that he was “fit, hale and hearty”.

A Delhi court on Friday refused to order a first information report against Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Delhi minister Kapil Mishra for his alleged involvement in the violence that broke out in the city in February 2020, Live Law reported.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwani Panwar passed the order in response to an application filed by a man named Mohammed Ilyas.

Panwar said that the demand for filing an FIR was “legally impermissible” in view of an order passed by the sessions court on November 11, The Indian Express reported. The sessions court had on that date set aside an order directing the Delhi Police to investigate the role of Mishra in the violence.

Panwar said on Friday that the findings of the sessions court had “are binding on this court and have attained finality”.

The additional chief judicial magistrate said that Ilyas’ application would instead be treated as a complaint, Live Law reported. “…The complainant is at liberty to lead evidence in support of his allegations under Section 210(1)(a) read with Section 223(1) of the BNSS [Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita],” Panwar said.

Ilyas was among the handful of citizens who approached the courts after police refused to register their complaints and file an FIR against Mishra for his alleged involvement in the riots that engulfed North East Delhi in February 2020. Fifty-three people died in the violence. The majority of them were Muslims.

Ilyas previously told Scroll that he had approached the police three times asking for a case to be registered against Mishra, but was told that they would register his complaint only against unspecified “rioters”.

The Delhi Police had alleged that there was a conspiracy to frame Mishra in the riots.

On April 1, Panwar’s predecessor, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasiya, had ordered the Delhi Police to held that there was enough material to warrant further investigation into whether Mishra had committed a cognisable offence. Mishra had filed a revision petition against the order.

On November 11, the sessions court, while setting aside the order, had said that the application should have clearly disclosed a cognisable offence, but did not do so, according to The Indian Express. “To assume cognizable offence, the ACJM relied analogies and inferences from Kapil Mishra’s questioning in the larger conspiracy case,” the court said.

Scroll reviewed six applications filed before magistrate courts in 2020 asking for first information reports to be registered against Mishra. All the complainants alleged that Mishra played a direct and active role in inciting violence against Muslim communities during the riots.

The complainants state that Mishra was present at locations where violence occurred. They allege that he was accompanied by groups of armed men and made hate-filled speeches in various parts of North East Delhi on February 23 and 24.

His speeches, they allege, included slogans such as “desh ke gaddaro ko, goli maro saalo ko” (shoot the traitors), “mullo ke do sthan, kabristan ya Pakistan” (Muslims only belong in two places: the cemetery and Pakistan) and “katwe murdabad” (down with Muslims – “katwe” being a derogatory term for Muslims in Hindi). Mishra is also alleged to have declared that “mullas” (another derogatory term for Muslims) and protestors need to be taught a lesson.

Also read: The futile, five-year struggle to lodge an FIR against Kapil Mishra

While walking through the Fort campus of the University of Mumbai, visitors often marvel at the unmistakable silhouettes of Gothic spires piercing the tropical sky. The soaring Rajabai Tower, the ornate Convocation Hall, and the grand Library building seem like European Gothic buildings transplanted onto Indian soil. Yet a closer look reveals something far more complex. These aren’t simply copies; rather they speak of architectural negotiations and tell a fascinating story of cultural adaptation under colonial rule.

When Sir George Gilbert Scott designed these buildings in 1866, he had never set foot in Bombay (now Mumbai). Working from his London office, he sent architectural plans across the ocean, trusting local architects and craftsmen to execute his vision. As a result, what emerged was neither purely European nor traditionally Indian, but something entirely new. The style was “Gothic Revival”, but one that had learned to speak in a local dialect.

The transformation began with materials used. Where European Gothic cathedrals rose from quarried limestone and sandstone, in the Bombay of the late 1800s, Gothic buildings drew from India’s geological palette.

Kurla’s golden stone was used to build the primary structures, while Porbandar’s white limestone provided an ornamental contrast to the exteriors. Ratnagiri granite anchored the foundations, and local hardy blue trap stone was deployed for the lower courses of the buildings, including parts of the foundation, that weathered the monsoons beautifully. The only materials that crossed the Arabian Sea from England, to finish off the buildings, were the Minton tiles and some stained glass. Everything else was resolutely local.

But the most intriguing negotiations between local culture and the European aesthetic happened in the realm of symbolism. European Gothic architecture had always been deeply Christian – its every stone carved to tell biblical stories for the largely illiterate congregations. The buildings of the University of Bombay (now the University of Mumbai) retained Gothic’s visual language – such as the pointed arches and rose windows, while carefully editing out its religious and biblical content.

Consider the Convocation Hall’s magnificent rose window, a 20-foot circle of stained glass that dominates the north facade. In European cathedrals, such windows typically depicted Christ surrounded by the 12 apostles or biblical scenes. Here, the 12 signs of the zodiac replace the Christian imagery, transforming the usual religious tableau into something more universally accessible. The building represents Gothic architecture with its theology surgically removed.

The 280-foot Rajabai Tower presents another striking example of cultural translation. Instead of European saints and kings in ornate niches, sculptures representing the 24 castes of Western India adorn the tower. Carved by local sculptors from Porbandar stone, these figures – a praying Parsee, a fierce Rajput with his hand on a sword, a shrewd Kutchi merchant – created a distinctly Indian pantheon using Gothic architectural language and framing.

This Gothic influence wasn’t simply about British architects imposing European styles on Indian craftsmen. The project’s funding came largely from prominent Parsi and Jain philanthropists – Cowasjee Jehangir donated a lakh of rupees for the Convocation Hall, while Premchand Roychand funded the tower named after his mother, Rajabai. These weren’t reluctant subjects accepting imperial architecture, but active participants in creating something that spoke to their own cultural pride while satisfying colonial requirements.

The climate of the city by the sea demanded its own negotiations. Bombay’s humidity and monsoons had no European equivalent, so the architects added covered verandahs, enhanced air circulation, and created shaded walkways. The Library’s reading room ceiling, which in England might have been stone-vaulted, was crafted from local teak wood.

The hybrid architectural language had the advantage of satisfying multiple audiences, simultaneously. British colonial administrators saw Gothic verticality and grandeur that they were familiar with, which projected imperial authority. Local communities found their own faces, materials, and environmental needs reflected in the craftsmanship. Indian philanthropists could take pride in buildings that showcased local culture but within globally recognised architectural forms.

Today, these buildings that have received recognition as UNESCO World Heritage sites, offer lessons about cultural adaptation that extend far beyond architectural practices. They demonstrate how cultural forms rarely transfer unchanged, even in unequal transcultural exchanges, but instead undergo complex processes of negotiation, translation, and reinvention.

The University of Mumbai’s Gothic Revival buildings remind us that colonial architecture wasn’t simply imposed from above, but emerged through intricate negotiations between imperial ambitions, local expertise, climatic necessities, and cultural sensitivities. In their soaring spires, teak ceilings, zodiac windows, and sculptures memoralising Indian faces, they embody the complex reality of cultural exchange under colonialism – neither purely European nor traditionally Indian, but something unique and original that has defined the architectural style of Mumbai’s Fort area for centuries.

These buildings continue to function today much as their architects intended, serving as a seat of education while commanding respect through their architectural grandeur. But perhaps their greatest achievement lies in demonstrating how architectural forms can travel, adapt, and acquire new meanings through the creative collaboration of different cultural traditions. In Gothic’s Indian turn, we see not cultural domination, but the remarkable human capacity for architectural improvisation.

Shreya Nithyanandan is a Master’s student in History of Art at the Indian Institute of Heritage, Noida (formerly National Museum Institute). She loves exploring art, culture, stories behind objects, and how history shapes what we see today.

This article was originally published by the MAP Academy, an open-access online resource focused on South Asian art and cultural histories.

The most crowded public spaces in Delhi’s Muslim neighbourhoods are not parks, libraries or plazas. They are shawarma stalls, kebab shops and roadside eateries. At these food outlets in densely populated neighbourhoods, customers can seldom find an empty table to sit and enjoy their food. Most of the patrons often eat by the roadside.

This is not because Muslims love food more than others. It is because leaving these neighbourhoods is perceived to be dangerous due to the violence they may face in Hindu-majority areas. By flocking to shops located on tightly packed streets, Delhi’s Muslims are seeking safety in numbers.

To some, these food streets are where Muslim culinary traditions live and thrive. But they also represent the general lack of public spaces in the ghettos where Muslims live.

With no parks or walkable streets, Muslims wishing to spend leisure time have few options but to visit food shops. This has contributed to the development of a unique food culture among Delhi Muslims, a factor that is often ignored, while being regarded as a characteristic of these neighbourhoods.

For my PhD research into urban precarity among Delhi Muslims, I wanted to make the study less about consumption and more about consumers. I approached the owners of Instagram-famous shops near Delhi’s Jamia Nagar area to hear about how they perceived this growing food culture.

I found that they were rarely willing to answer questions about the reality that had sparked this phenomenon. Doing so would mean acknowledging the combination of segregation and that the lack of public amenities had contributed to the popularity of their establishments – perhaps even more so than the food that they served.

Some might argue that this culture thrives in Delhi’s Muslim neighbourhoods simply because people enjoy eating out. But a walk through the colonnades of the upmarket Connaught Place area, where people sit in parks, on pavements, rather than in restaurants, demonstrates that the real difference is choice. In Muslim neighbourhoods, food culture unfolds in public because there are few alternatives.

The mushrooming food cultures of Old Delhi and Shaheen Bagh have irked Hindutva supporters. They often make claims that the food is contaminated. One popular conspiracy theory suggests that Muslim vendors spit in the food before serving it to Hindus.

This cooked-up narrative seeks to limit interactions between the two communities, while also enforcing an economic boycott of Muslim-owned shops and eateries. It is a narrative that has emerged precisely because these food streets have become popular – making Muslims more visible.

As the academician Ghazala Jamil has shown in her work on Delhi’s neighbourhoods, when upper-class, upper-caste adults of other communities visit Old Delhi to eat, it is not just food that they are seeking. These neighbourhoods located around the Jama Masjid are seen as exotic, strange – even dangerous.

Everyday life in these mohallas has been fetishised, commodified and made available for consumption by eager visitors who see themselves as daring enough to traverse the untraversable, Jamil writes.

But beneath this conspicuous consumption is the stark reality that Muslim neighbourhoods suffer from unwalkable streets, no parks for leisure and a growing sense of insecurity that makes residents unable to leave these ghettos.

From a distance, the food shops in these neighbourhoods seem appetising. From within, for residents, this food culture is a spatially constrained delicacy.

The food stalls are substitutes for facilities the city has failed to provide, functioning as informal places where people stand, talk, eat and briefly occupy space in neighbourhoods designed to be passed through rather than lived in.

But this is also a creative response to urban exclusion. These stalls and shops are an expression of Muslim food culture, but they must be recognised as symbols of everyday insecurity. In their celebration of “Muslim cuisine” is also the taste of segregation.

Saiyid Ashraf Husain Jafri is a PhD candidate in sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Turkey.

Eleven Indian citizens have been charged in the United States with allegedly conspiring to stage armed robberies at convenience stores so that store clerks there could falsely claim to be victims of crime and apply for visas.

US prosecutors alleged that as part of the conspiracy, the store clerks were to claim that they were victims of violent crime on their applications for U non-immigration visas. The visas are meant for victims of crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse, and who have been helpful to law enforcement.

An Indian man named Rambhai Patel and his co-conspirators had in March 2023 staged armed robberies in at least six convenience stores and fast food restaurants in Massachusetts, as well as more such incidents elsewhere, according to the charging documents. Rambhai Patel was in August held guilty by a court in Boston and sentenced to 20 months and eight days in prison.

On Friday, 11 others were charged for either helping to stage the robberies, or to pay for themselves or a family member to take part in the conspiracy as a purported victim.

🚨#BREAKING: #FBI Boston's Violent Crimes Task Force has arrested 10 Indian nationals across MA, KY, MO, & OH for allegedly participating in staged armed robberies for the purpose of allowing store clerks to claim they were "victims" of violent crime so they could apply for… pic.twitter.com/SG4oQW9z1t

— FBI Boston (@FBIBoston) March 13, 2026

Of those charged on Friday, Jitendrakumar Patel, Maheshkumar Patel, Sanjaykumar Patel, Amitabahen Patel, Sangitaben Patel and Mitul Patel were arrested in Massachusetts. Four others –Rameshbhai Patel, Ronakkumar Patel, Sonal Patel and Minkesh Patel – were arrested in Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio, the office of the US Attorney, District of Massachusetts, said.

Another woman, Dipikaben Patel, has been deported to India.

If convicted, those charged may face up to five years in prison and fines of $2,50,000.

In Coimbatore, S Surulivel is bracing for losses. His foundry, which does welding, cutting and fabrication work, relies on gas cylinders. “We use five cylinders every day,” said Surulivel. “We cannot work at all if we have no gas.”

Up north in Panipat in Haryana, Yashpal Malik’s textile dyeing unit stopped operations by the second week of March after he ran out of gas. Gas is crucial fuel for the boilers to produce steam. “There is no work in dyeing that can happen without steam,” said Malik. “Now that gas supply is not there, how can operations continue?” Panipat has about 10,000 textile manufacturing units, of which Malik estimates that about 1,000 are involved in dyeing.

As the war on Iran enters its third week, its effects are starting to ripple out across India. Small-scale manufacturing and industries, from textiles and dyeing to automobiles and plastic, are struggling to continue operations due to the gas shortage or are facing an increase in the cost of raw materials, putting businesses and worker livelihoods at risk.

The stakes are especially high for them. Like Surulivel, who has signed a one-year tender for railway supplies and must provide the required number of equipment every month. “If there is a delay in supply, then I will have to pay damages and that can mean losses up to 10%,” he said.

Following the US and Israel’s military strikes on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial maritime corridor, has been closed for ships, disrupting the supply of fuel and natural gas. The government on March 11 said that India imports 60% of liquefied petroleum gas, 90% of which comes through the Strait of Hormuz. For the moment, the government has prioritised domestic and essential use of gas till alternative supplies can stabilise the demand.

Larger industries, with deep re, might be able to cushion the blow, but smaller enterprises are starting to worry, scrambling to make alternate arrangements, only to find that there are few options.

In Mysuru, craft rum distiller Huli’s last cylinder will run out by the weekend, says co-founder Aruna Urs. “We cannot do distillation, generate steam and, therefore, cannot produce anything,” said Urs. Huli relies on LPG because it is more efficient and better for the environment. “It is also difficult to switch to alternate options because the process to get it done is long and arduous,” said Urs.

Caught unprepared, high operating costs

Many say they did not expect the war to last this long and that its wider effects could be so severe for India. Surulivel, head of the Railway Equipment Suppliers Association in Coimbatore, said he was shocked when news of the shortage of gas cylinders began spreading.

Urs of Huli too said the crisis was unexpected. “Even until last week we didn’t have any idea,” said Urs. “Even the government seems to have been blindsided.”

Malik, however, had started to worry about three days into the war on Iran. Days before the shortage of gas became a national crisis, Malik had been struggling to keep his dyeing unit running. His 60-70 workers are currently idle, but Malik says he is paying them. “The immediate impact has been on the medium-scale dyeing units that were dependent on cylinders,” said Malik. Smaller units are continuing work “as much as they can by burning wood for the boilers”, he said.

Urs, too, is bracing for a massive loss in the coming days. “Some cylinders are being sold at higher rates but it doesn’t make sense to buy them when that will only last another two-three days,” he said.

In Coimbatore, Surulivel said that his operating costs have also increased due to the panic about a possible fuel shortage. “Taxis are waiting for hours together waiting for fuel,” he said. “Whether it is customers coming to order equipment or transporting equipment, we are heavily reliant on vehicles as well.”

As head of the Railway Equipment Suppliers Association in Coimbatore, Surulivel said that all micro, small and medium enterprises had been affected by the LPG shortage. “There is panic everywhere,” said Surulivel. “We don’t know how long the war is going to go on either.”

He has written to the Tamil Nadu industries commissioner and the director of industries and commerce seeking support for micro, small and medium enterprises until gas is available.

“We are not a participant in the war but so many of us are affected,” said Urs.

Plastics get pricey

Some industries are also seeing an increase in the price of raw materials, adding to their operating costs in the face of losses.

In Delhi, the textile industry has seen an increase in the price of raw materials like poly-cotton threads. Poly-cotton, a polyester mix with pure cotton, is a common combination for denim manufacturing. Polyester is derived from crude oil, by refining it to create a plastic that is melted and spun into thread. Plastic bags used to wrap textiles too are costlier. Both are derived from crude oil, the supply of which has been disrupted across the world.

Abid Khan, a former jeans manufacturer from Khyala in West Delhi, said the war is affecting the entire textile supply chain and could temporarily increase the price of cloth per metre. “The dyeing units are not taking on any material to dye and so there is no cloth to sell,” said Khan.

Plastic pellets, or daana, which is the raw material to make plastic products, has also seen an increase in cost. “Prices of products made from petroleum, especially plastic daana, have increased by 50% here,” said GS Tyagi, president of the Faridabad Small Industry Association.

Spillover effect

Faridabad’s automobile manufacturing units are also facing an increase in steel prices. The sector provides components, parts and accessories for vehicles. But raw materials, like steel, are now costlier by 10%-15%, said Tyagi. “This is a lot for the industry.”

Small steel-makers are grappling with rising costs in the production of steel, Reuters reported. A small portion of steel makers make direct reduced iron, or sponge iron, which depends on natural gas for production. Even steel majors announced production cuts on account of the gas shortages.

Jindal Steel announced Friday that its plants are operating at reduced capacity due to fuel shortages from Middle East disruptions.

The company stated in an exchange filing, "Due to the heavy dependence of stainless steel manufacturing on industrial gases such as propane, LPG,… https://t.co/j4ElCR1hFH

— anshuman tiwari (@anshuman1tiwari) March 13, 2026

Limited supply of natural gas can have spillover effects on other fuels, said Hemant Mallya, fellow with Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water.

“Industries that are able to switch from natural gas to coal can lead to an increase in demand for coal and, therefore, the price,” said Mallya. “Coal is also transported using diesel trucks, and the cost of transportation could increase due to an increase in the price of crude oil and petroleum products.”

The net effect is an increase in coal demand and prices, he said. According to him, a long-term solution is electrification or the use of biomass or green hydrogen in industrial equipment.

For now, however, Tyagi fears that increased costs will slow down or completely halt manufacturing. “If things do not improve, it is possible that by March-end, industries will have to reduce workers’ shifts because there will be no raw material to work with.”

On the afternoon of March 4, the day of Holi, an argument broke out in a narrow lane in Delhi’s Uttam Nagar after a water balloon thrown by a child landed on a woman from a neighbouring family. The argument soon spiralled into a clash between the two families that ended in the death of a 26-year-old man.

Since he was Hindu and the neighbours were Muslim, Hindutva groups jumped in the fray, alleging that his murder was a communal hate crime. Over the next few days, 16 men from the Muslim family were arrested and a portion of their house was demolished by local authorities.

Was this a clash between two families or something much larger? Scroll went to Uttam Nagar to find out.

Kamal Pardhi, an Adivasi woman from Shahpur in Maharashtra’s Thane district, laughed ruefully as she narrated her experience with the Forest Rights Act.

First the good news. After several rounds of applications, her husband, Vithal, was allotted the land title to the 20 ghuntas (half an acre) they had been cultivating. But her happiness was short-lived: the document was in someone else’s name.

Despite several appeals to the authorities, the document has not been corrected. “What am I supposed to do now?” asked Pardhi.

Pardhi’s struggle was among the 40 case studies presented at a Jan Sunwai or public hearing on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in Maharashtra’s Konkan region held at the YB Chavan Centre in South Mumbai on February 24.

The hearing had been organised by the Yashwantrao Chavan Centre, the Shoshit Jan Andolan and the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties, Maharashtra, to draw attention to the numerous glitches in the implementation of an act meant to redress historical injustices to Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers.

The Forest Rights Act was passed in 2006 to recognise the rights of Adivasis and other forest dwellers to land, resources and self-governance. It recognises both the forest rights of both individuals and communities. They must prove that they have been on the land before December 13, 2005, the day the legislation was introduced in the Lok Sabha.

Forest rights are approved by a three-tier system of district authorities, starting from the gram sabha, an assembly of all registered voters in a village.

As the case studies at the Jan Sunwai showed, claims for rights are rejected despite rich supporting data: receipts from 75 years ago of having paid cess, photographs of the land and crops being cultivated on it and survey reports.

The case studies showed that community forest rights fared better. However, here too there are problems as forest areas are not mapped completely, so the development funds for the area cannot be claimed.

In Maharashtra, the Forest Rights Act has been implemented for 18 years. While the number of claims approved in the period seems large at 1.48 lakh, a total of 3.99 lakh claims have actually been filed. This works out to an approval rate of 37.1 %, noted Brian Lobo of the Kashtakari Sanghatana, an organisation that works with Adivasis in Dahanu and Palgarh.

Chandrakant Ghak from Dahanu taluka in Palghar district said that though he had been growing rice on a plot of land since 1962, he was denied his rights to it as the government claims it is reserved for a cricket ground. “This was the first I heard of it,” he said. “How is that possible?”

Govind Patil has receipts from 75 years ago proving that his grandfather had been cultivating the land he claimed. But in 2014, his village became part of the Panvel Municipal corporation in Raigad district. No approvals are being given for land titles in urban areas.

Similarly in Mumbai, Adivasis living in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Film City have been struggling to get land rights. Dinesh Habale said that he had applied for forest rights in Habalepada in the National Park in 2019 but it was rejected as the authorities claimed it was not forest land and fell in the park’s eco sensitive zone.

Forest rights can only be granted if an area is declared as a forest.

In Raigad district, Kaluram Bhagat found that his application for one acre of land was rejected because the plot has been earmarked for a golf course. He was allotted only half an acre. Laxman Pawar from the same district found that the land his family had been cultivating has been set aside for a cremation ground.

Bhiva Kadali’s family in Thane district’s Murbad taluka has four land titles but the land was submerged by the backwaters of the Barvi dam in 2015 as it was expanded. His fruit trees and rice crops were destroyed. He has been demanding compensation but he has not been paid anything.

“I have a file full of letters but nothing is happening” Kadali said.

The proceedings indicated that the act needed much more than good intentions to justify its true intent. The case studies of Forest Rights violations prepared by activists Ulka Mahajan, Indavi Tulpule of the Shramik Mukti Sanghatana, Brian Lobo of the Kashtakari Sanghatana and Surekha Dalvi prepared micro- level case studies of Forest Rights Act violations that broadly related to the failure of the government to appoint appropriate committees to decide on the forest rights claims under the law, arbitrarily excluding certain claimants and violations in the process of granting rights.

They found that the forest department had an undue influence in granting rights, and that claims of non-tribals and those living in cities were excluded.

The most serious issue was that the authorities often lost applications. Applicants in many cases submit original documents because photocopying facilities are expensive and hard to come by in some rural areas. They are frequently not given receipts for their applications. But if the authorities misplace the documents, applicants are thrown into confusion.

The authorities also rejected claims even though all supporting documents were available. Even after titles were awarded, they sometimes had the wrong names or there were errors in the survey numbers of plots. Importantly, the state has failed to compensate forest land title holders whose lands were acquired for development projects.

The number of rejected claims ranged from 48% in Thane district and 64.4% in Raigad district to 17.5% in Palghar district. There is also a high rejection rate of appeals in these three districts. In Thane, 8,798 out of 12,404 appeals were rejected. In Palghar, 501 of 1204 appeals were rejected and 696 are pending as of 2025. In Raigad, 1,092 of 1,478 appeals were rejected.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist, author and researcher.

The Union government on Friday acknowledged that the supply of liquefied petroleum gas in the country was a “matter of concern”, but added that no distributor had run out of stocks.

“LPG is a matter of concern for us as most of our imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz,” Sujata Sharma, joint secretary (marketing and oil refinery) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said at a press conference. “But despite this, no dry out has been reported at any of our 25,000 distributors.”

The official urged citizens not to believe in rumours and to refrain from panic buying. However, she urged consumers who can shift from LPG to piped natural gas to do so immediately.

Sharma said that there are currently 60 lakh households who can make the shift.

Since the conflict in West Asia began on February 28, Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries.

The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

On Friday, even as Sharma acknowledged concern on LPG availability, she maintained that the government has ensured uninterrupted supply to domestic households. “Similarly, LPG supplies are also being provided to hospitals and educational institutions,” the official added.

The joint secretary said that as compared to March 5, the domestic production of LPG has increased by 30%. She said that commercial cylinders have been “put at the disposal of state governments for priority distribution”.

On Monday, the Union government invoked the Essential Commodities Act, directing refineries to regulate the production, supply and distribution of natural gas. The petroleum and natural gas ministry said that the supply of natural gas to several sectors will be treated as a priority allocation.

The sectors include piped natural gas for domestic use, compressed natural gas for transport, liquefied petroleum gas production and pipeline compressor fuel.

Also read:

• From weddings to funerals, Iran war has hit life in India
• West Asia conflict: As Centre prioritises LPG supply for households, businesses face disruptions

The joint secretary on Friday claimed that petrol and diesel are available in adequate quantities at all fuel stations.

Sharma further said that states have been asked to identify specific locations within their districts for the distribution of an additional allocation of 48,000 kilolitres that the Union government has sanctioned, over and above the regular quota.

Public sector undertaking Coal India has issued orders to ensure that coal is made available to small, medium and other consumers, so that alternative fuel options are made available, the official told reporters.

Two Indians were killed and 10 injured in a drone attack in Oman’s Sohar province. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that five of the injured Indians have been discharged from hospital and the remaining are receiving treatment. One non-Indian was also injured.

The Indian authorities were in contact with Omani officials and were assisting the Indian citizens, the ministry said. Read on.

The stock market crashed further amid concerns about the conflict in West Asia and surging global oil prices. The benchmark Sensex and Nifty indices fell nearly 2% on Friday.

This was the worst week for the markets in four years, with nearly Rs 20 lakh crore in investors’ wealth getting wiped out.

The Indian rupee sank to a record low of 92.4 against the United States dollar. It has lost 1.5% in value since the conflict broke out.

The benchmark Brent crude oil price again jumped above the $100 per barrel-mark on Friday. The price was about $72.8 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started. Read on.

The Union government acknowledged that the supply of liquefied petroleum gas in the country was a “matter of concern”, but added that no distributor had run out of stocks. Sujata Sharma, joint secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, urged citizens not to believe in rumours and to refrain from panic buying.

However, the official urged consumers who can shift from LPG to piped natural gas to do so immediately.

Sharma also maintained that the government has ensured uninterrupted supply to domestic households, and said that LPG supplies are also being provided to hospitals and educational institutions,

The joint secretary said that petrol and diesel are available in adequate quantities at all fuel stations. Read on.

A government mandate to allow monthly menstrual leave may discourage employers from hiring women, the Supreme Court said. However, the court asked the Union government to formulate a menstrual leave policy in consultation with stakeholders.

With this direction, the bench disposed of a petition filed by a man seeking paid menstrual leave in all establishments. It asked why he had filed the petition, noting that no woman had approached the court.

The chief justice verbally observed that the policy could lead to an impression among young women that they are not at par with male employees and that they “cannot work like them during a particular time”. Read on.

Four members of the crew onboard United States’ aerial refuelling aircraft were killed when the plane crashed in western Iraq. The US military said that two of its aircraft were involved in the incident and that the second landed safely.

The accident did not occur because of “hostile fire or friendly fire”, the US Central Command said. Read on.

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Two Indians were killed and 10 others injured in a drone attack in Oman’s Sohar province on Friday amid the conflict in West Asia, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

Ministry of External Affairs Additional Secretary (Gulf) Aseem Mahajan said that five of the injured Indians have been discharged from hospital and the remaining are receiving treatment. One non-Indian was also injured.

Mahajan said that the Indian authorities were in contact with Omani officials and were assisting the Indian citizens.

Two drones crashed in Sohar on Friday morning, Oman’s state news agency reported.

One drone struck the Al-Awahi industrial area, killing the two Indians and injuring others. The second fell in an open area and caused no injuries.

The authorities said that an investigation had been launched into the incident.

The Omani report did not specify who the authorities believe had launched the drones.

Earlier this week, Omani state media reported that drones had struck fuel storage tanks at the Salalah port. However, Tehran denied involvement in that attack.

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched an attack on the Iranian government. Tehran has retaliated by launching missiles and drones at targets in the Gulf, including US bases, ships and major cities in the region.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a portion of a Delhi High Court order from December 19 that had directed the Lokpal to reconsider sanctioning the Central Bureau of Investigation to file a chargesheet against Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra in an alleged cash-for-query scam, PTI reported.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymala Bagchi issued notices seeking responses from Moitra, the CBI and the complainant, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey.

The Lokpal approached the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court verdict, which had set aside the anti-corruption ombudsman’s order allowing the CBI to file a chargesheet against Moitra.

The High Court had held that the Lokpal incorrectly interpreted the Lokpal Act as creating two provisions for sanction: one under Section 20(7)(a) for filing a chargesheet, and another under Section 20(8) for launching prosecution, according to Live Law.

It held that the Act lays down only one composite stage of sanction for prosecution, and that Section 20(8) merely allows the Lokpal to direct which agency should carry out the prosecution. The High Court noted that the Lokpal had “departed from the prescribed statutory procedure” and had sought to restructure the procedure laid down by Parliament, Live Law reported.

In its Supreme Court petition, the Lokpal challenged this interpretation. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to examine the matter, and said the Lokpal need not decide on sanction for prosecution as directed by the High Court.

Lawyer Ranjit Kumar, representing the Lokpal, told the court that the ombudsman was only challenging the High Court’s interpretation and was not concerned about any individual, according to Live Law.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that the CBI supported the High Court’s interpretation, but added that Moitra needed to be investigated.

The case against Moitra stems from allegations that she shared her login credentials to the Parliament website with businessman Darshan Hiranandani and accepted gifts in exchange for asking questions in the Lok Sabha.

Moitra has admitted to sharing her Parliament login details with Hiranandani but denied receiving any cash or gifts.

The allegations against the Trinamool Congress MP were made in October 2023 by Dubey and advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, her former partner. Dubey also filed a complaint with the Lokpal, accusing Moitra of taking cash for bribes.

The stock market crashed further on Friday amid concerns surrounding the conflict in West Asia and surging oil prices.

The benchmark Sensex index fell more than 1,400 points or 1.9%. The Nifty had also fallen nearly 2%, or by more than 460 points, when the session ended on Friday.

This was the worst week for the market in four years with nearly Rs 20 lakh crore in investors’ wealth getting wiped out, CNBC-TV18 reported.

Stock markets had begun to slide on March 2 after the conflict began.

The India VIX index, which measures volatility in the market, spiked 5.7% on Friday.

Major Asian stock indices also fell on Friday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed nearly 1% lower, while Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.1% and South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7%.

Rupee at record low

The Indian rupee slumped further on Friday to a record low of 92.4 against the United States dollar.

It breached the currency’s previous record low of 92.35 hit on Thursday.

The Indian currency has lost 1.5% in value since the conflict broke out, Reuters reported.

The fall continued on Friday as the benchmark Brent crude oil prices again jumped above the $100-per-barrel mark.

The global oil prices have spiked by nearly 40% since Israel and the United States launched their attacks on Iran on February 28, according to AFP. Tehran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

The price of Brent was about $72.8 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

The escalating tensions have raised fears of disruption to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

The narrow waterbody connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

On Monday as well, oil prices had briefly crossed the $100-per-barrel mark, the highest since July 2022.

Also read:

• From weddings to funerals, Iran war has hit life in India

• Why the US-Iran war will hurt India more than China

• Top updates: Iran says it won’t close Strait of Hormuz, Liberia-flagged oil tanker reaches Mumbai

In the last two weeks, Dhruv Chakravarty estimates that his catering company has suffered a loss of Rs 7 lakh-Rs 8 lakh due to cancellations following the shortage of liquefied petroleum. His family’s Vastavika Caterers in South West Delhi caters weddings, birthdays and corporate events. Chakravarty has had to cancel new bookings due to the severe shortage of commercial cylinders without which it is impossible to cater for weddings.

“We are hoping this ends soon, or it will be a problem,” said Chakravarty. “We had good business during Holi but now with Eid coming up, we are not sure.” Several other caterers have cancelled events or postponed bookings till April, he said.

India depends on the supply of natural gas from shipments through the narrow Strait of Hormuz in West Asia, which has been closed since the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran on February 28. The war on Iran has disrupted the supply of oil as well.

A catering manager based in Vasai, Mumbai, who did not want to be identified, said at least two-three customers had postponed their wedding bookings. “The situation is just like Covid-19,” he said, referring to how the pandemic had shut down economic and business activities through 2020 and 2021.

“We are sitting idle with no work,” the man said. “No one is able to do any business and everyone’s business is shut.”

When asked about using alternatives to LPG, he said “You can’t change technology in two days. Alternatives like electric cooktops take time to set up.”

A friend is getting married next week and now an unexpected request from the catering team has put the bridegroom in a difficult spot. The caterers have asked the family to arrange LPG cylinders for the event, citing supply constraints, adding last-minute pressure to the already…

— Sangeetha Kandavel (@sang1983) March 11, 2026

Nishank Bhadouriya of Hari Ram Caterers in Delhi said has been trying to get by with his old stock of cylinders. Even so, Badoria said caterers were lucky that the crisis has not hit in the middle of the wedding season. “During the months of May and June we do not get as many wedding bookings,” he said. “Otherwise we would have had to face a huge loss had this happened during November-December.”

Another Delhi-based caterer, who did not wish to be identified, was worried about gas cylinders being hoarded and sold on the black market. “The uncertainty of how long this war will go on has pushed many people to start hoarding which has worsened the issue,” he said.

Caterers Scroll spoke also said that in desperation, some have asked their customers to bring their own domestic cylinders, even though that is illegal.

The government has prioritised gas supply for domestic use, leading to shortages elsewhere. In Pune, crematoriums are managing with the available gas supply but may have to switch to wood, reported The Indian Express. “Right now, we still have some gas left with us. If the gas runs out, then we will have to use wood,” Sumit Giri, a crematorium operator in Bopodi told The Indian Express.

In Kerala, the Kozhikode civic body’s crematorium had to refuse three bookings on Tuesday after it ran out of gas, reported Manorama. The crematorium needs 120 commercial cylinders per month, using nearly four per day. Bharat Petroleum, the crematorium’s supplier, has been unable to provide cylinders, a health inspector told Manorama.

But as Bhadouriya observed, restaurants, dhabas and roadside food vendors are the worst hit. Small-scale food joints and tiffin services, often feed poor migrant workers, while keeping costs low.

In Mumbai, one tiffin service could only offer rice and pickle while another had to buy chapatis at Rs 5 each, driving up costs. Elsewhere, like in Ranchi, one stall owner said they had to cut down the menu to basic meals. Owners of a homestay, meanwhile, were, considering earthen, wood-fired ovens.

Meals outside a hospital

For the last three days, Debojit Senapati in Guwahati has been struggling to get a cooking gas cylinder to keep his rice stall open. Patients and their relatives depend on Senapati’s affordable meals, up to Rs 60 a plate, at his food joint outside the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, the region’s biggest hospital.

“I got one domestic cylinder yesterday [Wednesday] which cost more than double at Rs 1,800,” he told Scroll. Senapati said he needs at least one cylinder per day. “There is no cylinder today. I have already shut my stall in the afternoon today.”

The Assam Police on March 12 said strict legal action will be taken against anyone spreading “rumours” about a shortage of cooking gas and other petroleum products. “But there is a shortage of gas,” said Senapati. “We are looking for all kinds of gas – domestic and commercial supply. But it is nowhere to be found.”

For the last 11 years, Senapati has depended on income from his stall to feed his family of five and pay Rs 8,000 as rent for his home. “We have an income of hardly Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000 per day,” he said. “It will be difficult to manage if it continues for many days.”

Five workers depend on Senapati as well, earning Rs 300-Rs 400 per day. “If I don’t get gas for the next two days, I have to send them back to their village in Upper Assam,” he said.

Mumbai’s migrant workers

Mumbai’s huge population of migrant workers, who keep the city running, is paying more for food or even going hungry. At a construction site in Tilak Nagar, many workers live on the premises or the streets.

“Yesterday I slept without eating anything,” said Vimlesh Yadav, a security guard at a residential building. “Today I went to a restaurant around the corner. They only had rice and achaar to serve.”

Kamlesh Yadav, a guard at a construction site nearby, cooks his own food using a stove and a five-kg gas cylinder, which he buys for Rs 500 every month. Five days ago, Yadav ran out of gas and has been eating out. His expenses have suddenly more than doubled. “Now it’s costing me Rs 80 per thali,” he said.

Yadav, who earns Rs 17,000 a month, said he could manage his food, including the cylinder and rations, within Rs 2,000. If the shortage continues, he could end up paying Rs 4,800 a month.

Messes and tiffin services, which provide affordable food to the city’s working-class population, are struggling to keep costs low. Naresh Yadav’s tiffin service in Siddharth Colony feeds 100 labourers, security guards and daily wage workers every day. He needs a 23-kg gas cylinder every month.

“Last Saturday, I ran out of gas and could not find a cylinder anywhere,” he said. “I have tried reaching out to multiple suppliers but nobody has stock.”

Naresh Yadav said he sold meals at discounted rates because he was serving poor workers. But on Thursday, he was forced to buy chapatis from another supplier at Rs 5 per piece. “But many cannot afford this,” he said. When an entire meal costs Rs 50, paying Rs 30 for just six chapatis is a lot.

Cutting down menus

In Ranchi, Pawan Tamang has cut down the extensive menu of his Royal Momos food stall to just three dishes – chowmein, chilly chicken and momos. “Customers are upset about the limited menu, but we are trying to use cooking gas efficiently,” said Tamang, whose stall needs two to three gas cylinders a week – he buys 19-kg commercial cylinders which cost Rs 2,000 each.

“We’re down to our last one and we haven’t been able to procure more,” he said.

Tamang and his family of six run the stall, “When business is good we earn about Rs 15,000- Rs 20,000 in a week,” he said. “But now with this gas crisis we are wondering how we will survive.” Induction stoves were an option, said Tamang, but he is unsure of how reliable they will be since Ranchi faces several electricity cuts due to power cuts in the summers.

Sunita Dutta, who runs a tiffin service in Ranchi, is also down to her last gas cylinder, which will run out in the next 10 days. “I make tiffin for about 120 people daily, so we use two to three big cylinders in a month,” she said. She will turn to an extra gas cylinder at home – as long as that lasts.

Dutta has the safety net of her family’s income but depends on the tiffin service for her financial independence. “The government really needs to do something,” she said. “There are a lot of small business owners like me who will be impacted badly if this gas crisis extends.”

Two hours away in Khunti, Kapil Toppo, who runs a village farm stay, plans to turn to an earthen, wood-fired stove. “We host between 10-30 customers in a week so we require three to four gas cylinders in a month,” said Toppo.

When the farm stay was constructed, Toppo had built clay stoves as an afterthought, but never used them. Many residents of rural Jharkhand still rely on firewood and coal for cooking, said Toppo. These might be the only options if the LPG crisis continues, he said. “But these are also very polluting alternatives.”

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday sought responses from the Union government and a private firm on a petition by six liquefied petroleum gas distributors seeking an increase in the supply of domestic cooking gas cylinders, Bar and Bench reported.

A division bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Raj D Wakode said that the matter was serious and of grave importance.

The petitioners alleged that exports were being prioritised over domestic supply despite the shortage of LPG caused by the energy crisis sparked by the conflict in West Asia. They claimed that Nagpur-based firm Confidence Petroleum India Limited had failed to increase the supply of household LPG cylinders even though the Union government had ordered that domestic distribution be prioritised, PTI reported.

The petitioners said they were directly facing the consequences of a “severely disrupted” LPG supply chain in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region.

“This is causing widespread hardship to consumers across the country, particularly in the state of Maharashtra and the Vidarbha region,” Bar and Bench quoted the petition as saying.

The petitioners cited a March 9 order of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that directed all refineries and petrochemical complexes to use their entire production capacity to produce LPG, which is to be made available to public sector oil marketing companies.

The bench on Thursday directed Confidence Petroleum to make sure that the storage and supply of LPG for domestic use was in line with the Centre’s policy, according to Bar and Bench.

The matter will be heard next on Tuesday.

Confidence Petroleum’s Chairperson Nitin Khara said the firm was considering unloading its LPG vessel in India, as opposed to its earlier plan to export a part of the consignment after unloading a portion domestically, PTI reported.

Khara was quoted as having told a regional news channel that the firm will file its reply in the High Court soon.

“We are committed to the people of India,” PTI quoted him as saying. “We were not expecting this situation to arise, and we had given some export commitment. But now the management is thinking of unloading the entire vessel in India.”

LPG shortages in India

Since the conflict in West Asia began on February 28, the supply of LPG in India has been disrupted as the country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. This is because Iran has blocked the crucial Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels.

However, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri told Parliament on Thursday that there was no shortage of fuel despite the conflict in West Asia. “Field reports indicate hoarding and panic-booking at the distributor and retail level, driven by consumer anxiety rather than any actual supply shortage,” he maintained.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged state governments to enhance monitoring to prevent black-marketers and hoarders from taking advantage of the situation, The Hindu reported.

On the same day, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had alleged that India’s energy security had been compromised and attributed the situation to what he described as a “flawed foreign policy”.

Also read: From weddings to funerals, Iran war has hit life in India

The Supreme Court on Friday said that a government policy mandating monthly menstrual leaves may discourage employers from hiring women, thereby affecting their participation in the workforce, reported Live Law.

The court, however, asked the Union government to formulate a menstrual leave policy in consultation with all stakeholders.

The direction came while a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi disposed of a petition filed by Shailendra Mani Tripathi seeking paid menstrual leave in all establishments.

Tripathi had filed two earlier petitions in the matter as well, reported Live Law.

His first petition was disposed of in February 2023, allowing him to submit a representation before the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development for a policy on menstrual leave.

Tripathi approached the Supreme Court again in 2024, stating that the ministry had not responded to the representation. His second plea was disposed of in July 2024, with the court directing the Union government to take a policy decision.

On Friday, the bench questioned why Tripathi had filed the petition, noting that no woman had approached the court.

“This is basically only to create a type of impression in young women that you still have some natural issues and you are not at par with male persons and you cannot work like them during a particular time,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The chief justice also asked the petitioner to consider the long-term impact of such a policy and “look at the practical reality in the job market”.

“The more unattractive the human resource, the less is the possibility of assumption in the market,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “Look at from the business model. Will any employer be happy with the competing claims of other genders?”

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate MR Shamsad pointed out that Karnataka had recently formulated a menstrual leave policy and Odisha has had one since 1992. Many private organisations are also voluntarily allowing period leave, he added.

“Voluntarily they are giving, then it is excellent,” the legal news outlet quoted Kant as saying. “That is a very good thing. But the moment you introduce it as a compulsory condition in law, you do not know the damage it will do to the career of women.”

He added: “Nobody will give them responsibilities, even in judicial services, a normal trial will not be assigned to them.”

On October 9, the Karnataka Cabinet approved the 2025 Menstrual Leave Policy, which allows a one-day paid leave every month for women with government jobs and employed in the private sector.

The policy was introduced by the labour department following a recommendation by a committee pushing for paid menstrual leave.

In November, the government notified the menstrual leave policy.

In December, the Karnataka High Court stayed the policy but recalled its order hours later.

Also read: Period leave debate is a reminder that workplaces must provide for women’s needs

Several parts of the country witnessed heatwaves in the past two days, with severe conditions recorded in the Saurashtra-Kutch region of Gujarat and the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

The India Meteorological Department also predicted a heatwave in Mumbai and its neighbouring districts of Thane, Palghar and Raigad on Friday and Saturday, The Indian Express reported. Heatwave conditions were also reported from isolated parts of the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra.

In many parts of North India, daytime temperatures were above normal by more than 5.1 degrees Celsius, the Hindustan Times reported.

The weather agency declares a heatwave for a region when the temperature crosses 40 degrees Celsius in the plains, 37 degrees Celsius in coastal areas and 30 degrees Celsius in the hills.

Gujarat

Severe heatwave conditions prevailed in some pockets of Gujarat, including parts of Ahmedabad, Dessa, Surat and Anand, the IMD said. Some pockets in the Saurashtra-Kutch region, including Porbandar, Rajkot, Gir Somnath, Surendranagar, Bhavnagar and Kutch, also reported severe heatwaves in the 24 hours ending at 8.30 am on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Rajkot recorded a maximum temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius, the highest in Gujarat for the day, The Indian Express reported.

Ahmedabad, however, saw some relief on Thursday, with the mercury dropping to 38.9 degrees Celsius from 41.4 degrees Celsius on the previous day, The Times of India reported. The maximum temperature on Thursday, however, was still 3.8 degrees above normal.

Maharashtra

The IMD said that heatwave conditions will prevail in Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad on Friday and Saturday, The Indian Express reported. This was the third time in a fortnight that the weather agency made such a declaration.

The maximum temperature in Mumbai is likely to cross 38 degrees on Friday, and is expected to be at 37 degrees on Saturday, the weather agency said.

An anti-cyclone system developing over the sea is likely to lead to a spike in temperatures, The Indian Express quoted Bikram Singh, director of IMD Mumbai, as saying.

The city of Amravati in the Vidarbha region was the hottest in the country on Thursday, with the temperature rising to 42.2 degrees Celsius, which was 6.8 degrees above normal, The Times of India reported.

The maximum temperature in Akola was only marginally lower at 42 degrees Celsius.

In Nagpur, the mercury soared to 39 degrees Celsius, the highest in this season till now, according to The Times of India.

North India

Daytime temperature were above normal by over 5.1 degrees Celsius in parts of Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, West Rajasthan and East Rajasthan on Wednesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

The maximum temperatures in Delhi ranged from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius.

“Such heatwave episodes in March are normal and we had forecast it well in advance,” the newspaper quoted IMD Director General M Mohapatra as saying.

However, the IMD said that there may be rainfall in Punjab from March 14 to 16 due to a fresh western disturbance, The Tribune reported.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that he would repost a video showing him symbolically firing at two Muslim men, this time labelling them as “Bangladeshis”.

The video was posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Assam unit on February 7. It combined what appeared to be original footage of the BJP leader handling rifles with artificial intelligence-generated images portraying Muslims as targets.

On-screen text included slogans such as “Foreigner free Assam”, “No mercy”, “Why did you not go to Pakistan?” and “There is no forgiveness to Bangladeshis”.

The clip was deleted following social media criticism.

The Congress’ Assam unit and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen had filed complaints with the police against Sarma and the BJP for sharing the video. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India also moved the Supreme Court.

Speaking to Aaj Tak on Thursday, the Assam chief minister said that the video was “correct”, but it should have identified the men as “Bangladeshi”.

When told that he could not shoot Bangladeshi citizens or undocumented migrants either, Sarma said that it was only “symbolic” shooting.

“So that Bangladeshis don’t infiltrate into Assam, the Assam chief minister will have to shoot at them, symbolically,” said the BJP leader.

He added the video was deleted as it did not use the word “Bangladeshi”, so it was “legally and constitutionally wrong”.

“However, we will correct it and post it again,” claimed Sarma.

He added that the updated video would not be posted from the BJP’s account but from his personal account.

बंदूक वाले AI वीडियो पर मेरी टिप्पणी pic.twitter.com/32qULmd7Wn

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) March 12, 2026

The statements came in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Assam, which are expected to be held in April.

The BJP’s Assam unit chief Dilip Saikia had earlier claimed that the video was deleted as it was “unauthorised” and “immature”, The Indian Express had reported on February 12.

One of the four co-convenors of the Assam BJP’s social media cell was also removed from his position in connection with the video.

Saikia had told The Indian Express that the party was concerned about “illegal immigrant Bangladeshis in Assam”, adding that there had to be a movement in the society against this.

“But the party does not support the idea of a mala fide intent of targeting Muslims with bullets,”

On February 11, Sarma told reporters that he and the BJP do not support anything that goes against Assamese Muslims.

“We are not against Assamese Muslims but against Bangladeshi Muslims, Miya Muslims,” he said. “That photograph [in the video] should have made the difference [clear] between Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims.”

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

In the past month, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Miyas, including claiming that it was his job to “make them suffer”, and saying that he had directed BJP workers to file applications seeking to strike the names of Miya Muslims off the electoral rolls.

However, in February, the Supreme Court had declined to entertain petitions seeking that a first information report be filed against Sarma for hate speech against Muslims.

Also read:

• Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ make a mockery of the Constitution

• Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ prejudicial and ‘alarmingly hateful’, say activists, lawyers

India’s increasing demographic of the elderly needs long-term care, daily support and palliative services. While national policies emphasise care at home, government data show that access to such services remains limited.

With older adults projected to account for nearly 20% of India’s population by 2050, as we reported in March 2024, the gap between policy intent and care on the ground means many older adults are dependent on hospitals or family support.

As India ages, national policy increasingly positions home-based palliative and elder care as a way to reduce suffering and avoid unnecessary hospitalisation. Our reporting suggests these services reach only a limited share of older adults.

In this concluding story of a two-part series, IndiaSpend explains how gaps between policy design and delivery shape where care is provided, how households absorb costs, and who bears responsibility when care does not reach home. You can read the first part here.

Plans on paper

Home-based palliative care is a core component of India’s elder care framework, designed to reduce suffering among older adults with chronic and life-limiting conditions by providing care where people live.

Under the National Programme for Palliative Care, states are expected to plan and fund services through the National Health Mission. The programme envisions trained primary healthcare workers delivering symptom management, basic nursing care and caregiver support through periodic home visits, with referral links to higher health facilities when required.

In principle, this model moves care away from hospitals and towards communities. On paper, the architecture exists for care to reach homes.

But a health ministry response in parliament in December 2025 suggests the reach of home-based palliative care remains limited. Kerala, where community-based palliative care has evolved over decades, reported around 650,000 home visits in eight months to October 2025. Maharashtra recorded about 167,000 visits. In contrast, Uttar Pradesh reported about 42,500 visits across a fraction of its districts, while Bihar delivered services in only six districts.

UP and Bihar are also among India’s youngest states by population, but also being among the most populous, the care is not proportionate to needs.

Because these figures capture service delivery rather than need, they point to wide variation in access to home-based palliative care across states. By contrast, a 2024 nationally representative study found that 12.2% of Indians aged 60 and above have supportive or palliative care needs. The share rises to about 16% in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Community surveys suggest that roughly two in every 1,000 people require home-based palliative care. These estimates far exceed the reported service volumes.

When sustained care is unavailable at home, families often turn to hospitals. Parliamentary data from recent years show high outpatient attendance among older adults in several states. The data provide no information on the reasons for these visits.

Interpreting these patterns, clinicians working in palliative care say that high outpatient numbers do not necessarily indicate better access. Shanmugapriya P, regional facilitator (Kerala) of Pallium India Trust, said persistently high OPD use often reflects unmanaged symptoms and the absence of home-based support.

“In many cases, OPD visits substitute for home care because families have no alternative,” she said.

When care does not reach homes, the burden shifts to families.

Drawing on fieldwork and research on palliative care, Parth Sharma, a public health and palliative care researcher at the Association for Socially Applicable Research (ASAR), said home care is often understood narrowly as medical treatment, while the wider needs of patients and households remain unaddressed.

“In reality, families don’t just need medicines or physiotherapy,” Sharma said. “They need support for mental health, nutrition, schooling and livelihoods.”

Without structured support, he said, households managing life-limiting illness often make difficult trade-offs, including children dropping out of school, reduced spending on nutrition, delayed treatment for other family members and mounting debt, pushing families into long-term vulnerability.

Gaps on the ground

Sharma said the central issue is not the absence of policy, but gaps in implementation. “Services exist on paper,” he said. “Their implementation is lagging.”

Programmes such as the National Programme for Palliative Care and comprehensive primary healthcare under Ayushman Arogya Mandirs are intended to also support people with life-limiting illness. In practice, Sharma said, they face familiar constraints seen across the health system, including limited funding, shortages of trained workers and weak monitoring.

As a result, he said, families are often left to manage care on their own, absorbing costs and responsibilities that public services were meant to shoulder.

When care does not reach homes, formal social safety nets for older adults offer limited fallback.

Elderline (14567), a national toll-free helpline operational since October 2021, is intended to provide information and field intervention for older adults and caregivers. Parliamentary data suggest that its response capacity remains uneven.

As of November 30, 2025, Uttar Pradesh attended to about 4,190 of the 28,643 calls it received, while Punjab responded to fewer than 3,000 of nearly 18,000 calls. Smaller states recorded fewer calls but handled a larger share. Overall, states with the highest call volumes also show large gaps between calls received and calls attended, suggesting that capacity, rather than need, shapes access.

Government-assisted old age homes form another pillar of formal support, but their scale remains small, as we reported in the first part of this series.

IndiaSpend reached out to the social justice and empowerment ministry for comment on the Elderline call-handling capacity by state, gaps in responses, government old-age homes, beneficiaries, and any expansion plans. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Hidden costs

Private palliative care in India is largely delivered by non-profit trusts and small organisations, operating without mandatory national accreditation. Beyond hospital bills, families shoulder a range of financial burdens that remain largely invisible in official data.

Anuja Damani, additional professor of palliative medicine at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, and director of EPEC-India, said that the most significant costs are often indirect and poorly recognised.

“These include loss of income when a family member stops working to provide care, repeated travel to hospitals, accommodation near health facilities, and daily expenses such as food,” she said.

When formal services thin out, responsibility shifts to families, falling disproportionately on women, as IndiaSpend reported in June 2025. Caregiving frequently requires women to reduce paid work hours or exit the workforce altogether, clinicians said, resulting in income loss that often exceeds direct medical expenses.

Damani said caregiving-related costs often extend far beyond medical bills, with women frequently absorbing prolonged periods of unpaid care work that is neither reflected in health records nor covered by insurance, contributing to income loss, burnout and long-term financial vulnerability.

Out-of-pocket spending continues even when families are nominally insured, she added. For those attempting care at home, costs quickly accumulate for nursing support, physiotherapy, medical equipment and oxygen, services that are largely unregulated and almost entirely self-financed.

Public insurance schemes provide limited relief from these pressures. Damani said programmes such as Ayushman Bharat–PMJAY have improved access to inpatient care but offer minimal and inconsistent coverage for palliative and end-of-life care, particularly outpatient, home-based services.

Although palliative care is formally included under insurance, it is poorly defined and inadequately packaged, leading to wide variation in how hospitals interpret coverage. Core elements such as symptom control, counselling, advance care planning and caregiver support, are rarely reimbursed.

“There is a significant gap between policy intent and real financial protection,” Damani said. The lack of integration between insurance, primary care and community-based palliative services, she added, means families continue to bear most costs even when they are officially insured.

IndiaSpend reached out to the National Health Authority (NHA), the implementing body for Ayushman Bharat–PMJAY, for comment on coverage for palliative, outpatient, and home-based care under the scheme. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Even where home-based palliative care exists, providers and families operate under heavy strain. In parts of Kerala, nurses involved in home-based care said workloads often exceed sustainable limits, with some attending 20-26 patients in a day, often without reliable transport.

What else is possible

In settings where care is organised around homes and communities, and backed by policy and staffing, families are less isolated and ageing is more likely to unfold with dignity.

In Japan, government-backed community care systems combine medical treatment, home-visiting nursing and social support, enabling many older adults to remain at home rather than defaulting to hospitals or institutions.

India, too, offers limited but instructive examples. In Kerala, long-standing community palliative care networks, supported by local governments and volunteers, help ease the burden on families managing serious illness at home. “In some parts of the country, like Kerala, the community steps in to support the family,” said Parth Sharma, adding that in much of India, access to structured palliative care remains limited, shaping comfort and dignity at the end of life.

Sharma says India’s health system remains oriented towards hospitals rather than homes, while medical education continues to prioritise tertiary care over long-term, community-based support.

“If all healthcare continues to be delivered from hospitals,” he said, “a major proportion of the elderly will remain without access to care.”

Ayman Khan works in healthcare management in New Delhi, reporting on elder care and healthcare systems.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that India’s energy security had been “compromised” and attributed the situation to what he described as a “flawed foreign policy”, PTI reported.

Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, Gandhi said: “The basic issue is that gas is going to be a problem, petrol is going to be a problem, all fuel is going to be a problem because our energy security has been compromised.”

He asserted that the government must start preparations immediately, warning that without action “crores of people could suffer”.

VIDEO | Parliament session: Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on the reported fuel crisis says, “Normally there is a procedure where you can ask to speak. I had asked to be allowed to make a statement about the situation in the country regarding LPG, gas and oil. This… pic.twitter.com/u7T9FE8ngZ

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) March 12, 2026

During his brief remarks in the Lok Sabha later, Gandhi raised questions about the country’s energy security and asserted that a nation as large as India should be able to decide its relationships with oil and gas suppliers on its own.

He accused the government of “bartering” with India’s energy security and asked why the United States had been allowed “to decide who we buy oil from, who we buy gas from, and whether we can buy oil from Russia or not”.

Gandhi was referring to the US on March 5 granting India a 30-day waiver to accept Russian oil already on ships at sea.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri responded to Gandhi by saying that for the first time in recorded history, the Strait of Hormuz had been effectively closed to commercial shipping.

“India has to navigate through its consequences” despite not having any role in the conflict, he told the Lok Sabha.

Puri said that India had responded to the situation better than other countries in the neighbourhood.

The minister added that India’s crude oil supply position was secure and insisted that there was shortage of petrol, diesel, kerosene and aviation turbine fuel. “Retail outlets across the country are stocked and supply chains for these products are functioning normally,” he told Parliament.

The natural gas supply has been managed to prioritise allocation, he said, reiterating comments made by the ministry on Wednesday.

The domestic production of liquefied petroleum gas had increased by 28% in the last five days, Puri said in Parliament.

“Field reports indicate hoarding and panic booking at the distributor and retail level driven by consumer anxiety rather than any actual supply shortage,” he added.

The escalating tensions have raised fears of disruption to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterbody connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

The conflict has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

The waiver granted by Washington followed earlier tensions between the US and India over New Delhi’s purchases of Russian crude oil.

The Trump administration had in August imposed a punitive levy on India for buying oil from Russia amid the Ukraine war. This had taken the combined US tariff rate to 50%.

On February 7, Trump issued an executive order to remove the additional 25% punitive tariff on imports from India over New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil. This brought the effective US tariff rate on Indian imports to 18% after the interim trade deal was agreed to.

Assam Police warns against fuel shortage rumours

The Assam Police on Thursday warned that legal action will be taken against persons spreading rumours about shortages of liquefied petroleum gas and other petroleum products.

“Citizens are advised not to believe or forward such any misleading claims that may be spread by inimical elements to try and create confusion,” the police said.

Also read: Modi’s ‘capitulation certificate’: Congress on US saying it ‘permitted’ India to import Russian oil

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that India’s energy security had been compromised and attributed the situation to what he described as a “flawed foreign policy”. He said that the Union government must start preparations immediately, warning that without action “crores of people could suffer”.

Gandhi asserted that India must decide its relationships with oil and gas suppliers on its own and accused the government of “bartering” the country’s energy security. He asked why the United States had been allowed “to decide who we buy oil from, who we buy gas from, and whether we can buy oil from Russia or not”. Read on.

Two Kuki men who had been missing since Wednesday were found dead in Manipur’s Kamjong district. The bodies were found in a forested area of Thawai Kuki village.

The Kuki-dominated authority of Shangkai village alleged that the two men had been abducted by persons belonging to the Tangkhul Naga community. The village authority said that the public had stopped vehicles plying along the Ukhrul road “out of deep concern for the safety of the detained and missing villagers”.

Amid the tensions, several Tangkhul Naga persons travelling along the Ukhrul-Imphal route had been abducted allegedly by Kuki persons on Wednesday. They were released on Thursday morning. Read on.

The conflict in West Asia has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”, the International Energy Agency said. It said that oil producers in the Gulf had been forced to cut production by at least 10 million barrels per day. Of this, eight million barrels per day was crude oil and the remaining were petroleum products.

The slashing of production was attributed to the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterbody connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

Meanwhile, one Indian member of the crew onboard an oil tanker was killed in an attack near the Iraqi port city of Basra on Wednesday. The ship was sailing under the Marshall Islands flag. Read on.

The Indian rupee sank to a record low of 92.35 against the United States dollar amid concerns surrounding the West Asia conflict. It recovered marginally to end the session at 92.18.

The stock market continued to slide, with the Sensex and Nifty falling about 1%.

The price of benchmark Brent crude briefly touched the $100 per barrel-mark. It was about $72.8 per barrel on February 27, the day before the conflict started. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that parental income alone cannot be used to determine whether a candidate falls in the creamy layer of the Other Backward Classes category, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices PS Narasimha and R Mahadevan dismissed appeals filed by the Union government and upheld rulings of the Madras, Delhi and Kerala High Courts, The Indian Express reported.

The case involved candidates who had cleared the civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission but were denied Other Backward Classes benefits because their parents’ salaries exceeded the creamy layer income threshold. Many of the parents worked in public sector undertakings, banks or private organisations.

The creamy layer refers to the wealthier and more advanced members within a group that is eligible for affirmative action benefits.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that whether a person is part of the creamy layer must be determined primarily by the status and category of the posts held by the parents, not income alone.

Referring to the government’s 1993 office memorandum issued after the ruling in the Indira Sawhney versus Union of India case, the court noted that income from salary and agricultural sources was not meant to be clubbed with the income from other sources while applying the income or wealth test.

The bench said that interpreting the rules in a way that disadvantages one section of the same backward class without justification would amount to “equals being treated unequally,” Live Law reported.

It also held that relying only on a 2004 government clarification to treat salary income as the determining factor was “legally unsustainable”, according to the legal news portal.

The court dismissed the Union government’s appeals and directed the authorities to reconsider the candidates’ claims under the correct criteria within six months.

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday ordered that two security guards be deployed round-the-clock to protect a Muslim man who alleged that he and some others were stopped from offering namaz on his private property in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district.

The man, Haseen Khan, alleged that some people told him that his property in Mohammad Ganj village would be bulldozed if he did not make a statement in court as per their demands.

The court also recorded Khan’s statement that some police personnel allegedly made him place his thumb impression on a paper without explaining what was written on it.

On Wednesday, Khan urged the court to protect his family and property.

In response, a bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Siddharth Nandan directed that two armed guards be deployed to provide round-the-clock protection to Khan until further orders.

The bench added that any incident of violence against Khan or his property would be prima facie understood to have occurred “at the instance of the state”, though this would remain open to rebuttal.

On January 27, in an unrelated case, the Allahabad High Court held that no permission was needed for holding a religious prayer meeting on private property as long as the activity remains within private premises. The court had taken note of a statement by the Uttar Pradesh government that there was no such legal requirement.

Despite the court’s observations in the other matter, Khan alleged that he was picked up from his home and fined by the police for offering namaz, Live Law reported. A contempt petition was then filed before the High Court.

The court on Wednesday asked Additional Advocate General Anoop Trivedi whether officials had demanded that permission be sought for offering namaz on private property. To this, Trivedi said that all those present in the house, including the owner, were asked to seek permission.

The judges then directed District Magistrate Avinash Singh and Bareilly Senior Superintendent of Police Anurag Arya to remain present in court on the next hearing, which was scheduled for March 23.

The High Court had passed its January 27 order in response to petitions by Christian bodies Maranatha Full Gospel Ministries and Emmanuel Grace Charitable Trust. It had then noted that religious gatherings form part of the fundamental right guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution, which deals with the freedom of religion.