A judge in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal who had earlier this month ordered a case against several police officials in connection with the shooting of a man in 2024 was among 14 judicial officers transferred on Tuesday by the Allahabad High Court, Live Law reported.

Sambhal Chief Judicial Magistrate Vibhanshu Sudheer had ordered a first information report against former Circle Officer Anuj Chaudhary, Kotwali in-charge Anuj Tomar and 15-20 unidentified police personnel. The case pertained to a man named Alam being shot and injured during unrest in the town in November 2024.

The Sambhal Police had said they would move the High Court against the order.

Sudheer was transferred on Tuesday to Sultanpur as a civil judge (senior division). Aditya Singh, who was the civil judge (senior division) at Sambhal’s Chandausi town, has replaced him, The Indian Express reported.

Singh was the judge who passed the order directing a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town.

The violence in Sambhal, which left five dead, had broken out after a group of Muslims objected to the survey.

The survey had been ordered in a suit claiming that the mosque had been built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of the “centuries-old Shri Hari Har Temple dedicated to Lord Kalki”.

Earlier this month, Sudheer had allowed an application by Alam’s father, Yameen, seeking that a case be filed against the police officials who allegedly fired at his son. The applicant alleged that on November 24, 2024, his son was selling rusks and biscuits on his cart near the Jama Masjid at Sambhal, when police personnel suddenly fired at the crowd with the intention to kill.

The judge had said that while it was clear that Alam had been hit by gunshots, the identity of the shooter needed to be investigated. He had remarked that since the offence of attempted murder is a serious one, it was unlikely that the victim would spare the actual attacker and falsely accuse someone else, according to Live Law.

Sudheer had also said that for criminal acts, the police could not invoke the defence that they were merely discharging their official duties.

A Bengaluru sessions court on Tuesday directed more than 30 media organisations to remove allegedly defamatory content about Karnataka police officer K Ramachandra Rao, who was suspended a day earlier after videos purportedly showing him engaging in inappropriate acts with women in his office began circulating online, Live Law reported.

The videos purportedly showed the director general of police (civil rights enforcement) hugging and kissing women while in uniform during office hours.

In its order on Tuesday, the court, by way of an ex parte temporary injunction, restrained the media organisations from “making, publishing, telecasting, broadcasting or circulating any news, defamatory comments, statements or allegations or call recordings against [Rao] in print media, electronic media, television channels, websites” and social media platforms till next date of hearing, Live Law reported.

An ex parte injunction is an interim order issued without hearing the other side.

The court also directed all media entities, including TV9 Karnataka, India Today Group, The Hindu and The Times of India, to “remove and take down all such defamatory videos, audio clips, call recordings, visuals, newspaper reports that are available in websites, digital platforms and official social media handles forthwith” pertaining to the suspended officer, the legal news outlet reported.

The matter is listed for hearing on February 27.

Rao was suspended on Monday. In the suspension order, Karnataka government Under Secretary KV Ashoka said that Rao acted “in an obscene manner unbecoming of a public servant, causing embarrassment to the government”.

The order stated that the government was convinced he had acted in violation of service rules, necessitating his suspension while an inquiry was underway.

Following the controversy, Rao claimed that the video was manipulated and dated back eight years, when he was posted in Belagavi.

He said that he would speak to legal experts before taking further action on the matter.

The officer had been mired in controversy last year as well, when his stepdaughter, Kannada actor Ranya Rao, was arrested on allegations of smuggling gold.

The police official was sent on compulsory leave after he was accused of helping Ranya Rao evade security checks at the Bengaluru airport.

He was recalled and posted as the director general of police (civil rights enforcement) in August.

Tamil Nadu’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will seek a constitutional amendment to remove the requirement of beginning the first Assembly session of the year with the governor’s customary address in states governed by Opposition parties, the state’s Chief Minister MK Stalin said on Tuesday.

Stalin made the statement in a social media post hours after Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi walked out of the Assembly without delivering the customary address on the opening day of the session. This marked the fourth consecutive year that Ravi has left the House during the inaugural proceedings.

A governor is required to address the first session of the Assembly held in a year. As per convention, the governor reads a speech written by the state government.

Later in the day, the governor’s office said that Ravi had refused to read the address because his microphone was repeatedly switched off and he was not allowed to speak. It also alleged that the speech approved by the government contained several “unsubstantiated claims and misleading statements”, adding that crucial problems troubling the residents of the state were ignored.

Following the governor’s walkout, the Tamil Nadu Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution moved by Stalin, rejecting the governor’s decision not to read out the address, The Hindu reported.

The resolution stated that the speech prepared by the state government and uploaded on members’ tablets would be treated as having been read.

Stalin said that under Article 176 of the Constitution, the governor is required to read the address in full.

“There is no scope for the governor to include his personal comments or to remove parts of the speech prepared by the state government,” The Hindu quoted Stalin as having said.

He added that clarifications sought by the governor on Monday had already been provided, but that Ravi had still acted in violation of the provisions of the Constitution.

“It is regrettable that the Governor has acted like before,” Stalin was quoted as having said. “The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly reflects the sentiments of the eight crore Tamil people… [The governor] should extend cooperation to the government elected by the people. The Constitution expects the same from the individual holding the post.”

Stalin also said that such conduct was not limited to Tamil Nadu and accused Governors in several states of acting as “obstacles” to Opposition-led governments.

In Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday edited the policy address delivered by Governor Rajendra Arlekar to the Assembly.

After Arlekar left the Assembly, Vijayan returned to the House and said that the governor had changed three paragraphs in the policy speech. The chief minister said that while Arlekar omitted some portions of the text, he had made certain additions elsewhere in the speech.

In our era of fragmented identities and manufactured cultural tension, we are often told that deep, religious, and ethnic harmony is a naive dream, perpetually undermined by the “real” forces of history – conflict, empire and political manipulation.

To live in the Kerala coastal city of Kozhikode, however, is to inhabit a quiet, persistent rebuttal. This is not a city frozen in a utopian past, but a vibrant, living archive where a millennia-old politics of fraternity continues to shape its streets, its flavours, and its very soul.

Long before the term “globalisation” was coined, Kozhikode was its thriving epicentre. For nearly years, ships from the Mediterranean, Arabia, Persia, Africa, and China docked here, drawn by pepper and cardamom, but sustained by a uniquely cultivated trust.

The Hindu Zamorin rulers established a radical precedent: granting land and protection to early Christian traders, offering royal patronage to Muslim merchants for their mosques, and welcoming Jewish, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi communities. The visit of the Chinese admiral Zheng He’s treasure fleet in the 15th century was a spectacle of this conscious openness. Fraternity here was not a philosophical abstract; it was the practical engine of commerce and civic life, built on face-to-face familiarity.

The arrival of Vasco da Gama at Kappad Beach in 1498 introduced a different politics – one of crusading ideology and monopolistic conquest. Yet, even subsequent colonial encounters left traces of complex cultural and intellectual exchange. In the 17th century, the Dutch commissioned the monumental Hortus Malabaricus, a botanical compendium that systematically documented the region’s plant wisdom.

A century later, in 1774, the French staged a brief political intervention, signing a treaty with the local Zamorin ruler and raising their flag in a fleeting attempt to gain a foothold, only to be swiftly displaced by the advancing forces of Hyder Ali of Mysore. Later, the British colonial administration imposed foreign systems – from land revenue laws to English education – leaving behind both bureaucratic frameworks and physical landmarks like the serene St Mary’s English Church.

Throughout this period, the city’s innate character persisted. This was exemplified in the 19th century by the German missionary-scholar Hermann Gundert, who immersed himself in Malayalam to create its first dictionary, and by the Basel Mission, which contributed through education and landmark industries like the famous weaving mills and tile works. Each, in their own way, became a thread in the city’s plural mosaic.

The architecture of coexistence

Nowhere is Kozhikode’s living legacy more palpable than at its beach, where the city’s mercantile soul is written in architecture and community life. Extending into the sea are two historic piers – the older an iron screw-pile structure from 1871 stretching 400 feet. Once a hive of activity where cranes loaded spices, timber, and textiles onto global vessels, they stand as skeletal reminders of that exchange.

Lining the shore, the sturdy facades of old warehouses, known locally as pandika saala, silently guard the past. These storerooms of Arab, Gujarati, and European trading agencies, with thick laterite walls and steep, narrow wooden stairs, built for bales of goods, have been adaptively reused in a seamless transition from colonial trade depot to contemporary social hub.

They now house boutiques, art galleries, and beloved restaurants serving Malabar cuisine. This is Kozhikode’s philosophy in action: the past is not abandoned but woven into the daily fabric of community life – a truth felt as crowds gather for sunsets and literary festivals, sharing the same breeze.

This same spirit of shared space finds its most profound architectural expression a short distance inland, in the ancient Kuttichira neighborhood. Within a stunning radius of a few hundred meters, one encounters a silent, powerful dialogue of spires and roof-lines. Here stands the 14th-century Mishkal Mosque, a multi-storied wooden structure with a distinctive Kerala-style tiered roof, built by an Arab trader. A short walk away is the Mother of God Cathedral, a site of worship dating back to Portuguese contact.

They are neighbored by centuries-old Hindu temples and a historic Jain temple. This remarkable cluster is not a curated museum exhibit but a lived, everyday reality. For generations, the call to prayer, temple bells, and church chimes have woven together into a singular soundscape of belonging, a physical manifestation of a community where sacred spaces were built side-by-side, not in opposition.

The city’s famed culinary palette is its most delicious testament to this heritage. At the iconic Paragon Restaurant, founded in 1939, you do not just eat Malabar biryani; you taste the layered history of Arab spice routes and local genius. In the now-pedestrianised Sweet Meat Street, the halwa and crispy banana chips are the direct inheritance of a mercantile culture that blended techniques and tastes across communities.

From historic curry houses to modern multi-cuisine cafés, eating here remains a daily act of communion and shared heritage, continuing the ancient tradition of trade as a social bond.

Legacy in idea and action

This enduring spirit of exchange and shared space fuels the city’s intellectual life. Kozhikode’s identity as a Unesco City of Literature – with its over 500 libraries and thriving publishing houses – is a natural outgrowth of this deep-rooted culture, a tradition reflected in its sons and daughters who have shaped contemporary Malayalam literature, film, and music.

It culminates in events like the Kerala Literature Festival, where thousands gather on the very beach that saw historic arrivals to debate ideas in a cacophony of languages. Here, the legacy of literary and artistic giants finds its living, democratic echo in the public square. This vibrant, civil culture of debate in tea shops and public squares is the democratic echo of the old trading port’s negotiation tables, now channeled through prose, poetry, and public discourse.

This is where Kozhikode’s story challenges our contemporary majoritarian political despair. It demonstrates that the constitutional ideal of fraternity enshrined in India’s Preamble as the assurance of dignity and unity is not a top-down legal construct but a bottom-up, lived reality built on shared space, mutual interest, and daily encounter. Unity here was forged not through assimilation, but through the dignity of working, trading, worshipping, and creating alongside one another.

In a polarised world quick to weaponise difference, Kozhikode offers a different manifesto. It proves that pluralism can be robust, not fragile; that diversity, when woven into the urban fabric, the culinary palette, and the literary imagination, becomes a source of immense resilience and joy. The city does not ask us to merely tolerate one another. It invites us to build together – be it a new business in an old warehouse, a new understanding in a shared neighborhood or a new story in a common language.

Kozhikode’s mandate is clear: fraternity is a habit cultivated in the mundane architecture of everyday life. It is the politics of the shared street, the common meal, the neighboring house of worship and the collective story. In preserving this, the city is not just gazing at its past; it is actively writing, page by page, stone by stone, a vital chapter for our fractured future.

John Kurien, a reflective development practitioner, who has found in Kozhikode the perfect harbour for his sunset years.

“I wish the sea was far away from here,” said wada pao seller Ashok Dharmameher. “Then this project would not be here.”

Dharmameher was among the thousands who participated in coordinated protests on Monday on National Highway 48 and the roads leading to the district collector’s office in Palghar district, 84 km north of Mumbai, to demonstrate against the proposed Vadhavan port, plans to build a “fourth Mumbai city” there and other development plans for the area.

One protest was led by the Vadhavan Bandar Virodh Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation that has been opposing the construction of the port. Another protest, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), related to problems with land acquisition for these projects. It involved a 44-km march that ended on Tuesday.

Some of the protestors, led by the Kashtakari Sanghatana, were demanding forest rights.

Dharmameher, a resident of Chinchani village village, 6 km from the proposed port, said that he earned enough to support himself and his wife. But with little information available about the projects in the area, he and many others fear they will be displaced from homes their families have lived in for decades.

Opposition to the Vadhavan port, planned off the coast in Palghar, has been mounting in recent years, especially from fishing villages in the district that fear they will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Though the port is planned to be located offshore, an extensive road and rail network will be built to connect it to National Highway 48 (which runs from Delhi to Chennai) and to other cities such as Nashik and Bhusawal. This would entail acquiring land in the area’s villages. In some places, residents have prevented surveys from being conducted.

The Rs 76,000-crore port is a joint venture between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Maharashtra Maritime Board. It will be spread over 17,471 hectares. Of this, 16,900 hectares have been earmarked for the port and 571 hectares for rail and road connections.

The project will also require land to be reclaimed, for which about 200 million cubic metres of sand will be quarried from a pit located 50 km off the Daman coast in nearby Gujarat. The reclamation will also use stones from quarries in Palghar taluka.

Vadhavan port is being developed along with a “fourth Mumbai” that will involve acquiring vast tracts of land in Palghar district. (After Navi Mumbai was built in the 1970s to decongest Maharashtra’s capital, a “third Mumbai” has been proposed in Raigad district.)

Also proposed in the area are an offshore airport, a textile park at Kelve, a new expressway and a freight rail corridor. Already, residents have had land acquired for the bullet train project that will connect Mumbai with Ahmedabad.

On Monday, in a memorandum to the chief minister submitted to the Palghar collector, representatives of 11 organizations representing fisherfolk, farmers, adivasis stated that these projects should be stopped as it threatened their environment and livelihoods.

They emphasised that the port was not legally permissible as Dahanu taluka, where the port is proposed to be located is an eco-sensitive zone. That is why the Supreme Court-nominated Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority had in 1998 rejected the location of a port here, they noted.

The project violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which assures the right to life and dignity, they contended.

The memorandum also cited the Public Trust doctrine, which asserts that natural resources are not the property of the government but are a public resource. The government is only a trustee of these commons.

The memo said that the public hearing for the project in 2024 ignored the widespread opposition to the proposal by residents and the Social Impact Assessment Report did not have plans to regenerate livelihoods for those who would be affected by it.

Importantly it stated that though the port authority had agreed to not begin work till the land acquisition process was completed in the case before the Supreme Court filed in May 2025, it was violating that commitment in some places. This, the memo noted, was contempt of court.

Among the participants in Monday’s protest was Devashree Kini, the deputy sarpanch of Vasgaon village in the district. “We don’t want this port or their jobs,” she said. “We are self -sufficient. This port will wipe out our existence and our next generation will be finished.”

Also in the crowd was Sachin Patil from Chinchani village, who owns seven acres of a chikoo and mango farm. He employs four people and said that he earns Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh a month. After visiting Mundra port in Gujarat, he fears that the displacement he witnessed there will be repeated in Palghar. “I saw that land around the port was used for so many things, and here too our villages will be affected,” he said.

Palghar is an Adivasi-dominated district that was bifurcated from Thane in 2014. It lacks basic amenities and a tertiary hospital. One section of protestors was focused on demanding forest rights.

The Forest Rights Act grants individual rights such as habitation and cultivation as well as community rights such as grazing, fishing and collecting minor forest produce to forest-dwelling communities

Brain Lobo of the Kashtakari Sanghatana said that while the government acquired land for new projects, it had not settled existing claims of Adivasis under the Forest Right Act. There were over 3,000 appeals related to forest rights pending in the area. Of these, 600 related to wrong survey numbers, a crucial detail in cases when land is being acquired.

Prasad Shinde from Chahade village said even if the port was located offshore, the roads to the highway would require land to be acquired. Even though the authorities had assured residents that they would get jobs on these projects, Shinde was sceptical.

The only jobs available for residents here, most of whom are not educated, would be as sweepers, he remarked.

“Why doesn’t the government take the project to the north?” he said. “That is where people migrate from isn’t it and look for jobs in Palghar. We don’t want this new city also because we won’t have a place in it and we don’t want this port which will destroy our land and livelihoods.”

Jyoti Meher, secretary of the Maharashtra Macchimar Kruti Samiti, one of the organisers of the demonstration, explained what was at stake. “We are fighting for our existence and rights over natural resources,” she said.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and researcher.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday quashed a case filed in 2023 against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Malviya for allegedly distorting the comments made by Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin about “eradicating” Sanatana Dharma, The Hindu reported.

Justice S Srimathy said that Stalin’s statement amounted to hate speech.

Stalin had said at a press conference in September 2023 that Sanatana Dharma must be eradicated, and not merely opposed. “We can’t oppose dengue, mosquitoes, malaria or corona [Covid-19], we have to eradicate them,” the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader had said. “In the same way, we have to eradicate Sanatana [Dharma], rather than opposing it.”

While many understand the term Sanatana Dharma to mean Hinduism as a whole, others interpret it as a reference to the varna system and the propagation of caste supremacy.

Shortly after Stalin made the remarks, Malviya had alleged that he was calling for a “genocide” of Hindus. The Tiruchi city police in Tamil Nadu had subsequently filed a case against the BJP leader for alleged hate speech.

Srimathy, however, said on Tuesday that when the Tamil Nadu minister had engaged in “hate speech”, the person opposing it could not be said to have committed a crime, The Hindu reported.

“He has not asked any people to start any agitation either against the Minister or his party, but has put forth mere facts and questioned the Minister,” the judge was quoted as saying. “The petitioner’s post is in the form of a question and seeking a reply, and the same would not attract the ingredients of any sections [of the penal code].”

The judge also made references to statements by anti-caste activist EV Ramasamy Periyar and his social movement, the Dravidar Kazhagam.

“There is clear attack on Hinduism by the Dravidar Kazhagam, and subsequently along with by the DMK, for the past 100 years, to which the minister belongs,” Srimathy said, according to The New Indian Express. “While considering the overall circumstances, it is seen the petitioner had questioned the hidden meaning of the minister’s speech.”

The judge said that the court was pained by the prevailing situation in Tamil Nadu.

“The courts are questioning the persons who reacted, but are not putting the law on motion against the person who initiated the hate speech,” she was quoted as saying by The New Indian Express. “In the present case, no case has been filed against the minister for his hate speech in TN, but some cases are filed in other states.”

The European Union is on the cusp of signing a “historic trade agreement” with India, which will give the 27-member bloc the first-mover advantage in the region, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday.

“Right after Davos, I will travel to India,” the European Commission chief said while speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Switzerland’s Davos. “There is still work to do. But we are on the cusp of a historic trade agreement.”

She added: “Some call it the mother of all deals. One that would create a market of two billion people, accounting for almost a quarter of global GDP.”

The statement comes amid uncertainty about India’s long-pending trade deal with the United States. Without a deal with Washington, Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy for buying Russian oil amid the Ukraine war.

Von der Leyen, along with the president of the European Council, António Luís Santos da Costa, will visit India from January 25 to January 27. They will be the chief guests at the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi.

“Europe wants to do business with the growth centres of today and the economic powerhouses of this century,” Von der Leyen said in Davos. “From Latin America to the Indo-Pacific and far beyond, Europe will always choose the world. And the world is ready to choose Europe.”

Geopolitical shocks can - and must - be an opportunity for Europe.

The seismic shift underway makes it both possible & necessary to build a new European independence.

From security to the economy.
From defence to democracy.

Europe is gathering speed ↓ https://t.co/aLU0vo76Wn

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) January 20, 2026

On January 27, India and the European Union are slated to announce the end of negotiations on a free trade agreement, PTI reported.

The European Union is India’s biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade in goods estimated at $135 billion in 2023-’24. A free trade agreement is expected to provide a further boost to economic cooperation.

A Mumbai sessions judge on Monday told nine students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences that their careers were “ruined” after being booked in October for allegedly taking part in an event commemorating the death anniversary of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba, reported The Indian Express.

“You have a criminal record,” the newspaper quoted Additional Sessions Judge Manoj B Oza as saying. “Now your record is with the police – not just here but everywhere in the country.”

Oza told the students that they had “made a blunder so early”, before their careers had even started.

Saibaba, who had over 90% disability and used a wheelchair, spent over seven years in jail on accusations of having links with Maoists. In March 2024, he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court and released. Seven months later, on October 12, he died of post-operative complications in Hyderabad.

A year later, some TISS students gathered on campus to light candles and display posters of Saibaba to commemorate his death anniversary.

However, a few students reportedly associated with a group named the Democratic Secular Students Forum allegedly disrupted the gathering by tearing down some posters.

A student who did not wish to be identified had told Scroll that members of the group also clicked photographs of the students participating in the event.

The police had filed the case against the students who attended the event based on a complaint by the TISS administration. The first information report invoked charges of causing prejudice to the nation, causing enmity between various groups and participating in unlawful assembly, among others.

While hearing their anticipatory bail applications on Monday, the judge asked the students how many of them were not residents of Maharashtra, reported The Indian Express.

“You came to study in Maharashtra for all this?” said the judge. “Your fathers know about the case? How many of your fathers are in government jobs? You will not get government jobs because of the case.”

Oza said that they would have to disclose their pending criminal charges even if they choose to take up private employment. He then asked their lawyer what course the students were pursuing.

When he was told that they were enrolled in a Master’s in Social Work programme, the judge said their degrees would not help them secure employment, reported The Times of India.

“You think you are scientists or engineers,” he was quoted as saying. “Even engineers do not have jobs.”

He extended their protection from arrest till February 5, when arguments of the students’ pleas are likely to be presented.

In the FIR against the students, the police had also alleged that they shouted slogans in support of activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who have been in jail for more than five years on account of having taken part in an alleged conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi violence.

However, one of the students who was part of the gathering had told Scroll that no slogans were shouted at the event.

The arrest of 12 Muslim men in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly on Friday for praying inside an empty house even though there were no allegations of damage or violence is not legally tenable, legal experts said

The owner of the house said that the prayers were being conducted with her permission.

This is not the first time that the Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has prosecuted Muslims simply for praying. However, legal experts told Scroll the laws used to book these men were being misused.

The police described the Friday prayer as “illegal” and thearrests as a “precautionary measure”, reports said. The authorities invoked Section 170 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Surakhsha Sanhita, which allows the police to arrest, without a warrant, anyone suspected of planning a serious offence. In such cases, detention cannot exceed 24 hours.

The police said they “acted on villagers’ complaints and the 12 men were bound down for peacekeeping”. The arrest took place after a video of the men praying, taken surreptitiously by an unidentified person, went viral on social media.

In UP's Bareilly, a video of 12 people offering prayers had surfaced on social media. All 12 were arrested. pic.twitter.com/DM8OYUToiJ

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) January 18, 2026

‘Legally untenable’

Senior advocate practising at the Supreme Court, Sanjay Hegde, said that there is nothing in law that “criminalises namaz or any form of prayer”.

“Even if there was an undertaking by the owner that there would be no religious activity on the under-construction site, breach of such undertaking would have civil consequences like a fine for the owner, but not imprisonment for praying men,” he added. “This action is legally untenable in any view of the matter.”

Hegde said that the police’s argument was so weak, the case would likely not even see a trial. “There is nothing called precautionary arrest,” he said. “Arrest in anticipation of a crime is preventive detention for which there is a different framework. I doubt whether this matter will go to the stage of a prosecution in court.”

Supreme Court lawyer Vrinda Grover asserted that the arrests were unconstitutional, given that the offering of namaz is a cardinal feature of the fundamental right of Muslims to practise their religion, under Article 25 of the Constitution.

Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees all persons the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion.

“How can the exercise of a guaranteed fundamental right constitute an offence?” she said.

Grover said that peaceful gatherings and “prayers by a community are customary in India” and that all religions routinely hold religious programmes in both public and private spaces. “For instance, Hindu keertans, jagran, Sikh paath, roads and public amenities are made available by the state for processions such as the Kanwariya Yatra of Hindus,” she added.

Advocate on Record at the Supreme Court Anas Tanwir said the first question to be asked is under what law such a gathering or congregation can be prohibited, especially when it takes place on private property.

“We have a right to private property,” Tanwir said. “Even if it is not a fundamental right, it is a constitutional right. So for an executive branch to take up any action, they first need to establish that there’s a law that allows such detention.”

A long pattern

The Bareilly incident is the latest in a series of cases across Uttar Pradesh where Muslims have faced criminal or preventive action for offering namaz in public spaces.

In January, Uttar Pradesh detained a 55-year-old Kashmiri man after he allegedly offered namaz inside the Ram Temple complex in Ayodhya and shouted slogans. His family said he has a mental illness and submitted medical records to support this claim. But the police said “agencies questioned him to assess intent and verify his travel details”. He was released after nothing suspicious was found in his possession.

In March, the police arrested a student at a private university in Meerut after a video of namaz on campus circulated during Holi celebrations and drew protests from local groups. The police booked him under Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deals with “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings”, along with provisions of the Information Technology Act.

He was granted bail but was suspended from the college and placed under police surveillance.

The #UPPolice have arrested a student for allegedly offering namaz in an open area of a private university in #UttarPradesh's #Meerut, officials said on Sunday.

Khalid Pradhan (Khalid Mewati) was arrested following protests by local #Hindutva groups over a purported video… pic.twitter.com/j2GB96CefC

— Hate Detector 🔍 (@HateDetectors) March 17, 2025

In June, a Muslim caretaker of a temple in Badaun district was arrested after a secretly recorded video showed him offering namaz in the temple courtyard. The head priest of the temple publicly defended the caretaker and criticised the person who filmed the video.

Despite this, the police booked the man under Section 298 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which “penalises damaging or defiling a place of worship or sacred object with the intent to insult a religion”. He spent 14 days in judicial custody before being released on bail.

The same month, a college professor was placed on compulsory leave after a video of him offering namaz on the college lawn went viral and Hindutva groups demanded action. The college set up an inquiry against the professor and the police also started an investigation.

In July 2022, six men were arrested in Lucknow for offering namaz inside a mall and booked under multiple serious Indian Penal Code provisions, including “promoting enmity and outraging religious feelings”, before being granted bail.

The individuals were booked under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups), 295A (acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh Police arrested Faisal Khan, a communal harmony activist, for offering prayers at a Mathura temple. He was sent to 14-day judicial custody.

He was booked under Section 153A (promoting enmity) and other Indian Penal Code provisions after a video of him offering namaz in a temple courtyard, as a gesture of communal harmony, went viral. While the trial court denied bail, the High Court granted it, citing Article 21, but restrained him from using social media for such activities until the trial concluded.

Politics not law

Advocate Vrinda Grover said what is worrying is the “signal that is being sent to the minority community”.

“This is also not an isolated instance, as repeated acts of abuse and misuse of law by the law enforcement agencies indicate a pattern of institutional bias against religious minorities,” she said. “Such abuse of law injures our secular fabric.”

Grover said that while such “unconstitutional suppression of basic rights may please political masters”, the courts must hold the “police personnel responsible”.

Referring to the frequency of such actions, Tanwir said this amounts to “thanedaar justice”, where the police assume they are all powerful and arrest people at will.

He said that this is essentially meant to create a chilling effect. “Process is the punishment; once you are arrested, you have to go for bail, and you have to spend money,” Tanwir added.

The Assam government on Tuesday suspended mobile internet services in Kokrajhar district amid tensions between the Bodo and the Adivasi communities after one person was killed in mob violence.

While mobile internet services were suspended indefinitely with immediate effect, broadband services will remain operational, the state’s additional chief secretary (home and political department) said in a notification.

The tensions erupted on Monday night, when a vehicle with three persons from the Bodo community hit two Adivasis in the Karigaon area of the district.

Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Akhilesh Singh told The Indian Express that after the two persons from the Adivasi community were hit, “others joined in to attack the people inside the vehicle”.

While one person, Sikhna Jwhwlao Bismit, succumbed to injuries sustained during the incident, four are being treated in hospital, the newspaper reported.

Kokrajhar Superintendent of Police Akhat Garg told The Indian Express that 19 persons had been detained in connection with the mob violence and the matter is being investigated.

However, the incident led to tensions between the two communities on Tuesday. They blocked the national highway near Karigaon, burnt tyres, and set houses and an office building on fire, the additional chief secretary said in the notification. The police outpost in Karigaon was also attacked.

The Rapid Action Force was being deployed to restore law and order, the administration said.

The Assam government said that mobile internet was being suspended because social media could be used to spread inflammatory messages and rumours that may further disturb the situation.

Kokrajhar is part of the Bodo-dominated Bodoland Territorial Region, an autonomous division of Assam.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that arrangements have been made to deploy the Army in the area to help maintain law and order.

Mobile internet was also being suspended in the neighbouring Chirang district, Sarma said.

The Assam Police said on Tuesday evening that the situation in Karigaon was under control.

“We urge all sections of society to remain calm and not fall for rumours or misinformation that is being spread by anti-national elements,” the police said, adding that persons “attempting to disturb harmony and create panic” will be identified and dealt with strictly.

As the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos got underway on Monday, several Indian states announced that they had signed memoranda of understanding – with Indian companies. This led to a barrage of criticism from social media users.

They asked why Indian chief ministers had spent tax payers’ money to travel to Switzerland to hold meetings and sign agreements with Indian entities.

Nearly 3,000 delegates representing global businesses and governments from around the world are attending the event.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced on Tuesday that Indian entities Lodha Developers, Surajgad Ispat and K Raheja Corp were among the companies with which the state had signed MoUs.

The managing director of the Lodha Group, Abhishek Lodha, is the son of Mangal Prabhat Lodha, a minister in the Maharashtra government.

Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad from Mumbai was not impressed. She said that deal could have been sealed at the state guesthouse in Mumbai.

“Like every year, this year too a whole entourage has accompanied the CM to Davos only to sign MoUs with majority Indian companies,” Gaikwad said on X. “Last year too, MoUs with Hiranandani and Raheja group were signed in Davos, both operate out of Mumbai. Why is taxpayer money being wasted this way?”

This could have been signed at Sahyadri or Mantralaya or even the fancy office Mangal Prabhat Lodha had built for himself in the BMC isn't it?

Like every year, this year too a whole entourage has accompanied the CM to Davos only to sign MoUs with majority Indian companies. Last… https://t.co/dnOJBYgZoH

— Prof. Varsha Eknath Gaikwad (@VarshaEGaikwad) January 20, 2026

Karnataka Commerce Minister MB Patil announced that he held a meetings Tata Group Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran and officials from Tata Electronics. Patil also said that he met with the chairperson of UPL, an agrochemicals and industrial chemicals firm headquartered in Mumbai, and discussed expanding the company’s “agricultural footprint” in Karnataka.

DAVOS 2026 | STRENGTHENING THE TATA-KARNATAKA PARTNERSHIP

We fortified our long-standing alliance with the Tata Group at #WEF26 during a high-level exchange with Chairman Shri Natarajan Chandrasekaran and Tata Electronics CEO Dr. Randhir Thakur. With 1.3 lakh employees in… pic.twitter.com/gZyCZm85ao

— M B Patil (@MBPatil) January 20, 2026

The Madhya Pradesh government held a meeting with officials from Indian media company JioStar, ANI reported.

Is this a joke (at the expense of Indian taxpayers who funded MP delegates' trip to Davos to meet officials from Jiohotstar)? pic.twitter.com/ZWBFcKCRPL

— Karthik 🇮🇳 (@beastoftraal) January 20, 2026

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Telangana’s Revanth Reddy are also in the Swiss city to seek investments in their states.

Naidu announced that he had met with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma in Zurich.

Awwww how cute! What. Record!
Btw is it not possible for Indian leaderw to meet in India? https://t.co/L10wkPnXRv

— Lavanya Ballal Jain official (@LavanyaBallal) January 20, 2026

Many social media users said that meetings with Indian companies could have been held in India.

Journalist Swati Chaturvedi asked whether Mumbai’s acute traffic congestion had forced Fadnavis to travel to Davos to sign an MoU with a Mumbai-based builder.

Mumbai traffic so terrible that @Dev_Fadnavis has to fly to Davis in Switzerland first class with entourage at tax payer funding to sign an MoU with an Indian builder headquartered in Mumbai https://t.co/1wpVCId8eu

— Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) January 20, 2026

Other social media users were similar scathing.

Davos is where Indian officials and industrialists go to meet each other and the Indian media interviews the Indian delegations #TuesdayThoughtsWhileDrivingToGurgaon

— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 20, 2026

One more Indian state. Meeting representatives of Tata Steel. In Davos. Let’s ask ourselves - could these meetings not have happened in Ranchi or Delhi? https://t.co/DKg9UYGmBh

— Sanket Upadhyay (@sanket) January 20, 2026

I am so happy that our governments are going to such lengths to sign deals. Literally. pic.twitter.com/Gaa705DJM8

— Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) January 20, 2026

Wait!!! Madhya Pradesh government is frugal compared to Maharashtra government, who went all the way to Davos to sign an MOU with a Mumbai company.
World Economic Forum should be renamed World Travel Forum. The acronym becomes more apt. pic.twitter.com/7EctGGae6v

— Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) January 20, 2026

I think future MoUs should be signed in Dahanu, not Davos. pic.twitter.com/XLHQDhVAiW

— Traveling Salesman (@def__init__e) January 20, 2026

Davos is not free.

It costs $30,000 per participant - That’s not including the boarding, security & transport

Who is paying for these ministers for what is essentially a vacation ?

Why are Indian exchequers footing the bill for this ? pic.twitter.com/1gUTSmzqUW

— RedBoxxLocal India Parody (@REDBOXINDIIA) January 19, 2026

The Commission for Air Quality Management on Tuesday revoked Stage 4 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan in Delhi and the National Capital Region after the air quality improved.

Stage 4 restrictions had come into force on Saturday after the air quality slipped into the “severe” category.

The commission said on Tuesday that the Air Quality Index in Delhi has shown improvement because of favourable meteorological conditions and increased wind speed. It added that the average AQI in the national capital stood at 378 on Tuesday, which is in the “very poor” category.

The commission added that air quality forecasts provided by the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute Of Technology-Madras suggest that in the coming days, the AQI may remain in the current range.

Noting that Stage 4 restrictions under the GRAP were being revoked, the statement added that anti-pollution measures under Stage 1, 2 and 3 will continue to be implemented.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region. The commission is a statutory body formed in 2020 to address pollution in the NCR and adjoining areas.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

On Saturday, the air quality in the national capital had worsened to the “severe” category, reaching the 400-mark. On Sunday and Monday, the average AQI in Delhi remained above the 400-mark, before improving marginally on Tuesday.

As of 7.05 pm on Tuesday, the average AQI in Delhi was 364, which is in the “very poor” category, according to data from the Sameer application. In five of the 38 monitoring stations, it was in the “severe” category, showed the application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

An index value between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air. Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution. An AQI in the “severe” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

The cities adjoining the capital also reported hazardous air quality levels. While Noida recorded an AQI of 364, Greater Noida 356, Ghaziabad 387 and Gurugram 390 – all in the “very poor” category.

‘Serious deficiencies’ in implementing measures, says air quality panel

The Commission for Air Quality Management on Monday said that there had been “serious deficiencies” in implementing the Graded Response Action Plan as per norms under Stage 3 and Stage 4 by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee and the authorities in other states.

In its review, the commission observed shortfalls in the range of 7% to 99.6% in important actions that needed to be taken, such as inspection of construction sites and the sweeping of roads.

The commission also found a high number of unresolved complaints filed by the public. Forty-seven percent of the complaints were pending in Delhi during Stage 3 and 68% during Stage 4, it added.

The panel directed the Delhi Pollution Control Committee and the authorities in other states to initiate proceedings against officials responsible for failing to implement the measures.

The governor alleged that the Assembly had disrespected the national anthem and that his mic had been switched off during the proceedings. He left the Assembly a few minutes after the state anthem, Tamil Thaai Vaazhthu, was played.

In Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan edited the policy address delivered by Governor Rajendra Arlekar to the Assembly. After Arlekar left the Assembly, Vijayan told the House to say that the governor had made changes to three paragraphs in the speech.

Among the changes, Arlekar sid that Kerala was facing financial stress arising from “curtailment of advances”. The speech approved by the Cabinet had attributed the stress to “a series of adverse Union government actions that undermine the constitutional principles of fiscal federalism”.

The speaker said that the deletions and additions made by the governor would not go on record. Read on.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitin Nabin was elected as the party’s national president, succeeding Union minister JP Nadda. The 45-year-old politician is the youngest person ever to head the BJP.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Nabin will be responsible not just for running the party but also for ensuring coordination among the constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. “When it comes to party affairs, I am a worker, and he [Nabin] is my boss,” Modi declared.

Nabin was appointed the BJP’s national working president on December 14. At the time, he held the portfolios of road construction and urban development in the Bihar government. He resigned as a minister after he was named as the BJP’s working president. Read on.

The Supreme Court ordered the Punjab government to allow the Punjab Kesari Group to resume operations at its printing press in Ludhiana. It added that no coercive steps should be taken against the publication of the Punjab Kesari newspaper until the Punjab and Haryana High Court decides on a petition filed by the media group.

The printing press was shut down by authorities on January 15 for an alleged water pollution-related violation. The Punjab Kesari Group has alleged that the action was triggered by its news reports on the ruling Aam Aadmi Party government.

The media group had moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday, which reserved its judgement but did not grant any interim relief. It then moved the Supreme Court. Read on.

The Israeli authorities on Tuesday began bulldozing buildings in East Jerusalem of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, including the agency’s local headquarters. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UNRWA, said that the demolitions were a “new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law” by Israel.

The UN agency said that the action was a result of a law passed by the Israeli Parliament in December that prohibited the provision of water and electricity to facilities linked to UNRWA. This followed two laws passed in October 2024 that ban the agency from operating in Israel.

The Palestinian Prime Minister’s Office said that the action defied the International Court of Justice’s October 26 advisory opinion that Israel must not obstruct the UN agency’s work in the occupied territories. The Israeli foreign ministry said Tel Aviv owns the Jerusalem compound and that it was seized in accordance with Israeli and international law. Read on.

As the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos got underway, several Indian states announced that they had signed memoranda of understanding – with Indian companies. This led to a barrage of criticism from social media users asking why the chief ministers had spent tax payers’ money to travel to Switzerland to hold meetings and sign agreements with Indian entities. Read on.

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The Enforcement Directorate has accused Tamil Nadu Municipal Administration and Water Supply Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader KN Nehru of collecting bribes in exchange for the transfer and posting of government officers and engineers, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

In a communication dated January 14 to the state director general of police, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption and the chief secretary, the agency cited digital evidence and financial trails linking Rs 365.8 crore in alleged laundered funds to Nehru, his family and close associates.

Claiming to have uncovered “many instances of bribes being collected for the transfer and posting” in the Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department, the ED urged the state authorities to register a first information report against Nehru, the newspaper reported.

The agency added that the communication detailed the “evidence” related to these alleged transfers involving Nehru and his associates, The Indian Express reported.

This evidence came to the fore after searches were conducted in April 2025 at premises linked to Nehru’s relatives and close associates in Chennai, Tiruchirappalli and Coimbatore, the ED said.

While these searches were conducted in connection with an alleged money laundering investigation linked to a bank fraud case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the ED claimed that digital material seized during the raids indicated an entirely different set of offences.

According to the communication, the material included photographs, WhatsApp messages and documents recovered from digital devices seized during the searches.

It alleged that bribes ranging from Rs 7 lakh to Rs 1 crore were collected by Nehru’s close associates, the newspaper reported.

The agency also claimed that “about 340 officers/engineers…transfer/posting orders were found in the phone of the close associates of Nehru”.

The agency said that this amounted to “direct evidence” of bribes collected through such transfers and postings, adding that the allegations were part of a larger transfer and posting scam in state government departments, The Indian Express reported.

Responding to the allegations, the DMK leader told The Indian Express that he did not want to comment as he did not yet have clarity on the matter. He added that all these matters were under inquiry.

Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi on Tuesday walked out of the state Assembly without delivering the customary address on the opening day of the first session of the year.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Ravi has walked out of the Assembly during the opening ceremony.

On Tuesday, he alleged that the Assembly had disrespected the national anthem and that his mic was switched off during the proceedings.

The governor left the Assembly a few minutes after Tamil Thaai Vaazhthu, which is the state anthem, was played in the House, The Hindu reported.

“I am disappointed,” The Times of India quoted the governor as saying. “The national anthem was not given due respect.”

After the governor left, the House adopted a resolution moved by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president and Chief Minister MK Stalin to take on record only the approved text of Ravi’s address prepared by the state government, The Hindu reported.

Speaker M Appavu also urged the governor to follow established rules and customs of the Assembly.

In a statement issued later in the day, the Lok Bhavan listed several reasons for the governor’s refusal to read the speech in the Assembly, including that his mic was repeatedly switched off and that he was not allowed to speak.

The Lok Bhavan further alleged that the speech contained several “unsubstantiated claims and misleading statements”, adding that crucial problems troubling the residents of the state were ignored.

“Claim that the state attracted huge investments to the tune of over Rs 12 lakh crore is far from the truth,” read the statement. “Many of the MOUs [memorandums of understanding] with prospective investors remain only on paper. Actual investment is hardly a fraction of it.”

The Lok Bhavan also claimed that women’s safety was ignored in the speech, even though there was an “alarming increase of over 55% incidents of POCSO [Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act] Rapes and over 33% increase in incidents of sexual molestation”.

The statement added that there was rampant prevalence of narcotics and a sharp increase in their abuse among the youth, which was a serious concern that was also “casually bypassed” in the speech.

“Over 2,000, mostly youth, committed suicide in one year due to drug abuse,” it added.

The Lok Bhavan said that atrocities against Dalits and sexual violence against Dalit women were sharply increasing, adding that this was also not mentioned in the speech prepared by the state government.

There was also a steady decline in the standards of education and widespread mismanagement in educational institutions, it said, adding that more than 50% faculty positions had been vacant for years and guest faculties were restive all over.

“Our youth are staring at uncertain future,” the statement read. “It does not seem to bother the government and the issue is totally bypassed.”

The Lok Bhavan also noted that several thousand village panchayats were defunct because elections had not been held for years, and that many temples were without a board of trustees and were being directly administered by the state government.

The micro, small, and medium enterprises sector was also under huge stress due to visible and invisible costs of running the industry, it added.

The Lok Bhavan added that none of these problems were mentioned in the speech.

“National Anthem is yet again insulted and the Fundamental Constitutional Duty disregarded,” it added.

Apart from his maiden customary address to the House as Tamil Nadu governor in 2022, Ravi has walked out of the Assembly in 2023, 2024 and 2025 as well at different points during the sitting, The Hindu reported.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday edited the policy address delivered by Governor Rajendra Arlekar to the Assembly, The Hindu reported.

After Arlekar left the Assembly, Vijayan returned to the House and said that the governor had changed three paragraphs in the policy speech.

A governor is required to address the first session of the Assembly held in a year. As per convention, the governor reads a speech written by the state government.

Vijayan said on Tuesday that while Arlekar omitted some portions of the text, he had made certain additions elsewhere in the speech.

Paragraphs 12, 15 and 16 “as approved by the Cabinet will prevail”, Vijayan said. The English and Malayalam copies of the speech distributed to the MLAs retained the versions approved by the government, The Hindu reported.

Speaker AN Shamseer also said that the deletions and additions made by the governor will not be recognised, Onmanorama reported.

In the speech approved by the Cabinet, paragraph 12 said that despite social and institutional achievements, Kerala continues to face severe fiscal stress “arising from a series of adverse Union government actions that undermine the constitutional principles of fiscal federalism”.

The speech read by Arlekar said that the state was facing the fiscal stress “arising from curtailment of advances”, Vijayan was quoted as saying.

The governor omitted a portion of paragraph 15 that said that bills passed by the legislatures “have remained pending for prolonged periods” and that “my government has approached the Supreme Court on these issues, which have been referred to a Constitution bench”, according to Vijayan.

Shamseer had said on January 14 that 14 bills cleared by the Assembly were awaiting the governor’s assent.

A portion of paragraph 16 approved by the Cabinet said that “tax devolution and Finance Commission grants are constitutional entitlements of states and not acts of charity, and any pressure on constitutional bodies entrusted with this task undermines federal principles”.

The governor prefaced this with “my government feels”, Vijayan said.

The governor’s office has not commented on the matter.

The Left government and the governor’s office have had many run-ins in recent years on several matters, including over the customary address.

In January 2024, Arlekar’s predecessor Arif Mohammed Khan had omitted a major portion of the speech written by the state government, ending his address in little over a minute.

Arlekar’s address on Tuesday was the last during this term of the Assembly. The state will head for polls in the next three to four months.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Punjab government to allow the Punjab Kesari Group to resume operations at its printing press in Ludhiana, Live Law reported.

The court also said the state should not take any coercive steps against the publication of the Punjab Kesari newspaper until the Punjab and Haryana High Court decides on a petition filed by the media group, the legal news outlet reported.

The printing press had been shut down on January 15 on the orders of the Punjab Pollution Control Board over an alleged water pollution related violation, advocate Mukul Rohatgi told the Supreme Court while appearing for the newspaper.

The Punjab Kesari Group has alleged that the action against it was triggered by its news reports on the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s chief Arvind Kejriwal, Bar and Bench reported.

The media group publishes some of the highest-circulating Hindi and Punjabi dailies in the state, including Punjab Kesari, Jag Bani and Hind Samachar.

On Tuesday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and VM Pancholi directed the restoration of operations at the printing press after a petition filed by Jagat Vijay Printers and Hind Samachar Limited was mentioned for urgent hearing, Bar and Bench reported.

The Hind Samachar Limited is the parent company of the Punjab Kesari Group. Jagat Vijay Printers is a key printing entity within the Punjab Kesari Group.

Rohatgi told the Supreme Court that after it published certain articles critical of the state government, several coercive actions were initiated against its management, Live Law reported.

This included cutting off its electricity, notices by the pollution control board against the printing press, shutting down of the hotels run by Punjab Kesari Group and first information reports, among other such actions, he added.

“All this happened in a matter of two days because we published articles which are not favourable to the dispensation in Punjab,” Live Law quoted Rohatgi as saying.

The advocate also noted that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had reserved its judgement on Monday on similar petitions moved by the media group challenging the closure of its hotel and printing press, but had not granted any interim relief.

The group then approached the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Additional Advocate General of Punjab Shadan Farasat told the Supreme Court that all actions taken by the state government were in accordance with the law, Live Law reported.

Farasat added that the High Court had already reserved judgement on the matter, which was expected within a day or two.

Responding to this, the chief justice said that the newspaper cannot be stopped. Farasat added that only one unit had been directed to shut down and not the entire newspaper.

“Don’t close the newspaper part,” Live Law quoted the Supreme Court as saying. “Hotel or other commercial establishment…can be closed for a few days. But allow the newspaper.”

Farasat also claimed that liquor bottles had been found in the printing press.

In response, Rohatgi asked: “Two bottles were found, and because of that you will close the paper.”

The Supreme Court directed that the printing press of the newspaper function uninterruptedly, subject to the judgement of the High Court.

It also noted that this interim order would continue till the pronouncement of the High Court’s judgement in the matter and for a week thereafter to enable the parties to seek legal remedies.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitin Nabin was on Tuesday elected as the party’s national president, succeeding Union minister JP Nadda.

K Laxman, the returning officer for the BJP’s organisational polls, handed over the certificate of election to Nabin, PTI reported. The 45-year-old is the youngest person ever to head the BJP.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Nadda and several other senior BJP leaders were present at the event in Delhi.

Delhi: Nitin Nabin elected as the national president of Bharatiya Janata Party pic.twitter.com/BB6bGnnHjo

— ANI (@ANI) January 20, 2026

Modi said that Nabin will be responsible not just for running the BJP but also for ensuring coordination among the constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. “When it comes to party affairs, I am a worker, and he [Nabin] is my boss,” he said.

The prime minister claimed that the election process was conducted “in a 100% democratic manner”.

Nabin was appointed the BJP’s national working president on December 14. At the time, he held the portfolios of road construction and urban development in the Bihar government. He resigned as a minister after he was named as the BJP’s working president.

Born on May 23, 1980, Nabin is the son of former MLA Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha. He was first elected to Bihar’s Patna West Assembly constituency in 2006 through a bye-election. Subsequently, he won the Bankipur seat in Patna in elections held in 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025.

Nadda had taken over as the president of the BJP from Union Home Minister Amit Shah in January 2020. His term ended in 2024, but was extended on account of the Lok Sabha election that year.

The Karnataka government on Monday suspended Director General of Police (Civil Rights Enforcement) K Ramachandra Rao, a day after videos purportedly showing him engaging in inappropriate acts with women in his office began circulating online, The Indian Express reported.

The videos purportedly showed Rao hugging and kissing women while in uniform during office hours, the Deccan Herald reported.

In the suspension order, Karnataka government Under Secretary KV Ashoka said that Rao acted “in an obscene manner unbecoming of a public servant, causing embarrassment to the government”. The order stated that the government was convinced he had acted in violation of service rules, necessitating his suspension while an inquiry was underway.

The Indian Police Service officer has been directed not to leave the headquarters without the permission of the government. He will be paid a subsistence allowance under the All India Service Rules, The Indian Express reported.

Rao claimed that the video was manipulated and dated back eight years, when he was posted in Belagavi. He said that he would speak to legal experts before taking further action on the matter, the Deccan Herald reported.

The officer had been mired in controversy last year as well, when his stepdaughter, Kannada actor Ranya Rao, was arrested on allegations of smuggling gold. The police official was sent on compulsory leave after he was accused of helping Ranya Rao evade security checks at the Bengaluru airport.

He was recalled and posted as the Director General of Police (Civil Rights Enforcement) in August, The Indian Express reported.

A havildar in the Indian Army died on Monday after being injured in a gunfight with suspected militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district a day earlier.

The Army’s White Knight Corps said that Havildar Gajendra Singh “made the supreme sacrifice while gallantly executing a Counter Terrorism operation in the Singpura area during the ongoing Operation TRASHI-I on the intervening night of 18-19 Jan 2026”.

Singh was among eight soldiers injured in the gunfight that broke out between security forces and suspected militants on Sunday during an operation launched by security forces in the Chhatru area, ANI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

#WhiteKnightCorps | #Homage | #SupremeSacrifice

The #GOC, White Knight Corps and all ranks pay solemn tribute to Havildar Gajendra Singh of the Special Forces, who made the supreme sacrifice while gallantly executing a Counter Terrorism operation in the Singpura area during the… pic.twitter.com/XKUDTw9dxq

— White Knight Corps (@Whiteknight_IA) January 19, 2026

The operation was launched due to the presence of suspected militants in the region, the officials said.

The soldiers were injured when the suspected militants targeted the approaching search parties with grenades and AK-47 fire on Sunday afternoon, The Indian Express quoted unidentified officials saying.

The security forces resumed searches in the region on Monday morning after a night-long halt in the operation.

The Bombay High Court on Monday kept in abeyance the Thane district collector’s orders recognising and de-recognising alliances in the Ambernath Municipal Council, PTI reported.

A bench comprising Justices Ravindra Ghuge and Abhay Mantri directed the collector to pass a reasoned order after hearing all the concerned parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, the Ajit Pawar-led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party and the Eknath Shinde-led grouping of the Shiv Sena.

Commenting on the side-switching of four members of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP in Ambernath, the court quipped that they were “globetrotting”, PTI reported.

After the municipal elections in Ambernath held on December 20, the local BJP unit had allied with the Congress to sideline the Shinde Sena, which is its coalition partner in the Maharashtra government. While the Shinde Sena had emerged as the single largest party in the Ambernath municipal council, no group could reach the halfway mark of 31 on its own.

The BJP won the post of the council chairperson through direct election, PTI reported.

Initially, 14 BJP members, 12 Congress members, four leaders from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP and one Independent submitted a letter to the Thane collector seeking to be recognised as an alliance, The Indian Express reported. The coalition, the Ambernath Vikas Aghadi, was recognised as a pre-poll alliance by the collector on January 7.

However, after the alliance sparked criticism, the Congress suspended all its 12 elected members, while BJP leader and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis directed his party to break the alliance with the Congress.

On January 9, the four members of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP decided to support the Shinde Sena. The collector then recognised their tie-up as a pre-poll alliance and de-recognised the Ambernath Vikas Aghadi, which approached the High Court, according to The Indian Express.

The Ambernath Vikas Aghadi contended that the collector’s decision was illegal, as the coalition was to be considered as a pre-poll alliance for all purposes, including the appointment of subject committees.

During the hearing on Monday, Ghuge remarked: “Today, these four persons [NCP members] are with him [Eknath Shinde], yesterday they were with someone else. They are globe-trotting. What if tomorrow they go with someone else?”

The court directed all concerned parties to put forward their stands before the collector on January 28, and directed him to pass an order in the next 21 days, PTI reported. The collector’s orders will not take effect for two weeks, to enable the aggrieved parties to approach the court, the bench ordered.

“Until then, the collector's communications (orders) of January 7 and 9 shall be kept in abeyance,” the court was quoted as saying by PTI.

The statement was in line with New Delhi’s response in August to the United States announcing punitive tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. US President Donald Trump had also reportedly urged the European Union to impose tariffs of up to 100% on China and India to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

Opening remarks during meeting with DPM & FM @sikorskiradek of Poland.

🇮🇳 🇵🇱 https://t.co/XVG4WhmFxY

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) January 19, 2026

The external affairs ministry had said at the time that it was unfortunate that the US was imposing additional tariffs on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.

Jaishankar on Monday also urged Poland to show “zero tolerance for terrorism” and not help “fuel the terrorist infrastructure in our neighbourhood”. The foreign minister also told Sikorski that he hoped to discuss “some of your recent travels to the region” during their meeting.

He appeared to have been referring to Sikorski’s visit to Pakistan in October, when he had met the country’s top leadership, The Hindu reported.

Speaking to reporters outside the Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Sikorski said that the conversation about Indian and Polish neighbourhoods had been “frank”. He said that while the two countries agreed on concerns about terrorism, Poland saw India’s participation in “Zapad-2025” military exercises in Russia and Belarus as “threatening”, The Hindu reported.

The Polish foreign minister, however, told reporters in Jaipur earlier that he was “pleased” that India had reduced its purchases of oil from Russia.

Sikorski was in India for a three-day visit from January 17 to 19. The meeting with Jaishankar came days before the visit of the president of the European Council, António Luís Santos da Costa, and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to India from January 25 to January 27.

The Congress on Monday accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan of conspiring to fraudulently remove voters who support the Opposition from the electoral rolls using allegedly forged forms during the special intensive revision in the state.

Addressing a press conference, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Tikaram Jully and Congress’ state chief Govind Singh Dotasra demanded a forensic investigation into the forms that had been used to seek the deletion of voters’ names.

Dotasra said that the draft voter rolls published on December 16 in Rajasthan showed that about 45 lakh persons had been found to be absent, shifted or deceased.

The persons who had been removed from the voter list could file their claims and objections till January 15 and the deadline was on Thursday extended by the Election Commission to January 19.

“Until January 3, there was no chaos, and the entire system was running smoothly,” he alleged. “However, on January 3, BJP’s National General Secretary (Organisation) BL Santosh visited Rajasthan, held a meeting there, and then the process of fraudulently adding and removing votes began.”

The BJP has not commented on the allegations. But BJP leader and state minister Gautam Dak said on Monday that if a voters’ name is proposed to be removed, the person gets time to be heard. The Congress merely wants an issue to create dispute, First India News quoted Dak as saying.

Citing data from the Election Commission website, Dotasra claimed on Monday that between December 17 and January 14, the BJP submitted applications through 937 booth-level agents to add 211 names and delete 5,694 voters.

During the same period, the Congress submitted applications through booth-level agents to add 185 names and delete two voters, Dotasra said.

“We had already expressed our apprehension that the BJP and the Election Commission, in collusion, would extend the date to strike off the names of people aligned with the Congress ideology,” he alleged. “And in the end, that’s exactly what happened.”

Dotasra added: “In Jhunjhunu, 13,882 form 7s were taken for name deletions in a single day. In Mandawa, 16,276. In Udaipurwati, 1,241. In Khetri, 1,478 were taken. Meanwhile, 1,40,000 forms were even registered.”

Form 7 is an application submitted to the Election Commission to remove names from the electoral rolls.

The Congress leader told reporters on Monday that Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited the state on January 13 and stayed at the chief minister’s residence. Dotasra claimed that a “secret operation” had taken place within the BJP between January 3 and January 13.

“In every Assembly constituency, 10 thousand to 15 thousand fake computerised forms are printed,” he claimed. “All MLAs and MLA candidates are summoned, including ministers.”

He claimed that on January 13, January 14 and January 15, thousands of forms were submitted in every Assembly constituency to strike off names from the voter lists. “These efforts are especially targeted at those Assembly areas where the Congress had won the election,” Dotasra alleged.

The forms were distributed to remove the names of persons associated with the Congress ideology, he claimed. Additionally, forms were hastily distributed to remove the names of groups “angry with the double-engine government and those above 60 years of age”, he alleged.

“The rule book states that after draft publication, a single booth-level officer can submit only 10 forms in one day, no more,” Dotasra noted. “…the tally of forms submitted up to January 14 is right in front of you.”

The Congress leader claimed that BJP MLAs, ministers and party candidates had “forged” signatures of booth-level agents and submitted thousands of forms to every sub-divisional magistrate.

“In my own Assembly constituency, 627 forms were submitted, and when they took 2,000 more forms again, the SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] refused to accept them,” Dotasra claimed.

He added that several booth-level agents had given statements to the media that they had not signed these forms, and that the signatures were forged and the applications were incomplete.

The Congress leader said that his party had informed Rajasthan Chief Electoral Officer Naveen Mahajan about the alleged fraud. “We have told him that immense pressure is being put on the officers, telling them that they have to accept our forms if they want to keep their jobs,” Dotasra alleged.

He added: “We have demanded lists from several district collectors…by January 15, the BJP has managed to register nearly 1,40,000 names.”

अमित शाह जी 13 तारीख को राज्य में जाते हैं, CMR में रुकते हैं। फिर 3 से 13 तारीख के बीच BJP में गुप्त रूप से खेला चलता है।

• हर विधानसभा में 10-15 हजार फर्जी कंप्यूटराइज़ फॉर्म प्रिंट होते हैं। सभी विधायक और विधायक प्रत्याशियों को बुलाया जाता है, जिसमें मंत्री भी शामिल होते हैं… pic.twitter.com/xvHcfSTPbs

— Congress (@INCIndia) January 19, 2026

Dotasra also said that the BJP leaders claimed that they were removing the names of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas from the voter lists when asked about the deletions.

The Congress will “not allow a murder of democracy in the state”, he added.

Earlier too, the Opposition party had accused the ruling BJP of orchestrating mass deletion of voters during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

This came after a video, showing a booth-level officer alleging that he was being pressured to delete hundreds of voters from the rolls of his Hawa Mahal Assembly constituency in Jaipur, was widely shared on social media.

In the video, Kirti Kumar, a government teacher deployed as a booth-level officer as part of the exercise, can purportedly be heard saying on a call: “I will visit the collector’s office and will kill myself there.”

Kumar told The Indian Express that he was speaking with the councillor of the area, “who was pressuring me to delete the names”.

He has alleged that he was being “threatened and pushed beyond capacity” to look into the BJP’s objections seeking the deletion of 470 voters, mostly Muslims, from the draft electoral rolls, reported Newslaundry on Thursday.

Hawa Mahal is a Muslim-majority constituency that BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya won in the 2023 Assembly elections.

Suresh Saini, the councillor of the ward, denied Kumar’s allegations, claiming that there was large-scale fraud in the voter list of the area, according to the newspaper.

“Fake addresses are being used to register fake voters,” he was quoted as having said. “I raised objections and applied for the removal of such names with supporting evidence. This amounts to voter fraud by the Congress.”

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including Rajasthan. The exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners had moved the Supreme Court against it.

In Belém, Brazil, the spectacle of COP30 diplomacy has already faded. While the global leaders gathered to trade new promises on climate action, the real crisis raged on the ground.

India, a key player in this fight, is currently battling a confluence of climate-driven disasters. This year’s punishing extreme heatwave, one of the earliest and most severe on record, scorched vast swathes of the subcontinent.

Simultaneously, the recent unprecedented floods in Punjab, India’s essential “food bowl”, have submerged huge tracts of farmland, destroying crops and jeopardising the nation’s food security.

A new global assessment done by the UN now identifies India as one of the world’s largest methane emitters, driven largely by agriculture, crop-residue burning and overflowing dumpsites adding fuel to an already accelerating crisis.

This is the grim reality of climate change – extreme heat and flooding directly cause massive food loss at the farm gate, which in turn intensifies the climate threat when it rots in landfills.

Food rotting in landfills releases methane, a Short-Lived Climate Pollutant that is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years.

India is caught in a disastrous loop, where its colossal food waste problem is both a symptom and a significant accelerator of the climate crisis.

We are, quite literally, feeding our garbage dumps instead of our people, creating a downward spiral where wasted food heats the planet, and a hotter planet struggles to grow food.

Paradox of hunger and waste

The United Nation’s latest report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025, states a fundamental, painful truth: millions are malnourished because safe, nutritious food is often not affordable. This global paradox finds its sharpest echo in India. While we strive for food self-sufficiency, we rank a serious 105th out of 127 countries on the 2024 Global Hunger Index. Our failure isn’t a lack of food, but a monumental crisis of waste.

The numbers are staggering. The average Indian household discards 55 kg of food annually, totalling a national loss of 78.2 million tonnes, valued at a crippling Rs 92,000 crore. This waste is more than an economic failure; it’s an environmental time bomb.

Supply chain of neglect

An estimated 30%-40% of total food production gets wasted, amounting to a loss of Rs 2 lakh crore per annum, and this happens at various points along the supply chain:

The “First-Mile” Crisis (Farm): The journey of neglect begins here. Up to 16% of fruits and vegetables wilt in fields due to a critical lack of affordable cold storage and refrigerated transport. Small farmers are forced into distress sales to avoid total loss, a situation exacerbated by climate-driven crop damage from extreme weather events like the recent Punjab floods.

The “Middle-Mile” Chaos (Logistics): Produce that survives the farm hurdle faces an inefficient logistics network. Further wastage occurs due to poor infrastructure and, notably, “cosmetic filtering” – the arbitrary rejection of perfectly good produce by supermarkets for superficial blemishes.

The “Last-Mile” Disconnect (Consumption): In urban India, a growing detachment from food’s origins leads to profligate consumption. Enormous amounts of food from homes and lavish social events end up in landfills, where they are a primary source of the harmful methane emissions.

Current national food security policies like the National Food Security Act and the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, while successful in distributing staples like rice and wheat, have a blind spot: they largely overlook the colossal quantities of perishable, nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. These are the very items essential for fighting malnutrition and yet, tragically, remain undistributed.

Resilient India

Tackling food waste is a dual imperative: it can simultaneously enhance food security and build national climate resilience by curbing potent greenhouse gas emissions. This demands a multi-pronged, policy-driven response.

While the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has published regulations for surplus food distribution, they don’t fully shield businesses from potential lawsuits under the broader Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. This fear of litigation deters many restaurants and supermarkets from donating. A nationwide “Good Samaritan Law” is critical to protect donors from liability, empowering a robust food-rescue ecosystem.

Fragmented supply chains demand urgent, mission-mode investment. A dedicated national initiative must establish farm-level pack-houses, refrigerated transport, and modern storage facilities. This infrastructure will not only slash food wastage and curb harmful methane emissions but also provide a massive boost to farmer incomes, a triple win for the economy, environment, and society.

The final policy response must be to strictly enforce the Solid Waste Management Rules, requiring bulk generators to segregate and divert organic waste from landfills. Simultaneously, the government must act as the anchor customer for this diverted waste.

Schemes like SATAT (Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation) can guarantee the purchase of Bio-CNG produced from organic waste. This creates the necessary market demand, as successfully demonstrated by Indore’s pioneering Bio-CNG plant under the GOBAR-Dhan scheme, which is already generating 77,400 km/day of equivalent transport fuel that is being produced for 430 buses.

Tackling food waste is not merely waste management; it is a strategic climate and food security imperative for a nourished and resilient India. The path to achieving our climate goals and feeding our population begins on our farms and ends with responsible consumption.

Pranjali Chowdhary is a Research and Policy Associate at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, India, focusing on advancing climate goals by strengthening the integration of waste management and state-level policy frameworks.

Shivang Agarwal is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, Washington DC. He is an environmental engineering professional with six years of experience in air pollution and climate science, policy development, and project leadership.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The Delhi High Court on Monday rejected a petition filed by expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar seeking the suspension of his 10-year jail term in a matter pertaining to the custodial death of the complainant’s father in the Unnao rape case, Live Law reported.

This came nearly a month after the High Court on December 23 suspended Sengar’s life sentence in the rape case during the pendency of his appeal against his conviction in the matter. Despite the order, Sengar was to remain in jail as he was also serving the 10-year sentence in connection with the custodial death case.

However, the Supreme Court stayed this High Court order on December 29.

On Monday, Justice Ravinder Dudeja noted that Sengar had spent nearly seven and a half years in custody out of the total punishment of 10 years in the custodial death case and that there had been a delay in deciding his appeal against his conviction, Bar and Bench reported.

However, the judge said that the delay was partly because of Sengar, who has filed several applications.

Dudeja, while rejecting the expelled BJP leader’s petition, took into account his criminal antecedents and also said that there had been no new development in the case, Live Law reported.

The case

In December 2019, a trial court in Delhi convicted Sengar and sentenced him to life for raping a woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in 2017. She was a minor at the time.

In March 2020, Sengar and his brother, among others, were also sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for the killing of the woman’s father in judicial custody.

The killing had taken place after the father had been arrested in April 2018 allegedly at Sengar’s behest under the Arms Act. He died in custody on April 9, 2018.

In June 2024, the High Court rejected the petition filed by Sengar for the suspension of his sentence in the custodial death case, Live Law reported.

The petition rejected on Monday was his second attempt to secure interim relief in the matter.

The Supreme Court told the Election Commission to publish the names of 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections during the special intensive revision in West Bengal. The names should be displayed in gram panchayats, block offices and ward offices, the court said.

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and cases where parents have more than six children.

The court said that persons who had received notices from the Election Commission can submit their documents or objections through booth-level agents. If the documents submitted as proof are found to be unsatisfactory, the persons should be given an opportunity to be heard, the court said.

The court also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit card issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process. Read on.

The Supreme Court told the Madhya Pradesh government to decide within two weeks on granting the sanction to prosecute Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state minister Vijay Shah for his remarks allegedly targeting Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. The court noted that the Special Investigation Team it formed in May had filed its report and had been awaiting the approval from the state government.

Colonel Qureshi was among the spokespersons during the Union government and the military's media briefings about Operation Sindoor.

Shah had said that those who had widowed the daughters of India in the Pahalgam terror attack had been taught a lesson by Prime Minister Narendra Modi “by sending the sister from their own community”. While the BJP leader had not named any person at the time, Opposition parties alleged that the minister was alluding to Qureshi. Shah had apologised, saying that “Sofiya Qureshi ji has worked rising above caste and society while fulfilling her national duty”. Read on.

The Delhi High Court quashed income tax reassessment notices issued to NDTV founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy in 2016 in connection with alleged interest-free loans advanced to their company RRPR Holdings Private Limited, the promoter company of the broadcaster. The court penalised the Income Tax department Rs 2 lakh for issuing the notices.

The reassessment proceedings stemmed from allegations relating to interest-free loans advanced to RRPR Holdings. The tax department had alleged that a loan of Rs 403.8 crore from Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited to RRPR, along with a series of share transfers between RRPR and the Roys, were “colourable transactions” intended to evade tax.

The Roys had approached the court in 2017, arguing that the reassessment amounted to a second reopening for the same assessment year. They contended that reopening the matter amounted to a “change of opinion”, which is not permitted under the law.

The bench held that the department cannot revisit matters that had already been examined during an earlier reassessment. Read on.

The Delhi High Court rejected a petition filed by expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar seeking the suspension of his 10-year jail sentence for the custodial death of the father of the complainant in the Unnao rape case.

The court said that while Sengar had spent nearly seven and a half years in custody out of the 10-year period, the delay in deciding his appeal against his conviction had been partly because of the former MLA as he had filed several applications. It also took into account Sengar’s criminal antecedents and observed that there had been no new development in the case.

In March 2020, Sengar and his brother, among others, were convicted for the death of the woman’s father in judicial custody in 2018. The killing took place after the father had been arrested allegedly at Sengar’s behest under the Arms Act. Read on.

A fisherman from Gujarat who had been in a jail in Pakistan’s Karachi died in custody on Friday even as his sentence had ended in 2022, journalist and activist Jatin Desai told Scroll. In early 2022, the fisherman inadvertently crossed into Pakistani waters. About seven or eight others who were caught with him remain in jail in Karachi, Desai said.

The activist noted that a 2008 bilateral agreement on consular access states that arrested persons should be released and repatriated to each other’s countries within one month of their nationality being confirmed and their sentences being completed. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Monday told the Election Commission to publish the names of about 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections during the special intensive revision exercise in West Bengal, Bar and Bench reported.

Considering the large number of such notices, the court directed that the names of the persons in the logical discrepancy list be displayed in gram panchayats, block offices and ward offices.

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen was among those who got such a notice, with the Election Commission citing a gap of less than 15 years between him and his parents.

The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the special intensive revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of over 58 lakh voters were removed from voter lists in the state as they had either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.

Voters with “logical discrepancies” in their forms are separate from those whose names were removed, and from about 30 lakh “unmapped voters”, who could not establish a familial link with the voters’ list of 2002.

The Supreme Court on Monday said that those who received notices from the Election Commission can submit their documents or objections through authorised agents, who can be booth-level agents, Live Law reported.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant also directed that the offices where documents and objections can be submitted should be set up within panchayat or block offices, so that voters do not have to travel far for the purpose.

If the documents are found to be unsatisfactory, poll officials should give the persons an opportunity for a hearing, which the agent should be able to attend, the court said.

The court also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit card issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process, Live Law reported.

Earlier on Monday, lawyer Kapil Sibal, representing Trinamool Congress leaders, said that only 300 venues had been approved for hearings, while 1,900 were actually needed, Bar and Bench reported. He also questioned the nature of objections raised by the poll panel.

“They say if Ganguli is spelled differently... They omit the name,” Sibal said. “My lord knows that Datta is spelt differently. They are issuing notice with only the aim to exclude the names.”

Lawyer Rakesh Dwiwedi, representing the Election Commission, said that there were cases where the age difference between the parents and child was only 15 years.

However, the court asked how this could be a logical discrepancy, Live Law reported.

“How can 15 years age gap between mother and son be logical discrepancy?” Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked. “…It is not as if we don’t have child marriages in the country.”

Kant also objected to the Election Commission issuing directions through WhatsApp rather than an official circular. “There is no question of running everything through WhatsApp,” he said, according to Bar and Bench. “Circular has to be issued.”

Trinamool Congress National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee welcomed the court’s directions, saying that the “much-needed intervention” had dealt a decisive blow to the “cruel, politically motivated and deeply unjust SIR process”.

“This is a judicial slap across the face of the Election Commission, and the people of Bengal will deliver an even sharper democratic slap to the BJP at the ballot box,” Banerjee said on social media.

We wholeheartedly welcome the landmark direction of the Supreme Court to the Election Commission. This much-needed intervention has dealt a decisive blow to the CRUEL, POLITICALLY MOTIVATED and deeply UNJUST SIR process.

The SC has rightly ordered that the names of those…

— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) January 19, 2026

The court has been hearing a batch of petitions against the validity of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in several states, including West Bengal. The exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll.

Former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud on Sunday said that bail before conviction should be a matter of right, but added that courts need to examine cases in depth when national security is involved, PTI reported.

Chandrachud made the remark at the Jaipur Literature Festival after he was asked by the debate moderator about his views on the Supreme Court denying bail to activist Umar Khalid in the 2020 Delhi riots larger conspiracy case.

“They’ve been inside for five years,” ANI quoted Chandrachud as saying. “I’m not criticising my court...you can impose conditions to ensure that the conditions for bail are not abused, but you must necessarily take into consideration that they have the right to an expeditious trial. And if an expeditious trial is not possible under present conditions, then bail should be the rule and not the exception.”

However, the former chief justice said that bail can be denied if there is a possibility of the accused person committing another crime, tampering with evidence or escaping.

“If these three grounds are not present, then bail must be granted,” PTI quoted Chandrachud as saying. “I think that where national security is involved, it is the court’s duty to examine the case in depth. Otherwise, what is happening is that people remain imprisoned for years.”

#WATCH | Jaipur, Rajasthan: On Umar Khalid, former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud says, "They've been inside for five years. I'm not criticising my court...you can impose conditions to ensure that the conditions for bail are not abused, but you must necessarily take into… pic.twitter.com/rbmfeoxDyM

— ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2026

Chandrachud said that during his two-year tenure as the chief justice, the Supreme Court disposed of about 21,000 bail applications. “There are cases which people don’t think about when they criticise the Supreme Court for not granting bail,” he said.

On January 5, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria denied bail to Khalid and Sharjeel Imam – both activists and former Jawaharlal Nehru University students. The court, however, allowed the bail applications of Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Shadab Ahmed and Muhammad Saleem Khan.

The bench said that Khalid and Imam can file bail applications after all protected witnesses are examined or after one year.

The court said that the material on record showed that Khalid and Imam were the “masterminds” of the alleged conspiracy to spark violence in Delhi, and that there was a prima facie case against them under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Also read: Five years later: Delhi Police’s riots conspiracy case is built on sand

Commenting on the case during an interview in September, Chandrachud had said that Khalid’s counsel had sought adjournments at least seven times in his bail petition, and subsequently withdrew the plea.

However, an analysis by Alt News showed that of the 12 adjournments that were sought between May 2023 and February 2024, only two were sought by the petitioner’s side alone. The rest were either sought by the respondent, requested jointly by the prosecution and defence or by the bench itself.

The Supreme Court on Monday told the Madhya Pradesh government to decide within two weeks on granting the sanction to prosecute Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state minister Vijay Shah for his remarks allegedly targeting Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Deepankar Datta and Joymalya Bagchi noted that the Special Investigation Team the court had formed in May had filed its report and was awaiting sanction from the state government.

The sanction from the state government is necessary for the court to take cognisance of the offence under Section 196 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which pertains to promotion of communal hatred and ill will.

The matter pertains to remarks made by the BJP leader at an event in Mhow on May 13.

Shah had said that those who had widowed the daughters of India had been taught a lesson by Prime Minister Narendra Modi “by sending the sister from their own community”. He repeated the remark immediately after saying it the first time.

While the BJP leader did not name a person, Opposition parties had alleged that the minister was alluding to Qureshi, one of the spokespersons during the media briefings relating to Operation Sindoor held by the external affairs ministry and the defence ministry.

On May 14, the Madhya Pradesh High Court took suo moto cognisance of the matter and ordered the registration of a case against Shah. The High Court had also observed that Shah’s remarks referred to “none other but” Qureshi.

Shah was subsequently booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, an act hurting harmony between communities and for making statements about a member of a community in a manner that could adversely affect communal harmony.

The BJP leader had moved the Supreme Court.

On May 13, Shah apologised and said that his remark should not be viewed “in a different context”.

“I want to tell people that my speech is not in that context,” The Indian Express had quoted him as saying at the time. “They are our sisters, and they have taken revenge with great strength along with the armed forces.”

Shah had said that he was ready to apologise “10 times” if his remark had hurt “society and religion”.

The minister had also issued another apology the next day, saying that he was “ashamed and saddened” by his comments. “Our country’s sister Sofiya Qureshi ji has worked rising above caste and society while fulfilling her national duty,” he added.

Rejecting Shah’s apology, the Supreme Court on May 19 ordered the formation of the Special Investigation Team to look into the matter. The bench had also stayed his arrest and ordered him to join the investigation.

In August, the investigating team submitted its request to the state government for a sanction to prosecute the minister, The Hindu reported.

In the Supreme Court on Monday, the chief justice told advocate Sridhar Pottaraju, representing the state government, that “we are in January 2026 now”.

In response, Pottaraju said that the delay in granting the sanction may be because Shah’s petition seeking the quashing of the first information report filed against him was pending before the Supreme Court.

Advocate Maninder Singh, representing Shah, noted that the minister had apologised, adding that he was also cooperating with the investigation.

“You keep on cooperating,” The Hindu quoted Kant as having responded.

The Supreme Court noted that no apology had been filed on record, Live Law reported.

“It is too late to tender any apology,” the legal news portal quoted the bench as saying. “We had earlier commented on what kind of apology is submitted.”

At the earlier hearing on May 13, the Supreme Court had described the remarks made by Shah as “crass” and “completely thoughtless”, and added that it was not ready to accept his public apology.

“What kind of apology?” Live Law had quoted the bench as saying at the time. “What is that apology? Sometimes people apologise to wriggle out of legal liabilities. Sometimes crocodile tears. What kind of apology is yours?”

The court on Monday added that the report submitted by the Special Investigation Team had cited other instances where Shah had made allegedly objectionable remarks, Live Law reported. The investigation team has been asked to submit a report on the action proposed to be taken about these instances as well.

The police in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi have filed first information reports against eight persons for allegedly posting misleading content on social media about redevelopment at the city’s Manikarnika Ghat, The Indian Express reported.

The eight have been accused of sharing images, purportedly created by artificial intelligence, about the work on social media platform X, the construction agency tasked with carrying out the redevelopment alleged in its complaint to the police.

The complainant alleged that some of the posts sought to link the Union government with Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, sparking public anger.

Some of the persons accused in the matter are linked to the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, PTI quoted Assistant Commissioner of Police (Dashashwamedh Ghat) Atul Anjan as saying.

The Manikarnika Ghat, one of 84 ghats in Varanasi, is believed to be one of the city’s most sacred cremation grounds. A demolition drive under a redevelopment project at the site sparked protests over the past week.

Protesters have alleged that a century-old idol of 18th-century Malwa ruler Ahilyabai Holkar was damaged during the demolition drive, PTI reported. The district administration has denied the claim.

Nevertheless, Opposition parties have accused the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government of destroying Varanasi’s heritage and demanded that work at the Manikarnika Ghat be halted.

The first information reports against the eight persons were filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, defiling a place of worship, acts intended to outrage religious feelings and statements conducing to public mischief, The Indian Express reported.

The United States has invited India and Pakistan to join President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace, which Washington has described as a global initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, initially focusing on Gaza.

It was not clear whether New Delhi has agreed to join the initiative.

A contribution of $1 billion secures permanent membership on the board instead of a three-year appointment, AP reported quoting an unidentified US official. The three-year appointment does not require any contribution.

The Board of Peace will be part of the second phase of a US-backed ceasefire proposal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. A United Nations Security Council resolution in November authorised the Board of Peace to oversee Gaza at least until the end of 2027.

Trump has extended invitations to about 60 countries, Al Jazeera reported. This includes Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco, Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Sharing Trump’s letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media on Sunday, the US ambassador to New Delhi, Sergio Gor, said that the board “will support effective governance to achieve stability and prosperity”.

In the letter dated Friday, Trump said the board was a “critically historic and magnificent effort to solidify peace” in West Asia and to embark on a “bold new approach to resolving global conflict”.

The US president also said that the initiative “will be established as a new International Organization and Transitional Governing Administration”.

“Our effort will bring together a distinguished group of nations ready to shoulder the noble responsibility of building LASTING PEACE, an honour reserved for those prepared to lead by example, and brilliantly invest in a secure and prosperous future for generations to come,” the letter added.

Honored to convey @POTUS invitation to Prime Minister @narendramodi to participate in the Board of Peace which will bring lasting peace to Gaza. The Board will support effective governance to achieve stability and prosperity! pic.twitter.com/HikLnXFFMp

— Ambassador Sergio Gor (@USAmbIndia) January 18, 2026

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also received an invitation from Trump to join the board, a spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry was quoted as saying by Reuters on Sunday.

“Pakistan will remain engaged with international efforts for peace and security in Gaza, leading to a lasting solution to the Palestine issue in accordance with United Nations resolutions,” the statement added.

According to a draft charter of the Board of Peace obtained by The Times of Israel, the preamble declares that “durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed”.

Participating countries would initially serve three-year terms without a financial contribution. However, countries seeking permanent membership will be required to contribute more than $1 billion within a year, which would be used to fund the board’s activities.

The initiative would be chaired by Trump and supported by a multi-tier structure, including a Palestinian technocratic body tasked with administering Gaza, alongside an international security arrangement, Al Jazeera reported.

The Executive Board members of the peace initiative include US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, billionaire businessman Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to Al Jazeera.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on besieged Gaza since then, leaving more than 67,000 persons dead.

Trump’s peace plan was approved by the United Nations Security Council in November, with Russia and China abstaining over concerns about the lack of clarity on how the Board of Peace would function and whether it would pave the way for Palestinian statehood.

The Delhi High Court on Monday quashed income tax reassessment notices issued to NDTV founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy in 2016 in connection with alleged interest-free loans advanced to their company RRPR Holdings Private Limited, the promoter company of the broadcaster, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Dinesh Mehta and Vinod Kumar also imposed costs of Rs 2 lakh on the Income Tax department, directing it to pay Rs 1 lakh each to Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy for issuing the notice.

“No amount of cost can be treated as enough for these cases,” the bench was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench. “However, we cannot leave these cases without imposing any.”

The detailed judgement is yet to be made public.

The reassessment proceedings stemmed from allegations relating to certain interest-free loans advanced to RRPR Holdings Private Limited.

The tax department had alleged that an interest-free loan of Rs 403.85 crore from Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited to RRPR, along with a series of share transfers between RRPR and the Roys, were “colourable transactions” intended to evade tax, Business Standard reported.

The Roys had approached the High Court in November 2017, arguing that the reassessment amounted to a second reopening for the same assessment year.

They submitted that the Income Tax department had already reopened the assessment in July 2011 and examined the same issues during those proceedings, which concluded with a reassessment order in March 2013.

They contended that once a reassessment is initiated, the entire under-assessed income can be examined, and that reopening the same matter amounted to a “change of opinion”, which is not permitted under the law, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench agreed with the petitioners and held that the department could not revisit issues that had already been examined during an earlier reassessment.

A fisherman from Gujarat who had been languishing in a jail in Pakistan’s Karachi, despite his sentence having ended in 2022, died in custody on January 16, journalist and activist Jatin Desai told Scroll.

In early 2022, the fisherman inadvertently crossed into Pakistani waters. About seven or eight others who were caught with him remain in jail in Karachi, Desai said.

Desai, a peace activist who has for several years been taking up the cause of Indian fisherfolk arrested in Pakistan, did not disclose the name of the fisherman who died.

However, he noted that a 2008 bilateral agreement between India and Pakistan on consular access states that arrested persons should be released and repatriated to each other’s countries within one month of their nationality being confirmed and their sentences being completed.

“As per this document, the fisherman should have been released long ago,” Desai told Scroll. “But for that to happen, the agreement has to be implemented in letter and spirit.”

The journalist-activist claimed that three to four Indian fishers die in Karachi’s Malir Jail every year. “In the first place, such persons should not be arrested at all,” he said. “If they are arrested, a situation should certainly not arise in which they die in prison.”

Desai said that India and Pakistan should follow a no-arrest policy for fisherfolk who inadvertently cross the maritime border, and should instead push them back to their own countries.

“The International Maritime Border between India and Pakistan is a notional line, and so, it is always possible for fishers to accidentally cross over to the other side,” he said. “Fisherfolk come from marginalised communities, and are usually not very well-educated. So, instead of putting them through legal processes, their cases should be seen through a humanitarian lens.”

A delegation of women from fisherfolk families had recently met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Delhi, and had urged him to expedite the process to release and repatriate Indian fishermen in Pakistani jails, The Indian Express reported.

They also sought that medical care be ensured for the arrested persons, and that a Joint Judicial Committee on Prisoners, which last met in October 2013, be revived. Further, the delegation demanded that confiscated Indian fishing boats should be returned and mechanisms for family distress support be set up, according to The Indian Express.

Also read: Caught for crossing invisible ocean borders, Indian and Pakistani fishermen are languishing in jail

Six suspected Maoists were killed between Saturday and Sunday in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, PTI quoted the police as saying.

While two of the suspected Maoists were killed on Sunday morning, four others were shot dead on Saturday in the forested hills of the district’s northwestern region, Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Yadav was quoted as saying.

Those who were killed on Sunday were active members of the National Park Area Committee of the Maoists, said Yadav.

They were identified as Dilip Vedja, a divisional committee member of the committee, and Madvi Kosa, Lakkhi Madkam and Radha Metta.

The identities of those killed on Sunday are yet to be established, the police said.

A joint of the Special Task Force, the District Reserve Guard, and the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or the CoBRA unit, has been carrying out a search operation in the district based on intelligence inputs about the presence of Vedja and other armed Maoists, PTI reported.

Security forces have recovered six weapons from the site of the gunfight, including an Avtomat Kalashnikova-47 rifle, an Indian Small Arms System rifle, a carbine and a .303 rifle.

Search operations continued in the region on Monday, with security officials searching for Papa Rao, a senior Maoist leader believed to be operating in the Bastar region, The Indian Express reported.

Rao is a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, the highest state-level body of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), and serves as secretary of the South Bastar Zonal Bureau Committee as well as in charge of the West Bastar Division Committee.

On Saturday, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishn Deo Sai said the killing of the suspected Maoists was a “decisive blow to Naxalism”.

“The message of our government is clear – abandon violence, connect with the mainstream of development,” Sai said on social media. “The government is fully committed to rehabilitation with justice, security and dignity.”

नक्सलवाद पर निर्णायक प्रहार, बस्तर में शांति, समृद्धि और प्रगति की दिशा में तेजी से आगे बढ़ रही सुशासन सरकार

बीजापुर के उत्तर-पश्चिमी क्षेत्र के दुर्गम जंगल–पहाड़ी इलाकों में डीआरजी, कोबरा और एसटीएफ के साहसी जवानों ने सघन सर्च ऑपरेशन के दौरान महत्वपूर्ण सफलता हासिल करते हुए एक…

— Vishnu Deo Sai (@vishnudsai) January 17, 2026

With the latest deaths, at least 20 suspected Maoists have been killed in separate gunfights in Chhattisgarh so far this year, PTI reported.

On January 3, 14 suspected Maoists were killed in two separate gunfights with security forces in the state’s Sukma and Bijapur districts.

On January 15, 54 Maoists surrendered before security forces in Bijapur. Forty-nine of them carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 1.4 crore.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha that 942 Left-wing extremists had been arrested this year.

Overall, 1,841 such persons had been killed, over 16,000 had been arrested, while 9,588 others had surrendered since 2014.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

In October, the Union home ministry said that the number of districts across states affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to 11 from 18 in March.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three, it added. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

In the course of the Union government’s anti-Maoist offensive in 2025, key Maoist leaders like Uike and Madvi Hidma have been killed, while others like Vikas Nagpure, alias Anant, and Mallojula Venugopal Rao, alias Bhupathi, have surrendered.

A report by Malini Subramaniam for Scroll on Hidma’s killing noted that in the Andhra Pradesh village closest to where he was killed, no one heard gunfire.

She had earlier reported that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

Music composer AR Rahman on Sunday addressed the criticism about his recent comments about a possible “communal” bias in the Hindi film industry in the past eight years, saying he never intended to hurt anyone’s sentiments.

In a video shared on Instagram, the 59-year-old Oscar-winning composer said that while intentions can sometimes be misunderstood, his purpose has always been to “uplift, honour and serve through music”.

The clarification follows his recent comments to BBC Asian Network in which Rahman said that the Hindi film industry has changed over the past eight years, attributing it to a shift in power and possibly to “a communal thing”.

His remarks sparked a political row, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party rejecting his claims and Opposition leaders expressing concern.

View this post on Instagram

On Sunday, he said: “I have never wished to cause pain and I hope my sincerity is felt.”

Rahman added that he feels fortunate to be Indian as it allows him to “create a space which always allows freedom of expression and celebrates multicultural voices”.

In his comments to BBC Asian Network, he had said that people “who are not creative have the power now to decide things, and this might have been a communal thing also, but not in my face”.

“[It comes to me] as Chinese whispers that they booked you…but the music company went and funded the movie and got their five composers [hired],” he added.

He also said that audiences are capable of judgement and are not influenced by “divisive” movies.

Activist Sonam Wangchuk’s detention under the National Security Act is “illegal” and has “no merit”, which is why the Union government was repeatedly seeking fresh court dates in the appeal against it, his wife Gitanjali Angmo was quoted as alleging by PTI on Sunday.

“The solicitor general of India, who represents the Union [government], always keeps taking dates after dates, employing delay tactics, because I think they have realised that there is no merit in the case,” she said in an interview to the news agency.

Angmo added that Wangchuk should already be out of prison due to what she described as serious “procedural lapses” by the authorities.

Police firing and violence had broken out in Leh on September 24 during protests seeking statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at the police, and set fire to the Bharatiya Janata Party office and a police vehicle.

Wangchuk was arrested in Leh on September 26, two days after four persons were killed in the police firing. He was later taken to a jail in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur.

The Union government has claimed that the violence was incited by Wangchuk’s “provocative statements”.

In October, Angmo filed a petition before the Supreme Court challenging his detention and seeking his immediate release. She has contended that the detention order relied on “stale, irrelevant and extraneous” first information reports, many of which did not name Wangchuk.

She told PTI that the matter was an “open and shut case” and said the detention reflected the “state of democracy in the country”, where power was being used to illegally detain “people who have been working for this country”.

“If it can happen to Sonam, it can happen to anybody else,” she added.

Angmo said that obtaining the detention order and meeting her husband had also required approaching the court, and that even accessing his handwritten notes was difficult.

On October 15, the Union government told the Supreme Court that it had no objection to Wangchuk sharing the notes he had prepared while in jail to challenge his detention with his wife.

She also highlighted that under the National Security Act, all documents forming the grounds of detention must be supplied to the detainee within “five or a maximum of 10 days”. However, she alleged that four videos relied upon by the authorities were provided to Wangchuk only after 28 days, which she said amounted to a major procedural lapse that should render the detention void from the outset.

“In a way, it is an open and shut case just on this alone because it violates Section 8 of the National Security Act,” she said. “Corollary to this is that because he did not get these videos, he was denied a chance to make an effective representation.”

Angmo also said that the grounds of detention were “stale” and some of them “rely on videos that are one and a half years old or one year old”.

She said that three of the five first information reports cited by the authorities did not name Wangchuk, while one of the two that did, dated back to August, had not been followed by any notice or inquiry.

She further alleged that the district magistrate’s detention order was largely a “copy-paste” of the proposal submitted by the superintendent of police, without independent application of mind.

On the issue being raised in Parliament, Angmo said she was grateful to those who spoke about it, including Ladakh MP Mohmad Haneefa, but expressed disappointment that it had not been pursued more forcefully.

Angmo also said the detention had highlighted growing polarisation in society and appealed to people to think beyond party or sectarian lines and “become a true citizen of independent India, you know, with a mind and wisdom of our own”.

“Let us not lose our wisdom and discernment and be swayed by narratives and party ideologies,” she added.

Also read: Nine false claims about Sonam Wangchuk – and why they fall flat

Can media organisations use the work of independent artists without credit or payment? Does it not amount to a violation of an artist’s copyright?

In recent years, several independent photographers, filmmakers and writers have accused mainstream media organisations of using their photographs, videos and writings without proper attribution, and sometimes even presenting them as their own content.

The issue came into sharp focus in December when Emmy-nominated filmmaker and photographer Ronny Sen filed a civil suit against Zee News seeking Rs 18 crore in damages. He accused the channel of a deliberate act of copyright infringement, alleging it had used his exclusive cinematographic work documenting the transport of cheetahs from Africa to India without authorisation.

A commercial court in Kolkata admitted the suit and will hear the matter.

Sen told Scroll that what had happened was “quite outrageous”. He alleged that Zee didn’t only “steal the work but have claimed it as exclusive and suggested that only they had access to it”.

Zee News did not respond to Scroll’s email seeking a response to the allegation.

Sen said that he hopes that “courts will do something so that the rights of photographers like me can be secured”.

For Sen, this was not an isolated incident involving Zee News. He has pointed out that, as far back as 2014, one of his photographs was used by Zee News’s Bengali channel during coverage of protests in Jadavpur University without his consent.

One of Sen’s main arguments in his suit is that Zee News cannot rely on “fair use” because the photograph was not used “incidentally or just for brief news reporting”. Instead, the channel used the entire photograph “repeatedly, without giving him credit, and even falsely claimed it as their own with exclusive access”.

At the heart of the debate lies a phrase that is frequently invoked but rarely understood, “fair use” – or as Indian law calls it, “fair dealing”.

What is fair dealing?

While the term “fair dealing” is widely used in India, the doctrine itself is distinct from the concept of “fair use” in the United States.

Fair use, a feature of American copyright law, is considered relatively “open-ended and flexible”, said Mumbai-based copyright law advocate Pankhuri Upadhyay. Under US law, courts apply a four-factor test that looks at the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market for the original work.

In India, the governing framework is Section 52 of the Copyright Act, which lists specific situations where the use of copyrighted material “does not amount to infringement”.

These include limited use for “criticism or review” and for “reporting current events and current affairs”, including public lectures. However, the law does not define fair dealing in clear terms, instead provides circumstances where it may be used as a defence if an instance of use is challenged.

Explaining how courts approach this, Pankhuri said that “commercial use is not automatically disqualified in India, but it does warrant greater scrutiny” and often weighs against a fair dealing claim.

Another key factor, she noted, is the “amount and substantiality of the work used”, warning that even short excerpts can count against fair dealing if they capture the most significant part of a creative work.

These factors, she said, are applied together, “not as a rigid checklist”.

Section 52 also makes author attribution mandatory in news reporting, while Sections 51 and 57 protect copyright and moral rights.

Advocate Prashant T Reddy, who practises in Delhi, added that even permitted uses cannot cross into “misrepresentation or distortion” that harms an author’s reputation.

Pankhuri emphasised that fair use is “not a rule but a defence”, and can only be determined by courts on a case-by-case basis.

‘Photographers have no rights?’

Media organisations are increasingly exploiting the work of photographers, Sen argued, because of a key structural shift within newsrooms.

“Media publications that used to hire photographers in the past don’t really hire anymore because there is a sense that images can be produced by anyone,” he said. However, when a story becomes important, “there is tremendous pressure on publications to generate some kind of visual material, and then there is a tendency by large media groups to use other people’s work without any due process”, he added.

Sen pointed out that photographers remain a “largely unorganised community, which makes it difficult for them to enforce their rights”.

“The crisis we see today is because photographers have been completely sidelined, and under pressure, big media organisations run photographs without consent,” Sen said. “Photographers, like any other creative professionals, put in just as much work. How is it that photographers have no rights?”

Photographer Gauri Gill echoed similar concerns. She said she was “disheartened” last year to discover that her photographs had been used “without permission by media organisations”.

Brilliant Gauri Gill took these viral photos of @MiraPagliNair and @ZohranKMamdani. She's being ripped off, they're being circulated without credit. These have her name on, let's share these and fix it. pic.twitter.com/hGsylPSKXY

— Karuna Nundy (@karunanundy) November 9, 2025

She recalled that in November 2025, major media organisations had taken her unpublished, older photographs of Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, with his mother Mira Nair, from her private Instagram account, without her permission. The images were subsequently made viral on social media.

Gill said she was upset that “major profit-making publications” had used her work without permission, credit, or payment, and chose to “let the matter go” instead of taking legal action.

“It has definitely given me pause to think and consider what to do in the future,” she added. “I was freely putting out original content on my Instagram account, just for the pleasure of sharing, and trusting people not to share without asking, but now, I don’t know.”

Gill said the problem has two sides – companies using images without permission or credit and individuals sharing photos online. “I wonder about the distinction in law as it applies to companies and individuals, print, TV and social media,” she said. “The internet has introduced a whole new dimension to the concern.”

Kolkata-based photographer Subhrajit Sen told Scroll that in May 2025, a major television network had “used his original photographs” while crediting itself as the source. The images were part of his work and had earlier been published with attribution by another publication.

Subhrajit raised the issue on Instagram, calling it “alarming and deeply irresponsible” to reuse his images without permission or credit, and said it violated his rights and reflected poorly on editorial ethics.

He said he took a stand publicly by posting about the issue on Instagram and tagging the news channel. It contacted him and “attempted to offer compensation”, which he declined. Subsequently, “they issued a public apology on LinkedIn”, he said.

Subhrajit said he chose not to approach the courts “as legal action is costly and time-consuming, especially against a large media house”. He also said the “lack of accessible contact details” left him with no option but to flag the issue on Instagram.

Another photographer, Ishan Banerjee, said he had a similar experience with the same television channel. After Subhrajit’s Instagram post, Banerjee said the channel used his photo and told him, “It’s just a photo. Why are you making a big issue?”

He said his credit request was refused, and the image was later quietly removed.

In its LinkedIn apology, the television channel said there was “absolutely no intention to misuse anyone’s work or to take credit for it”.

In April 2025, Delhi-based artist Anita Dube faced copyright allegations after using lines from poet Aamir Aziz’s poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jaayega in works shown and sold at Vadehra Art Gallery. Aziz accused her of theft, saying, “This is not conceptual borrowing. This is theft. This is erasure.”

View this post on Instagram

Aziz told Scroll that while the gallery came to a settlement with him, Dube did not. Aziz said that Dube tried to convince him that the use amounted to “fair dealing, claiming it was promoting his work”.

On legal action, he said approaching the court would itself require around Rs 2 lakh in court fees. “How struggling artists could afford such costs,” he said.

Mumbai-based photographer Prarthna Singh summed up the wider problem, saying the theft of creative work is rampant in India. Even when images are publicly available, she said, “that is not the way it should be used; even if it’s out in public, you should still reach out to the artist for permission”.

Burden of implementation

Speaking to Scroll, Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer Anshumaan Sahni explained that individuals often lack the resources needed to enforce their own copyright.

“Large corporations typically have strong systems in place to track copyright infringement and actively pursue violators,” he said. “However, when it comes to independent artists, photographers and writers, this system is against them because it requires constant vigilance.”

Sahni noted that even among individuals, there is a clear hierarchy. Since damages claimed in court have to be based on potential earnings lost by an artist, new artists are at a disadvantage.

“Someone who has goodwill and is already famous, there is a clear value attached to their work,” he said. “But for someone who is just starting, how do you value their work?”

While an established artist may be able to claim damages based on prior sales, “to pursue such a claim, the artist would often have to spend a significant amount on legal costs”, which Sahni said “strongly discourages independent artists” from seeking legal remedies.

Another Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer, Nishchal Anand, said that in many cases, a legal or takedown notice is sufficient. “Big organisations are also very conscious about their image, so they try to settle the matter outside court,” he said.

Anand stressed the need for artists to have “collective management organisations” to enforce their rights.

Advocate Reddy emphasised that “collective societies are important” because they will help reduce the high costs of enforcing copyright.

Once infringement occurs, advocate Upadhyay said, “the burden shifts entirely onto the artist”, and “the costs involved are insane”.

“Big organisations have power and money, and in many ways, the battle is already lost before it begins,” she added.

The police in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district detained 12 Muslim men for allegedly offering namaz in an empty home “without permission”, PTI reported.

The 12 persons were challaned under legal provisions pertaining to breach of peace and subsequently produced before a magistrate, who granted them bail.

Superintendent of Police (South) Anshika Verma said that the authorities took precautionary action after getting information that a vacant home in the Mohammedganj village was being used as a temporary madrasa, PTI reported.

“Conducting any new religious activity or gathering without permission is a violation of the law,” Verma said. “Strict action will be taken if such activities are repeated.”

The matter came to light after a video purportedly showing a group of people offering namaz in a home was shared on social media.

In UP's Bareilly, a video of 12 people offering prayers had surfaced on social media. All 12 were arrested. pic.twitter.com/DM8OYUToiJ

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) January 18, 2026

A preliminary inquiry revealed that the house belongs to a man named Hanif, and that it was being used temporarily for Friday namaz, PTI quoted the police as saying.

Some villagers had objected to prayers being held regularly at the man’s home and informed the authorities, after which the police stopped the gathering.

For many years, I lived in the Indian city of Chennai where the summer temperatures can reach up to 44 degrees celsius. With a population of 4.5 million, this coastal city is humid and hot.

Its suburbs are home to 600 Hindu temples and there’s a wildlife reserve called Guindy national park in the heart of the city. Trees line some of the streets but green parks are few and far between – as is the shade.

As urbanisation accelerates across India and the rest of the developing world, urban forests become more vital. These clusters of trees in parks, gardens, public spaces and along roads and rivers in urban areas have multiple benefits – from cooling the surrounding air to providing homes for wildlife and creating space for people to enjoy nature. Yet they are often overlooked by city developers.

My research shows that, in Chennai, there are 26 square miles of tree and other vegetation cover, mainly accounted for by formal green spaces such as Guindy wildlife reserve. On the outskirts of this city, an area of nine square miles of unused land is ideally suited to creating more urban forest. Similarly, there is more potential space for urban forests in other fast urbanising Indian cities like Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli.

Global urban planning guidelines recommend having at least 30% tree cover in urban areas. The World Health Organization suggests that cities should allow for nine square metres of urban tree cover per person. Most Indian cities don’t meet this requirement.

Improving urban forests in India has been a challenge for many years due to high land prices, lack of urban planning and little public participation in tree-planting initiatives.

Policies introduced by the Indian government to “green” urban areas often equate tree planting with cooling cities and building climate resilience. But it’s not that simple. The success of urban forests depends on factors such as rainfall, understanding interactions with local wildlife and people’s needs.

A recent study warns that in hot, dry cities with limited water availability like Chennai, trees slow the cooling process by water evaporation from leaves and instead contribute to urban heat. Urban heat comes from the reflection and absorption of sunlight by buildings and land surfaces. This is particularly high in growing smaller Indian cities with populations of 1 to 5 million.

Planting trees with the sole aim of cooling cities could negatively affect wildlife too. Not all birds, bugs and mammals depend on trees for food or shelter. A study from researchers in Bengaluru, India, shows that non-native tree species contribute little to bird richness. Meanwhile, urban grasslands and marshlands that are often misclassified as “waste land” support wildlife and help regulate flooding.

In India, cities and villages have open “common” land where people graze their cattle or harvest fuelwood from trees that grow naturally there – tree-planting initiatives in these open land areas can displace poorer communities of people who rely on open lands for grazing and fuel wood collection.

Design with nature

Urban forests can be planned to meet the needs of people, birds and other wildlife.

In 1969, Ian McHarg, the late Scottish landscape architect and urban planner came up with the concept of “design with nature”, where development has a minimal negative effect on the environment. His idea was to preserve existing natural forests by proposing site suitability assessments. By analysing factors such as rivers and streams, soil type, slope and drainage, McHarg’s approach still helps planners to identify which areas suit development and which are best preserved for nature.

This approach has advanced with new technology. Now, geographic information systems and satellite imagery help planners integrate environmental data and identify suitable areas for planting new trees or conserving urban forests.

Using the principles of landscape ecology, urban planners can design forest patches in a way that enhances the connectivity of green spaces in a city, rather than uniformly planting trees across all open spaces. By designing these “ecological corridors”, trees along roads or canals, for example, can help link fragmented green spaces.

Planting native tree species suited to dry and drought-prone environments is also crucial, as is assessing the local community’s needs for native fruit-bearing trees that provide food.

Growing urban forests

By 2030, one-third of India’s electricity demand is expected to come from cooling equipment such as air conditioning. Increasing urban forests could help reduce this need for more energy.

National-level policies could support urban forest expansion across India. In 2014, the government of India released its urban greenery guidelines and flagship urban renewal programmes such as the Smart Cities Mission have tried to increase tree cover. But guidelines often overlook critical considerations like ecological connectivity, native species and local community needs.

In 2020, the government of India launched Nagar Van Yojana (a scheme to improve tree cover in cities) with a budget of around US$94 million (£70 million). It aims to create urban forests through active participation of citizens, government agencies and private companies. But there is little evidence that urban forest cover has improved.

Urbanisation reduced tree cover in most Indian cities, and much of it was rather unplanned. But by protecting and planting more trees, citizens can live in greener, cooler cities. By shifting urban forest policy from counting trees to designing landscapes, plans that enhance climate resilience, nature conservation and social equity can be put into practice.

Dhanapal Govindarajulu is Postgraduate Researcher, Climate Adaptation, University of Manchester.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Saturday imposed a penalty of Rs 22.2 crore on IndiGo following an investigation into widespread flight disruptions in December, finding that the airline overstretched its flight crew and failed to adequately implement revised pilot duty and rest norms, The Hindu reported.

The aviation regulator said its four-member inquiry committee found that there was “an overriding focus on maximising utilisation of crew, aircraft, and network resources, which significantly reduced roster buffer margins”.

Crew rosters were designed to maximise duty periods, with increased reliance on dead-heading, tail swaps, extended duty patterns and minimal recovery margins, which “compromised roster integrity and adversely impacted operational resilience”, the statement added.

The penalty relates to large-scale cancellations and delays between December 3 and 5, when 2,507 flights were cancelled and 1,852 delayed, affecting more than three lakh passengers.

The fine includes Rs 1.8 crore for multiple violations of Civil Aviation Requirements and Rs 20.4 crore as a cumulative penalty of Rs 30 lakh for continued non-compliance with revised Flight Duty Time Limitation norms over 68 days.

The probe also identified deficiencies in software systems, shortcomings in management structure, and weaknesses in operational control, The Hindu reported.

The regulator noted that following the December crisis, IndiGo was found to have 65 fewer captains than required to comply with the revised duty and rest norms, which came into effect on November 1.

The DGCA issued a warning to IndiGo’s Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers, and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras, after serving them show-cause notices.

It also ordered the removal of Senior Vice President, Operational Control Centre, Jason Herter from his current position, citing failure in systemic planning and timely implementation of the revised norms, The Hindu reported.

Further, IndiGo has been directed to pledge a bank guarantee of Rs 50 crore to ensure compliance with the regulator’s directives and long-term systemic correction.

The aviation regulator said the amount will be released after verification of corrective measures across leadership and governance, manpower planning, rostering and fatigue-risk management, digital systems and operational resilience.

The regulator also said it will conduct an internal inquiry, following instructions from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, to examine how IndiGo was to increase flights in the winter schedule by 10% without assessing its ability to comply with the revised duty norms.

The disruptions in December came amid the rollout of stricter work hour norms introduced in November. The revised rostering norms, issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in January 2024 after concerns about pilot fatigue, were meant to take effect on June 1.

However, airlines asked for delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually introduced on November 1.

The new rules required longer weekly rest, restricted night landings, extended the definition of night hours and limited consecutive night duties.

IndiGo used to operate about 2,300 flights daily and held about 60% of India’s domestic civil aviation market, making it the country’s largest airline.

Also read:

• IndiGo disruption reflects the crisis in India’s aviation sector
• Flyers can seek damages from IndiGo. But most will skip that route

A 20-year-old Kuki woman who was gang-raped in Manipur in May 2023 died on January 10 of a prolonged illness linked to her injuries, Newslaundry reported on Saturday.

Her family said she never fully recovered from the physical and psychological trauma of the assault.

The woman was abducted on May 15, 2023 in Imphal while trying to withdraw money from an ATM. She said that over the course of several hours, she was assaulted at multiple locations in the city and forced into vehicles by groups of men, some allegedly affiliated with the radical Meitei outfit Arambai Tenggol. She later escaped with the help of an auto-rickshaw driver.

The woman was first taken to relief camps in Kangpokpi district and later received medical treatment in hospitals in Manipur and Nagaland. A medical report from Kohima, which Scroll independently verified, recorded her injuries as “alleged case of assault and rape”.

The case was first reported to the National Commission for Women in June 2023, Newslaundry reported.

She filed a police statement in July 2023, and a zero first information report was registered before the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. A zero FIR can be filed at any police, irrespective of where the offence occurred. It subsequently has to be transferred to the police station that has jurisdiction over the matter.

More than two years later, no arrests have been made in the woman’s case.

Her mother, Lhingnei Haokip, said the trauma left her daughter with severe injuries, breathing problems, insomnia and mental health problems, Newslaundry reported.

“For the last two years, she lived in constant fear,” Haokip told the news outlet. “She used to tell me that she did not want to live anymore. Once, she told me that everyone knew what had happened to her and that she felt extremely vulnerable because of it.”

The Kuki-Zo community held a candlelight vigil in Churachandpur in her memory on Saturday.

At least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced since the ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

In 2023, Scroll travelled to Manipur to interview Kuki women who faced extreme violence at the hands of the mobs, including the complainant who died.

Also Read: ‘Everyone should know what happened to us’: Four Kuki women recount brutal assaults they survived

The Enforcement Directorate has alleged that Faridabad-based Al-Falah University had appointed three doctors identified as suspects in the November 10 blast near Delhi’s Red Fort without police verification, reported PTI on Saturday.

Two of the doctors – Muzammil Ganaie and Shaheen Saeed – were arrested by the National Investigation Agency, while the third – Umar Nabi – is alleged to have been driving the car that exploded and killed 15 people.

On Friday, the ED said it has filed a chargesheet before a Delhi court against the university’s Chairperson Jawad Ahmed Siddiqui and the Al-Falah Charitable Trust, which controls the group’s educational institutions, in a money laundering case.

The court is yet to take cognisance of the ED chargesheet, PTI reported.

The Al-Falah group has been under scrutiny in an investigation linked to the November 10 blast.

Siddiqui was arrested on November 18 and is in judicial custody.

The central agency also provisionally attached assets worth about Rs 140 crore belonging to Al-Falah University, which is owned by the Al-Falah group.

According to the ED chargesheet, the university employed doctors “on paper” and listed them under a “22-day punch” or “two days per week” clause, to represent them as regular faculty and obtain approvals from the National Medical Commission, PTI reported, quoting unidentified officials.

Bhupinder Kaur Anand, the vice-chancellor of the university, reportedly confirmed to the ED that the three doctors had been appointed based on recommendations from the human resources head and approvals by Siddiqui. Anand added that “no police verification or scrutiny” was conducted.

The central agency has alleged that some doctors were hired temporarily to meet regulatory requirements and others were on the payroll without attending classes or seeing patients.

These “on paper staff” were aware of their status and were provided with “fake” work experience certificates, the agency alleged, according to PTI.

The ED also alleged that fake patients were admitted shortly before inspections and that the hospital was largely non-functional weeks before National Medical Commission assessments.

The commission is a regulatory body for medical education and practice.

The chargesheet alleged that Siddiqui and the Trust misrepresented the university’s National Assessment and Accreditation Council accreditation and University Grants Commission recognition to “deceive” students, generating illicit funds of Rs 493.24 crore from fees paid for tuition and examinations.

Certificates for courses were obtained from the Haryana government through fraudulent means, The Indian Express quoted the agency as saying.

The case

The blast near the Red Fort metro station left 13 persons dead. Umar Un Nabi, a doctor, was believed to have been driving the car that exploded. Two days after the explosion, the Union government described it as a “terrorist incident”.

Since then, the National Investigation Agency has arrested at least nine persons linked to the blast.

Hours before the blast, the police also said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. The police said at the time that it had recovered 2,900 kg of improvised explosive device-making material in raids in several states.

During its investigation, the police had alleged that the key suspects in the case, including Nabi, who was a faculty member, used a room on the Al-Falah Medical College campus in Haryana’s Faridabad to plan logistics for transporting ammonium nitrate for multiple blasts in the National Capital Region.

The college is part of Al-Falah University.

The vehicle used in the blast had also been parked inside the campus for nearly 20 days, the police had said at the time.

Siddiqui, who has also been the chancellor of Al-Falah University since 2014, had been taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after investigators examined material seized during searches conducted on November 18.

The case filed by the Enforcement Directorate was based on two first information reports filed by the Delhi Police, which alleged that Al-Falah University had falsely claimed accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and misrepresented its eligibility under the University Grants Commission Act.

One night in October, Saluram Kargal was sleeping near his goats outside his home in the village of Wadgaon Borwadi, around 100 km from Pune. The one-room brick home is situated in an enclosure surrounded by an eight-foot-high fence. Suddenly, Kargal’s sleep was broken by the sound of the animals yelping. He opened his eyes and saw a blur of orange near the goats.

It was two leopards.

One swiftly grabbed a 6-kg goat by its neck and jumped out of the enclosure over the fence, then disappeared into the sugarcane fields that surround the house. The second grabbed another goat and also tried to escape, but its paw got stuck in the fence.

Each goat cost between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000. Desperate to save at least one of them, Kargal attacked the leopard.

“The leopard dug its teeth into my thigh,” Kargal told Scroll in mid-December. “I screamed and my son ran out with a stick and began to hit it.” The leopard fled, only to return minutes later and attack Kargal again.

The animal bit the 40-year-old farmer on his stomach, hand and left leg, tearing through his flesh. Kargal fell unconscious – his stomach and thigh were bleeding profusely. The leopard next attacked Kargal’s 15-year-old son, Santosh. But now, the family’s four dogs pounced on the leopard from all sides, and bit it to death.

By this time, Kargal and Santosh were unconscious – they woke up four hours later in a hospital, where forest guards had rushed them.

Three months on, Kargal is able to walk, but with a limp and some pain. “I can never forget that leopard and that night,” he said.

This story is part of Common Ground, our in-depth and investigative reporting project. Sign up here to get the stories in your inbox soon after they are published.

Kargal’s village, Wadgaon Borwadi, is located in Junnar taluka in Pune district.

Junnar, which is spread over 5,826 sq km, is nestled at the northern end of the Western ghats. The surrounding region is dotted with lakes, waterfalls and picturesque valleys. On one of the mountain peaks in Junnar sits the Shivneri fort, where Shivaji, the founder of Maratha empire, was born. The site attracts a steady stream of tourists through the year, mostly from Mumbai and Pune.

This striking locale is also the site of a complex human-animal conflict – between leopards and people like Kargal, who live in small villages.

One reason this conflict has arisen is the high density of leopards in the area.

Although the last count of leopards in Junnar dates back to 1920, when a survey found between 420 and 500 leopards in the area, officials estimate their numbers have dramatically risen. “Now we estimate their population to be 800 to 1,000. Maybe more,” said Smita Rajhans, assistant conservator of Junnar forest division.

Ankit Kumar, a senior researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India, who is working under the senior scientist Bilal Habib on leopard behaviour and population estimation in Junnar, said that they found that the region had a density of around six or seven leopards in every 100 sq km. Kumar explained that in other parts of Maharashtra, such densities are typically found in protected areas, like the Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve, which has around seven leopards for every 100 sq km, and the Sahayadri tiger reserve which has six for every 100 sq km.

Considering that Junnar is not a protected area and has heavy human habitation, Kumar said, he considered its leopard population density “towards the higher number”.

The high density in the region is closely linked to changes in patterns of land use over decades in the districts of Pune, Solapur and Nashik. Since the 1970s, at least five dams have come up in the region, in response to which farmers began to grow the water-intensive cash crop of sugarcane. The dense fields offered leopards the ideal habitat to breed, while the presence of humans ensured good prey availability in the form of dogs and goats.

Experts noted that conflict was almost inevitable in such a situation. “A low-density large carnivore population and low-density human population can co-exist. But when both become high, then that’s a recipe for conflict,” said YV Jhala, former dean of the Wildlife Institute of India, and a biologist who has worked extensively with tigers, leopards and cheetahs.

Indeed, these factors have resulted in a high number of “chance encounters” with humans, Rajhans noted, often leading to fatal attacks.

Between 2002 and this year, 56 people, most of them children, have been mauled to death and another 156 have been injured, according to data that the Junnar forest department shared with Scroll. Last year, while Kargal survived, five others lost their lives in leopard attacks in Junnar. At least 26,979 cattle have been killed.

Since 2002, the forest department has paid residents of Junnar a total of Rs 26.62 lakh for deaths and permanent disabilities that have resulted from leopard attacks. “But the compensation means nothing when you lose a family member,” said Maya Sonawane, a farm labourer.

The problem has even had some political ripples: to draw attention to locals’ frustrations and fears over the problem, in December, Junnar member of the legislative assembly Sharad Sonawane attended a session of the assembly in a leopard costume and mask.

Even as the problem persists, Junnar’s residents do whatever they can to avoid encountering leopards, which they refer to by the Marathi word “bibtiya”. When Scroll visited three villages in late December, locals advised us not to move around alone. Cages to trap the big cats were a common sight and we found fresh pug marks at multiple locations in two of the villages. Locals shout loudly while walking to scare any possible leopards in nearby fields, and shut themselves indoors by 8 pm.

In all these villages, locals guarded us and made whistling noises as we walked around sugarcane fields, meeting families. We were prepared to flee whenever a tiny rustle in farms was heard. “We live in fear all the time,” Kargal said. “Imagine you have to keep looking behind your back even when you sit on your porch.”

Sixty-two-year-old Laxman Mandlik remembers Junnar’s barren, undulating landscape before sugarcane was introduced in the region. At the time, the major crops grown in the region were wheat and maize, both sown on limited cultivable land. Leopards were present then too, he recounted, but conflicts were rare because “their numbers were less”, he said.

In 1972, the government built five dams on the Kukadi river, to provide water in Pune, Ahmednagar and Solapur. Along with these dams, located in and around Junnar, the government also created an extensive canal system that made water easily available for thirsty crops, such as sugarcane.

“A sugar factory came in 1982 which increased demand for sugarcane and made it lucrative for farmers to grow the crop,” said Mandlik, a retired schoolteacher and a farmer. Between 2000 and 2010, the area in Junnar under sugarcane cultivation doubled from 8,000 hectares to 16,000 hectares.

The crop is typically harvested once between every 12 months and 18 months. In this period, it can grow into a dense foliage more than 15 feet tall, which offers shelter to leopards to give birth to and raise cubs. Furthermore, the animals are usually left undisturbed because farmers in this region rely on drip irrigation, and so rarely need to venture into the farms to water the crop.

“This gave leopards privacy,” said Feroz Pathan, a “rescue member” with the Junnar forest department, whose job is to trap, relocate and rescue leopards, as well as raise awareness among residents on ways to protect themselves. “Unlike forests where predators could kill their cubs, in sugarcane farms they had no enemies. Cubs began to survive better on farms.”

Kumar explained that the cats also diversified their diets – while in forests, they typically eat animals such as deer and wild boar, his team’s photographic evidence showed leopards feeding on rats in farms, as well as dogs and livestock like goats and sheep. “We could not have predicted it, but we seemed to have created a perfect habitat for the leopard,” he said.

Indeed, the team’s camera traps showed that Junnar’s leopards had made the fields their home. “There was always a notion that leopards come here from some place and attack and then leave,” he said. “But, our study showed that this was not the case.” Their research, which is yet to be published, revealed that 70% of the leopards the team documented persisted in the area for at least three years. Based on this, the team informed locals that the animals were living “in their very own backyards”, Kumar said.

As the animal’s population grew, so did conflicts with it. A 2023 study that looked at data from 2001 to 2019 found that the number of attacks on livestock had increased sharply since 2015, ranging from 400 to 900 a year – in contrast, the region had seen between 200 and 400 such attacks a year between 2001 and 2014.

The threat to human lives also increased. Sakubai Kakade, a 65-year-old farmer in Kalwadi village, experienced the tragic consequences last year, when her eight-year-old grandson Rudra was killed by a leopard in their sugarcane field. After that she stopped going to the farm alone. “To cut the sugarcane, we ask sugar factory owners to send workers. Nobody wants to risk their lives anymore,” she said.

Locals in Junnar have also started to rely on migrant workers to cut their harvest. Vaishali Wagh is one such migrant worker, who travels from Jalgaon to Junnar every year for four months to harvest sugarcane. She, too, lives with the fear of leopards. “I keep looking back to make sure she is there,” said Wagh about her eight-month-old baby who was playing in the dry grass as Wagh cut the tall-stemmed cane metres away. “There is nothing else I can do. We have heard of leopards and we are scared. But I have to earn money to pay off a loan of Rs 1 lakh.”

In Kalwadi, farmers have been advised to avoid sugarcane cultivation close to borders of the village, to minimise the risk that leopards will stray in. The sides of the village’s roads are kept clean of shrubs or bushes to ensure that leopards do not have easy hiding places. Further, to ensure their safety, children in the village are not allowed to leave their homes alone at any time. “If they do, there is always an elder,” said Tushar Waman, the sarpanch of the village.

The forest department has approved Rs 13 crore for measures to tackle the leopard problem in Junnar for 2025-’26.

As part of this work, it has identified 650 isolated houses, and aims to provide residents with 75% of the cost of erecting solar fences around them, which deliver mild electric shocks to animals that might intrude. The department has also set up around 400 cages across Junnar to trap leopards, though, Kalwadi’s sarpanch Waman noted, this number is proving insufficient as the number of distress calls climbs every day.

In addition, the department has designed and distributed spiked collars to 3,300 farmers – worn around the neck, the area leopards often bite first, these devices can protect farmers who are attacked.

Among the most prominent long-term strategies that the government has resorted to in Junnar is translocating animals. Since the early 2000s, the forest department has sought to mitigate the problem by moving animals from human-habited areas into forested regions of Junnar, or other forested areas in the state.

But experts note that this approach is ultimately unlikely to be successful. “Such translocations only solve the problem for a while in the location from where they are translocated,” Jhala said. “But it translocates the problem elsewhere.”

This was borne out by a 2010 paper by the ecologist Vidya Athreya, which examined a programme to translocate leopards in Maharashtra that began in 2001. As part of the programme, initially 29 leopards were captured from human habitats and released in the slopes of the Western Ghats, primarily in Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary, and Malshej Ghat, parts of both of which are within 40 km of Junnar. The study found that translocation led to an increase in the frequency of leopard attacks on humans in the Junnar forest division by a staggering 325%.

“The release sites already contained resident leopards, thus, leopard movements out of the release sites were inevitable,” the authors wrote, since “the two small areas could not support the influx of large numbers of leopards.”

Kumar’s more recent research also indicates that translocation is a flawed strategy. His team radio-collared 13 leopards that had been moved from various villages in Junnar to forested areas between 15 and 70 km away. The researchers found that the animals would almost always come back to the original sites within 30 days to two months. Further, Kumar explained that as the animals explored routes to return to their original homes, they would look for prey in an unfamiliar area, “which will lead to more interactions with humans”.

Jhala noted that translocations “could also mess with the social dynamics of where the animals are taken from”. For instance, he said, if a dominant leopard, which had perhaps been coexisting with humans, was shifted, other younger leopards less familiar with human presence could take over the territory. This “could exacerbate the problem”, Jhala said.

Forest department staffers said that the failure of these strategies can leave locals deeply angry, particularly after a village sees a fatal attack. “We are scared to even enter villages at such times,” Pathan said. “Recently, locals set a forest van and outpost on fire.”

In response, the forest department has for the moment halted translocations. Instead, it is housing captured leopards permanently in a centre in Manikdoh, initially meant for lost or injured animals. Another centre is being constructed in Junnar to accommodate the growing numbers of captive leopards.

But this approach is inherently limited. The Manikdoh centre has 50 enclosures, each of which is 25 square feet wide and can house one leopard. But currently, the centre houses 130 leopards, many in tiny trap cages where they can hardly move. “We are expanding our centre to build more enclosures and we will soon send 50 leopards to Vantara,” a senior official from the rescue centre told Scroll, referring to the Reliance Foundation’s animal centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

The forest department is also attempting to use new technology to tackle the problem.

On a crisp December afternoon, forest helper Rushi Gaikwad inspected a cage trap that he had set up the previous day for a leopard found lurking in the village. He showed us an application on his mobile phone, developed by the forest department. The app is linked to 55 AI-powered cameras in Junnar, set up in villages where leopards are spotted frequently. The cameras are programmed to recognise leopards and capture images of the animals, as well as set off alarms on phones that have the app installed. “We receive a notification from it on our phone when it captures an image of a leopard. We immediately rush to the spot,” Gaikwad said.

Additionally, the forest department also relies on a more general warning system called the “animal intrusion detection and repellent system”, or “anider”, set up near several villages in Junnar. The system detects the intrusion of an animal into a human settlement and makes a loud sound to drive away the animal. “We have 75 anider machines that detect wildlife movement and set off an alarm,” Rajhans said.

Further, she explained, the department has installed 16 simpler alarm systems that make loud noises at regular intervals, such as of lions roaring, elephants trumpeting and firecrackers exploding. “This scares a leopard away,” Rajhans said.

But the sheer population of leopards in Junnar means that such measures cannot go very far towards tackling the problem. Every village that has a sugarcane field – and most do – report leopard sightings regularly. “If we spot a leopard today, the forest team comes tomorrow,” Waman said. “They are short on staff and cages to trap leopards.”

Other new proposals that the forest department is considering to manage the conflict have also been met with criticism. One of these entails moving leopards from Schedule I of the Wildlife Protect Act, 1972, to Schedule II, which would in effect reduce the level of protection they enjoy. This would make it easier to catch “maneater” leopards, the government has claimed.

However, experts claim this will be a disastrous step.

Jhala explained that under the act, the chief wildlife warden has the power to make decisions to remove an animal if they deem it harmful to humans. Changing the protection status would “make it easier for the chief wildlife warden since the onus of decision making would not come to him”, said Jhala. But, he argued, it would spell disaster for the animal. “The leopards are still in the trade, their skin is valuable,” Jhala said.

Another strategy being implemented entails giving immuno-contraceptives to wild female leopards to prevent reproduction and thus control the animal’s population. In November, the union environment ministry granted the state forest department permission to proceed with a pilot test involving five female leopards.

Experts caution that this method might be inefficient and expensive, since each vaccine shot costs between $100 and $150, and interrupts the animal’s reproduction cycle for only around two years, after which it needs to be injected again.

The sterilisation project was initiated in 2015 when Jhala was working at the Wildlife Institute of India. “We had set up experimental cages at the institute but soon after the ministry refused to release any money for this project,” he said.

This hampered progress on studying the approach closely, he noted. “Science cannot operate at a finger snap,” he said. “You have to have your science done before the problem comes up. If you do it when it comes up, it is too late.”

Officials involved with the process are also worried about the possible hormonal changes that the shot may induce in the leopards. “We are taking help from African authorities who have undertaken contraception for animals there,” Rajhans said. “They reported a change in animal behaviour. We want to make sure contraception does not make a leopard more aggressive. That is why we are starting with just five leopards and we will observe them for three years.”

Jhala argued that other long-term strategies would be more effective, such as “changing of cropping pattern which provides cover, or reducing vulnerability of livestock to predators, and total elimination of free-ranging feral livestock and dogs, which provide the food base to sustain leopard population”. He added, “Everything else is all eyewash. It’s a matter of stalling the problem. But some hardcore decisions need to be taken.”

Meanwhile locals resort to extreme measures to protect their families. Maya Sonawane, a farm labourer, locks her three children indoors for the entire day when she is on farms working. “The leopard comes and sits under that tree,” she said, pointing to a tree in the courtyard. “My children watch it from the window.”

The toilet is located outside the house. “At night, we all wait outside if one person has to use it,” she said.

Some find humour in their grim circumstances. Laughing, Gaikwad said that the one silver lining was that thefts in Junnar had reduced, because “Even thieves are scared to go out alone at night.”

The Congress in Rajasthan has accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of orchestrating mass deletion of voters during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, reported The Indian Express on Sunday.

This came after a video, showing a booth-level officer alleging that he was being pressured to delete hundreds of voters from the rolls of his Hawa Mahal Assembly constituency in Jaipur, was widely circulated on social media.

In the video, Kirti Kumar, a government teacher deployed as a BLO amid the SIR, can purportedly be heard saying on a call: “I will visit the collector’s office and will kill myself there.”

Kumar told The Indian Express that he was speaking with the councillor of the area, “who was pressuring me to delete the names”.

He has alleged that he was being “threatened and pushed beyond capacity” to look into the BJP’s objections seeking the deletion of 470 voters, mostly Muslims, from the draft electoral rolls, reported Newslaundry on Thursday.

Hawa Mahal is a Muslim-majority constituency that BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya won in the 2023 Assembly elections.

“How am I supposed to do that without following the procedure?” Kumar was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “After my video went viral, senior officials intervened and told me to follow the rulebook.”

Suresh Saini, the councillor of the ward, denied Kumar’s allegations, claiming that there was “large-scale fraud” in the voter list of the area, according to the newspaper.

“Fake addresses are being used to register fake voters,” he was quoted as saying. “I raised objections and applied for the removal of such names with supporting evidence. This amounts to voter fraud by the Congress.”

On the other hand, the Congress claimed that Kumar’s allegations reflect a broader pattern of voter deletions in Rajasthan, reported The Indian Express.

The party also alleged that on January 15, the final day of filing claims and objections, “pressure was exerted through EROs [electoral roll officers] on BLOs to strike off the names of voters aligned with Congress ideology”.

“Pre-filled Form-7 data was even thrust upon BLOs, which is a direct assault on the impartial election process,” claimed Rajasthan’s former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on social media.

He added: “In many places, when administrative officials and BLOs refused to partake in this murder of democracy, they were threatened with transfers by people from the ruling party.”

Gehlot claimed that such attempts were also made in Sardarpura, which is his constituency, and accused the BJP of insulting the “public and democracy”.

During a press conference, Acharya, the Hawa Mahal MLA, dismissed the Congress’ allegations as “baseless” and said the party leaders “have lost their mental balance”, reported The Indian Express.

“The Election Commission is an independent constitutional body meant to keep the democratic process alive,” he added. “The commission is working efficiently. The Congress won a seat in Rajasthan during the recent bypolls, why didn’t they object then? Congress needs to fight on real issues.”

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including Rajasthan. The exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state.

In Rajasthan, the draft voter rolls published on December 16 showed that the names of 41.85 lakh voters were deleted. The State Election Commission stated that of the total, 8.75 lakh had died, 29.6 lakh had shifted from their registered addresses and 3.44 lakh were enrolled at multiple places.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners had moved the Supreme Court against it.

A delegation of the Communist Party of China this week met office-bearers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in Delhi. This was the first interaction between the two entities since the Galwan clashes in 2020.

The BJP said that they discussed how to enhance communication with China’s ruling party.

Monday’s meeting came at a time when the Chinese government has been reiterating its territorial claims on the Shaksgam Valley. New Delhi says that the region is Indian territory and historically a part of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan ceded it to China in 1963 in an agreement not recognised by India.

While New Delhi has repeatedly objected to infrastructure projects undertaken by Beijing there, the Chinese foreign ministry on Monday said that the programmes were “beyond reproach”.

While the BJP-RSS and the Chinese Communist Party have maintained contacts since at least the late 2000s, the contrasting rhetoric from New Delhi and Beijing perhaps illustrates the knotty China problem the BJP is facing.

A tangled relationship

There was a time not too long ago when the BJP repeatedly accused Congress of signing a “secret” Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese Communist Party in 2008. It also alleged that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had met with Chinese officials during the 2017 Doklam standoff between India and China.

The Congress rejected the allegations and the events this week gave it the political ammunition to clap back at the BJP. It reminded the Hindutva party that China had supported Pakistan during Operation Sindoor in May.

The Indian military has publicly described China as one of its adversaries during the four-day conflict, saying that Pakistan was receiving real-time intelligence from the Chinese military about important Indian deployments.

The Congress also reminded the BJP that Indian soldiers had been killed in Galwan and that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was “sitting there after encroaching in Ladakh”.

“[China] is settling villages in Arunachal Pradesh,” Congress leader Supriya Shrinate added. “And here, hugs are being exchanged.”

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Both countries had deployed thousands of soldiers and heavy artillery in the region, creating a prolonged stand-off.

In October 2024, a patrolling arrangement, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh, was announced. But it is unclear whether the status quo ante, or the situation before the clashes, has been restored.

Broader concerns remain about Beijing’s growing sway in South Asia, a region India considers its sphere of influence.

A rapprochement

There is a crucial reason why India’s BJP-led government is turning a blind eye to these impediments.

With United States President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy, so-called reciprocal tariffs, punitive levies and repeated claims of having mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan having all but sunk the burgeoning India-US partnership, New Delhi has had to hasten to recalibrate its relationship with Beijing.

However, as we noted in an earlier edition of Slow Lane, Trump’s actions are viewed as an accelerant of and not the catalyst for the India-China rapprochement.

Over the past half year, there have been several high-level bilateral engagements between India and China. This has proceeded along with measures such as resuming direct flights between the two countries, restarting the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and reopening visa services.

The Chinese foreign minister said in December that New Delhi and Beijing had picked up “good momentum”, citing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tianjin in August for a multilateral summit.

India seems eager to take a bigger step in economic cooperation. Reuters reported on January 9 that in view of “reduced border tensions”, the Union government is planning to scrap restrictions introduced after the Galwan crisis that required Chinese firms seeking Indian government contracts to register with a committee, and secure political and security clearances.

The push by both India and China to rebalance their relationship despite the challenges has been so striking that even the US has taken note of this changed mood.

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

Maharashtra politics. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies won most of the 29 municipal corporation elections in Maharashtra on Friday, a day after polling took place.

In Mumbai, the country’s richest civic body, the BJP and Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction 118 seats of the 227 in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

The victory margin was slimmer than predicted by exit polls. The Opposition alliance mainly comprising the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena group and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena won 72.

The BJP also won in Nagpur, Nashik and Navi Mumbai, and defeated the alliance of the two Nationalist Congress Party factions in their Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad strongholds. The Shinde Sena won in Thane and Kalyan-Dombivali.

The state’s six major political parties had contested the polls in varying combinations of tie-ups in different cities. In several cities, the civic polls took place after a four-year delay.

Bloodshed in Iran. About 2,000 persons, including security personnel, have been killed during the anti-government protests in Iran, an official told Reuters on Wednesday.

India issued a fresh travel advisory urging its citizens to avoid travelling to Iran. The country’s embassy in Tehran also asked Indian citizens in Iran to leave at the earliest. There are about 10,000 Indians in Iran, including a large number of students.

The protests, which began on December 28, initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded in scope as protesters in more than 100 towns demanded an end to clerical rule. On January 8, the government snapped internet access and telephone lines, largely cutting off the country from the outside world. The authorities in Iran have accused the United States and Israel of inciting the unrest.

What led to Zubeen Garg’s death? The Assamese singer was “severely intoxicated” and not wearing a life jacket when he drowned during a yacht trip in September, the Singapore Police told a coroner’s court. Assistant Superintendent of Police David Lim said Garg had refused to wear a life vest despite repeated reminders and swam away from the yacht before becoming motionless and floating face down.

Garg died in September during a yacht trip in Singapore, a day before he was scheduled to perform at the North East India Festival there.

He was pulled back on board and given cardiopulmonary resuscitation before being taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy found 333 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood in his system. The police said there was no evidence of suicide, duress or coercion.

Also on Scroll last week

• Assam’s nowhere people: 24 hours to leave India, tossed back and forth across Bangladesh border
• Are blanket bans on VPN use in India legal?
• Single mother, BJP MLA, Marwari trader: The Bengal voters on EC’s SIR radar
• Why Haryana wants cameras in hospitals before settling insurance claims
• How sugarcane farming fuelled a rise in leopard attacks in Maharashtra
• Why hundreds of H-1B visa holders are stuck in India after the winter break
• Across South Asia, leaders are promoting hate to distract citizens from economic insecurity
• Why Indian laws fail to protect women online
• Shakti Samanta centenary: ‘There wasn’t a moment when he wasn’t thinking of films’
• ‘Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos’ review: In scattershot comedy, anything goes and little lands

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The Commission for Air Quality Management on Saturday imposed Stage 4 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan to control pollution in Delhi and the National Capital Region, as the air quality slipped to the “severe” category.

A day earlier, the commission had invoked Stage 3 measures.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region. The commission is a statutory body formed in 2020 to address pollution in the NCR and adjoining areas.

It stated on Saturday that the Air Quality Index of Delhi was 400 at 4 pm and deteriorated to 428 by 8 pm due to “calm winds, stable atmosphere and unfavourable meteorological conditions resulting into trapping of the pollutants”.

The India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras have forecast further deterioration of air quality, the commission added.

“Accordingly, in an effort to prevent further deterioration of the air quality, the sub-committee on GRAP hereby decide to proactively invoke all actions under Stage 4,” it stated.

An AQI in the “severe” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

Stage 4 restrictions under GRAP include a ban on trucks entering the region and halting construction activities for public and private projects. All schools, except for classes 10 and 12, also shift to hybrid mode.

Stage 3 measures, which were already in place, include a ban on non-essential construction work and the closure of stone crushers and mining activities.

Additionally, the use of BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel cars is restricted in Delhi and the NCR.

BS norms, or Bharat Stage Emission Standards, are regulations set by the Indian government to control air pollutants from motor vehicles. The higher the BS norm, the stricter the standard and the lower the permissible emissions.

The commission’s decision on Saturday came as the overall AQI in Delhi rested at 400, according to the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

On Sunday, the AQI in the national capital was 439 at 7.05 am.

Watch: Delhi’s pollution crisis needs drastic action

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

Delhi and the neighbouring cities have recorded air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

On December 24, the commission revoked Stage 4 restrictions that had come into force on December 13 after the air quality slipped into the “severe plus” category.

Also read:

• India’s car-first cities should prioritise walking to help tackle smog

• How Delhi’s rich are escaping air pollution

I have never woken up with an armour-like back and many tiny legs as Gregor Samsa did in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. But I know for sure that I am a cockroach – the disgusting species that Charles Bukowski writes in a poem about killing with a subtle pleasure for living rent-free in his home. Maybe it is not just about the rent. It could be the insect’s audacity to flaunt its existence. The crime is its visibility.

How dare it leave the sewage, even momentarily, for a place where it does not belong?

Samsa, the salesman in Kafka’s novel, met the same fate at the hands of his helpless family when he left his room.

I am acutely aware of this. I know what would happen to me if I dared to breach boundaries. That is why I tend to isolate myself in places that conceal my visibility, hoping that this situation might end one day – the day I metamorphose into a human being.

Mind you, don’t pity me. Never. I remind you of what Babasaheb Ambedkar said in his essay Waiting for a Visa, “Though my condition was pitiable I did not like to be pitied.”

Perhaps, it isn’t pity. You are kind enough to empathise with me. But I don’t want you to be kind either. I remember complaining to my DPhil supervisor about how her kindness was overwhelming, and how I was not used to being treated in such a manner.

Humiliation? Yes. It is painful, yet familiar.

But kindness drags me into a world of unfamiliarity. It disorients me and confronts the comfort that I have known so far of being a cockroach.

“Can’t you see that I am a cockroach?” That is what I want to say to anyone who tries to be kind to me.

You are probably wondering where I am going with all this. Will this end with a hint of hope? Maybe, maybe not. But isn’t hope a tricky thing? It is easy to confuse it with delusion.

It is possible to think that I am being delusional when I say that I am a cockroach. You may say, “It is just in your mind” or that I am making it up, something similar to what Justice Brown of the US Supreme Court said in the Plessy vs Ferguson case in 1896 when he held that segregation of races does not treat the Blacks as inferior unless they want to construe it in such a manner.

But my mind doesn’t operate in a vacuum. What am I supposed to think when I constantly read that my fellow Dalits are being killed – not only for marrying non-Dalits but for actions such as sporting a moustache, for sitting cross-legged, for riding a horse, or dressing up. In short, for breaching society’s idea of how a Dalit should be?

How am I supposed to feel when my fellow Dalit students are forced to clean bathrooms in schools, humiliated as “quotawallas” or even driven to suicide in colleges?

I myself was expelled from my previous university without any inquiry for demanding scholarships. Not to mention the humiliation I have faced since my school days. In every nook and corner, I am reminded that I am a cockroach that must never come out of the sewer. I have internalised these reminders.

But that’s only half the story. Being a cockroach is familiar, but there is also the violence that I commit upon myself, as my therapist once put it. I do want to be a human being with dignity, for I am not made for the sewer. So far, I have outsourced the task of recognising me as human to others. When others appreciate or validate me for the things I do, I feel like a human – at least until the feeling fades away.

I continued chasing such validation, only to realise that it never made me feel completely human. It was a conditional recognition that I imposed upon myself. I got into Oxford University! Yes, you are a human now, but you must prove that you deserve to be here.

I completed my MPhil in law with distinction! Yes, you are a human now, but that’s not enough. Perhaps my examiners were kind and liked doing charity work. Nothing killed the cockroach to give birth to the human.

It is ironic that since my undergraduate days my research area has centred on human rights. Several moments of deep breathing, hours of therapy sessions, the constant support of my loved ones and reading philosophical texts gave me the courage to entertain the possibility that I could be wrong.

What if I am not a cockroach?

What if I deserve self-respect irrespective of what I do?

Yes, the time has come to rebel.

Albert Camus says that to rebel is to say no and yes at the same time: “no” to existing conditions, an awakening to the realisation that they cannot continue like this. And “yes” to certain parts of one’s self that must be preserved. I have started saying no to the thought that I am a cockroach and began to think for myself, as a rebel initially does.

I know this is not a linear process, and I may be forced to return to my sewer whenever I say yes. But I will still come out again and again. I don’t think I have any other option, for I, “a glorious thing made up of stardust”, do not belong to the sewer.

Do I like doing this? Am I happy? I am – or at least I imagine that I am, and perhaps, you could imagine it too.

Bhimraj M is a DPhil student in Law at the University of Oxford. He currently coordinates the Oxford South Asian Ambedkar Forum, an anti-caste society at Oxford.

January 17 marks the death anniversary of Dalit student Rohith Vemula, who died by suicide on this day in 2016.

Music composer AR Rahman in an interview to BBC Asian Network said that the Hindi film industry has changed over the past eight years, attributing it to a shift in power and possibly to “a communal thing”.

His remarks sparked a political row, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party rejecting his claims and Opposition leaders expressing concern.

In the interview on Thursday, the Oscar-winning composer said he often hears about projects falling through indirectly.

“People who are not creative have the power now to decide things, and this might have been a communal thing also, but not in my face,” Rahman said. “[It comes to me] as Chinese whispers that they booked you…but the music company went and funded the movie and got their five composers [hired].”

Asked whether he had faced prejudice when he began working in Hindi cinema in the 1990s, Rahman said: “Maybe I didn’t get to know all this stuff…maybe God concealed all this stuff.”

“But for me, I never felt any of those [in the 1990s],” he said. “But the past eight years, maybe, because the power shift has happened.”

Rahman also said that as an artist, he tries to avoid movies that are “made with bad intentions”.

He added that audiences are capable of judgement and are not influenced by “divisive” movies.

“I definitely think people are smarter than that,” Rahman said. “Do you think people are going to get influenced by movies? They have something called internal conscience which knows what the truth is and what manipulation is.”

The BJP on Friday rejected Rahman’s remarks, saying that the Hindi film industry continues to function on talent and merit, not religion.

Union minister Ramdas Athawale said that he disagreed with Rahman’s statement, IANS reported.

“The Hindi film industry has many artists from the Muslim community, including Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, who are loved by people in Maharashtra and across India,” he was quoted as saying.

Mumbai, Maharashtra: On Singer AR rahman statement, Union Minister Ramdas Athawale says, "I believe there is no truth to AR Rahman's allegations, as the film industry has many artists from the Muslim community, including Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Aamir Khan, who are loved… pic.twitter.com/aKGsohZ4YE

— IANS (@ians_india) January 16, 2026

BJP Minority Morcha president Syed Bhasha also dismissed Rahman’s claims, saying that opportunities in the film industry depend on a project’s success rather than the ruling party.

“Rahman reportedly said he has not received opportunities under the BJP government, but that is not true,” IANS quoted Bhasha as saying. “Since 1992, he has delivered major hits such as Slumdog Millionaire and Madras Cafe, and has earned awards.”

Bhasha also cited the example of Shah Rukh Khan, who won the National Film Award for Best Actor in 2025 for his film Jawan.

However, leaders from Opposition parties expressed concern over Rahman’s remarks.

Congress leader Husain Dalwai described the issue as unfortunate and concerning.

“Rahman is a great musician and an Oscar winner who is known all over the world,” Dalwai said. “If he is facing difficulties because he is a Muslim, then it is very sad and wrong. Sidelining someone of his stature is a loss not only for the film industry but for the country.”

Congress MP Tariq Anwar also urged the government to take note of the matter.

Mumbai, Maharashtra: On Singer AR rahman statement, Congress leader Husain Dalwai says, "This is very sad. A.R. Rahman is a great musician and has even won an Oscar. People around the world know him. If he is facing such difficulties because he is Muslim, then in my view, it is… pic.twitter.com/tut2843wk7

— IANS (@ians_india) January 16, 2026

The Indian Embassy in Tehran on Saturday urged Iranian authorities to grant consular access to 16 Indians who were part of a ship’s crew and were detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on December 8.

The detained persons were aboard the vessel MT Valiant Roar, which is owned by Glory International FZ LLC / Prime Tankers LLC, Dubai, also referred to as Global Tankers in India.

The crew members were detained while the vessel was in international waters off the Dibba port near Dubai, PTI quoted their family members as saying. They added that the vessel was carrying Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil, but Iranian authorities have accused the crew of smuggling diesel.

In a statement posted on X, the embassy said: “Around mid-December 2025, the mission was informed about the detention of the vessel MT Valiant Roar by Iranian authorities, with 16 Indian crew members on board.”

It added that the Consulate of India in the port city of Bandar Abbas had written to the Iranian government on December 14 seeking consular access.

Regarding detention of a Merchant Vessel (MT VALIANT ROAR) with Indian Crew members, by Iranian Authorities.@MEAIndia @IndianDiplomacy pic.twitter.com/9h1YV1rGd6

— India in Iran (@India_in_Iran) January 17, 2026

The embassy said that access had not been granted despite repeated requests since then. It added that the Indian Consulate in Dubai was also pressing the UAE-based ship-owning company for legal support for the crew, having first contacted the company on December 15.

“The Iranian authorities were also requested to allow the crew to communicate with their families in India,” the statement added.

It said that the consulate had been in touch with the Iran-based agents of the company to ensure the provision of food, water and fuel for the ship, and to arrange legal representation for the crew in Iranian courts.

The embassy added that the case would follow Iran’s legal process. “However, the mission and the consulate continue to press the Iranian authorities to grant early consular access to the crew and to ensure expeditious completion of the judicial proceedings,” the statement said.

The embassy’s statement came after family members of the 16 Indians approached the Delhi High Court, seeking directions to the Union government to provide consular access to the detained persons and ensure the timely completion of the investigation, as well as their repatriation to India, PTI reported.

On Thursday, the High Court issued notice to the Union government. The matter has been listed for hearing on January 21, PTI quoted the counsel for the petitioners Gurinder Pal Singh as saying.

The parents of one of the detained crew members, Ketan Mehta, have also appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and secure their son’s release.

Also read: Cases of seafarers being abandoned by employers are soaring – and Indians are among the worst hit