The Calcutta High Court on Thursday declined to grant interim relief in a petition challenging West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose’s decision to recognise expelled Trinamool Congress MLA Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of Opposition, Live Law reported.

Justice Krishna Rao directed all parties to file affidavits explaining their stands. The matter has been listed for further hearing on July 28, Bar and Bench reported.

The writ petition was filed by TMC leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, who argued that the speaker had ignored the party leadership’s decision to nominate him as leader of Opposition.

According to the petition, a meeting of Trinamool MLAs held on May 6 nominated Chattopadhyay for the post and the decision was communicated to the speaker.

The speaker subsequently sought a resolution and minutes of the meeting, after which additional documents were submitted following another meeting on May 19.

However, the speaker later recognised Ritabrata Banerjee as leader of Opposition on the basis of support claimed by a group of rebel Trinamool MLAs.

During the hearing, the court questioned why the speaker had not acted on the proposal submitted by the party leadership while accepting a subsequent representation from rebel legislators, Live Law reported.

The court observed that the central question was whether the speaker could ignore one proposal and recognise another without hearing all concerned parties.

Bose’s counsel defended the speaker’s decision, arguing that he was required to determine which claimant commanded the support of the majority of legislators belonging to the Opposition party.

The speaker’s counsel said 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs supported Ritabrata Banerjee and had personally appeared before him, and that the decision was based on numerical strength within the legislature party.

Ritabrata Banerjee’s lawyer argued that the leader of Opposition’s office was linked to the functioning of the Assembly, which would mean the speaker was entitled to assess which claimant enjoyed majority support.

It was also argued that the dispute concerned an internal disagreement within the party and not a split, which would attract the provisions of the anti-defection law under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, Live Law reported.

Appearing for Chattopadhyay, advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay argued that the speaker had wrongly treated the legislature party’s views as superior to those of the political party.

He contended that only the political party leadership could decide who would represent it as leader of Opposition.

After hearing the parties, the court said it did not find a prima facie case for granting interim relief and declined to stay the speaker’s decision pending further proceedings, Bar and Bench reported.

On June 3, Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that Bose had accepted the claim of 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs to be the main Opposition in the state.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the House.

TMC rift

Rebel TMC MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha, who have been expelled from the party, have alleged that 14 of the signatures were forged in documents submitted to Bose in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment.

On June 2, TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee sent a fresh letter to Bose, reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Chattopadhyay as leader of the Opposition.

A first information report was registered based on complaints filed by the expelled MLAs. The police are investigating Abhishek Banerjee, who signed the letter, in connection with the case.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also Read: Why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards

The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi retained its place as India’s top-ranked university in the 2027 QS World University Rankings released on Thursday.

The institute is ranked 118th globally, the highest for an Indian institution. IIT-Bombay was the first Indian institute to be ranked 118th in 2025.

Fifty-two Indian universities were featured in the global rankings. Of them, 26 improved their ranks, nine held their position, 15 fell and two entered the list for the first time.

Seven of India’s top 10 universities were the Indian Institutes of Technology, including the top five.

Eleven Indian universities were among the world’s top 100 for research impact or citations per faculty, a measure of the relative intensity and volume of research being done at an institute.

The Indian Institute of Science Bangalore ranked 21st globally for citations per faculty.

The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay ranked 32nd globally for employer reputation. The metric is derived from QS’ survey of more than 69,400 employers globally who identify the universities from where they most prefer to recruit.

The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi was ranked 39th for employer reputation.

‘Modest’ academic reputation

However, the rankings, which were launched in 2004, noted that the “academic reputation” scores of Indian universities remained “modest”. The indicator measures the reputation of the universities and their programmes by asking more than 1.2 lakh academics to nominate institutes based on their subject area of expertise.

The low levels of international faculty and students “suggest the system’s strengths are still under-recognised internationally,” it added.

Among the 52 universities ranked, academic reputation had improved among 8% of them. It had declined for 28% of the institutes.

India’s share of global research output had grown to about 5.5% of all Scopus-indexed papers. Scopus is a database of academic literature.

This places India third by volume behind China and the United States.

However, the QS World University Rankings noted that “volume alone does not move reputation scores”. What matters is whether that output is concentrated in high-impact journals and associated, in the minds of the international academic community, with specific Indian institutes by name, it said.

Improving on the academic reputation parameter requires “more deliberate international positioning: investment in scholarly communications, faculty-exchange programmes and a sustained presence at leading global conferences,” it added.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Eitan Gilboa was trekking along the “hummus trail”, like thousands of other Israelis who visit India every year, when he made one mistake: he posted photos online which showed where he was vacationing.

This was a break for the pro-Palestine activists who had been tracking the Israeli soldier. Gilboa’s post, which showed he was in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh, allowed the Hind Rajab Foundation to file a complaint with Indian authorities and demand his arrest.

The foundation is alleging that he committed war crimes in Gaza.

While demands to arrest Israeli soldiers deployed in the Gaza War have been made in other countries, this is the first time that it is happening in India. Scroll spoke to the lawyers and activists behind this campaign to understand how they went about putting together a case against Gilboa.

Though they argue that their complaint is legally sound, they did not expect the Indian government to act on it, given the warm ties between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

However, they hoped that their initiative would spark a debate on whether Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes should be allowed to vacation in India. The Hind Rajab Foundation even claimed that Gilboa left India soon after they went public with the complaint.

‘Pride in destruction’

The Hind Rajab Foundation takes its name from a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed with her family in 2024 after the Israel Defense Forces reportedly attacked their car in Gaza.

Volunteers from the Belgium-based foundation track the social media accounts of Israeli soldiers and their family members. Based on the information that they collect, they prepare dossiers detailing the war crimes that these soldiers allegedly committed during their time in Gaza and other Palestinian territories.

These dossiers then form the basis of the complaints that they file against Israeli soldiers when they visit a foreign country.

Since its inception in September 2024, over 1,000 Israel Defense Forces personnel have come on the foundation’s radar. It has filed nearly 100 complaints against Israeli soldiers in as many as 30 countries.

The Hind Rajab Foundation began tracking Eitan Gilboa soon after it started its operations, its litigation head Natacha Bracq told Scroll over a phone call. It has evidence to show that he was a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces till at least May 2025. Reservists are trained, part-time soldiers whose services can be enlisted by armies in times of war or other emergencies.

The foundation’s researchers first came across photos and videos of the destruction that Gilboa had allegedly caused in Gaza on the social media profile of his mother, Tamar. While it is common for Israelis to post photos and videos of the Gaza War, Bracq suggested that the Gilboas might have had a deeper reason to do so.

The family once lived in a settlement located in Gaza but had to vacate it when Israel withdrew from the coastal strip in 2005, she added. So, when young Eitan joined the Israel Defense Forces and was posted in Gaza, it was an emotional moment for them, according to her.

“They were eager to go back,” Bracq said. “His [Eitan’s] mother wrote a book about her time in Gaza. He took that book from place to place, taking pictures where they had lived before. It is very illustrative of the current political mindset of Israelis.”

What also helped the researchers was that his mother’s social media profile was public. “It was out in the open,” Bracq explained. “She was actually expressing pride in the destruction that he [Eitan] carried out in Gaza.”

Building the case

One of the videos that Gilboa’s mother is purported to have posted online in January 2024 shows him and other Israeli soldiers cheering an explosion in Khan Younis, a city in south Gaza. “Eitan shows them what the IDF is,” she allegedly wrote in the caption, according to the foundation.

Another video from July 2024 purportedly captures Gilboa himself triggering an explosion that detonated an entire residential block in Gaza. The foundation claims that the acts of destruction recorded in some of these videos were dedicated to a slain Israeli soldier, which shows that there was no military justification for them other than retribution. Neither Eitan Gilboa nor his mother could be reached for comment.

The videos were submitted to the Indian government as part of the complaint last month. Pooja, a 31-year-old lawyer from India who requested not to be identified by her real name, played a key role in the process.

The Hind Rajab Foundation had not filed a complaint with authorities in New Delhi before this. When Pooja first met someone from the organisation at an event in Amsterdam back in March, she had walked up to them and asked why that was the case despite India being a well-known vacation destination for Israeli soldiers. She was aware of the foundation’s work and offered to help them navigate the legal system in India if needed.

Within days, she and the legal team at the foundation were on calls, discussing ways to identify Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes currently in India. And in May, she finally got a lead worth chasing. The researchers had found a video that Gilboa posted from Himachal Pradesh. But there was a problem.

“We could not really tell exactly where in Himachal Pradesh he was,” Pooja said, adding that they needed his precise location in order to file a complaint at a local police station. “I watched the clip many times.”

Eventually, she was able to decipher the name of a guesthouse from its signboard. That got her searching for all such establishments in Himachal Pradesh that have the same name. “I sat and worked on Google Maps,” she recalled. “Finally, I found it in Gondhla village.”

In the video, Pooja had also spotted a bank next to the guesthouse. She matched it with the street-view visuals for Gondhla village available on Google Maps for confirmation. “And that is how we decided to go to the Himachal Pradesh police,” she added.

The Indian hurdle

In its email complaint to the Himachal Pradesh Police, the Hind Rajab Foundation has invoked the Geneva Conventions Act, a law passed by India’s Parliament in 1960. This act gives domestic effect to New Delhi’s obligations under the four Geneva Conventions, which govern the wartime conduct of governments all over the world. India had ratified these conventions in 1950, soon after its independence.

In addition to the complaint, the foundation has written to the Bureau of Immigration, which comes under the Ministry of Home Affairs, asking it to deport Eitan Gilboa by using its powers under the Immigration and Foreigners Act of 2025.

While the Modi government has yet to comment on the issue, Pooja, the lawyer, contended that there is little by way of precedence in Indian law for something like this. The International Criminal Court also cannot intervene in the matter because New Delhi is not a party to the Rome Statute, under which the court was established.

Asked about their legal strategy, Pooja likened it to throwing darts on a board and seeing what sticks. She wanted India to follow in the footsteps of countries that have acted on similar complaints, such as Canada and Brazil. However, she acknowledged that there was no “political will” for that in India, given the friendly relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

In fact, India is a rare country that has significantly expanded the scope of its relationship with Israel in recent years, in spite of the genocide in Gaza. Between 2020 and 2024, it emerged as the largest buyer of Israeli weapons.

Politically, New Delhi is more closely aligned with Tel Aviv than ever before. At the United Nations, India has repeatedly abstained from voting on resolutions seen to be censuring Israel. In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited that country and praised its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, just days before he declared war on Iran. Netanyahu, in turn, has brought up the “absolutely crazy support” that Israel enjoys in India.

Holiday cut short?

In Canada, a complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation led to the revocation of an Israeli reservist’s visa. One of the foundation’s complaints about Israeli soldiers waving military flags at a music festival in Belgium had even reached the International Criminal Court.

India has long been a favoured destination of Israeli revellers, many of whom visit the country after completing compulsory military service. The latest data released by the Ministry of Tourism shows that 47,465 Israelis visited India in 2024. Moreover, these were substantial stays: each of them spent 24 days in the country on average.

They Knew. Everyone Knew.

For years Kasol’s Forests became Open-air Rave & Drug Zones for ISRAELI TOURISTS While Netas & Police Played "We Had No Idea Why It’s Famous."

Finally the Himachal High Court had to Step In.

Ordered Immediate Spot Inspection + Personal Affidavits from… pic.twitter.com/GLc9FMBnwv

— তন্ময় l T͞anmoy l (@tanmoyofc) June 14, 2026

Pooja hoped that the complaint she had helped the Hind Rajab Foundation file would push the Indian government to vet the Israeli soldiers who vacation in India.

“I don’t want them to feel a sense of impunity and I don’t want India to be a safe haven [for them],” she added. “I want them to feel chased and hunted in the same way that they hunt. I want them to not come to my country. I want them to leave.”

Her wish may have come true with Gilboa. Without offering more details, Bracq from the Hind Rajab Foundation claimed that the soldier had likely left India after their complaint. In several other countries, the Israeli embassy had intervened to get soldiers out soon after the foundation filed complaints against them, she said.

Scroll was unable to confirm this information independently. Questions sent to a spokesperson of the Israeli embassy in New Delhi did not elicit a response.

“The Israelis have been very annoyed by our activities,” Bracq continued. “They know that we have evidence of the crimes that their soldiers have committed. They even told their soldiers to stop posting their crimes on social media. But it is too late.”

Trinamool Congress leader Aroop Biswas on June 12 wrote to HDFC Bank seeking a freeze on the party’s account, citing uncertainty surrounding the authority and control of the organisation’s affairs and assets, NDTV reported on Thursday.

In the letter, Biswas identified himself as the party’s treasurer and said he was acting in that capacity.

However, unidentified persons in the party told NDTV that Biswas was removed as treasurer on June 5 after he lost the Tollygunj seat, a party stronghold, to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly election.

He was replaced by Subhashish Chakravarty.

Biswas was reported as having written in the letter: “At present rival groups are claiming to be the legitimate representatives and office bearers of AITC, resulting in uncertainty regarding the authority of persons who may seek to operate the bank accounts maintained in the name of AITC.”

Further, Biswas expressed concern that signed cheques already in circulation or held by people whose authority was under dispute could be misused, according to NDTV.

He requested the bank to maintain the status quo and stop debit transactions or changes to the account’s operational mandates until the dispute was resolved.

#TMC leader #ArupBiswas writes to #HDFC to freeze party account citing internal turmoil.

On June 5, Arup Biswas was removed as the Treasurer. The letter to HDFC branch manager was written on June 12.

While he has been evading questioning in the #MessiTour probe. pic.twitter.com/zuPHbxvq1Y

— Sreyashi Dey (@SreyashiDey) June 18, 2026

In December, Biswas stepped down as West Bengal’s sports minister after alleged mismanagement during footballer Lionel Messi’s visit to Kolkata led to chaos at Salt Lake Stadium.

The June 12 letter came amid internal divisions in the TMC following its defeat in the West Bengal Assembly election.

On May 4, the BJP defeated the TMC in the state polls, ending the party’s 15-year rule in West Bengal.

On Sunday, TMC leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said that 20 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs will merge with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party and back the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lower House of Parliament.

Three of the TMC’s Rajya Sabha MPs resigned last week, and two of them quit the party.

At the state level, expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that a group of at least 58 of TMC’s 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly. The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting another legislator as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday told the Union government to respond to a petition filed by messaging platform Telegram challenging the decision to restrict access to its services in India until June 22, ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination, The Hindu reported.

Justice Tejas Karia directed the government to file its response by Thursday and listed the matter for further hearing at 2.30 pm.

The court asked the government about the extent of the alleged illegal activity on the platform, noting that any digital service could be misused.

The judge, however, refrained from granting any interim relief to Telegram, Live Law reported.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Tuesday restricted access to Telegram till June 22, the day after the re-examination of the entrance test for medical college admissions concludes.

The ministry also directed the platform, under the Information Technology Rules, to disable its message-editing feature till June 30. The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, alleged that the feature was used “to fabricate after-the-event ‘paper leak’ evidence”.

A separate direction also requires Telegram to disable the editing of previously sent messages until June 30.

The NEET-UG exam was conducted on May 3, but was cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.

On Wednesday, the messaging platform approached the High Court

During the hearing on Wednesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said the authorities had repeatedly raised concerns with Telegram about alleged misuse of the application, but the platform failed to take any measures to prevent it.

He said several channels were allegedly being used to offer leaked examination questions in exchange for money and that examples had been shared with the company, The Hindu reported.

“If you give me time till tomorrow morning at 8 am,” Mehta told the court. “I will place shocking things before the court.”

Telegram’s counsel challenged the blocking order, arguing that it was discriminatory because other social media intermediaries continued to operate without similar restrictions. He further said the company had cooperated with the authorities and removed content identified by government agencies.

“We have removed all the contents that you have pointed out and that we found objectionable too,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

The NEET case

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the May 3 test. However, the exam was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union education ministry. It has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.

The Opposition and the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical political campaign, has been demanding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation for the alleged mismanagement in holding competitive exams.

The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A man was killed on Tuesday during an alleged gunfight with the Assam Rifles and the Army in Manipur’s Churachandpur district, the state police said, describing him as a “suspected militant”

However, local residents alleged he was a civilian, identified as Lenminsang Haokip.

According to a statement issued by Manipur Police, the gunfight took place on Tuesday between Molphei and Songkong villages during an operation against suspected militants.

“During the encounter, one suspected militant was killed,” the statement added. “One AK-47 rifle, along with magazines, ammunition, explosives, and other incriminating items, was recovered from the spot.”

The police further said that a case had been registered and that further investigation was underway.

However, the Songkong Village Authority disputed the official version of events and condemned the “brutal and inhumane attack carried out by the Indian Army on our village".

It accused the Army of acting with “complete disregard for the safety of women and children” and using drones and bombs to attack the village.

The village authority said Haokip was an “innocent civilian” who was killed during an “unprovoked assault”. It further alleged that after his death, his clothes were changed into military fatigues and his body was taken away.

“To this hour there is no trace of his mortal remains,” the statement issued on Wednesday said.

Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Letzamang Haokip also condemned the killing “at the hands of those entrusted with his protection” and called for an independent inquiry into the incident.

He said witnesses had alleged that after Haokip was shot, his clothes were removed and his body was taken away by the joint security forces.

He added that there were allegations that attempts were later made to portray the incident as the result of a gunfight with security personnel.

The legislator said that if the allegations were found to be true, they would constitute a “grave abuse of authority and a serious violation of the rule of law”.

He demanded the prompt recovery and handover of the body to the family, and called for strict action against anyone found to have concealed facts, tampered with evidence or misrepresented the circumstances surrounding the death.

Ethnic clashes had broken out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in Manipur in May 2023. According to official estimates in April 2025, the violence has left at least 260 people dead. The conflict has seen periodic spikes in violence in 2024 and 2025.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that seafarers have a “rough profession” when asked if he had a message of condolence for the families of three Indian sailors who were killed in US military strikes on commercial ships in West Asia last week.

“This has been happening throughout time,” Trump said at a press briefing during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “We love all of those people.”

The comment came a week after three Indians were killed and dozens evacuated when the US military repeatedly struck commercial ships in West Asia for allegedly violating sanctions and the blockade amid the conflict in the region. New Delhi had at the time twice summoned US’ chargé d’affaires to register a protest.

At the meeting on Wednesday, Modi told Trump that the safety of Indian seafarers was of “utmost importance” to the country.

#WATCH | Evian, France | On 3 Indian seafarers killed in an attack near the Strait of Hormuz, US President Donald Trump says, "I heard about that, it's a rough profession and we work together on it. This has been happening throughout time but we work together..."

(Video:… pic.twitter.com/2J4ME7FSuA

— ANI (@ANI) June 17, 2026

He congratulated the US president for the “progress made to restore peace” in West Asia. The Strait of Hormuz remaining open is crucial for the global economy, the prime minister told Trump.

Since the conflict began, the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, has effectively been blocked for most international commercial vessels, triggering a global energy crisis.

“Lakhs of Indian seafarers are performing their duties across global maritime trade routes, including the Strait of Hormuz, and their safety is of utmost importance to us,” Modi said.

Modi told Trump that he “was confident that the issue of seafarers will receive the highest priority” during the implementation of the US’ peace agreement with Iran.

Trump said that “a lot of things were happening” between the US and India, including a trade deal.

He also said that the US will help India if it was attacked, adding that the defence relations between New Delhi and Washington “were great”.

“Without having a contract – we don’t have a contract – but if they were attacked, we would be there to help them...” Trump said. “If anybody attacks that man [Modi], we’re going to be...If there’s a new leader, I don’t know about that.”

While answering a reporter’s question about the war in Ukraine, Trump repeated his claim that he had ended eight conflicts. Trump has previously, on several occasions, counted the India-Pakistan conflict of May 2025 as one of the wars he had mediated an end to. New Delhi has repeatedly rejected Trump’s claims.

#WATCH | Evian, France | On India-US defence relations, US President Donald Trump says, "I think it is a great relationship...If they were attacked, we would be there to help them...If anybody attacks that man, we are going to be there...If they are attacked and he (PM Modi) is… pic.twitter.com/45pjpLY39e

— ANI (@ANI) June 17, 2026

Modi and Trump met at the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in France. India is an invitee at the event.

This was the first bilateral meeting between the two leaders since February 2025, when Modi had visited Washington.

Strained ties

The meeting also came as the trade deal between India and the US hangs in balance.

After an interim bilateral trade deal was agreed on February 2, US tariffs on India goods would have been reduced to 18% from a combined rate of 50%. The earlier rate of 50% had included a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

However, negotiations on the final deal were postponed after the US Supreme Court on February 20 struck down Trump’s global tariffs, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.

In response, Trump imposed a temporary 10% tariff on goods imported into the US, citing his authority under the 1974 Trade Act. The new tariff rate is for a maximum of 150 days, unless the US Congress approves an extension.

On February 21, the US president said that he was increasing the tariffs to the “fully allowed, and legally tested” level of 15% from 10% with immediate effect. However, it is unclear as to when the increased tariff rate would take effect.

This has left the status of US’ trade deals with countries, including India, unclear.

On June 4, Trump said that the two sides would soon reach the trade agreement, while claiming that New Delhi had for years “taken advantage” of Washington but the relationship had been reversed.

The diplomatic relations between India and the US have been frosty for more than a year.

On July 30, Trump had described India as among “dead economies”. In September, after Modi travelled to China for a multilateral summit for the first time in seven years, Trump remarked that India appeared to have been “lost to deepest, darkest China”.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Three injured Kuki men were moved from the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal shortly after midnight on Wednesday under heavy security, following two days of protests against their admission to the hospital, ANI reported.

The three men were shifted to the district hospital in Kuki-Zo-majority Churachandpur district, a police officer told Scroll.

The three men were injured in a firing incident in the Kangpokpi district on Monday and were brought to the hospital for treatment by security personnel.

However, their presence at the hospital sparked protests by members of the Meitei and Naga communities, who alleged that the injured men were “militants” and demanded that they be removed from the facility.

As tensions escalated on Tuesday evening, large crowds gathered outside the hospital, shouting slogans and attempting to enter the premises.

Security personnel initially tried to control the situation, but later fired tear gas shells to disperse protesters after some allegedly attempted to storm the hospital grounds and throw stones at security forces.

The injured were identified as Genlenmang Vaiphei, 18, Lunliandaw Vaiphei, 20 and Paogou Lal, 18. One of them is reported to be a footballer who has played for Mohun Bagan.

The clash in which they were injured took place near the border between Leilon Vaiphei, a Kuki-majority village, and Konsakhul, a Naga-majority village, in the Kangpokpi district.

The developments came amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7 after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes. At least 25 persons from the two communities have been killed since tensions erupted.

The fresh violence came after the bodies of six men from the Naga community, who had been abducted by a Kuki armed group on May 13, were recovered on June 10. The police said that an investigation into the deaths was underway.

On May 13, at least 48 civilians from the Kuki and Naga communities were taken hostage by armed groups in the state’s Kangpokpi and Senapati districts.

The abductions had taken place after three church leaders were killed and five others injured when the vehicles they were travelling in were ambushed while they were returning from a meeting in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi. Another civilian was also killed and his wife wounded in Noney district.

On May 15, the police said that 28 of the persons who had been abducted were released.

On June 9, the United Naga Council said that 14 Kuki hostages had been released on “humanitarian grounds”.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A new nationwide study mapping jungle cats’ distribution and estimating their population at a national scale finds that India has the potential to support more than 300,000 jungle cats. “We didn’t know much about jungle cats – their habitat associations, population status, interactions with tigers and leopards, or their role in illegal wildlife trade until this study,” says Kathan Bandyopadhyay, the study’s lead author.

Drawing on more than 6,000 verified records, researchers mapped suitable habitat for jungle cats (Felis chaus) across India, largely using data from tiger surveys. The study has been published in Scientific Reports.

The study found that jungle cats prefer warm, semi-arid regions with moderate rainfall and some human presence. Roughly 545,000 square kilometres of suitable habitat has also been identified. States such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat are likely to support large populations.

Senior principal scientist at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Shomita Mukherjee notes, “Most researchers would not put in this kind of effort for a relatively common and small species.”

A cat in the scrub and grass

Jungle cats favour open habitats such as grasslands, scrublands, wetlands, and agricultural mosaics, while avoiding dense forests and urban areas. Their long legs and lean bodies help them move through tall grass, and their colouring blends into dry terrain. “The morphological features of the jungle cat clearly indicate that it is a scrub-dwelling cat,” Mukherjee says, though the species is often described as a generalist in their habitat preference.

Estimating their numbers is challenging since, unlike tigers, jungle cats do not have unique markings that make them easily identifiable. Researchers used data from GPS-collared animals to estimate space use and combined it with habitat maps to arrive at a population estimate of about 308,000 individuals, though with wide uncertainty. “This is the first time we’ve attempted this. It’s something we need to revisit in 15-20 years to assess population trends,” Bandyopadhyay says. Mukherjee, however, cautions that the reliance on tiger survey data may miss some habitats. “Models are only as good as the data behind them,” she says.

A 2025 government report analysing data from camera trap images across different locations in 18 states from 2018-2019 and 2022-2023 found jungle cats to be the most widely distributed small cat species, occupying about 96,275 square kilometres.

The species is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List, a status that has contributed to the perception that they are safe and thriving. In India, they are protected under Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, recognising their vulnerability to localised threats.

Expanding roads and railways cut through habitats, and cats moving between agricultural patches are often killed by vehicles. Much of their habitat is officially labelled as “wasteland,” making them vulnerable to conversion. Bandyopadhyay explains, “These habitats are under immediate threat from conversion into agricultural land or for green energy projects.”

Jungle cats often live alongside people, especially in farms and grazing areas where rodents are plentiful, but they tend to avoid dense urbanisation and heavy infrastructure. Living close to people, however, brings them into contact with domestic animals. “Stray dogs act as invasive predators by stealing their prey, killing them, and transmitting diseases,” says Bandyopadhyay. Mukherjee adds: “Many jungle cat kittens are ‘rescued’ from crop fields each year, but people often don’t know how to care for them,” potentially reducing survival rates.

The study also identifies hybridisation with domestic cats as a potential concern. However, Mukherjee says that there is no documented evidence of natural hybridisation, adding that raising it as a threat without data is premature, though it cannot be ruled out. Bandyopadhyay agrees that genetic study and more research are needed to confirm these possibilities.

Living in the shade of big cats

For now, the jungle cat is benefiting from certain landscape-level conservation efforts. Wildlife corridors created for tigers are utilised by jungle cats. Conservation projects such as Project Cheetah, which aim to conserve neglected landscapes such as grasslands, also have the potential to benefit small wild cats that use these habitats, according to Bandyopadhyay.

Mukherjee argues conservation policy must reflect this. “Their value lies in a balance with human use. If managed like forests, grasslands may become wooded, and species like the jungle cat could lose out.”

Small carnivores play important ecological roles, yet they do not attract enough attention from scientific community and conservation planners. Jungle cats help control rodent populations in agricultural areas, underscoring the importance of factoring them in while building conservation strategies, as per co-author John Koprowski.

For Bandyopadhyay, the next steps are clear: “We need deeper insights into their movements, susceptibility to diseases, and interactions with other small cats, especially in human-dominated landscapes.” As land-use patterns shift, jungle cats may serve as quiet indicators of ecological change.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut alleged that his party’s MPs were being offered Rs 15 crore each to join the rival faction led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Raut had initially said that reports of a breakaway group were “a lie” and stated that all MPs had recently “expressed faith” in party chief Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership.

However, Raut later alleged on social media that attempts were being made to induce MPs to switch sides. He claimed that the MPs were being offered Rs 50 crore to join rival parties, with Rs 15 crore being the “advance” payment.

Separately, Uddhav Sena MP Arvind Sawant wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla urging him not to entertain any claims seeking recognition of a separate group or merger involving MPs elected on the party’s symbol. Read on.

The United States government announced that its military’s US Indo-Pacific Command will revert to its original name, the Pacific Command. The move restores the name under which the organisational unit operated for more than seven decades.

The Department of War said that the move was intended to honour the command’s historical identity and legacy. The decision reversed a change introduced in 2018, when the US government, during Donald Trump’s first term as the president, renamed the unit as the Indo-Pacific Command.

Washington had at the time cited the growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region and its increasing integration with the security situation in the Pacific Ocean. Read on.

Messaging platform Telegram challenged before the Delhi High Court the Union government’s decision to ban it in India till the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for seats in medical colleges is held. The court agreed to hear the matter.

The counsel for the platform told the bench that more than 150 million users have been affected by the blocking order. Telegram also argued that the government had singled it out, violating Article 14 of the Constitution that guarantees the right to equality. Read on.

Three injured Kuki men were moved from the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal shortly after midnight under heavy security. This came after two days of protests against their admission to the hospital. The authorities have not disclosed where the three men were taken.

The men had been injured in a firing incident in the Kangpokpi district on Monday and were brought to the hospital for treatment by security personnel. Their presence at the hospital had sparked protests by members of the Meitei and Naga communities, who alleged that the injured men were militants.

As tensions escalated on Tuesday evening, a large crowd gathered outside the hospital, shouting slogans and attempting to enter the premises. Security personnel fired tear gas shells to disperse the protesters. Read on.

Comedian Pranit More and audience member Himanshu Jangra were booked by the Gurugram Police for allegedly objectionable content posted online from a comedy show recorded in Haryana. More and Jangra had been booked by the Maharashtra Police in the matter on June 11.

The cases were filed after a video was widely shared online in which Jangra expressed entitlement to physical intimacy in return for spending Rs 370 for a biryani on a date with a woman. He had also claimed to have pressured the woman to accompany him to a “dark” park despite her repeated reluctance.

Jangra was part of the audience in an episode of the comedy show hosted by More. Video clips of the episode had been widely shared and criticised on social media. Read on.

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Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut on Tuesday alleged that MPs were being offered at least Rs 15 crore each to switch sides and join the rival Shiv Sena faction led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The Rajya Sabha MP had initially said that reports of a breakaway group were “a lie” and stated that all MPs had recently “expressed faith” in party chief Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership, ANI reported.

Later, however, Raut alleged on social media that attempts were being made to induce MPs to switch sides.

He claimed that MPs were being offered Rs 50 crore to join rival parties, with Rs 15 crore being the “advance” payment.

On Wednesday, Raut also alleged that MP Om Raje Nimbalkar had been told that if he wanted a favourable verdict in a murder case in which his father is facing trial in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, he would have to switch political sides, ABP Majha reported.

However, on Wednesday, Nimbalkar and another MP, Rajabhau Waje said that they had not been offered any money to defect to the Shinde Sena, The Indian Express reported.

Waje said that he would always stay with Thackeray: “I was with Uddhav ji yesterday, and I will remain with him tomorrow as well.”

Nimbalkar also denied any knowledge about such an offer of money.

“The common man knows how I have struggled in life and how I have come up,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “So, they will not believe such speculation.”

Meanwhile, Uddhav Sena MP Arvind Sawant on Tuesday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, urging him not to entertain any unauthorised claims seeking recognition of a separate group or merger involving MPs elected on the party’s symbol.

Apna Sapna Money Money!
No no — Mahua ji,the Minimum Support Price is fixed at ₹50 crore per MP.(पचास खोके)
₹15 crore is just the advance.
Frankly, these people aren’t even worth ₹50,000.
Their price has only gone up because of the Shiv Sena and TMC brand label. https://t.co/Srzjgg4DkX

— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) June 17, 2026

In the letter, sent on the instructions of party chief Uddhav Thackeray, Sawant said media reports suggested that some MPs elected on the Uddhav Sena symbol had either approached or were considering approaching the Lok Sabha speaker’s office seeking recognition as a separate group or a merger with another political party in the Lok Sabha.

The Lok Sabha MP urged Birla not to entertain any such claim.

Sawant said that the Uddhav Sena remained a “single political party” in the eyes of the law and argued that the parliamentary party was “represented in the House through its duly authorised leader and whip, and that no separate recognition, status, privilege or facility be accorded to any purported faction or breakaway group claiming to represent the party”.

He stated that the constitutional framework did not allow for “multiple competing formations claiming to represent the same political party” within Parliament.

Citing a 2023 Supreme Court judgment, Sawant argued that the constitutional recognition previously given to a “split” no longer existed following the 2003 amendment to the Tenth Schedule.

“The constitutional framework therefore does not recognise the creation of splinter groups within a political party as a legitimate basis for separate existence in the legislature,” he said.

He said the judgment affirmed the primacy of the political party over the legislature party and that any claim to function independently of the party would be inconsistent with constitutional principles.

He further argued that a merger under Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule required both a merger of the original political party and the support of at least two-thirds of the members of the legislature party.

“The two requirements operate conjunctively and not disjunctively,” Sawant stated. “Public reports appear to proceed on the erroneous assumption that the numerical requirement alone is sufficient.”

He asserted there had been no merger of Uddhav Sena with any other political party and requested that no separate recognition, status, privilege or facility be granted to any purported faction claiming to represent the party.

Sawant also asked the speaker that no decision be taken on any such request without first allowing Uddhav Sena to present its submissions.

Earlier today, following the instructions of our Hon'ble Party President Shri Uddhav Thackeray Saheb I have written to the Honourable Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Shri Om Birla ji: pic.twitter.com/mR55DbHYvx

— Arvind Sawant (@AGSawant) June 16, 2026

The developments come amid growing speculation that several MPs from the party may join Shinde Sena, The Indian Express reported.

Several Uddhav Sena MPs arrived in Delhi on Tuesday, while Eknath Shinde travelled to the national capital later the same night, according to the newspaper.

Shinde Sena leader Shaina NC rejected suggestions that the party was attempting to engineer defections, saying it had “no interest in breaking any party”, ANI reported.

However, her party colleague, MLC Krupal Tumane said discussions with seven Uddhav Sena MPs were at an advanced stage and claimed they were likely to join the Shinde faction before the forthcoming monsoon session of Parliament, the news agency reported.

The Shiv Sena had split in June 2022 after then-Chief Minister Eknath Shinde claimed the support of 39 out of the Shiv Sena’s 55 MLAs, in addition to 10 independent MLAs, and rebelled against Thackeray’s Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition.

Shinde went on to dislodge the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government, becoming chief minister with the support of Bharatiya Janata Party for about two years and five months.

Both factions have since then contested who represents the real Shiv Sena.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

• Explained: How the Election Commission recognised Eknath Shinde’s faction as the real Shiv Sena

Messaging platform Telegram on Wednesday challenged before the Delhi High Court the Union government’s decision to ban it in India till the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test is held, Bar and Bench reported.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology restricted access to Telegram till June 22, a day after the re-examination of the entrance test for medical college admissions concludes.

The ministry also directed the platform, under the Information Technology Rules, to disable its message-editing feature till June 30. The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, alleged that the feature was used “to fabricate after-the-event ‘paper leak’ evidence”.

The exam was conducted on May 3, but was cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.

Violates right to equality, says Telegram

The court agreed to hear the matter. The counsel for the platform told the bench that more than 150 million users have been affected by the blocking order, Live Law reported.

Telegram argued that the Union government had singled the platform, violating Article 14 of the Constitution that guarantees the right to equality.

The government’s decision is based on an “impermissible premise that misuse by a subset of users justifies blocking of an entire platform”, the company contended.

“Such an approach, if upheld, would enable indiscriminate suspension of digital platforms, severely undermining constitutional protections of free speech and access to information,” Bar and Bench quoted the plea as having argued.

Telegram submitted that it had held several meetings with government agencies since May, when the test was cancelled, and provided responses outlining the measures it had taken. It said that it had taken down more than 900 links related to the competitive exam.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on Tuesday that the government order was punishing ordinary users and “not the insiders who leaked” the exam papers.

“And the ban hasn’t stopped anything,” Durov said on social media. “The leaks just moved to other apps.”

Banning the platform, even temporarily, was “a mistake”, he added.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that the Narendra Modi government’s decision to ban the application was like “locking the victim’s door instead of catching the thief”.

“Millions of students have been studying on Telegram for years – notes, test series, discussions, preparation,” Gandhi said on social media. “How does snatching that facility become the solution to paper leaks?”

The Congress leader said that the ban was not foolproof and that it was known by “every student in the country” and the “paper leak mafia”.

He asked if similar messaging platform WhatsApp would be banned next. “Modi ji – drop the theatrics. Strike at the mafia, not the students,” he added.

The NEET case

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the May 3 test. However, the exam was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union education ministry. It has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.

The Opposition and the Cockroach Janta Party, a political campaign, has been demanding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation for the alleged mismanagement in holding competitive exams.

The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The United States government on Tuesday announced that its military’s US Indo-Pacific Command will revert to its original name, the US Pacific Command.

The move restores the name under which the military command operated for over seven decades.

The decision by the Department of War reversed a change introduced in 2018, when the US government, during Donald Trump’s first term as the president, had renamed the command as the Indo-Pacific Command.

Washington had at the time cited the growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region and its increasing integration with the security situation in the Pacific Ocean.

On Tuesday, the Department of War said that the restoration of the name was intended to honour the command’s historical identity and legacy. It noted that the command was established by former US President Harry Truman on January 1, 1947.

“The command operated under the USPACOM banner for over 70 years, standing as the oldest and largest of the United States' unified combatant commands,” the department said.

U.S. Pacific Command…is back. pic.twitter.com/wDaDzbLJ81

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) June 17, 2026

The department said that the command’s areas of responsibility – spanning the waters of the US West Coast to India’s western border – remains the same.

In India, the Congress said that when the military command was renamed in 2018, the Union government had described it as a victory and “beat the drum of [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi becoming the vishwaguru”.

“Now that the United States has changed the name of this region, there’s pin-drop silence,'“ the Opposition party said. “Not a single word is being said by the Modi government.”

The Congress alleged that Modi was “completely compromised, unable to utter a word in front of Trump” and that the “country is paying the price for this”.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor questioned whether the development amounts to “one more nail in the coffin” of the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, that comprises India, the US, Japan and Australia.

One more nail in the coffin of the Quad? https://t.co/7QauDO0a3s

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 17, 2026

In a similar vein, defence analyst Pravin Sawhney described the decision as “extremely significant”, and said it indicated that the US had “no geopolitical use” for India in the Asia-Pacific region. “Moreover, in the so-called India’s backyard [South Asia], China and Pakistan will now have geopolitical, geoeconomic & military sway,” he remarked on social media.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Comedian Pranit More and audience member Himanshu Jangra were booked by the Gurugram Police for allegedly objectionable content posted online from a comedy show recorded in Haryana, The Indian Express reported.

A case has been registered against the two for allegedly publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form, making statements conducing to public mischief and sexual harassment by making sexually-coloured remarks, the newspaper reported. The police also sent requests to social media platforms to remove the content.

More and Jangra were also booked by the Maharashtra Police in the matter on June 11.

The cases were filed after a video was widely shared online in which Jangra expressed entitlement to physical intimacy in return for spending Rs 370 for a biryani on a date with a woman. He had also claimed to have pressured the woman to accompany him to a “dark” park despite her repeated reluctance.

Jangra was part of the audience in an episode of a comedy show hosted by More. Video clips of the episode had been widely shared on social media.

The views expressed on the show had led to criticism online.

Jangra had been sacked from his job after the video of his comments was widely shared online.

On June 11, the National Commission for Women had taken cognisance of the matter and directed the Haryana Police chief to take action in the matter for “remarks allegedly glorifying sexual coercion”. More and Jangra were summoned by the panel on June 22.

The panel said that it was concerned about the content of the video and the “manner in which the alleged conduct was trivialised and presented as entertainment before a public audience”.

On Saturday, More issued an apology. He said that he had gotten carried away during the live recording and deserved the backlash he had received.

Jangra also apologised for his comments on Sunday. He said that parts of the story he had narrated were “improvised” for entertainment. “I did not have any such intention or mindset,” he added.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Mumbai hospital sends student Sejal Pawar on forced 15-day leave over cadaver remarks on comedy show

Ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections for two seats in Jharkhand, MLAs from the state’s Opposition National Democratic Alliance were moved to a hotel in Ranchi, while legislators from the ruling INDIA bloc participated in training exercises and a mock poll at Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s residence on Tuesday, PTI reported.

The election on Thursday will be contested by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha candidate Baidyanath Ram, Congress nominee Pranav Jha and Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Independent candidate Parimal Nathwani.

A candidate requires at least 28 first-preference votes to win.

The INDIA bloc has 56 MLAs, including 34 from the JMM, 16 from the Congress, four from the Rashtriya Janata Dal and two from Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation. The Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha has one MLA.

The BJP-led NDA has 24 MLAs in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, comprising 21 BJP legislators and one each from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), All Jharkhand Students Union Party and Janata Dal (United).

Thus, the NDA does not currently have the numbers to secure Nathwani’s election without support from outside the alliance or cross-voting.

“All the MLAs have been called here for the training purpose,” The Hindu quoted BJP MLA from Barkagaon Roshan Lal Choudhary as saying. “We will stay here for two days and will directly go to the Assembly for the voting on June 18.”

Leader of Opposition Babulal Marandi said the alliance would hold meetings, while BJP chief whip Naveen Jaiswal said a series of discussions and training sessions had been planned, particularly for newly elected MLAs.

“There are several new MLAs,” PTI quoted Jaiswal as saying. “So, a training programme has also been arranged where they would impart training regarding the poll exercise.”

Meanwhile, the INDIA bloc held a meeting at the chief minister’s residence, where legislators were briefed on the voting process, according to PTI.

Congress leader and state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Radhakrishna Kishore said a mock poll was conducted as part of the training exercise.

According to Kishore, the JMM received 29 votes and the Congress nominee received 27 votes in the mock ballot.

Congress MLA Pardip Yadav said another meeting would be held at the chief minister's residence on Wednesday as well.

The election is being held to fill two vacancies. One seat became vacant following the death of JMM co-founder Shibu Soren, while the other is due for voting as BJP member Deepak Prakash’s Rajya Sabha term ends on June 21.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called for the protection of seafarers and the security of maritime trade routes during an outreach session at the G7 summit in France, where he addressed leaders including United States President Donald Trump, who was seated beside him.

The G7 summit brings together the heads of France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

“We welcome the progress made in peace efforts in West Asia,” Modi said. “This conflict has caused loss of life and property in our friendly countries in West Asia.”

Modi said disruptions to maritime trade through the Strait of Hormuz had affected the global economy and that many Indian civilians had lost their lives.

“The safety of seafarers, who connect all nations through global maritime trade, is our responsibility,” he added. “We must ensure that sea routes remain safe, and seafarers can carry out their work without fear.”

Modi made the remarks in the backdrop of a series of attacks by US forces on vessels in West Asia on which Indian seafarers had been travelling.

On June 10, three Indian seafarers were killed when the US military struck a Palau-flagged commercial tanker off the coast of Oman. Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued.

A day later, 20 Indian seafarers on board another ship were evacuated after it was struck off the Omani coast.

On June 8, 24 Indian seafarers were rescued from a tanker Marivex after it was targeted by the US.

Speaking during a session on forging new partnerships and rebuilding international solidarity, Modi said the world was increasingly interconnected and that energy security, food security, health security, cybersecurity and economic prosperity were linked across borders.

“Today, the world does not suffer from a shortage of resources, it suffers from a shortage of trust,” the prime minister said. “And the future of our partnerships depends on rebuilding this trust.”

Referring to the international order established after the world wars, he said systems created to promote peace, stability and prosperity had been founded on trust, but that this trust had been eroded in recent years.

“The Covid-19 [pandemic] has shown us how hollow the claims of trust and solidarity were,” Modi said.

He said India had long viewed the world as one family and had based its international engagement on the principle of “sarvajana hitaya, sarvajana sukhaya,” meaning welfare and happiness for all.

“India believes: The true test of partnership is not what we build for others, but what we enable others to build for themselves,” Modi said.

The prime minister added that countries of the Global South had “great expectations” from the global community but underlined that they wanted to be partners in development rather than beneficiaries.

He called for a move beyond the donor-recipient model towards partnerships based on equality and dignity.

Modi concluded by saying India was ready to work with international partners to address these shared challenges.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Earthmover tracks wind their way through a forest clearing. Caked and compacted soil is exposed to the sun. Tree saplings are planted in rows. There are piles of uprooted forest shrubs and chopped tree-trunks. A termite mound has been destroyed. This scene, reminiscent of a war zone, is from the Central Ridge of Delhi, an offshoot of the geologically ancient Aravalli Hills.

The Ridge, located in the heart of Lutyen’s Delhi, has recently been taken up for ill-planned “restoration”. Surprisingly, the institution responsible is the one mandated to protect and conserve forests, the Delhi Forest Department.

The Central Ridge, covering 864 hectares at one time, is composed of gently undulating hills and rock faces, dry forests and grasslands, dissected by tiny rivulets. It was completely deforested during the Indian Uprising of 1857, when it was used for army encampments by the British.

From 1914, when Lutyen’s Delhi was being planned, this area was planted over with the exotic Vilayati Kikar (Neltuma juliflora), among other trees, with the aim of restoring Delhi’s greenery. Vilayati Kikar proved to be a resilient invasive that rapidly expanded its range, jostling out native flora and fauna, and currently overruns most of Delhi’s remaining forests.

A hundred years later, numerous native species have made a dramatic return under the canopy of the ageing Vilayati Kikar trees. For instance, Heens (Capparis sepiaria), Ganger (Grewia tenax) and Arushta (Adhatoda vasica) are today growing abundantly in the understorey, providing niches for numerous birds, mammals and insects.

Small groves of native trees have also stood their ground through the last century such as the Kadamba (Mitragyna parvifolia), Ronj (Acacia leucophloea) and the sacred Barna (Crataeva religiosa). Birdlife is surprisingly diverse. The calls of the Brownheaded Barbet, Common Hawk-cuckoo and Grey Francolin can be heard while Jungle Babblers and Grey Hornbills are easily spotted. A Kalpavriksh publication reports that as many as 200 species of birds have been recorded from the Delhi Ridge over the last century, many of which are scrub forest specialists.

Now, the Delhi Forest Department has abruptly decided to restore the Central Ridge forest with the principal aims being the large-scale clearing of Vilayati Kikar, followed by replanting. A range of modifications have been implemented in these forests that go against accepted tenets of restoration science and threaten to destroy both remnant biodiversity and irreversibly alter soil conditions.

The easy way out has been adopted: trees and shrubs are being cleared using heavy machinery. The forest soil is being dug up by earthmovers, which is both compacting the soil and destroying its fauna, including termites, earthworms, insects and spiders. The rich forest soils that have accumulated nutrients over time are being cleared of forest debris and exposed to the harsh summer sun, turning it into a compacted mass.

Remnant native shrubs, herbs and trees are being eliminated, with scattered exceptions. The biocrust – the thin organic covering of the soil that harbours a rich set of micro-organisms, including algae and fungi and that are critical for the health of the soil, is being destroyed.

In place of this diverse ecosystem, artificial parks have been created such as the Nyaya Vatika and Ek Ped Maa ke Naam project, each covering 30 acres-40 acres. Saplings have been planted in the cleared plots but mortality rates are visibly high. This is expected when young saplings are planted in denuded soils, in inappropriate microsites, and with scarcely any shade. Four religiously-themed forests or vans have been planned as well.

The active Working Plan of the Forest Department lists trees for plantation of which 12% are exotic and 50% are not native to the Aravallis. A random mix of tree species have been planted already, a large proportion of which are neither native to India nor to the Aravallis such as Jungle Jalebi (Pithecolobium dulce) and African Sausage Tree (Kigelia pinnata).

Where native species are used, they have not been planted in appropriate microsites. Micro-habitats suitable for specific species and tree communities need to be respected while planting.

In the Aravallis, there is a natural differentiation of vegetation according to slope, soils, degree of rockiness and soil moisture. For instance, rocky cliffs harbour the Salai tree (Boswellia serrata), rocky slopes are covered by the Dhok (Anogeissus pendula), while the low-lying alluvial strips in between the hills are suitable for Palash (Butea monosperma) and Ber (Zizyphus mauritiana). The streamside terrain has its own diverse set of moisture-loving tree species like Jamun (Syzygium cumini), Gular (Ficus racemosa) and Kadamba (Mitragyna parvifolia). The immense diversity of these mini-forest types is what nurtures the native fauna of this region including the nilgai, the porcupine and the palm civet.

There are now accepted methods for removing invasive species and restoring forests with all their heterogeneity and diversity. Good restoration practice depends on field studies of “reference sites” in the Aravallis, such as Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan and Mangar Bani in southern Haryana. This is usually the first step in restoration. The existing forest landscape is surveyed so that naturally occurring assemblages of trees, their inter-relationships and their micro-habitats can be preserved as far as possible.

The removal of Vilayati Kikar trees is something that most ecologists agree upon as it is the first step in restoring the native forest. However, rather than destructive means such as bulldozing, there are alternatives such as girdling. In this method, tree trunks of invasive trees are girdled, so that they die gradually and nutrients are recycled naturally into the soil. The gradual opening up of the canopy due to tree mortality, would likely allow the growth of native trees and shrubs that are already present as seedlings and saplings.

Further, sturdy two-three-year old saplings of native species, particularly those that are disappearing from the Delhi NCR, should be planted in these gaps. Such an approach would preserve the soil fertility and texture, save scarce resources and improve survival rates of planted trees. Neither would there be any need for repeated irrigation, a wasteful process in a water-scarce region.

Every restoration site requires techniques and procedures faithful to the local ecology and terrain. Poor site-specific knowledge and a lack of sensitivity to the nuances of nature, can result in unpredictable consequences.

The Central Ridge itself has legally been declared a Reserved Forest under the Indian Forest Act (1927). Modifications of the vegetation into themed forests and parks have been inexplicably allowed, despite the fact that such drastic interventions can be deemed as illegal “non-forest activity”.

New Delhi is fortunate in having a large forest which effectively modulates climate, secures groundwater in a drought-prone region, and provides a refuge for urban wildlife. With good planning, the Ridge can also provide much-needed space for nature-linked recreation: a critical necessity in an increasingly crowded city. In this vibrant heart of Delhi, only the right kind of science and sensitivity can preserve all of the ecosystem services that we urgently need today.

Ghazala Shahabuddin teaches environmental studies at Ashoka University, Sonipat and researches ecological issues at the interface of human society and biodiversity conservation.

On June 12, three literary bodies representing the Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam asked members of the community to declare their language as Assamese in the ongoing Census.

There was nothing exceptional about the statement. Since the 1950s, Muslims of Bengali origin, whose ancestors had settled in the region in the late 19th century, have been enlisting themselves as Assamese in every Census. They have done so to assimilate with the native population, as well as to blunt the hostility of the larger Assamese society towards “outsiders”.

But a day later, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma dismissed the appeal by the organisations and called it a “fraud” by the Bengali-origin Muslim community, who are also sometimes derogatorily referred to as Miya Muslims.

“What is the benefit if one doesn’t speak Assamese at home but writes Assamese as their mother tongue?” Sarma said at a press conference in Dispur.

The Assamese language, Sarma said, will survive even if only 20% of the state’s population declare it as their language.

But Assamese authors and civil society groups have sharply criticised the chief minister, arguing that the historical role of the Muslims of Bengali origin in protecting the language cannot be denied. If Assamese is spoken by only 20% of the population, “the Assamese-speakers will become a linguistic minority in Assam,” said Harekerishna Deka, a writer and the former director-general of police. “Hindutva may win, but Assameseness will not.”

The neo-Assamese

Language is a highly emotive subject in Assam and intertwined with Assamese subnationalism and identity.

In 1836, the British government had declared Bengali the official language of the state, leading to widespread protests. The decision was eventually withdrawn, but it seeded an anxiety about linguistic identity that has persisted to this day.

Assam is also home to several linguistic communities, and in the 1931 Census, Assamese speakers accounted for only 31.4% of the population.

Two decades later, the proportion of Assamese speakers in the state went up sharply to 56.7%, as a large number of Muslims of Bengali origin identified themselves as Assamese speakers.

In their June 12 statement, the three literary bodies – Char Chapori Sahitya Sabha, Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad and Char Chapori Axomiya Samaj – laid out a historical account of how the dwellers of chars, shifting riverine islands in the Brahmaputra, adopted the Assamese identity. They were described variously as “Na-Asomiya” or Neo-Assamese, Assamese of East Bengal origin and by the derogatory epithet of Miya Muslims.

“Our ancestors decided, from the third and fourth decades of the 20th century, that the mother tongue of the Char-Chaporis would be written as Assamese in the Census,” the bodies said. “Not just that, our ancestors established the first Assamese medium school in 1899, and we have been studying in Assamese medium schools to be part of Assamese society since then.”

The literary bodies asserted: “[Our] mother tongue is still Assamese and will remain Assamese in the future.”

For most of Assam’s history, the Bengali-origin Muslims have stuck to this decision, with many of them refusing to identify as Bengalis. An exception arose in 2019, during the contentious updating of the National Register of Citizens, when a campaign urged Bengali-origin Muslims not to enlist themselves as Assamese, as adopting the language had not prevented their citizenship to be called into doubt.

However, that stayed a minority view.

The appeal by the prominent literary bodies came weeks after the remarks of Basanta Kumar Goswami, who heads the Asam Sahitya Sabha, the apex literary body in the state.

Goswami had lauded the role of the Muslims of Assam’s chars in “strengthening the Assamese linguistic community” as their continued identification as Assamese speakers in the Census is “crucial for safeguarding” the language and cultural identity of the state.

“If the Muslims of char-chapori areas do not support the Assamese language movement, Assamese people may one day become second-class citizens,” he said. “We consider the people of the chars as Assamese and as sons of the soil. A large section of Assamese speakers today comes from these areas,” Goswami said.

অসমীয়া ভাষা অসমত চন্দ্ৰ সূৰ্য থকালৈকে ২০% শতাংশই কলেও থাকিব বুলি মুখ‍্যমন্ত্ৰীয়ে কোৱা কথা বিশ্বাস নকৰিব । অসমীয়া ভাষাক নিশকটীয়া কৰিবলৈ এফালৰ পৰা চৰকাৰী মাধ‍্যমিক বিদ‍্যালয় সমূহ নিঃশেষ কৰি অহা হৈছে । হিন্দী বলয়ৰ কবলত অসম ! এটা জাতি জীয়াই থাকিবলৈ ভাষা , সংস্কৃতি জীয়াই ৰাখিব…

— Mira Borthakur Goswami (@borthakur_mira) June 15, 2026

Who is Assamese?

The Assam chief minister, who has repeatedly targeted the Bengali-origin Muslim community throughout his tenure, appeared to downplay that history.

Sarma said that debates surrounding the survival of Assamese based on percentage calculations were outdated. He accused Muslims of Bengali origin of “declaring Assamese as their mother tongue to stop being called Bangladeshi”.

The Muslims of Bengali origin are often reviled as Bangladeshis and “illegal immigrants” in Assam, where the anxiety about being swamped by outsiders has shaped politics for decades.

Sarma’s statements, however, also open up the larger question of who is Assamese in a state with several linguistic communities and fierce contestations over language.

Khabir Ahmed, who heads the Char Chapori Sahitya Sabha and is one of the signatories of the June 12 statement, told Scroll: “Sarma has said that to be an Assamese, one has to speak Assamese at home. So, do the Bodos, Bengali Hindus, Karbis, Dimasa, Rabhas, Biharis, tea-garden communities speak Assamese at home? Those who speak the language at home would be not more than 30 %. Does it mean that the remaining 70% people in Assam are not Assamese?”

Ahmed pointed out that in another interview, Sarma had conceded that the resistance to making Assamese language compulsory in the state’s schools comes not from residents of the chars but from other tribal communities.

Both Bodos and the Bengalis of Barak Valley have in the past opposed the “imposition” of Assamese as the official language. In 2020, Bodo was conferred the tag of “associate official language” in the state while Bangla is one of the official languages in Barak Valley.

Ahmed added: “We do not need the CM’s appreciation. We are carrying the legacy of our ancestors while the CM is carrying the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party. That is his compulsion.”

Remarks made by Asam Sahitya Sabha president Basanta Kumar Goswami on the role of char-chapori inhabitants in preserving the Assamese language have triggered a major debate across Assam, drawing criticism and support from different sections of society.

Read:… pic.twitter.com/92Tw82TanP

— The Assam Tribune (@assamtribuneoff) May 19, 2026

The numbers and the future

Author and social commentator Mayur Bora dismissed Sarma’s statement as “pompous” and “flawed”.

“The stellar role played by a substantial section of the people of East Bengal origin in embracing Assamese in schools and in declaring the language as the mother tongue in successive censuses from 1931 onwards can’t be wished away because of political convenience of a party,” he added.

He also said that if the linguistic basis of forming states continues to hold in the future, it was important for Muslims of Bengali origin to identify as Assamese-speakers. “Otherwise, who can guarantee the continuation of Assamese as the state language after 30 years?”

Deka, the writer, said that a drop in the number of enlisted Assamese speakers would be a “serious socio-political and economic setback for the Assamese speaking community”.

Deka warned that Sarma’s “communal” political stand on language weakens the standing of Assamese people in the state and opens it up to more powerful communities. “If Himanta Biswa Sarma’s power wanes, he may see the day when a non-Assamese Hindi-speaking politician usurps his place.”

The debate within

For Miya Muslims, the debate only exemplifies how vulnerable their standing is in Assam.

“Whatever the outcome, politicians will spin it against our community, that’s for sure,” said an author from the Char Chapori community, who teaches in a government college. “If Bengali becomes the majority language, politicians will highlight the areas where the number of Assamese speakers fell and say, 'See Bangladeshis have taken over'. Otherwise, they will say they do not need us.”

The teacher said that the three organisations’ appeal is “pragmatic” but criticised them for their silence during the community’s crises. “During the worst of times for us, from pushbacks to hate speech, they never got together to make a statement. How is the Census a bigger issue than the pain and suffering of the common people?” he said.

Academic Abdul Kalam Azad argued that the appeal made by the three literary bodies was unnecessary. “We should trust the community's own acumen,” he said. “Had this appeal come from allies within the leadership of the so-called mainstream Assamese community, that would have been a different matter.”

He also questioned the idea or utility of “assimilation”. “Language and dialect are a community’s cultural identity – as they are for the Bodos, Rabhas, Adivasis, and other ethnic groups. They are Assamese too. Historically, Assam has welcomed every community with open arms. To be Assamese, one does not need to assimilate completely.”

Trinamool Congress leader Tapash Chatterjee on Tuesday filed an election petition before the Calcutta High Court challenging the poll result in the Rajarhat New Town Assembly constituency, where he lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Piyush Kanodia by 316 votes, News18 Bangla reported.

TMC chief Mamata Banerjee also filed an election petition before the High Court challenging the poll result in the Bhabanipur constituency, where she lost to BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari. Adhikari, West Bengal’s first BJP chief minister, had defeated Banerjee by a margin of more than 15,100 votes.

On May 4, the BJP defeated the TMC in the state polls, ending the party’s 15-year rule in West Bengal.

In the Rajarhat New Town, a ground report by Scroll had described how the TMC had a lead of 316 votes on May 4. But after an additional round of counting the next day, the BJP won the seat with the same margin. The TMC had held the seat since 2011. Chatterjee had won the seat in 2021 by a margin of more than 56,400 votes.

The Election Commission did not respond to Scroll’s queries about the need for an extra round.

The candidates of both parties accused each other of manipulating the counting process.

Chatterjee had also alleged that BJP workers had violently driven away despondent TMC counting agents, even as central forces watched, allowing the alleged counting fraud to take place. Besides him, Scroll had in May spoken to other candidates and party workers to piece together an account of what transpired in the constituency’s counting centre on May 4.

A Scroll analysis of the Election Commission’s booth-wise data also showed how the close contest went in favour of the BJP after the Hindutva party received overwhelming votes in a Muslim-majority booth. Questions sent to the Election Commission did not elicit a response.

At the heart of the controversial poll lies Musalman Para, a locality in North Kolkata with two booths: 164 and 165. Most of the registered voters in the booths are Muslim and they vote at the same polling centre, their electoral roll showed.

On May 4 and May 5, when the votes were counted, booth 164 was not counted in its scheduled round, but in a separate round at the end of the counting process. The tally in Musalman Para showed a divergence: while the BJP could only manage a few dozen votes in booth 165, it got an overwhelming majority in booth 164.

Scroll’s analysis found that the only booth to be counted on May 5 in the 18th round had 656 votes, Election Commission data showed – the exact number of votes polled in booth 164, which was skipped in the ninth round.

Here, the BJP got 637 votes and the TMC five, turning the result in the BJP’s favour with a margin of 316 votes.

When Alt News spoke to voters in the constituency, several of them described the result as impossible.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• How slow counting of votes in Bengal helped BJP win a lost seat from Trinamool
• One mostly Muslim booth flipped a controversial Bengal seat – 97% of its vote went to BJP

The municipal corporation in Mumbai on Tuesday announced additional measures to conserve water, saying that only 10.3% reserves were remaining in the reservoirs that supply water to the city.

The new curbs on non-essential use of water will include a 20% reduction in supply for industrial units, commercial establishments and sports clubs, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said.

Water connections to swimming pools and for construction activities will be temporarily disconnected, the civic body said.

The new restrictions will take effect on Wednesday.

The municipal corporation urged citizens to use borewell water or that drawn from wells for washing vehicles, watering gardens and parks, and cleaning roads and public areas.

New water connections for construction projects will be suspended until further notice, it added.

The municipal corporation also urged the railways, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers company located in the Chembur area, petroleum companies, the Indian Navy, the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation and the port authorities to reuse treated water from the Colaba and other sewage treatment plants for operational purposes.

The civic body had already implemented precautionary measures to conserve water citing delayed southwest monsoon caused by the El Niño effect and the declining levels in the reservoirs supplying Mumbai. The curbs included a 10% cut in supply since May 15.

El Niño weather phenomenon, which involves the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. It typically occurs every few years and has been linked to reduced monsoon rainfall in India.

Mumbai requires about 4,664 million litres of water per day but has been receiving 4,100 million litres of water per day.

The delay in the onset of the monsoon has led to concerns about shortage of rainfall, water scarcity and continued high temperatures in several regions of the country.

Data from the India Meteorological Department on Tuesday showed that the monsoon had reached southern Maharashtra in the west, parts of Odisha in the south-east and regions of West Bengal and Bihar in the east.

The advance line of the monsoon was at least four days behind the usual date of onset in Mumbai, southern Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. India had received only 19.2 mm of rainfall between June 4 and June 15, against a normal of 53.7 mm. This is a rainfall deficit of 64.2%.

The weather department has forecast a heatwave in parts of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana this week.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Mumbai is worried about water, but its control over mainland dams is depriving others
• Mumbai is emptying groundwater reservoirs to quench its thirst
• How Mumbai neglected its groundwater – only to become dependent on it

As Mumbai waits for the monsoon, water supply in the city has been cut by 10% since May 15, after water levels in the seven lakes that supply water, have fallen. The lakes depend entirely on seasonal rainfall to be filled, commonly causing water cuts in the summers.

Adding to this situation, on June 7, the Mumbai Water Tanker Association went on strike. The strike was called off two days later following an intervention by Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Mumbai receives around 4,100 million litres per day against an estimated demand of 4,665 MLD, leaving a shortfall of about 565 MLD. Private water tankers fill this gap.

The tanker association was protesting against notices issued by the state government ordering ring-well and borewell operators to stop supplying water to tankers until they obtain fresh licenses from the Central Ground Water Authority.

The tanker association protest has drawn attention to a larger issue: Mumbai’s heavy dependence on groundwater and the limited oversight of its extraction.

“Mumbai has more than 17,364 wells used for the commercial sale of water,” says groundwater activist Suresh Kumar Dhoka, citing information obtained through an RTI application.

In 2015, the National Green Tribunal made it mandatory for all commercial groundwater users to obtain No Objection Certificates from the Central Ground Water Authority. As of May 2025, only 619 wells, mostly borewells, had received No Objection Certificates for monitoring and charging purposes.

Earlier this year, a complaint filed by Dhoka triggered an investigation into hundreds of wells in Mumbai’s western suburbs. Officials reported that 27 wells and borewells were extracting groundwater without a no objection certificate issued by the Central Ground Water Authority in R/C Central division.

Extracting groundwater for commercial use without a No Objection Certificate violates groundwater rules and is punishable with a fine or imprisonment under the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

Following the current protests by the water tanker association, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray echoed their concerns. In a June 9 letter to Union Jal Shakti Minister CR Patil, he urged the government to amend the Central Ground Water Authority’s norms for Mumbai and other densely populated cities, describing them as “impractical and highly restrictive” for water extraction.

Groundwater dependency

Historically, Mumbai relied on an extensive network of wells and tanks for its water supply. However, the commissioning of the Vihar water project in 1860 marked the city’s shift towards dams, pipelines and reservoirs managed by public authorities. Today, Mumbai draws water from seven lakes – Tulsi and Vihar within the city, and five others located in Palghar, Thane and Nashik districts.

Despite this extensive system, the city faces a water deficit of about 565 MLD, which is filled by private water tankers. “There are 500 water tanker owners and 2,100 water tankers that operate in Mumbai. We supply around 550 MLD to Mumbai each day,” says Ankur Sharma, spokesperson of MWTA.

These tankers primarily supply non-potable water to construction sites, malls, hotels, housing societies and other commercial users. While tanker owners purchase some water from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, they primarily rely on groundwater extracted through borewells.

Experts say the issue extends beyond licensing violations. Sitaram Shelar, a right-to-water activist and convener of the Pani Haq Samiti, a people’s campaign for universal access to water, claims that tanker operators often purchase small parcels of land in areas with high water tables and install borewells to extract groundwater. According to him, almost every housing society in Mumbai has at least one borewell.

Yet groundwater extraction remains poorly monitored. A Central Ground Water Board report on groundwater quality in Maharashtra records no monitoring borewells in Mumbai, and only six and 19 monitoring dug wells in Mumbai city and suburban areas, respectively. Shelar describes this as a “planned data gap”.

He alleges that a nexus exists among borewell contractors, housing societies and some officials involved in granting permissions. “There is a nexus of borewell diggers, pest control officers (PCO) from the BMC and housing societies. The PCO permits the digging of a borewell, while the engineer’s job is to inspect the site. Still, often, many boreholes are rigged without applying the required permissions, and PCO informed us that they are not authorised to monitor these borewells, which are illegally extracting groundwater.”

Environmental activist Zoru Bhathena points to another source of stress on groundwater resources. “Unlike earlier times, basements today are at least four floors deep under the ground. This requires dewatering the immediate construction area and its surrounding periphery. Amidst this density, the construction of hundreds of new sites at once is depleting the groundwater enormously.”

Relentless concretisation across Mumbai has further reduced natural groundwater recharge by sealing permeable surfaces. Contamination and saline-water intrusion remain additional concerns.

“There is so much priority given to the infrastructure that there is hardly any space left in the city. There should be some limitations on infrastructure development and mandatory provision for rainwater harvesting,” says Sharma from Mumbai Water Tanker Association, on groundwater depletion in the city.

Experts say the city lacks the institutional capacity needed to understand and manage its groundwater resources. In 1994, an expert committee on water planning, led by Madhav Chitale, recommended establishing a dedicated geo-hydrological unit within the municipal administration to scientifically monitor and manage groundwater. However, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is yet to establish such a unit.

In 2017, the Groundwater Surveys and Development Agency was asked to assess groundwater conditions in Mumbai. Officials discussed conducting a year-long assessment with the Central Ground Water Board and sought data from the BMC, but the exercise never progressed beyond the planning stage, Dhoka claims.

“The water supply department is predominantly shaped by civil engineers who approach and remain largely focused on the development, monitoring, and management of surface water resources. There is a need for hydrogeologists who can understand and map aquifers for sustainable monitoring and management of groundwater resources,” says Sachin Tiwale, a fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment who specialises in studying water governance-related issues. ATREE is a globally recognised non-profit organisation focused on environmental conservation.

Aquifer mapping project

In May 2025, the BMC launched its first aquifer mapping pilot in the upper catchment of the Mithi River. The long-term objective is to include groundwater management into Mumbai’s water resilience and climate adaptation planning.

“The upstream catchment was selected strategically because springs and discharge zones are easier to identify in upper catchments, which helps establish aquifer flow patterns,” explains Deepti Talpade, Program Lead – Urban Development and Resilience, Sustainable Cities, WRI India. Aquifers are underground geological formations that store and transmit groundwater, she explains.

“Groundwater is invisible and therefore easily ignored. Any study on groundwater is incomplete unless you study aquifers,” says Himanshu Kulkarni, hydrogeologist and co-founder of the Pune-based non-profit Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management. “Your entire perspective on groundwater changes when you study the aquifers because it isn’t fixated on the source but a larger system of groundwater and its connection to surface water bodies,” he adds.

The Mumbai municipal corporation is carrying out the project with WRI India, Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management and Pani Haq Samiti under the Environment and Climate Change Department, and the work aligns with India’s National Aquifer Mapping Programme.

The year-long exercise is still in its early stages, but experts say it could help address critical gaps in understanding Mumbai’s groundwater systems. Talpade reports that the Central Ground Water Board has conducted macro-level surveys in rural settings across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), but detailed, city-scale hydrogeological assessments remain limited.

One of the major challenges for Mumbai is the influence of seawater on groundwater systems. Kulkarni says that generating scientific data is only part of the task. “Communicating the findings to different stakeholders and translating them into policy and action will be equally challenging. We also need to be sensitive to the concerns and knowledge of local communities.”

However, experts caution that better data alone will not solve Mumbai’s groundwater problems. Dhoka says illegal groundwater extraction and unauthorised tanker operations continue openly across the city. “Without strict regulation, accountability and enforcement, even the best mapping exercises will not protect groundwater resources.”

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Thirteen allegedly undocumented Bangladeshi migrants were detained in Gurugram on Tuesday, PTI reported.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Naveen Sharma told reporters that the crime branch team had carried out checks after receiving inputs “in view of national security and law enforcement”.

The persons had been residing in several areas of Gurugram, Sharma added.

“Some were living in slums, while others were working at construction sites,” PTI quoted the police officer as saying. “Our team conducted a thorough interrogation and search operation to detain these 13 persons.”

The police alleged that the persons had Bangladeshi identity documents and “were found calling Bangladeshi phone numbers to contact their families residing there”.

Steps were being taken to deport them, he added. They will be detained at a centre while the legal process is completed.

Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

Scroll has also reported on several cases of persons who were forced into Bangladesh being brought back to India, as the authorities had failed to follow the process laid down by the Union home ministry for such deportations.

On June 3, the Ahmedabad Police detained more than 290 alleged undocumented Bangladeshi migrants for interrogation. The police had said that it had carried out searches and verification of the persons' identity documents following intelligence inputs.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’
• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

The Union government restricted access to messaging application Telegram till June 22, a day after the scheduled re-examination of the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for seats in medical colleges. The Centre also directed the platform to disable its message-editing feature till June 30.

The National Testing Agency claimed that the application’s message-editing feature was used in several recent examinations to make fabricated claims of paper leaks. Read on.

Social media and streaming platforms host and profit from Hindutva “hate music” that dehumanises Muslims and Christians and incites violence against them, according to a new study. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate identified 523 Hindutva hate songs on platforms such as YouTube, Meta, Apple Music and Spotify platforms that violated content policies.

More than 50% of the 523 songs directly threatened or incited violence against religious minorities, while the rest promoted or incited hatred through slurs and dehumanisation, according to the study by the Washington DC-based non-profit think tank.

When 225 songs were reported to the four platforms in October for content policy violations, only 18 had been removed by May, a takedown rate of 8%, it added. Read on.

A cut-throat digital economy and deep-rooted hatred have fundamentally changed India, Nachiket Joshi reviews the book ‘H-Pop’

The delay in the onset of southwest monsoon in most parts of the country has led to concerns about shortage of rainfall, water scarcity and continued high temperatures. Data from the India Meteorological Department showed that the monsoon had reached southern Maharashtra in the west, parts of Odisha in the south-east and regions of West Bengal and Bihar in the east.

The advance line of the monsoon was at least four days behind the usual date of onset in Mumbai, southern Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. India had received only 19.2 mm of rainfall between June 4 and June 15, against a normal of 53.7 mm. This is a rainfall deficit of 64.2%. Read on.

The Union government amended the 1945 Drugs Rules to ban the over-the-counter sale of all syrups, including those consumed to treat cough. The purchase of syrups will require a doctor’s prescription. Pills, tablets and lozenges for cough would continue to be available without a prescription.

The rules have been amended following a series of cases of contaminated cough syrups leading to deaths of children. Read on.

If you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday filed an election petition before the Calcutta High Court challenging the poll result in the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency, where she lost to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari, The Hindu reported.

Adhikari, West Bengal’s first BJP chief minister, had defeated Banerjee by a margin of more than 15,100 votes.

The BJP leader had also defeated another TMC candidate in the Nandigram constituency, which he vacated on May 15.

In 2021 as well, Banerjee had filed a similar petition after she lost to Adhikari in Nandigram by a margin of 1,956 votes.

On May 4, the BJP defeated the TMC in the state polls, ending the party’s 15-year rule in West Bengal.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Social media and streaming platforms such as YouTube, Meta, Apple Music and Spotify host and profit from Hindutva “hate music” that dehumanises Muslims and Christians, and incites violence against them, according to a study by a Washington DC-based non-profit think tank released on Monday.

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, identified 523 Hindutva hate songs on the four platforms that violated content policies. Of these, 210 songs were on YouTube, 109 on Spotify, 103 on the Meta music library and 101 on Apple Music.

More than 50% of the 523 songs directly threatened or incited violence against religious minorities, while the rest promoted or incited hatred through slurs and dehumanisation, the study said.

When 225 songs were reported to the four platforms in October for content policy violations, only 18 had been removed by May, a takedown rate of 8%, it added.

“Enforcement is superficial and easily circumvented,” the organisation noted. “Artists whose channels are terminated create new ones.”

It cited the example of singer Sandeep Acharya, whose accounts it said were suspended at least three times. “Yet 21 of his 26 violative songs remain available across other YouTube channels,” it noted.

🚨For over a year, I've worked with a small team of researchers to clinically document evidence of the role Big Tech platforms play in encouraging Hindutva Pop music.

We found a total of *523 SONGS*, encouraging violence against Muslims, stoking hate. YouTube, Meta, Apple and… pic.twitter.com/bKff4FMnae

— Kunal Purohit (@kunalpurohit) June 16, 2026

Songs containing threats, violent themes

Many of the songs flagged by the study praise violence against Muslims and contain explicit threats against them.

On YouTube, the most-viewed song identified by the organisation was Bharat Ka Bacha Bacha Jai Shri Ram Bolega by Pooja Golhani, which warns Muslim “enemies” that they will be “slayed” if they obstruct Hindus.

Another song, Gau Mata by Biru Kataria, uses a slur against Muslims and threatens violence against them if they kill cows.

The song Jaago Neend Se Hindu Veeron portrays Hinduism as being under threat and alleges that Muslims and Christians are forcibly converting Hindus.

Several other songs accuse Muslims of engaging in “love jihad”.

Love jihad is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men trick Hindu women into romantic relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam. The Union home ministry has told Parliament that Indian law has no provision defining such a term.

Some songs also reference Hindutva campaigns laying claim to mosques in cities in Uttar Pradesh such as Mathura and Varanasi.

“Almost all of these songs refer to Muslims either directly by name or through barely-concealed language, such as commonly-used slurs and implicit references,” the study noted. It said that several Hindutva pop songs use terms such as “traitors”, “terrorists” and “enemies” as synonyms for Muslims, and link Indian Muslims with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

‘Enforce norms, act against repeat offenders’

The organisation urged social media and streaming platforms to “invest meaningfully in consistent and proactive enforcement of guidelines” against hateful content.

“Effective moderation requires platforms to pursue content-level enforcement in combination with account-level action,” the study said. “[Platforms should ensure] that violating material is removed wherever it is hosted, rather than only from the primary account of the creator responsible.”

It also called on platforms to identify repeat offenders and “apply escalating consequences, including demonetisation” as per their own rules.

The organisation also said that while YouTube and Meta have relatively easier processes to report hateful content, Spotify and Apple Music have no straightforward reporting pathway.

“All platforms must establish clear, transparent, and timely mechanisms for communicating with users who report violations, including acknowledgment of receipt, updates on the status of reports, explanation of any action taken or not taken in response, and the grievance redressal mechanisms available to challenge platform decisions,” the study said.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: ‘H-Pop’: A cut-throat digital economy and deep-rooted hatred have fundamentally changed India

The delay in the onset of southwest monsoon in most parts of the country has led to concerns about shortage of rainfall, water scarcity and continued high temperatures.

The concerns have also been driven by the strengthening El Niño weather phenomenon, which involves the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. It typically occurs every few years and has been linked to reduced monsoon rainfall in India.

Data from the India Meteorological Department on Tuesday showed that the monsoon had reached southern Maharashtra in the west, parts of Odisha in the south-east and regions of West Bengal and Bihar in the east.

The advance line of the monsoon was at least four days behind the usual date of onset in Mumbai, southern Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, according to the data.

Also read: Interview: How will El Niño affect the monsoon in India?

Delayed monsoon

The country had received only 19.2 mm of rainfall between June 4 and June 15, against a normal of 53.7 mm, India Today reported. This is a rainfall deficit of 64.2%.

The conditions were favourable for further advance of the monsoon into more regions of Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar, and some parts of Chhattisgarh in the next four to five days, the weather department said on Tuesday.

While the monsoon is forecast to advance after June 20, not enough rainfall is expected till the last week of the month, India Today quoted weather agencies as saying.

Maharashtra water crisis

This month is projected to be the driest June in Mumbai in nearly 20 years, India Today reported. The weather observatory in Santacruz has recorded 13.1 mm of rainfall this month and 5 mm at Colaba.

The average rainfall in Mumbai during June is 526.3 mm.

The level of water in the reservoir in Maharashtra, including dams, had fallen to 25.5% as of June 10, News18 quoted the state’s water department as saying. At the same time in 2025, the storage was 30.5%.

Following the delay in the onset of monsoon and a low rainfall forecast, the department has informed the Pune Municipal Corporation that it needs to reduce its consumption of water to ensure that the storage lasts till the end of August, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

The civic body has ordered swimming pools and vehicle washing shops to close, and prohibited the use of water provided by the municipal corporation to be used at construction sites, the newspaper reported.

Intense heat

A heatwave is “very likely” in parts of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday and Wednesday, in central Maharashtra and Marathwada on Thursday and Friday, and western Uttar Pradesh on Friday and Saturday, the weather department said.

Parts of Odisha are expected to face a heatwave on Tuesday and Telangana between Tuesday and Thursday.

On Monday, temperatures of between 40 degrees Celsius to 43 degrees Celsius were recorded in coastal Andhra Pradesh, eastern Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, central Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, western Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh, the India Meteorological Department said.

The highest maximum temperature of 43.4 degrees Celsius was recorded in Banda, Uttar Pradesh.

Twenty-one districts of Bihar, including Patna, recorded an increase in maximum temperatures on Monday. In Patna, the temperature rose to 40.0 degrees Celsius and 41.1 degrees Celsius in Sheikhpura, the Dainik Jagran reported.

The weather department had on June 4 announced that the southwest monsoon had set in over Kerala, marking the beginning of the four-month rainy season in the country. This year, the monsoon reached Kerala three days later than its usual onset date of June 1.

The southwest monsoon season generally begins in June and starts to retreat by September. The India Meteorological Department declares the onset of the season when it hits Kerala.

On May 29, the India Meteorological Department said that the country is expected to receive rainfall at 90% of the long-period average. The long-period average is the measure of the mean rainfall during the four-month monsoon season over the last 50 years.

This figure is lower than the 92% projection made in its first long-range forecast issued in April.

This marks the first time in 11 years that a shortfall in rainfall has been predicted for the June to September period.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of the Sikhs, on Monday declared Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann a “Guru Dokhi” or betrayer of the Guru and “Khalsa Panth Virodhi” or opponent of the Sikh community, after concluding that two controversial videos linked to him were not generated using artificial intelligence, The Hindu reported on Tuesday.

The decision was announced by Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Kuldeep Singh Gargajj after a meeting of the five Sikh high priests in Amritsar.

The Akal Takht said forensic examinations conducted by two laboratories found that the videos circulating on social media had “not been tampered with” and were not AI-generated, The Indian Express reported.

“Ultimately, the conclusion from both labs is that this video is authentic,” Gargajj said, adding that the laboratories were government-recognised and experienced forensic units.

He further said that the video appeared “entirely natural, just like sitting in a natural environment where shadows fall”.

Gargajj said the Akal Takht secretariat had written to Mann in January after he publicly stated that he was willing to undergo a forensic examination of the video, but had received no response since then, PTI reported.

He said the secretariat subsequently arranged for the video to be examined by the two forensic laboratories.

“A position of chief minister is respectable,” the jathedar said. “But chief minister Bhagwant Singh lied at the Akal Takht.”

The controversy dates back to January, when Mann was summoned by the Akal Takht over remarks relating to Guru Ki Golak, or donation boxes in gurudwaras, and for indulging in “objectionable activities” with the pictures of the “Sikh Gurus” and separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in some video clips, PTI reported.

One of the videos allegedly showed Mann sprinkling alcohol on a symbolic image of the ten Sikh Gurus and on a photograph of Bhindranwale, The New Indian Express quoted Gargajj as saying.

The Akal Takht also took exception to Mann’s reported remark that people steal money from gurdwara donation boxes, PTC news reported.

On January 15, Mann told the body that the videos shared on social media were fake and AI-generated, and stated that the Sikh clergy could have them examined by any forensic laboratory in the country.

Shortly before the Akal Takht's announcement on Monday, Aam Aadmi Party Punjab media in-charge Baltej Singh Pannu questioned the conclusions being drawn from the forensic reports.

“While the forensic report may state that the video itself is authentic, it does not establish who the individual in the video is,” The Indian Express quoted Pannu as saying. “Therefore, declaring someone guilty on that basis raises serious questions.”

Pannu also accused the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Badal family of politicising Sikh institutions in the state, the newspaper reported.

Responding to the development, Mann on Monday maintained that the person in the videos bore “no resemblance” to him.

In a post on social media, he said that he “categorically and completely” rejected the authenticity of the videos, and accused those holding office at the Akal Takht of spreading “malicious disinformation” at the behest of their “political masters” with an intention to defame him.

“Religion is being exploited,” the chief minister further claimed. “While I consider Sri Akal Takht Sahib supreme, the entire ‘Sangat’ is well aware of the nature of the decisions being handed down by those who hold these politically motivated appointments there.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Protests broke out outside a hospital in Manipur’s Imphal on Monday after three Kuki men injured in a firing incident in the Kangpokpi district were taken there for treatment, prompting security forces to use tear gas and lathi charge to force the crowd to disperse, The Hindu reported.

The mob objected to their treatment, alleging that they were extremists and shouted slogans against security forces for transporting them to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences.

The three injured persons, all from the Kuki community, were initially taken to the 183 Military Hospital at Leimakhong before being referred to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal for further treatment.

In a statement issued after the protests, the hospital said that it bears the responsibility to provide medical care to all patients brought for treatment.

“It is the professional, ethical, and humanitarian duty of doctors and healthcare workers to attend to and treat patients requiring medical attention, irrespective of their background or circumstances,” the hospital said.

The statement urged the public not to obstruct hospital operations, warning that disturbances could cause harm to critically ill and emergency patients.

In a separate statement, the institute also condemned the use of mock bombs and smoke bombs within the hospital premises during the protest.

On Tuesday, the hospital authorities said that all departments and services were functioning normally and appealed to the public not to disrupt healthcare services.

The three men were injured in a firing incident between two armed groups in the Kangpokpi district on Monday.

The clash took place around 6 am near the border between Leilon Vaiphei, a Kuki-majority village, and Konsakhul, a Naga-majority village, Hindustan Times reported.

Residents of Konsakhul alleged they were working in paddy fields when armed men opened fire, prompting the Naga Village Guard to retaliate.

Security forces intervened about 40 minutes later and evacuated the injured persons.

The injured were identified as Genlenmang Vaiphei, 18, Lunliandaw Vaiphei, 20 and Paogou Lal, 18, India Today reported.

Kuki organisations rejected the allegations that those injured were “extremists” and said they were students who also served as village volunteers, The Hindu reported.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur, an apex Kuki body, condemned what it described as the “bombing” of Leilon Vaiphei village and alleged that the attack had been carried out by the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) and the Kamson faction of the Zeliangrong United Front, Economic Times reported.

The developments came amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7 after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes. At least 25 persons from the two communities have been killed since tensions erupted.

The fresh violence came after the bodies of six men from the Naga community, who had been abducted by a Kuki armed group on May 13, were recovered on June 10. The police said that an investigation into the deaths was underway.

On May 13, at least 48 civilians from the Kuki and Naga communities were taken hostage by armed groups in the state’s Kangpokpi and Senapati districts.

The abductions had taken place after three church leaders were killed and five others injured when the vehicles they were travelling in were ambushed while they were returning from a meeting in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi. Another civilian was also killed and his wife wounded in Noney district.

On May 15, the police said that 28 of the persons who had been abducted were released.

On Tuesday, the United Naga Council said that 14 Kuki hostages had been released on “humanitarian grounds”.

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has temporarily restricted access to messaging application Telegram till June 22, a day after the scheduled re-examination of the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, the National Testing Agency said on Tuesday.

The ministry has also directed the platform under the Information Technology Rules to disable its message-editing feature till June 30. The National Testing Agency alleged that the feature was used “to fabricate after-the-event ‘paper leak’ evidence in respect of national examinations”.

NTA STATEMENT REGARDING THE ACTION ON TELEGRAM PLATFORM IN INDIA

1. The National Testing Agency (NTA) welcomes the directions issued today in respect of the Telegram platform in India. The directions, issued on recommendations of NTA are calibrated and bounded in time:

(a) a…

— National Testing Agency (@NTA_Exams) June 16, 2026

The NEET-UG exam was initially conducted on May 3, but was later cancelled following allegations of a paper leak. The exam is conducted by the National Testing Agency for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India.

The National Testing Agency said the ministry issued the directions to Telegram on its recommendation.

It claimed that the application’s message-editing feature was used in several recent examinations to make fabricated claims of paper leaks.

“…A channel administrator edits an older, innocuous message to insert the actual question paper after the examination has been conducted, and the resulting chat is then circulated as purported ‘evidence’ that the paper was in circulation before the examination,” the agency claimed.

The National Testing Agency said that while it acknowledged that the restriction on Telegram would hamper the work of those who use the application for legitimate purposes, the access restrictions were confined to the period ending on June 22.

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the May 3 test. However, the exam was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

The CBI filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union education ministry. It has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.

The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar filed 10 mercy petitions before the British colonial administration seeking that his sentence be reduced, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar told a Pune court on Monday during a criminal defamation trial against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Live Law reported.

The statements were made during Satyaki Savarkar’s cross-examination before Special Judge Amol Shinde.

The case pertains to a complaint filed by Satyaki Savarkar in April 2023 against Gandhi, accusing him of making false and malicious remarks about the Hindutva ideologue during an event in London in March 2023.

During the hearing on Monday, Satyaki Savarkar said that “it is true to say that Savarkar had filed a clemency petition ten times” adding that records of the mercy petitions were available in government archives, Live Law reported.

However, he rejected the suggestion that filing clemency petitions was inconsistent with the Hindutva ideologue’s title of “veer”, or heroic.

Satyaki Savarkar also acknowledged that several other freedom fighters of the period, including Rajguru, Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt and Ashfaqulla Khan, did not submit clemency petitions.

“It is true to say that Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt remained steadfast in their ideology and principles until the very end,” Live Law quoted Satyaki Savarkar as saying. “I am aware that revolutionist Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt did not compromise on their principles and ideologies in their dealings with the British right to the end.”

Satyaki Savarkar also accepted that Savarkar had filed a mercy petition within a month of being sentenced.

He further stated that clemency petitions were part of “a standard procedure under the British government” and that many prisoners used the mechanism to seek remission or reduction of sentences.

“It is true to say that, filing a clemency petition was neither exceptional nor illegal,” he added. “It is not true to say that the language Savarkar used in that clemency petition was one of humility.”

Satyaki Savarkar maintained that the wording followed official procedure and did not contain “words expressing loyalty to the British government”, Live Law reported.

He further told the court that the British government rejected all of Savarkar’s petitions and feared that he would rejoin revolutionary activities if released.

The cross-examination will continue on July 1.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Fact check: Did VD Savarkar write mercy petitions on Gandhi’s advice, as Rajnath Singh claimed?

The National Council of Educational Research and Training on Monday said that it will restore the original photograph of the iconic “Dancing Girl” sculpture in the new arts textbook for Class 9, ANI reported.

While the original version of the photograph showed the bronze sculpture of a young woman or a girl with a bare torso, the updated textbook had shown it to be covered, The Indian Express reported on Monday.

The statue, of a girl wearing ornaments and with her hair tied in a bun, is believed to have been sculpted between 2300 BC and 1750 BC in the Indus Valley Civilisation city of Mohenjo-daro, now in Pakistan.

The sculpture is in the National Museum in Delhi.

In the updated photo, the statue’s torso had been covered with a dark shading, which hid anatomical details that had been visible earlier.

The statue had been a topic of discussion earlier as well, during which a Union government expert pushed back against objections from some council members who considered it a nude depiction, The Indian Express reported.

On Monday, the council’s Director Dinesh Saklani told ANI that the department was directed to look into the matter as soon as a row erupted over the changes to the image in the textbook.

“Following consultations with experts, the department is replacing the image of the Dancing Girl with its original version,” Saklani told the news agency. “The correction is being implemented immediately in the digital version of the textbook, while the revised print editions will carry the original version of the image.”

‘An act of censorship’

The council’s decision came amid pushback.

Michel Danino, who led the development committee for the council’s new Class 6 Social Science textbooks, told PTI that he had earlier been told that the statue was considered unsuitable for younger students.

“The reason I was given was that the image of the Dancing Girl was not age-appropriate,” PTI quoted Danino as saying. “Our team disagreed; we even checked with teachers of Class 6, and they told us there was never a problem with the Dancing Girl.”

He added: “The notion that nudity is inappropriate is, in my opinion, an obsolete Victorian view. Yet we speak of decolonising Indian education.”

Commenting on the fresh row relating to the Class 9 textbook, The Indian Express quoted Danino as saying that “the shading of the figure’s whole trunk is an act of censorship” and “wrong and unfair to the student”.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: ‘Dancing Girl’ as Parvati is just one of many bizarre claims in ICHR paper on Harappan civilisation

India’s newly appointed High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Dinesh Trivedi, crossed the Benapole-Petrapole land border on Friday afternoon, walking into Bangladesh by road in a gesture his office likely intended as symbolic of accessibility and warmth.

Within hours, that gesture had become the backdrop for a diplomatic controversy that is still reverberating in Dhaka.

Trivedi, a 75-year-old veteran Bharatiya Janata Party politician and former Union Railway Minister, is himself a significant appointment. He is the first politician to serve as India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh in the 55-year history of bilateral diplomatic relations – a deliberate departure from the longstanding convention of sending career Indian Foreign Service officers to Dhaka.

He was appointed in April, succeeding Pranay Verma, who has since been named India’s Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union.

Speaking to Bangladeshi journalists at the border, Trivedi was warm and expansive. He spoke of cooperation in sports, health, education, and technology.

But it was a specific formulation that set off the uproar. Asked about border tensions and the possibility of easing restrictions on trade and travel, he said: “India and Bangladesh share the same sky, the same air, the same pain. I do not feel as though I have come to Bangladesh. Whatever is good for the 1.4 billion people of India and the 200 million people of Bangladesh – for these 1.6 billion people – is what will be done.”

The next day, Shafiqur Rahman, the Jamaat-e-Islami chief and leader of the opposition in Bangladesh’s Parliament, demanded that the government seek formal clarification from Trivedi about his remark that India and Bangladesh become one. “We request our government to address this matter sincerely,” Rahman said in a post on his official Facebook page, noting that if the High Commissioner had intended the remarks literally, “then it is certainly condemnable”.

The same day, Bangladesh’s Information Minister Zaher Uddin Swapan put forth the government’s position, framing the controversy in terms of regional architecture.

Swapan noted that SAARC – South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation — comprises 2.2 billion people. “Those who don’t want SAARC unity, if they only talk about two countries’ unity, we will look at them with suspicion,” he said. “Beyond the UN, SAARC, and Bangladesh, if anyone talks about any other framework, we will view them with suspicion.”

Bangladesh’s media amplified the controversy, with commentators comparing Trivedi’s language to “Akhand Bharat”, the ideologically-loaded formulation of an undivided India.

To understand why seemingly warm words about shared skies could provoke this reaction, it is necessary to understand the current state of the India-Bangladesh relationship and the historical sensitivities that frame how Dhaka receives New Delhi’s overtures.

Bangladesh achieved its independence through the 1971 liberation war, in which India was a crucial ally, but one that Bangladeshis fought to assert a distinct national identity.

In the Bangladeshi political imagination, the recurring anxiety has always been absorption into larger regional frameworks. When a new Indian envoy arrives and says that he does not feel as though he has crossed into another country, and frames the two populations as constituting a single 1.6-billion-strong bloc, the historical resonance is difficult to separate from the diplomatic intent.

The relationship between the two countries has also been strained since August 2024, when former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh following a mass uprising and took shelter in New Delhi, where she remains.

Hasina’s presence in India has been a persistent political irritant. Bangladesh has requested her extradition under the bilateral extradition treaty, and all New Delhi has said is that the request “is being examined as part of ongoing judicial and internal legal processes”.

Against this backdrop, the relationship inherited by the current Bangladeshi government led by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, whose Bangladesh Nationalist Party won the February elections, is one that his Foreign Affairs Adviser Humaiun Kobir has described as marked by a “tremendous deficit” accumulated over 15 years of Hasina’s rule.

That deficit, in Kobir’s telling, was the product of a relationship that was “one way, and not done with the interests of the people of Bangladesh in mind”.

There are also other disputes. For instance, the continued “push-in” operations, in which the Indian Border Security Force allegedly force across the border individuals they claim, often without documentation, are Bangladeshi.

These operations continue to take place despite being raised at the highest levels, including at the 57th Bangladesh Border Guard-Border Security Force Director General-level Conference held in New Delhi last week. A resolution on “push-in” operations was conspicuously absent from the outcome of that meeting.

Then there is the 1996 Ganga Water Sharing Treaty, which is set to expire this year. Bangladesh is seeking its renegotiation on terms it considers equitable and climate-resilient. The Teesta water treaty, long promised, remains unsigned.

Trivedi’s appointment was designed to cut through this stalemate. The Indian media read his appointment as a signal of political intent. The Hindustan Times described it as a “clear signal” that Modi was willing to send political leaders rather than career diplomats to key postings. Frontline framed it as New Delhi's admission that “the old Hasina-centric approach will no longer work”.

What routine diplomacy had failed to resolve – on push-in operations, water-sharing, and Hasina’s extradition – is likely to require sustained political will on both sides. But the opening hours of Trivedi’s tenure revealed the danger that cultural fluency can become when wielded without sufficient attention to the asymmetries of the relationship.

The Akhand Bharat comparison may be unfair to Trivedi’s personal intentions, but the fact that it was reached for so quickly in Dhaka is itself telling.

The timing made matters worse. On the same day Trivedi spoke of shared pain and borderless brotherhood, Border Security Force operations at the frontier resulted in another Bangladeshi death. That, as Bangladesh’s media observed, is the chronic contradiction at the heart of the bilateral relationship. You cannot speak of a single sky while maintaining what is regarded in Bangladesh as “among world’s most dangerous borders”.

Until India’s approach – including at the level of language and symbolism – reflects that recognition, the reset both sides say they want will remain elusive.

Jannatul Naym Pieal is a Bangladesh-based writer, researcher and journalist. He can be reached at jn.pieal@gmail.com.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke was on Monday slapped during a protest in Jaipur, videos widely shared on social media showed.

An unidentified man can be seen in the videos repeatedly slapping Dipke as he was being carried on the shoulders of his supporters.

It was not immediately clear who attacked Dipke and what the motive was. Two persons had been detained, PTI quoted unidentified police officers as saying.

कॉकरोच जनता पार्टी के फाउंडर अभिजीत दीपके को शख्स ने मारा थप्पड़

Abhijeet Dipke #CockroachJantaParty | #CJP pic.twitter.com/t5bqbR1NNM

— News24 (@news24tvchannel) June 15, 2026

The protest was being held at the Shaheed Smarak. Hundreds of young persons had gathered at the site to protest the alleged mismanagement in the conduct of competitive exams and other problems such as unemployment.

After the incident, Dipke said that “physical attacks are a sign of fear and cowardice”.

“We will continue to raise our voices peacefully,” the 30-year-old said on social media. “I am a follower of Gandhi and Ambedkar, and I will keep fighting this battle with peace and love. PS: Dharmendra Pradhan must resign!”

After holding a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on June 6, the Cockroach Janta Party – which started as a satirical political campaign – has been organising demonstrations in several cities demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Dipke has also announced an indefinite sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar on June 20 if the demand is not met.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• ‘We want accountability’: Voices from the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest in Pune
• ‘They have sold themselves’: At ‘cockroach’ gathering in Delhi, protestors rage against the system
• Watching the Cockroach Janta Party – cautiously
• Why India’s Opposition parties should be worried about the cockroach movement

Stock markets across the world rose sharply on Monday and global oil prices fell after the United States and Iran reached a deal to end the war in West Asia, and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The agreement is expected to be signed in Switzerland on Friday.

The benchmark Brent crude fell by 4.9% to $83.3 per barrel on Monday. The price of Brent was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started. It had reached a high of $114 per barrel on May 4.

Indian benchmark stock indices ended the trading session on a strong note. The Sensex and Nifty had risen nearly 1% by the time the session ended. During early trade, the Nifty briefly reclaimed the 24,000-level after 20 days. Read on.

The wholesale price inflation in India jumped to 9.6% in May from 8.2% in April amid a spike in global fuel prices triggered by the conflict in West Asia. The wholesale price index-based inflation in fuel and power spiked to 30.3% in May as compared to 24.8% in the previous month. The inflation in crude petroleum and natural gas was 61.5% in May, up from 56.3% in April.

The wholesale inflation data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Monday was the first set from the revised wholesale price index series with 2022-’23 as the base year. The revised series also expanded the commodity basket to 957 from 697 items. The base year in the earlier series was 2011-’12. Read on.

India’s acting High Commissioner in Dhaka was summoned by the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, a day after Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Information Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman was allegedly stopped at the Delhi airport on Sunday. Dhaka expressed dissatisfaction about the incident. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has not yet commented on the matter.

Zahed Ur Rahman had arrived in Delhi to attend a two-day meeting of the Indian Ocean Rim Association hosted by India’s external affairs ministry. While the adviser was eventually granted permission to enter India following instructions from the higher authorities, he chose to return to Dhaka via Colombo on Monday afternoon.

He had waited for more than two hours during the immigration process in Delhi. It was unclear what caused the delay. Read on.

The Supreme Court indicated that it may hear petitions challenging amendments to the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act itself or consolidate them and assign them to a particular High Court. Petitions against the amended law are pending before the High Courts of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala and Delhi.

A bench stayed the proceedings in the cases and issued notices on the Union government’s plea seeking their transfer to the Supreme Court. Read on.

Why activists see the imprint of Hindutva in the new transgender law, Nolina Minj explains

The United Kingdom will ban users under the age of 16 from accessing social media to protect them from being exposed to “dangerous” and harmful content, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. The UK government said that it plans to use the same blocking model as in Australia. In December, Australia became the first country to block social media for those under 16.

The ban in the UK will include platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. Messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal will not be banned. Read on.

Social media bans won’t keep teenagers safe – Finland shows a better approach, Susan Grantham and Aida Hurem explain

If you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.

India’s acting High Commissioner in Dhaka, Pawan Badhe, was summoned by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, a day after Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Information Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman was allegedly stopped at the Delhi airport on Sunday for “mysterious reasons”, Prothom Alo reported.

Dhaka expressed dissatisfaction about the incident, the newspaper reported.

The Indian external affairs ministry has not yet commented on the matter.

Zahed Ur Rahman had arrived in Delhi to attend a two-day meeting of the Indian Ocean Rim Association hosted by India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

While the adviser was eventually granted permission to enter India following instructions from the higher authorities, he chose to return to Dhaka via Colombo on Monday afternoon. He had waited for more than two hours during the immigration process in Delhi, The Daily Star reported.

It was unclear what caused the delay.

Bangladeshi High Commissioner to India M Riaz Hamidullah was present at the airport and identified Zahed Ur Rahman to the immigration authorities, The Wire quoted unidentified diplomatic officials as saying.

The Indian authorities had been informed in advance that Zahed Ur Rahman would lead Bangladesh’s delegation at the meeting that began on Monday, The Wire reported.

While other members of the Bangladeshi delegation were cleared to enter India without difficulty, Rahman remained held up, The Wire reported.

On Monday, Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser Khalilur Rahman told reporters that the incident was unexpected, Prothom Alo reported.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Former Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Rathore has been arrested in Uttarakhand for allegedly making statements linking a party leader to the 2022 Ankita Bhandari murder case, PTI quoted the police as saying on Monday.

Rathore was detained from his office in Buggawala in Haridwar and taken to the Dalanwala police station in Dehradun, where he was formally arrested, Superintendent of Police Pramod Kumar told the news agency.

Bhandari worked as a receptionist at a resort in Rishikesh that was owned by Pulkit Arya, son of former BJP leader Vinod Arya. She went missing on September 18, 2022. A day later, Pulkit Arya, resort manager Saurabh Bhaskar and assistant manager Ankit Gupta filed a missing person report.

However, they later confessed to killing Bhandari by pushing her into a canal following an altercation. Bhandari’s body was recovered from the Chilla Canal in Rishikesh six days after she had gone missing.

The BJP expelled Vinod Arya and his other son Ankit Arya after the matter came to light.

Evidence recovered later, such as WhatsApp messages from Bhandari to a friend, seemed to show that the men were allegedly trying to force Bhandari into prostitution. It was claimed that she was killed for refusing to provide “special services” to a “VIP”.

In audio and video clips made public later, Rathore had allegedly identified BJP national general secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam as the “VIP” in question, PTI reported. However, the former MLA had denied releasing any audio or video clips, or making any remarks against senior party leaders.

Four cases had been registered against Rathore in connection with the matter. However, three days ago, he held a press conference, in which he said that the Uttarakhand High Court had on June 4 quashed two of the four first information reports registered against him, according to PTI.

Rathore also said that two other cases registered at Dalanwala and Nehru Colony police stations were still under investigation and that he was cooperating with the authorities.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Monday indicated that it may hear petitions challenging amendments to the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act itself or consolidate them and assign them to a particular High Court, Live Law reported.

Petitions against the amended law are pending before High Courts of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala and Delhi.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice V Mohana also stayed the proceedings in the cases and issued notices on the Union government’s plea seeking their transfer to the Supreme Court.

The 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Act was cleared by Parliament on March 25 after a motion to refer the proposed legislation to a select parliamentary committee was rejected.

Introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 13, the legislation amends the 2019 Act by redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

It removes transgender persons’ right to a self-perceived gender identity and limits the scope of the law to those with certain biological or physiological characteristics, intersex variations, or specific socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.

The law makes medical evaluation and certification mandatory for legal gender recognition. It underlines that the authority to permit such transitions is vested in medical professionals operating under a medical board.

When the bill was being discussed in Parliament, Opposition leaders had expressed concerns that it undermines the right to self-identification recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 National Legal Services Authority v Union of India matter, or NALSA case.

The judgement had formally created the “third gender” category for transgender persons that recognised them as a socially and economically backward class.

It had issued directions to the government to ensure transgender community gets job quotas, admission in educational institutions, health benefits, separate public toilets and a host of other safeguards against discrimination.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Why activists see the imprint of Hindutva in the new transgender law

• Why right to self-determination is essential to improving employment and education among transpeople

• Changes to trans rights act will worsen access to healthcare for vulnerable individuals

The Voice of Hind Rajab is the most powerful and moving film that I have seen in recent memory. The movie was screened at the G5A in Mumbai after India’s Central Board of Film Certification finally allowed its release. In March, the Censor Board had blocked the release of the film claiming it would spoil India’s relationship with Israel.

Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, was trapped in a car that Israeli soldiers had shot at in Gaza in January 2024. Her relatives were killed but Hind hid between the seats and after her uncle established phone contact with her, he passed on her number to the Red Crescent, a truly heroic group of international and Palestinian volunteers who co-ordinate search and rescue operations from the West Bank.

The volunteers did all they could to keep Hind’s morale up over the phone as they attempted to obtain permission from the Israelis military to send an ambulance to her. Many volunteers have been killed by Israel during similar rescue missions, so official permission was crucial. The Israeli military controlled all roads and permissions were endlessly delayed, as it turns out, perhaps deliberately so.

The 70 minutes of Hind’s phone recordings made over a day are the heartbeat of the film. They are also the only documentary part of the film. The rest of the story was recreated through painstaking research and brilliantly acted, directed and edited into a masterful piece of truth telling.

After the screening, filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania over a video call expressed her happiness that the film was being seen in India, having grown up loving Indian cinema, so popular in her region. Having watched the film, I really hope the Censor Board is right. May we indeed spoil relations and create some distance with a genocidal regime whose country, in my youth, we were not allowed to travel to.

Like other English-educated Indians I grew up on stories of the Holocaust and Leon Uris novels like Exodus and Mila 18. We empathised with the Jews of the world who had faced centuries of persecution. I still do. But I no longer believe the common fiction that Israel had been created out of a “land without people for a people without a land”. I know now that Palestine had been populated by Muslims, Christians and Jews who had lived together for centuries in relative harmony. Unlike Europe, there were no pogroms here against the Jews.

Luckily for me, India’s leadership knew more than I did and were less influenced by Hollywood. Mohandas Gandhi was one of the earliest world leaders, perhaps the very first, to oppose the creation of Israel. He spoke out against the grabbing of Palestinian land in 1938 before Israel was created, and then again in 1948.

Gandhi sympathised with Jews who had faced terrible persecution in Germany and other parts of Europe but said that “The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.” He added that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”

Gandhi, perhaps instinctively, opposed partitions of all kinds and the division of humans against each other in the name of an artificially created nationalism that only benefits a ruling class or a colonial or imperial power. He may not have known that the very concept of Zionism did not originate from Jews but was an imperialist and Christian Restorationist project.

Long before Theodor Herzl, considered the father of Zionism, wrote Der Judenstaat, prominent 19th-century British politicians and theologians had lobbied for a Jewish return to Palestine. Some, like Lord Shaftesbury and Charles Henry Churchill, promoted the idea as an imperial strategy to secure British interests in West Asia. Later, once oil was discovered, the placement of a well-armed, white European policeman on Arab soil perfectly suited both, a waning Britain, and the United States, an emerging super power at the end of the second World War.

Meanwhile, Independent India in the first few decades was Gandhi and Nehru’s India. My Indian passport refused to allow me to visit two countries – apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel. South Africa no longer practices apartheid but Israel still does. Guest workers from India and non-white immigrants from everywhere face the brunt of racism in Israel. Palestinians, native to the land that Israel occupied, face a daily dose of insecurity at the best of times and when times get darker, torture, rape and death.

Israel’s carte blanche as the land of those who suffered the Holocaust is coming to an end after its genocide in Gaza. Even Germany, which out of pure guilt refused to criticise Israel, has started to express reservations. Zionism is no longer a good word internationally and all criticism of it can no longer be dismissed as “antisemitism”.

This is not true as yet in today’s India. The Gandhi-Nehru era has long been buried along with ideas of socialism, secularism and democracy. The rise of a muscular ultra-Hindu nationalism – Gandhi was murdered for advocating fraternity with Muslims – mirrors the rise of ultra-Zionists who murdered Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for having dreamt of peace with Palestine.

There is strong evidence that Israel’s secret service, Mossad, had ties with and aided the terrorism of fanatic Hindu groups in the days when the extreme Hindu Right was not yet in power. Today, Israel and Narendra Modi’s India trade arms and are partners in crime, shamefully, even during the genocide in Gaza. Anti-Muslim hate is common to both and official permission for pro-Palestine protests are rarely granted.

To get back to the film that triggered this reflection, we had protested the blocking of the release of The Voice of Hind Rajab in India through an international signature campaign that included actor Naseeruddin Shah, director Martin Duckworth and eminent filmmakers and others from across the world. For whatever reason the ban was finally lifted, I am deeply grateful. One less moment of shame.

Now, for the next step. JVEL, an intrepid distributor, has picked up the film and from June 19, over 100 cinemas across India will screen The Voice of Hind Rajab. The film has English subtitles, so the reach will be limited. But if enough of us English speaking Indians throng the cinema, the distributor could be persuaded to make different language versions.

It can become a breakthrough moment for India, for not only does this film depict the bravery of rescue volunteers who enter war zones, it also bears testimony to the murder of humanity, an act we witness almost on a daily basis in many parts of the globe. The war on Iran began with the US dropping bombs on a school, killing 168 Iranian schoolgirls.

The film destroys the “victim” myth of Israel and the “saviour” myth of a US that funds ongoing barbarism. It is an unflinching comment on the cruelty being inflicted by the rich and powerful of the world upon the poor and the defenseless. It is the inner voice of a conscience we cannot allow to die.

Anand Patwardhan is an award-winning filmmaker.

In 2021, Britannia launched a new version of its waffle-shaped Milk Bikis biscuit. The company claimed it was made of “100% atta” and had “doodh roti ki shakti”, or the energy of milk and roti.

The company’s claim that the factory-manufactured biscuit was as wholesome as wheat rotis and milk ran into trouble with India’s food safety regulator.

In January 2024, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India issued a notice to the company, seeking justification for these claims, which it stated, “seems misleading” and “should be withdrawn”.

The company responded to the regulator’s notice. But when the matter came up for discussion again in November, the food regulator rejected the justification, documents obtained through a Right to Information application show.

The regulator noted that the label was making an unacceptable comparison between “processed food” and “freshly cooked food”. It stated, “The claim of Dudh Roti ki Shakti cannot be accepted and is misleading.”

In February 2024, the company sent “revised artwork” of the label to the regulator. But the changes, too, did not satisfy the regulator – the documents note that in a March 2024 meeting, the regulator found the revised label “unsatisfactory” and directed an official to ensure that the company “shall mandatorily remove the claim”.

Two years later, however, in April 2026, we found that the biscuit was still being sold with the same packaging on e-commerce websites.

We placed an order on Amazon – the packet that was delivered featured the tagline “doodh roti ki shakti”. Britannia responded to queries from Scroll, stating that the matter is “of confidential nature and meant for exchange between the organisation and FSSAI alone”. Further, it stated that the cases had “all been successfully closed with full compliance from the brand”.

The FSSAI did not respond to Scroll’s queries.

This is not the only case in which claims that the food safety regulator flagged as misleading continue to be in circulation.

The documents Scroll accessed contain information about 163 cases, the earliest from 2022, which were discussed in a meeting held by the Food Safety and Standards Authority in March 2024.

Our analysis found that most of these products continue to be sold with the same claims that the regulator had flagged as being misleading. These include products from Britannia, Dabur and Patanjali, among other fast moving consumer goods giants.

While regulations set out a time frame of a maximum of 165 days within which concerns about a product’s claims must be resolved after they are first raised, several companies continued to make allegedly misleading claims years after the food regulator had flagged them.

This dramatically low rate of enforcement of food advertisement regulations was even underlined in the Economic Survey of 2026, published in January. In a section on “the challenge of ultra-processed foods”, the survey noted that though there were many regulations in place to prevent misleading food advertisements, enforcement against them “leaves much to be desired”.

Scroll emailed the FSSAI, seeking responses to criticisms that it had not done enough to protect Indian consumers from misleading food claims. This story will be updated if it responds.

Unhealthy packaged food is fuelling an epidemic of lifestyle diseases in India. The government knows this. But its measures to regulate the industry are falling short. This series, based on previously unpublished internal documents, takes a hard look at this failure.

How the process works

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, which functions under the union health ministry, is responsible for regulating the production and marketing of food in the country.

One of its internal panels, called the advertisement and claims monitoring committee, is tasked with implementing regulations, including those that mandate that all claims made on food products are “truthful, unambiguous, meaningful, not misleading”. Further, any claim of nutritional or health attributes has to be “scientifically substantiated”.

As part of its work, the committee examines food products that appear to have made false or misleading claims. These include products that it identifies itself, as well as those brought to its attention by other entities, such as other food and beverage companies or other arms of the government.

If the committee needs more information, it can seek clarifications from the food business or marketer in question. The firm must send the information within 30 days of receiving the request. The regulator is required to pass an order accepting or rejecting the clarification within 90 days.

But the regulator may also suggest “improvements” to the claim made in the product label or advertisement, which the company is then required to implement within 45 days.

A firm can also be directed to run a corrective advertisement within 30 days of being ordered to do so by the regulator, using the same medium, to “neutralise the effect” of the original advertisement whose claims the regulator flagged.

The regulations allow FSSAI to impose a financial penalty on companies that do not comply with its directions – the maximum amount of this penalty is Rs 10 lakh, a limit that has remained unchanged since the Food Safety and Standards Act was enacted in 2006, and is a fraction of what a large FMCG company can earn from the sales of a product that makes misleading claims.

The regulator can also impose “other stringent punishments” such as suspension or cancellation of a company’s license “in case of repeated offences”.

Despite the public interest inherent in the work it does, the proceedings of the advertisement and claims monitoring committee are not public. There is no information in the public domain about how frequently the committee meets. Nor are there any public disclosures about companies whose food products it has examined and found guilty of making misleading claims, and against which it has taken punitive action.

Rather, the FSSAI’s annual reports only furnish numbers for instances of “labelling defects/misleading claims/others”, without disclosing the names of products and companies in question.

The products flagged

For this report, Scroll reviewed more than 230 pages of documents containing details of the correspondence between the FSSAI’s advertisement and claims monitoring committee and companies whose products were flagged as misleading. The documents, most of which emerged out of a meeting held in March 2024, were obtained through a Right to Information request.

Of the 163 products that were examined in the March 2024 meeting, 136 had been flagged earlier for making misleading claims, like Milk Bikis. In these cases, the regulator had already issued improvement notices to the companies.

Issued under Section 32 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, a notice is the first sign that the regulator has found a company’s claims about a product to be in violation of regulations. The company in question is expected to take remedial measures within a stipulated period or face a penalty and even suspension of its licence.

Another three cases pertained to Dabur Real juice products. In the March 2024 meeting, the regulator flagged them as being of potential concern. Since then, it has explicitly stated in a petition in a court case in the Delhi High Court that it considers claims made about the products misleading. Dabur has contested this in court.

Of these 139 products, 120 continue to be sold with the same claims that had been flagged as misleading. In this report, we examine a representative list of cases, across different product ranges.

In the March 2024 meeting, the regulator also discussed another 24 products for which it has not publicly released any further findings.

There were only two instances recorded in the documents of companies taking down misleading claims – in only these did the regulator recommend closure of the cases.

To obtain more information about the cases listed in the documents, and how they had progressed since March 2024, Scroll filed a right-to-information request in February, seeking copies of the minutes of the meetings of the committee held from January 2023 onwards, and for copies of its action taken reports.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority rejected the request by citing two clauses of the transparency law that allow information to be withheld if it is related to “commercial confidence”, “trade secrets”, or “intellectual property” and data held in a “fiduciary” capacity.

While the act allows public authorities to hold back information on these grounds, it maintains that the information can be divulged if the authority is convinced of its “larger public interest”.

We emailed the food regulator on May 26 to ask why it considers information on how it dealt with food claims flagged as misleading to not be in the public interest. This story will be updated if we receive a response.

After our right-to-information request was rejected, we also emailed the regulator specifically asking for information on the products that it had discussed in March 2024. We followed up with the regulator twice, but did not receive a response.

It has also similarly stonewalled others. Earlier, in May 2024, a food activist had filed a right-to-information request, asking the FSSAI to share details of the companies whose licenses had been revoked for violating food advertisements regulations. In response, the regulator had said that “no such information is available”.

Claims about juices

Among the major companies whose products appear in the documents is Dabur. The document shows that FSSAI officials flagged different products from Dabur’s Real range of juices twice over seven months – first in November 2023, and then again in the March 2024 meeting.

In November 2023, the regulator noted that the company’s statements about the composition of its mixed fruit juice seemed to be “ambiguous”, and that its claims about “health and sehat” were “misleading” and violative of regulations. It directed officials to “close the matter at the earliest”.

But the same juice – along with grape and apple juices – was examined again in 2024. In each case, the regulator noted that the company’s claims that the products were “100% juice” were misleading, since they were made from concentrates ranging in percentages from between 6.80% and 22%.

Minutes of the March 2024 meeting show that the regulator decided to put the case before a scientific panel the following month. The authority recommended that after receiving comments from the panel, officials should meet and seek clarification from Dabur “before initiating action”.

The regulator also took note of the fact that the juicebox carried the disclaimer that “Real” was only a “trademark and does not represent its true nature” at the back of the pack. But it pointed out that when a product used terms like “natural” and “real”, companies were required to carry such disclaimers at the front of the packet.

Scroll bought a box of Real juice from a retail store and found that the packaging did not carry the disclaimer at all. On e-commerce websites, products continued to be described as “100% juice”.

Indeed, the most widespread violation identified across the database involved the misuse of terms such as “natural” and “pure” to describe products. The committee repeatedly noted that such claims violated the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising & Claims) Regulations, 2018, which restricted the use of these terms – the term “pure”, for instance, can only be used for “a single-ingredient food to which nothing has been added”.

In fact, three months after the March 2024 meeting, the FSSAI issued a broad directive stating that there was “no provision” under the law for companies to claim they sold “100% Fruit Juice”. Further, it noted that they were not permitted to use the term “100%” when fruit juices were “reconstituted using water and fruit concentrates/pulp”.

Ten months later, Dabur India challenged this directive in the Delhi High Court, arguing that it was “legally unsound”. While the regulator’s objections had thus far been confined to internal documents, now, in court, the FSSAI stated that Dabur’s claims that its products were “100% juice” were “misleading”.

The next hearing in the case is on July 13.

In parallel to this case, a disclosure by the company to the National Stock Exchange revealed additional legal problems. The document noted that the additional district magistrate of Almora had on April 10 fined the company Rs 4 lakh over a product label that violated the food safety law. The company did not specify which product the case pertained to, but said it would appeal the penalty.

Scroll emailed Dabur, seeking its comments on the FSSAI’s findings. This story will be updated if the company responds.

Britannia flagged, not only for biscuits

Britannia did not come under the regulator’s scrutiny only for its Milk Bikis biscuits.

The regulator noted that Britannia’s 100% Wheat Bread “is not complying the standard of Whole wheat bread”. It pointed out that under the regulations, bread could only be described as “whole wheat” if it contained a minimum of 75% of whole wheat flour. The Britannia product falls short of this proportion, and contains only 62.5% whole wheat flour.

Officials first flagged the product in August 2023. In October 2023, they issued an improvement notice, and in the next month rejected Britannia’s response, noting that it was “unsatisfactory”. It then issued a “show cause notice” to the company.

Scroll’s queries to Britannia included queries about the notices it received about its wholewheat bread. The company did not respond separately to queries about different products, only stating broadly that the matters were “of confidential nature and meant for exchange between the organisation and FSSAI alone”. Additionally, it noted in the general response that the cases had “all been successfully closed with full compliance from the brand”.

In April 2026, Scroll purchased a packet of the bread and found that it still claimed to be “100% wholewheat bread”, even though, according to its label, it contained 62.5% whole wheat flour. On e-commerce platforms, too, we found the product listed with less than the mandated percentage of wholewheat flour.

Concerns over gummies

Among the categories of products that the regulator flagged were gummies, which companies claim impart a variety of benefits. In August 2023, officials scrutinised Tata 1mg’s Biotin Gummies. They came to a categorical conclusion about its composition: “The claim ‘Health gummies with non-caloric sweetener stevia’ is misleading since the product also contains sugar along with stevia.”

FSSAI officials also raised concerns about the product’s use of the word “healthy”. They noted that this was “misleading” and in violation of food safety regulations, which stipulate: “Food shall not be described as ‘healthy’ or represented in a manner that implies that a food in and of itself will impart health.”

Scroll found that the product is listed on Tata 1mg’s own platform, still described as containing the “non calorie sweetener Stevia” – its list of ingredients still included sugar.

Further, the words “healthy” and “health” appeared multiple times on the product page. Scroll emailed Tata 1mg, seeking its responses on the FSSAI’s findings. This story will be updated if it responds.

The vegan question

The regulator also flagged numerous companies for claims they made pertaining to products labelled as vegan.

In all, the document showed that more than 20 products market themselves as “vegan” without procuring the mandatory vegan certification from FSSAI, or displaying the required FSSAI vegan logo on physical packaging. These included an unsweetened almond beverage made by Epigamia, a Brooklyn Creamery dessert and almond milk made by Raw Pressery.

As of the March 2024 meeting, none of these cases had reached a conclusion – rather, the food safety regulator directed officials to take “suitable” and “necessary” action in them. Ahead of publishing this story, Scroll found these products still available online, with their claims of being vegan intact.

Also among the products that were flagged was Nourcery’s coconut milk powder. FSSAI officials noted that the product’s label of “vegan” was “misleading” because it “contains Milk protein in it as per the information provided on the label”. FSSAI officials called on the licensing authority to take “suitable action” – but the case remained “under process” 132 days after the regulator issued an improvement notice to the company.

The powder is still sold as a vegan product on its own website and Amazon.

Numerous other products were also flagged for claiming to be vegan without the mandatory FSSAI approval. These included Alt Co’s oat milk, soy milk and almond milk, Drupe’s almond milk, HealthSetGo’s Relax Gummies, One Good’s Cashew Mylk and Tata 1mg’s Biotin gummies.

Scroll found all these products still available on the companies’ websites or e-commerce websites, with the claim intact. We emailed the companies whose products the FSSAI had flagged. One Good responded that all their products were “100% plant-based” and “carry the required FSSAI license details and relevant regulatory markings on the packaging”. This story will be updated if we receive any other responses.

Products that claimed health benefits

The regulator’s most grave concerns pertained to products that made claims of providing medical and therapeutic benefits and advantages. Among these were products that claimed to prevent breast cancer, and others that claimed to treat diabetes, kidney diseases, urinary tract infections and insomnia. They also included products that made claims of being sugar-free.

In all, Scroll identified more than 20 products that had been flagged for such concerns.

Among them was Patanjali’s honey, about which the regulator received a complaint from the Central Consumer Protection Authority, a consumer rights-enforcement body under the union department of consumer affairs. The claims committee discussed the matter in December 2023 – it determined that justification should be sought from the company for claims it made, such as that the honey “scores 100% on more than 100 parameters of purity”, and that it “Can be taken along with juice of ginger for cough relief and for other ailments.” As of March 2024, the matter remained unresolved.

At the time of publishing this story, on its own website and e-commerce websites, the company continued to make the claims that had been flagged by the authority, two-and-a-half years after the FSSAI committee first probed the claims.

This was not the only Patanjali group product that the regulator flagged for claims related to managing sugar levels. In September 2022, FSSAI officials flagged the entire range of the group’s Nutrela Nutrition products. The regulator sought justification from the company for a variety of claims it made about the products, including that they helped improve insulin sensitivity, helped with weight reduction, and hunger and sugar craving management.

The regulator also stated that claims “related to organic on all the products is misleading,” because none of them carried the mandatory certification. They also termed “misleading” the claims, “No doping ingredient and banned substance free”, and directed the company to have them removed.

The minutes of the March 2024 meeting note that after these concerns were raised, the regulator extended a “final hearing opportunity” to the company – despite the fact that regulations do not provide for any such extensions.

As of April 2026, some of these claims persist, both on e-commerce platforms and on Nutrela Nutrition’s website, even though these products are no longer described as “organic” on the company’s website. Scroll emailed the company, seeking its responses to these concerns. This story will be updated if the company responds.

Products flagged for potentially misleading health claims also included Purifry, a product made by D Technology that is added to cooking oil, and which the company claims “acts like a sponge for harmful contaminants – making your cooking oil cleaner and better for reuse”. The regulator flagged the company for claims that the product reduces substances in oil that cause cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and acidity.

Scroll emailed the company at the end of May about the claims and the FSSAI notification.When we checked the product’s website on June 1, it still made these claims. The same day, however, the company responded that it had “not made any claim of reducing the risk of any disease. We have mentioned it reduces the intake of Free Fatty acids and Peroxides which cause heart disease”.

It added, however, that the phrasing “may be interpreted as a claim” and thus that it had “updated the wordings of the same with immediate effect”. By the end of the first week of June, the claims had been removed from the website.

Three products of the company Indian Chai were flagged for claims including that they helped tackle diabetes and insomnia, and improved the function of organs such as the liver and kidneys. In all these cases, the regulator recommended that officials “close the matter” after taking “suitable action” against the company. Scroll found that the company still made these claims about its products on its website and e-commerce websites.

Indian Chai, in a response to Scroll, said their “products are marketed as traditional herbal and wellness infusions based on commonly known Ayurvedic ingredients and practices. We do not intend to position these products as medicines or as substitutes for medical treatment.” Further, the “product labels carry a disclaimer stating that the information provided has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and that the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease”.

‘Sugar-free’ claims

A large number of cases pertained to products that claimed to be sugar-free, or promised to help tackle diabetes.

For instance, the regulator flagged the entire “sugar-free” catalogue of Anand Sweets, a Bengaluru-based sweets-maker and seller. The committee alleged that each of these items used sugar substitutes that disqualified them from claiming that they were “sugar-free”. It directed officials to initiate “suitable action”.

In a response to Scroll, Anand Sweets said that it took the FSSAI’s “feedback seriously and are actively reviewing and modifying the packaging labels, website descriptions, and marketing claims for the specified products. We are working to ensure that all ingredient disclosures and product descriptors strictly conform to the updated FSSAI guidelines on sugar substitutes and sweeteners”.

In the case of Medinutrica’s Sugartone Anti-Diabetic Tea Powder, the regulator noted in September 2023 that the manufacturing unit “had been closed” and that “the license has been surrendered”. But it then observed that the product was still available on Amazon. Three years after the unit was said to have been closed, Scroll found the product still available on at least one e-commerce platform.

One ad, for a herbal capsule made by a company named Sheopal’s, which claimed to control diabetes, shows an elderly man eating syrup-drenched gulab jamun. The accompanying text promised that the product would help “balance sugar” and “enhance insulin production”.

The regulator issued an improvement notice to the company in February 2024, and received a response the same month. The regulator then recommended that an official assess the response and “close the matter at the earliest”. It noted further that the claim that the product was natural was “still mentioned” on websites selling it. Scroll found that the company continued to make these claims on its website.

Other companies

The products detailed in this report are illustrative examples. A longer list of several of the companies that the FSSAI flagged for making misleading claims can be seen here in this table. Scroll found that all these claims can still be found on the companies’ websites or e-commerce platforms.

Only in a few cases did the companies respond to Scroll’s request for comment. The comments have been summarised in the table, which will be updated if we receive more responses.

In the third part of this series, we investigate concerns that the FSSAI raised over one of India’s best known beverage mixes.

Read the full series here.

Four passengers, including a child, died on Sunday when they jumped from the Khajuraho-Udaipur Intercity Express following a rumour of a fire on board and were crushed by another train in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district, The Indian Express reported.

The incident occurred around 4.15 pm near Hetampur railway station in the Jhansi division after a passenger in a general coach pulled the alarm chain of the train over a rumoured fire.

Railway officials said that due to panic surrounding reports of the alleged fire, some passengers got off the halted train and moved onto the adjacent railway track, PTI reported.

The Patalkot Express was passing on the adjacent track at the time, and the passengers who had got off failed to notice the approaching train and were run over, railway officials said.

“Due to the curve, those on the track may not have seen the train,” Jhansi Divisional Railway Manager Anirudh Kumar told The Indian Express. “Despite the driver’s attempt to apply emergency brakes, the train, moving at high speed, ran over them.”

According to railway officials and eyewitness accounts, no fire was subsequently detected on the Khajuraho-Udaipur Intercity train, the newspaper reported.

Those who died have been identified as Virma Devi (60), a resident of Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, Shakuntala Devi (60), Afreen (35) and her four-year-old son Asad Khan – all residents of Uttar Pradesh’s Agra district, The Hindu reported.

The authorities have launched a detailed investigation into how the rumour started and the circumstances that led passengers to leave the train and step onto the railway tracks.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A 33-year-old Dalit man was on Saturday beaten to death allegedly by three coworkers in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur district after he refused to massage their feet while they were drinking alcohol together, PTI reported.

Police said Rajkumar, also known as Chhannu, had attended a party at the Civil Lines residence of Samyak Rajnayak, 38. Two other coworkers, Gajendra Narwaria, 37, and Gaurav Raikwar, 25, were also present.

The three men, who were allegedly under the influence of alcohol, asked Rajkumar to massage their feet, PTI reported.

“When he refused, the three men assaulted him with a belt and an iron rod, resulting in his death on the spot,” Lalitpur Additional Superintendent of Police Kalu Singh told the news agency.

Police alleged that the men later dumped Rajkumar’s body on a road to make the death appear to have resulted from a traffic accident.

The Kotwali police received information on Sunday morning about a man lying unconscious on a road behind Varni Jain College near Gurunanak Dharamshala, PTI reported. He was taken to hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

Rajkumar’s body has been sent for a post-mortem examination and further legal proceedings are underway, the police said.

All three accused have been arrested and have allegedly confessed to the crime, PTI reported.

Based on a complaint by Rajkumar’s mother, the police registered a murder case along with relevant provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Trinamool Congress leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said on Sunday that 20 of the party’s MPs will merge with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party and back the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha, reported ANI.

Dastidar made the announcement after the MPs met with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla earlier in the day.

This came soon after TMC MPs Kirti Azad and Sagarika Ghose handed over to Birla a letter by party National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee against recognising any separate faction of the Trinamool Congress in the House.

The letter was initially sent to the speaker on Wednesday.

After meeting with Birla, Dastidar said that the rebel factions constitutes “more than two-thirds of our [TMC’s] total strength”.

Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who is among the 20 MPs, said that the 20 MPs will make the demand in July to give it the Trinamool Congress name since two-thirds of the party’s MPs are supporting it.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party has 28 MPs in the Lower House of Parliament. Although the TMC had won 29 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the MP from Basirhat has since died and a bye-poll is yet to be held.

On June 8, led by Dastidar, 20 of the party’s MPs wrote to Birla, declaring their support for the ruling National Democratic Alliance.

#WATCH | Delhi: After meeting Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Rebel TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar says, "We, the twenty MPs elected from the AITC, met the Speaker and submitted a letter requesting to sit separately; these twenty MPs constitute more than two-thirds of our total… https://t.co/9rbLSAmmwQ pic.twitter.com/XIOlUMGSsY

— ANI (@ANI) June 14, 2026

Abhishek Banerjee’s letter

In his letter, Abhishek Banerjee told Birla that TMC should be treated as “a single political party represented in the House solely through its duly authorised leader and whip”.

While Abhishek Banerjee is the leader of TMC’s parliamentary party, Kalyan Banerjee is the appointed whip.

“The AITC [All India Trinamool Congress] is a single, indivisible political party,” wrote Abhishek Banerjee. “The legislative party in the Lok Sabha derives its very existence from, and remains an emanation of, the political party. There is in law only one AITC, one Leader of the Party in the House, and one Whip, all of whom hold office by authority of the political party and its competent organisational authority.”

Abhishek Banerjee told the speaker that the TMC should be given an opportunity to be heard before any decision is taken on the rebel faction’s request.

The party reserves its rights to initiate proceedings under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution “in respect to any conduct falling foul of the provisions referred to herein”, he added.

The Tenth Schedule is an anti-defection provision that outlines the process by which MPs and MLAs can be disqualified for switching political parties.

Abhishek Banerjee wrote in his letter that the political party, and not the legislature party, is supreme.

Assuming without admitting in any manner that two-thirds of the legislative party has switched, “there has been no merger of the political party with any party or any creation of a new party called AITC”, he added.

The TMC has been facing internal divisions since it lost the West Bengal Assembly elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Three of TMC’s Rajya Sabha MPs have resigned since Monday, and two of them quit the party.

Apart from the proceedings in Lok Sabha, at the state level, expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee has claimed that a group of 58 of TMC’s 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

On June 3, the TMC dissolved all its committees and organisational units in the state, saying it would undertake a “comprehensive” review of its performance and party structure.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: Why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards

The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department searched the Kolkata home of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

This was part of an investigation into allegations made by rebel TMC MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha that 14 forged signatures were included in a letter submitted to support the appointment of Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

Banerjee was in Delhi during the day. Her residence is also an office of the Opposition party. TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who is Mamata Banerjee’s nephew, had skipped summons in the case. Read on.

Fourteen Kuki persons who had been held hostage in Manipur since May 13 were released by the United Naga Council and Naga civil society organisations. Ng Lohro, the president of the United Naga Council, said that he hoped the six Naga men who continue to be held by armed groups would be released soon.

They were among the more than 38 persons from the Kuki and Naga communities had been taken hostage by armed groups in the state’s Kangpokpi and Senapati districts on May 13. On May 15, the Manipur Police said that 28 of the persons who had been abducted were released. Read on.

The Congress took several of its MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, barring a few senior legislators, from Bhopal to Bengaluru ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in the state on June 18. It is “important to keep an eye out because of the way BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is trying to cause disruptions”, said Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Umang Singhar.

The Congress is the ruling party in Karnataka and is in the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh.

The BJP is expected to win two of the three Upper House seats in the polls, and the Congress the third. Read on.

A Patna court directed that no coercive action be taken against Bihar educator and YouTuber Faizal Khan, popularly known as Khan Sir, in an attempted murder case until the next hearing. Khan had been booked after two of his security guards allegedly told the police that he ordered them to open fire during violence outside his coaching institute in Patna on June 2.

The case came days after Khan claimed that “eight to ten rounds of gunfire” were fired outside his coaching institute, Khan Global Studies, after a group allegedly vandalised the premises in Patna’s Musallahpur area. Read on.

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A first information report has been registered against two nurses at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal for allegedly administering an injection containing a hazardous chemical to a three-year-old cancer patient, The Hindu quoted the police as saying on Saturday.

Sarthak Yadav, a resident of Korja village in Sagar district’s Bina tehsil, died in December, soon after he was injected with formalin, a hazardous chemical used for preserving biopsy samples, according to The Indian Express.

He had been admitted to the hospital on December 15 for the treatment of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a form of blood cancer.

The FIR against Madhubala Sharma and Anuka Gujarati was filed after an internal inquiry found evidence of gross negligence on their part.

According to the FIR, a syringe containing formalin had been prepared for a scheduled bone marrow biopsy, reported The Indian Express. However, the procedure was subsequently postponed.

Despite this, the syringe was neither discarded nor secured and was left on a locker near the child’s bed, according to the newspaper.

On December 17, Sharma used the syringe to flush the child’s intravenous line without checking its contents or label, the newspaper quoted the FIR as saying.

“During this time, the child’s father Siddharth Yadav cautioned and warned Nursing Officer Madhubala three times that the syringe did not contain IV flushing fluid and that it should not be administered to the child without consulting a doctor,” the FIR added.

Police alleged that the warnings were ignored and the child lost consciousness immediately after the injection. He was transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, where doctors attempted emergency treatment, but he was pronounced dead later the same morning.

The hospital’s internal inquiry had held Gujarati responsible for leaving the syringe containing the chemical unattended beside the patient’s bed.

The nurses face charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to causing death by negligence and negligent handling of hazardous substances, The Hindu reported.

The hospital has suspended them.

An unidentified senior police officer told The Indian Express that efforts were underway to locate them.

Edited by Sneha.

Fourteen crew members were rescued on Sunday after the Indian-flagged vessel they were aboard suffered an engine failure off the coast of Oman, said the Indian Embassy.

It added that the crew on board the vessel Virat 1, who were all Indian, evacuated to another ship heading to Mumbai.

The vessel had begun sinking about 80 nautical miles east of Ras Al Hadd in Oman, reported ANI. The embassy did not provide further details about the incident or the vessel’s condition.

This came in the wake of a series of incidents in the region involving vessels with Indian crew members, as tensions continue in West Asia.

It has emerged that the vessel experienced an engine failure, and the crew eventually transferred safely to a liferaft. Rescue operation is presently underway through ships in vicinity, under coordination of Omani authorities.

— India in Oman (Embassy of India, Muscat) (@Indemb_Muscat) June 14, 2026

Three Indian sailors were killed after the United States’ military on Wednesday attacked the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello off the coast of Oman.

On Thursday, the US said that its military had “disabled” another tanker off the coast of Oman as it was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen tanker MT Jalveer, which was located off the port of Shinas in northern Oman. Twenty Indian seafarers on board the vessel were evacuated.

An Indian seafarer serving aboard the merchant vessel MT Celestial died of illness on Thursday at Duqm Port in Oman, said the Indian embassy on Saturday.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India alleged that the seafarer died due to a lack of timely medical support.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “silent” and listening to orders from the United States “like an obedient servant” after American strikes killed three Indian seafarers earlier this week off the coast of Oman.

In a social media post, Gandhi added that the US had neither expressed remorse nor issued an apology. Instead, “America has continued issuing orders”, said the Congress leader.

His remarks came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and registered India’s protest against the American strikes on commercial vessels in the Gulf.

“Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified,” Jaishankar had said on social media.

During their conversation, Rubio “stressed that all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from US forces as they seek to uphold peace and security in the strait”, the US Department of State’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott stated on Saturday.

Rubio “underscored that violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated”, Pigott added.

The US has imposed a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz since April 13, preventing transit to and from Iranian ports as part of efforts to restrict Iran’s oil trade amid the conflict in West Asia.

On Sunday, Gandhi said that “a free country would never tolerate” the language used by Rubio after the killing of the three Indians.

“But our compromised PM? Silent,” wrote Gandhi, adding that such a leader “would not defend the nation’s honour” because he was being controlled by “those who insult the country”.

अमेरिकी हमलों में तीन भारतीय नाविकों की हत्या के चंद दिन बाद - न अफ़सोस, न माफ़ी। उल्टा, अमेरिका ने आदेश देना जारी रखा है।

उनके शब्द पढ़िए: “अमेरिकी सेना के आदेश तुरंत मानें।” कोई उल्लंघन “बर्दाश्त नहीं किया जाएगा।”

एक आज़ाद देश इस तरह की भाषा कभी नहीं सहेगा। लेकिन हमारे…

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 14, 2026

Jaishankar’s conversation with Rubio had come hours after the Ministry of External Affairs summoned the US Chargé d’Affaires, Jason Meeks, for the second consecutive day to convey India’s protest against the continued US strikes on ships carrying Indian crew members in West Asia.

Meeks had also been summoned on Thursday to register a protest against Wednesday’s strike on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman in which three Indians were killed.

Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued from the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello.

The US Central Command had acknowledged striking the Settebello, claiming that the vessel had violated the American blockade restricting maritime traffic linked to Iran. The ship was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Edited by Sneha.

My maternal great grandmothers were named for precious things – diamonds and gold. I met Hirabai, named for diamonds, several times as a child, and never met Sonabai, named for gold. But thanks to things Sonabai left behind, I have a better sense of who she was than who Hirabai was.

Hirabai Ajinkya, my mother’s maternal grandmother, was frail, almost wraith-like. I saw her a few times a year when I’d tag along with my grandmother to visit. I don’t recall having a conversation with her . After a greeting upon arrival, I usually wandered around the house on Hughes Road and returned only when I was told it was time to leave.

Even though Sonabai Kothare, my mother’s paternal grandmother, died well before I was born, she always seemed present. I heard lots of stories about her. But more importantly, in the house in which she’d lived in Girgaon, I was surrounded by things she’d touched and changed during her life.

A beautifully embroidered tiger head. Exquisitely painted glass panes on three-paneled units that could be used as stylish room dividers. I remember spending hours wondering how on earth the eyes of the people painted on those panels followed me no matter where I stood in the room.

These and other objects provided a sensory portrait of Sonabai.

So you can imagine my joy when in 2012, my aunt, Tej, gifted me a bound collection of Sonabai’s watercolour paintings. It had been bequeathed to my aunt, and I was lucky that she thought I would be a good steward of it.

Holding the collection that I was seeing for the first time felt like I was directly communing with this not-too-distant ancestor, fragments of whose DNA I carried and have passed on to my children.

The 75-year-old album has yellowed with time and become fragile. The numerous holes in the book made it clear that it had been a feast for some sort of arthropod, so before its condition worsened I decided to photograph every page myself. I made bound copies of the photograph for my mother and each of my aunts.

There are more than 30 watercolor paintings in the book – some incomplete or abandoned, others extremely detailed, completed and signed. Of the little I know about art, I have learnt that a human form is challenging to depict in almost every medium, so it is particularly interesting that almost two-thirds of the paintings have one or more humans in them.

I wonder if all those human figures say something about the woman I’ve heard described as strong and determined.

Sonabai Kothare was part of the Pathare Prabhu community that purportedly settled in Bombay in the mid-to-late thirteenth century. It is a shrinking community that historically engaged in education, the arts, and business. Perhaps as a consequence of being close to the sea, the community is also known for its deep love for seafood .

I’ve been leaning on my mum and my aunts to share stories about Sonabai. So far, a common thread in their stories has been this woman’s fiery temper, her culinary expertise, her support for the arts and her overall elan. While I did not have the good fortune to experience her culinary expertise nor witness her panache, I’ve seen hints of that fiery temper in her descendants.

As far as I know, Sonabai was not a formally trained painter but to my lay eye, she seems to have brought some of the rigor of a professional artist to her paintings, all of which were signed “SBK” – Sonabai Balaji Kothare.

Several pages in the book have made me stop, stare and wonder.

One in particular brings together Sonabai’s talent and also her support for the arts about which my mother has spoken. It’s a scene where musicians are on stage, performing for the observer, as it were.

Who were these musicians? What was the woman singing? Where were they performing? The woman, and the musician to her left are both looking into the audience, but to their right; the other musician is almost looking straight up ahead. What caught their attention? The woman’s hands, especially her knuckles, are extremely detailed  –  was Sonabai trying to convey something through this detail?

All but two of the paintings in the book are untitled  –  “Sunrise” and “Sunset”. Curiously, she painted Sunset before Sunrise (note the numbers at the top left of each painting). I am willing to bet that her gustatory inclination towards fish prompted both these paintings. Sunrise is reminiscent of fisherfolk getting ready to go off on their home-to-home sale of early morning catches, while Sunset depicts fishermen returning from a day at sea.

Painting number 15 appears to be a more detailed depiction of sorting the catch of the day, probably before heading out to sell it. Based on the un-erased pencil lines in this painting, it’s entirely possible that her original intent was another scene altogether.

Sonabai didn’t limit herself to painting scenes favoring her palate. On page 24 of the book, we see a young woman dressed to the nines  – note her footwear  –  playing with a dog. What I think is impressive is that in this painting she has created a layered effect where one can see the woman’s arms and legs through the diaphanous material of her outfit.

Sonabai’s paintings strike me as deeply private – made for herself, with no audience beyond perhaps her family. I’m not sure she even intended Tej to be the keeper of this book until the moment she gave it to her. But in that gift, she preserved a version of herself for her descendants.

A recent exhibition about the Pathare Prabhus at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai makes an effort to document the community before its stories fade. But community histories, however carefully assembled, rarely capture the interior lives of women. Sonabai left no public record – no exhibitions, no reviews, no archive beyond what her family preserved and passed on. Her paintings are a reminder that the most intimate histories live not in museums but in families, and can be easily lost to time and arthropods.

It’s a shame I waited so long to embark on the project of learning more about this woman. Sonabai suffered from a stroke from which she never fully recovered and died in the early 1950s, a couple of years after she gave this book to her granddaughter, my aunt.

My grandfather who likely knew her better than his children did, and with whom I shared this planet until I was 31 is long gone. But thanks to my mother’s and aunts’ stories and general family lore, I do know that in addition to Sonabai’s prowess with the paintbrush and embroidery threads, she also played the dilruba.

It is the bowed stringed instrument that you can hear very clearly in the opening bars (and later too) of the Beatles Within You Without You. George Harrison’s lyrics to this song capture my sentiment “..it’s far too late/When they pass away.”

Thanks to these paintings, Sonabai Kothare has finally introduced herself to me.

Deepti Pradhan is a cancer patient and survivor advocate at Yale University.

An Indian seafarer serving aboard the merchant vessel MT Celestial died due to a “medical condition” at Duqm Port in Oman, the Indian Embassy in Muscat said on Saturday.

The embassy said that arrangements are being made to repatriate his remains to India.

“The Embassy has been in continuous contact with the ship management company and is coordinating closely with all concerned stakeholders,” the statement added.

An Indian national Mr. Nishanth Uirthanathan passed away due to medical complications. His mortal remains are currently onboard MT Celestial at Duqm Port.

The Embassy has been in continuous contact with the ship management company and is coordinating closely with all concerned…

— India in Oman (Embassy of India, Muscat) (@Indemb_Muscat) June 13, 2026

The seafarer who died has been identified as Nishanth Uirthanathan, a 35-year-old second officer from Tamil Nadu, The Indian Express reported.

He died on Thursday evening due to medical complications while the vessel was at Duqm Port.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India alleged that Uirthanathan died “due to lack of timely medical support”.

In a separate post, the union on Saturday said his “body has remained onboard for over two days with no proper refrigeration”.

“Crew is using cold water bottles in a desperate attempt to slow decomposition – a horrifying and health-risking situation,” the crew said in a video posted by the Union. “Despite repeated distress calls, timely medical evacuation was reportedly delayed amid regional tensions.”

They sought urgent repatriation of Uirthanathan’s remains.

According to a statement signed by 15 crew members and shared by the union, Uirthanathan first became seriously ill on June 8 and suffered repeated vomiting, Mathrubhumi News reported.

They said the company was informed immediately and that requests for assistance were also made through maritime communication channels.

However, the crew alleged that despite repeated requests, no immediate medical assistance arrived as his condition worsened. They said they sought an urgent medical evacuation through Duqm Port authorities on Thursday and were directed to coordinate with a local agent.

According to the crew’s account, Uirthanathan became unconscious later that day and subsequently died.

The union has called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the medical response, the handling of the emergency and support provided to the crew.

It has also raised broader concerns about the welfare and safety of merchant seafarers operating in the region amid escalating tensions in West Asia.

The vessel’s management company, Romana Ship Management, rejected suggestions of wrongdoing and instead mentioned an earlier disagreement with the crew regarding the vessel’s route, Mathrubhumi News reported.

“It is further placed on record that three (03) days prior to this incident, you were advised to proceed to Shinas, which you refused without valid justification,” the news outlet quoted the company as saying.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai sent medical student Sejal Pawar on compulsory leave for 15 days while a formal inquiry is conducted into remarks that she made during a stand-up comedy show hosted by comedian Pranit More, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Pawar had made allegedly objectionable comments about the reproductive organs of a male cadaver.

Her parents have also been called for counselling, the newspaper reported.

The action follows controversy surrounding comments made by Gurgaon resident Himanshu Jangra during a separate live recording of the show. Jangra expressed entitlement to physical intimacy in return for spending Rs 370 for a biryani on a date with a woman. He had also claimed to have pressured the woman to accompany him to a “dark” park despite her repeated reluctance.

After his remarks drew criticism, social media users shared clips from another episode featuring Pawar in the audience, in which she also made comments that were widely criticised.

The action by KEM hospital follows a preliminary inquiry into the videos featuring Pawar, The Indian Express reported.

Harish M Pathak, the dean of the teaching hospital said Pawar had been “handed over to the care of her parents and concerns regarding her safety and mental well-being are also being considered”, the newspaper reported.

He added the hospital had advised her parents to arrange counselling and that any further action would be taken in accordance with applicable rules and guidelines “given that she is still pursuing her medical education”.

On Friday, Pawar submitted a written apology acknowledging that some of her statements were inappropriate and may have caused distress.

A five-member committee has been proposed to carry out an investigation into the matter and submit a report within seven working days, The Times of India reported.

The panel is expected to include a retired faculty member, three senior faculty members and a journalist.

“While certain facts emerged during the preliminary assessment, a broader and impartial investigation was considered necessary before arriving at any conclusions,” The Indian Express quoted the dean as saying.

The Maharashtra Police on Thursday registered a case against More, Jangra and Pawar, among other persons under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to making sexually coloured remarks, distributing obscene materials and circulating false information intended to promote enmity between groups.

They were also booked under a section of the Information Technology Act for publishing obscene material.

The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors said that Pawar’s comments were inappropriate and not in line with the dignity of the profession.

However, they also acknowledged that the online campaign against her had crossed into “targeted harassment” and “person vilification”, Hindustan Times reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Two Democratic senators in the United States have alleged that a reported proposal by Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani to invest $10 billion in the US economy if fraud charges against him are dropped appeared to be an “egregious quid pro quo offer”.

In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal questioned the “transactional nature” of the US Department of Justice’s actions, referring to its request to a court to drop the criminal charges against Adani.

The department of justice on May 18 told a New York judge that it had decided, “in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges”. The judge has not yet approved the request.

Four days earlier, The New York Times reported that the department of justice was planning to drop the charges against Gautam Adani after he hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

Warren and Blumenthal, in the letter to the acting attorney general on June 11, said that the department of justice’s decision gave the appearance “that Mr. Adani – with the help of one of the President’s personal lawyers – bought his way to criminal immunity, trading the promise of an investment in the United States for immunity from an alleged multi-billion dollar bribery scheme”.

Reports of Adani’s offer to invest in the US economy if the charges against him were dropped appeared to be a “blatant attempt by a wealthy individual to buy his way to leniency,” the senators said.

Warren and Blumenthal said that the department of justice’s decision to drop all charges against him weeks later “gives the appearance that the DOJ is an equal partner in corrupt behaviour”.

The senators sought to know if the White House communicated with the department about the case against Adani, including his alleged offer to invest money in the American economy and help create jobs.

The case

The US authorities had in November 2024 indicted Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani for allegedly orchestrating a $265 million fraud scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, and then misrepresenting the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the US.

The details of the alleged bribes were concealed to secure financing, the US justice department had claimed.

The Adani Group has denied the allegations. In a stock exchange filing in November 2024, the conglomerate said that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had been charged in the US for securities fraud, not bribery.

Even if the criminal charges are dropped, Gautam Adani is still expected to pay financial penalties, the New York Times quoted persons aware of the case as saying last month.