Rescue personnel in Maharashtra’s Pune district on Sunday recovered the body of the last person who was missing after the collapse of a waste processing unit, PTI reported. With this, the toll in the incident has risen to nine.

On July 8, a three-storey administrative building of a waste-to-energy plant in the Moshi area of the Pimpri-Chinchwad city collapsed when an adjacent mound of garbage fell on it. Twenty-three employees of Antony Lara Renewable Energy Limited, a company that had been given a contract by the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, were inside the building at the time, The Indian Express reported.

Five employees who were on the first floor had managed to escape immediately after the collapse. Nine trapped workers were rescued hours later in an operation by the National Disaster Response Force, the fire brigade and the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority.

The body of a man named Bhavesh Wani was pulled out of the debris on Thursday, The Indian Express reported. However, rescuers had not been able to locate any other bodies for the next two days.

The rescue personnel subsequently deployed Poclain machines, dumpers and excavators to create a pathway through the debris, according to the newspaper. On Saturday, they recovered the bodies of seven more persons – Akshay Sawant, Sunil Korke, Sunny Mane, Mahesh Kumbhar, Nagesh Gaikwad, Ranjeet Patil and Rahul Gaikwad.

In the early hours of Sunday, the body of the last missing person, Waman Kasbe, was recovered from the rubble, after which the search operation was called off.

Mahendra Ananthula, the group president of the Antony Waste Group, said that the collapse was an “act of God” which could not have been predicted, PTI reported.

“The kind of rainfall witnessed over the last four to five days could not have been predicted,” Ananthula was quoted as saying by the news agency. “Similar incidents have occurred in different parts of the country over the past week.”

Ananthula announced a compensation package of Rs 25 lakh for the families of each of those who died, and added that the company would bear the medical expenses of those injured.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

In India, urbanisation and land-use changes are driving forest loss across biodiversity hotspots, including the Western Ghats which support over 250 amphibian species. A new study based in Udupi, a Tier-2 city at the foothills of the Western Ghats, suggests that urbanisation may not necessarily lead to species loss, but may be reshaping frog communities.

The study, published in Urban Ecosystems, suggests that urbanisation is altering amphibian communities by filtering out species according to certain traits such as body size, reproduction and habitat use.

Species with specialised traits – such as arboreal (tree-dwelling) or fossorial (burrowing) frogs, direct-developing species (that hatch directly as frogs, bypassing the tadpole stage) or those with a larger body size – were associated with less-urbanised habitats farther from the city centre. In contrast, generalist species with more adaptable traits showed greater urban tolerance.

“The study’s most novel finding is that urbanisation acts as a trait filter rather than simply a diversity filter,” said Aravind NA, Senior Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and the study’s supervising author.

While traditional biodiversity assessments may conclude that urbanisation has either little or drastic impact based on species counts, trait-based analyses can reveal how landscape changes restructure amphibian communities, Aravind explained. “This finding is particularly important because it highlights hidden biodiversity changes that may precede measurable species losses,” he added.

Although around 40% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction globally, little is known about how amphibian communities respond to urban pressures, especially in the Global South.

Urbanisation favours generalists

The study was conducted on laterite plateaus – unique rock outcrop ecosystems – in Karnataka’s Udupi district. Although they support endemic and threatened biodiversity, these plateaus remain understudied and “many of the [Western Ghats] foothills are now considered as wasteland”, said Madhushri Mudke, the study’s lead author and currently postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Wildlife Studies. This classification leaves laterite plateaus prone to land-use changes, with several being lost to agriculture, urban expansion and mining.

“To see how species are distributed on the foothills, we decided to do a gradient approach,” said Mudke. The team studied frog communities at 23 sites radiating outwards from Udupi’s city centre towards the forest, including eight forest sites, 13 city sites and two at the city-forest edge. Over two monsoon seasons in 2018-19, they recorded 947 individuals across 19 frog species.

“Although urban, edge, and forest sites supported broadly similar levels of species richness, the species occupying these habitats differed substantially,” said Aravind. Species count and diversity peaked at the urban-forest edge, suggesting that moderately urbanised landscapes can retain significant biodiversity, though the authors advised caution when interpreting patterns given the small number of edge sites sampled.

Unlike metropolitan cities, Udupi has retained its diverse natural habitats, including sacred groves, which may explain why amphibian diversity remained stable across sites, they noted. Mudke added that the inclusion of sacred groves in the study shows “these spaces preserved through decades of cultural practices are also important and need to be recognized.”

At each site, researchers also recorded environmental variables like temperature, elevation and humidity, and anthropogenic pressures such as roads, artificial light, and noise. They then used statistical modelling approaches to study associations between environmental variables and species traits.

According to their analysis, specialist frogs were associated with higher elevations, cooler microclimates, and greater microhabitat availability farther from the urban centre. “These species often depend on specific microhabitats, stable moisture regimes, intact vegetation, or specialised reproductive environments that are frequently lost during urban development,” said Aravind.

Generalist species have broader ecological tolerance and greater flexibility, and can exploit a wide range of habitats, including artificial or modified environments, he added. “As a result, urbanisation tends to favour generalists while selectively excluding specialists, leading to functional homogenisation of amphibian communities,” Aravind said.

Microhabitats support frog communities

Researchers also found that microhabitats such as ephemeral pools, leaf litter and rocky crevices may buffer some of the impacts of urbanisation, highlighting the need to maintain diverse microhabitats to support frog communities in rapidly-urbanising environments.

Microhabitats provide refuge, control temperature and humidity, and provide breeding opportunities. “Even one or two degrees of change will affect amphibians” as they are highly sensitive to environmental changes and act as ecosystem indicators, Mudke said.

Frogs belonging to the Indirana genus, for example, produce tadpoles that depend on moist rocky patches for survival – a tiny microhabitat otherwise considered of no use. Removing these rocky patches could “remove a whole trait that is important for the survival of one species,” she explained.

Karthikeyan Vasudevan, herpetologist and scientist at CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology found the study “informative” as it shows that “intense human-use areas have paramount diversity.” He was not associated with the study.

But since the study was conducted in a single Tier-2 city over a relatively short period of time, its findings cannot be generalised to other cities, Aravind pointed out, adding that the differences observed in community composition while “statistically significant” were “relatively weak”.

According to Vasudevan, elevation may be a confounding factor as elevated areas are less urbanised and more forested due to lower accessibility. Detectability could also be a concern, as some species may be easier to observe than others, he added. Vasudevan also suggested studying deformity and scale mass index (a measure of an animal’s body weight relative to its specific size) to obtain a measure of their body condition, especially in urbanised areas.

Biodiversity-sensitive urban planning

“Most of this work feeds into regulating how we look at development,” said Mudke. “We have to look at cities as areas that can retain microhabitats because they are not just home to biodiversity, but they also act as spaces for ecosystem functioning,” she said.

The study’s findings highlight the significant biodiversity that Tier-2 cities like Udupi and lateritic plateaus hold which, Mudke added, needs to be recognised. They also provide guidance for biodiversity-sensitive urban planning in tropical cities. “All our [India’s] Tier-2 cities are growing rapidly and this sort of study gives insight into how things can be better planned,” said Vasudevan.

Aravind emphasised the need for long-term monitoring to determine whether the observed communities are stable or will undergo further change as urbanisation progresses. Further studies could look at the individual effects of urban stressors such as artificial light or noise pollution.

“It would also be valuable to examine whether urbanisation reduces genetic connectivity among amphibian populations and whether similar trait-filtering processes occur across other tropical cities,” Aravind said. “Such research would improve our understanding of how urban development shapes biodiversity over longer timescales and across broader geographic regions,” he added.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Three United Nations special rapporteurs have written to the Indian government expressing concern about the large-scale removal of names from electoral rolls through the special intensive revision exercise, saying that minority groups may be particularly affected.

The special rapporteurs, in a letter on May 1, also noted that worries have been expressed about artificial intelligence allegedly being used to flag alleged irregularities in voter data, which they said could lead to questions about “transparency, errors and potential bias”.

The letter noted that nearly 52 million names have been removed from the electoral rolls across 12 states and Union Territories through the special intensive revision exercise. “West Bengal has been particularly affected, where a total of 9.1 million names were reportedly deleted from the register,” it added.

The third phase of the special intensive revision exercise is underway in 16 states and three Union Territories.

The document has also raised concerns about the alleged deletion of voters’ names due to minor spelling discrepancies, “discriminatory rhetoric” by politicians against minorities, and inadequate time for tribunals to hear appeals.

“Senior government officials, including the Union Home Minister [Amit Shah], have reportedly publicly framed the deletion of voter names as targeting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, a rhetoric that conflates legitimate Indian Muslim citizens with foreign nationals,” the document said.

The communication said that such rhetoric amounts to potential “incitement to discrimination within the meaning of Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by India.

The letter highlighted the impact of the special intensive revision on the 2026 West Bengal elections, taking note of reports that 95% of the deleted voters in Nandigram constituency were Muslims, even though Muslims only make up 25% of the constituency’s electorate.

On May 27, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, saying that the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections”.

A similar communication was sent by the United Nations special rapporteurs in December 2018 during the updation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam. The officials had then also questioned the Election Commission’s role in the exclusion of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities from the contentious exercise.

The National Register of Citizens was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified over six years on.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

Data analysis: How SIR deletions shaped BJP’s landslide in Bengal

The Ministry of External Affairs on Sunday said that one Indian is missing and ten have been rescued after a commercial vessel was attacked off the coast of Oman amid the war in West Asia.

The vessel, GFS Galaxy, was attacked on Sunday morning, the ministry said.

The vessel had been disabled by fire and damage to its engine room, AFP quoted US Central Command as saying. The US has also accused Tehran of attacking the ship.

The crew abandoned the vessel and boarded a lifeboat, the news agency quoted United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations as saying.

The Indian foreign ministry said that continuing attacks on commercial shipping in the region are “deeply worrisome”. It called for the de-escalation of tensions and for the “conclusion of ongoing negotiations for a diplomatic solution so that peace and stability can return to the region”.

“The targeting of commercial shipping and civilian infrastructure in the region must end, and free and unimpeded navigation and commerce through the international waterways in the region, in keeping with international law, must be restored at the earliest.”

The attack followed Tehran's announcement that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and launching missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbours in response to the latest US strikes.

Ceasefire in limbo

On Thursday, the US military launched fresh attacks on Iran hours after Trump said that the ceasefire was “over”. Iran retaliated by striking sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

This came after tensions between the US and Iran escalated on Wednesday after the US launched strikes on Iran in response to Tehran’s alleged attacks a day earlier on three liquefied natural gas and crude oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

On June 15, the US and Iran arrived at an interim agreement to stop the fighting and reopen the strait for commercial vessels. They also held talks in Switzerland aimed at reaching a final peace deal within two months.

However, the two countries have again exchanged several rounds of fire, as well as threats of recriminations, over the past week.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Election Commission has added a new section to the online version of Form 6, asking applicants whether they or their parents were part of the last special intensive revision of electoral rolls, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

The new declaration appears only in the online Form 6 available on the ECINET portal. The downloadable statutory version of the form remains unchanged.

Form 6 is used by persons applying to be included in the electoral roll after turning 18, acquiring Indian citizenship or if their name has been deleted from the voter list.

This came as the third phase of the special intensive revision exercise is underway in 16 states and three Union Territories. More than 5.5 crore names have been deleted from electoral rolls in 10 states and three Union Territories since the exercise began last year, The Indian Express reported.

The form has not been amended since the Election Commission began the special intensive revision in June 2025, the newspaper reported. Section 28 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 says that only the Union government can amend the rules governing electoral forms, including Form 6.

Although the new declaration is not marked as mandatory, applicants cannot submit the online form without filling it.

The added section asks applicants to choose one of the three options: “my name exists in electoral roll of last SIR, my parents name (father, mother, grandfather, grandmother) exists in the electoral roll of last SIR, neither my name nor my parents name exists in the electoral roll of last SIR”.

Those selecting the first two options must provide details such as the Assembly constituency, booth number and serial number from the earlier electoral roll. It is unclear what applicants should do if they do not have these details.

Concerns about SIR

During the first two phases, concerns were raised by Opposition parties and activists that such a revision process could arbitrarily disenfranchise several voters.

In the first phase, the exercise took place in Bihar between July and September ahead of the Assembly elections in November. Forty-seven lakh voters in the state were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Twelve states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, were covered in the second phase.

In West Bengal, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed as of April 6.

Ahead of the state polls, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals. Of these, 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded. Appellate tribunals had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

Scroll’s analysis of the poll results found that in half the seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won in West Bengal, the total deletions that took place during the voter list revision exercise outnumbered the victory margin.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General has warned that Maharashtra’s finances could come under strain because of its spending on the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, the Hindustan Times reported on Sunday.

The scheme, launched in June 2024, provides a monthly transfer of Rs 1,500 to women aged 21 to 65 whose families earn less than Rs 2.5 lakh per year.

The Ladki Bahin scheme is said to have played an important role in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance winning 230 seats in the 288-member Assembly in November 2024.

The report, tabled in the state legislature on Friday, said that spending on the Ladki Bahin scheme has led to the women’s welfare budget to jump to Rs 33,554.3 crore in 2024-’25 from Rs 261.7 crore in 2023-’24. This amounts to an increase of approximately 12,700%.

“The spending in the social sector expanded significantly while capital expenditure accounted for only about 14% of total expenditure, indicating a shift towards revenue expenditure and cash-transfer schemes,” the newspaper quoted the report as saying.

The audit also flagged the state’s dependence on off-budget borrowing which are loans taken by state agencies through government-owned entities instead of directly by the government.

It said that Maharashtra recorded a revenue deficit of Rs 29,994 crore, a fiscal deficit of Rs 1.2 lakh crore and outstanding liabilities of Rs 8.6 lakh crore in 2024-’25.

“Maharashtra’s fiscal health is anchored by robust [Gross State Domestic Product] growth,” the newspaper quoted the report as noting. “However, the increasing revenue deficit will necessitate an increased reliance on market borrowing to finance capital expenditure. This generates potential risk to long term debt sustainability.”

The Ladki Bahin scheme has sparked controversy due to the strain it has placed on the state’s finances. Monthly scrutiny exercises had also flagged numerous instances of ineligible enrolments.

In October, Nationalist Congress Party leader and state minister Chhagan Bhujbal had claimed that all government departments were facing a fund crunch because of the Ladki Bahin scheme.

In February, state minister Ganesh Naik acknowledged that the scheme had put financial strain on government departments but said it would not be discontinued. The state government spends Rs 3,700 crore to disburse the benefits to 2.4 crore beneficiaries each month under the scheme.

A review of the scheme in July 2025 had found that more than 14,000 men in Maharashtra allegedly received a monthly payout under the scheme for 10 months.

The Women and Child Development Department said that 14,298 men had enrolled in the scheme by misrepresenting their identities, leading to a loss of Rs 21.4 crore to the state exchequer.

Payments to their accounts have since been stopped.

In June, a state-wide verification exercise found about 80 lakh women ineligible for the scheme. As a result, the number of beneficiaries fell from about 2.4 crore to nearly 1.7 crore after the April 30 deadline to complete the e-KYC process.

Opposition leaders alleged that the government was reducing the number of beneficiaries because of the state's financial constraints.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• The cash handout burden and its underlying politics

• ‘Election stunt’: Anger, confusion among Maharashtra women as Ladki Bahin payments falter

• As Ladki Bahin squeezes Maharashtra welfare schemes, will discontent surface in civic body polls?

The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday said that it had attached additional assets worth Rs 1,021 crore in its money laundering investigation into Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited.

With this, the total value of assets attached in cases involving the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group has reached Rs 20,367 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Rs 77.86 crore under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, the agency said.

The investigation is based on two first information reports filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in September 2022. The FIRs pertained to two separate loans given by Yes Bank to Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited.

It has been alleged that loans of about Rs 3,000 crore received by the companies from the bank between 2017 and 2019 were illegally diverted to shell companies and wholly owned subsidiaries of the conglomerate with an intention to siphon the money.

In July 2025, the Enforcement Directorate conducted raids at more than 35 premises and searched 50 companies and 25 persons as part of its investigation.

On Saturday, the agency alleged that Rs 15,548 crore in public funds raised by Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited was diverted through a network of shell companies and group firms controlled by the Reliance Anil Ambani Group.

The newly attached assets include equity shares of Reliance Power Limited held by Reliance Infrastructure Limited, and loan amounts receivable from Sasan Power Limited and Reliance Power.

The ED said it is investigating four cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and three under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. So far, it has searched more than 80 premises, filed four prosecution complaints under the money laundering law and one complaint under FEMA, and arrested eight “senior officers and close associates” of the group.

The investigation is based on two FIRs registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation in September 2022. They relate to loans given by Yes Bank to RHFL and RCFL.

According to the agency, loans worth about Rs 3,000 crore, disbursed by Yes Bank between 2017 and 2019, were diverted to shell companies and wholly owned subsidiaries of the group to siphon off the funds.

In July 2025, the Enforcement Directorate searched more than 35 locations linked to 50 companies and 25 individuals as part of the investigation.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

In the 18th century, the colonial kitchens of Madras became an unlikely meeting ground for two groups from different social worlds.

Imperialism brought Europeans to Madras, many of them civil and military officials of the East India Company, soldiers, traders, sailors, lower-level bureaucrats and planters.

In India, some of these Europeans were categorised as “beef-eating” untouchables, like those at the lower end of India’s caste order. This inadvertently fostered close contact between Europeans, the agents of imperialism, and lower-caste domestic workers, the victims of the caste system.

The “Madras curry” took shape in the exchange of culinary knowledge in this colonial paradox. Initially, Europeans tried imported tinned food. But as this proved impractical, they gradually adopted a hybrid food culture that combined European and local taste.

Colonial recipe notes provide a long list of ingredients, including various spices, coconut, curry leaves and mango. Other commonly recommended ingredients included turmeric, coriander, cumin, poppy seeds, dried ginger, black pepper and dried chillies. To these, memsahibs were instructed to add their desired meat. During the later period, they used curry powder or paste.

The transnational journey of Madras Curry reveals several intertwined histories, especially the complex interaction between colonialism and caste.

The European and the ‘outcastes’

Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, many Europeans in India were single men, bereft of a domestic life. But once the Suez Canal cut down the travel time between London and Madras from nearly six months to one, European men could bring their families along to the subcontinent. This familial migration gave rise to new demands and challenges, foremost among them the need for in-house domestic workers.

Upon settling in Madras, Europeans encountered an unusual form of exclusion from caste Hindus, who regarded them as “white pariahs”, below the position of untouchable outcastes, and refusing social or cultural interaction. This humiliating treatment was a recurring theme in colonial accounts. It included the refusal to exchange food or shake hands, breaking glasses touched by Europeans, and dismissing their meals as “Pariah food”.

Such attitudes also limited access to workers. A willingness to handle beef and wine was essential for employment in European households. Caste Hindus were reluctant to take up such work for fear of losing caste status, while Muslims were averse to handling alcohol for religious considerations.

Non-caste people, unbound by such restrictions, became domestic workers and cooks for European households.

The colonial kitchen

The colonial kitchen became a site of culinary experimentation and an exchange of knowledge, where Europeans developed a taste for Indian food.

Historians tend to view colonial homes in India in two ways: as places where white racial supremacy and Western imperial authority were asserted, and as sites where such unequal arrangements often frayed in everyday domestic life.

The wives of European men managed the household and kitchen. Some of their personal accounts of domestic servants often reveal not authority but a relationship of mutual dependence.

Colonel Kenney Herbert, who after his retirement from Madras, wrote many cookbooks and recipe columns under the pen-name “Wyvern”, noted that “unless amicable relations exist between the cook and mistress or master, the work will never be carried out satisfactorily”.

He added that “for all we know that Ramasamy’s domestic curry often gains, whilst we lose” and “the moment you betray irritation and hastiness in your manner towards Ramasamy, he ceases to follow you”. Ramasamy and Muthusamy were among the names English writers commonly used for their cooks.

Wyvern observed that “good curries, from our standpoint, are the result of a blend between European and Asiatic cookery, and whenever you get an especially nice one, depend upon it, the credit is more due to the mistress of the house than to the cook.”

Yet there were also occasions when cooks overruled the decisions of memsahibs in matters of food.

Colonial writings refer to dishes such as Bengal curry and Malay curry. But Madras curry, in terms of popularity and acceptance, outshone them all. The memsahibs received local knowledge of curry-making from the cooks and, in turn, seasoned, refined and made it palatable to the European tongue.

Alongside Madras curry, another Madras dish that won over European taste buds was mulligatawny, derived from the Tamil phrase milaguthannir, meaning “pepper water”.

When the prince tasted Madras curry

Anecdotes about Madras curry are plentiful, each testifying to the esteemed place it came to occupy in global culinary culture. Its popularity extended far beyond those who had lived in the Madras Presidency and their European relatives.

Its appeal also cut across social ranks – from ordinary soldiers craving Madras curry during long sea voyages to the Prince of Wales himself, who went out of his way to taste it during his visit to India.

In June 1876, newspapers in India and England reported the following: “When the Prince of Wales was in Madras, His Royal Highness expressed a desire to have a good tiffin of Madras curries. He was accordingly invited to the club, and expressed complete satisfaction with the manner in which tiffin at the club was served, and it appears that he asked the club committee to send a Madras cook to England, to enable His Royal Highness to have curries served in Madras fashion at the Royal table…”

Colonial authorities in Madras managed to send a cook to England at the cost of Rs 105. The news report concluded, “Happy Prince! still happier cook!”

‘Madras curry’ goes global

Madras curry was often promoted as a secret of the East. For many Westerners, especially those who returned to Europe or Australia after years in Madras, preparing curry paste with the proper texture remained a challenge. Yet they remained hopeful.

One writer in the Examiner newspaper observed, “I see no reason why the ingredients could not be obtained in England, with the exception of the fenugreek and green leaves”, adding that “Indian dishes are not beyond the power of the average cook.”

As Europeans developed a taste for Indian food, the trade in ready-made Madras curry powder and paste flourished in the 19th century. An advertisement in Allen’s Indian Mail in 1857 promoted “true Madras curry and Mulligatawney paste and Chutnies”, offering former residents of India a regular supply of these condiments.

Another brand, Vencatachellum Madras Curry Powder, was especially popular in Australia. At the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, Vencatachellum traders showcased nearly 30 products, including Madras curry powder.

Although curry appeared in English coffee houses as early as 1733, it became widespread only in the mid-19th century. The taste for “Oriental” food reflected a growing Western cosmopolitanism, initially confined to elite circles but later spreading more widely.

Historian Nupur Chaudhuri notes that memsahibs “were a major force in nurturing this newly acquired culinary taste.” But the culinary knowledge that sustained it came largely from lower-caste cooks, whose contribution has largely faded from view. Colonialism, however, helped global communities acquire a taste for what had once been dismissed as “pariah food”.

S Gunasekaran teaches history at Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Around this time last week, Honey Trehan’s Satluj was trending on Zee5 as the most-viewed film. Consigned to censorship purgatory since 2022, the political drama previously titled Punjab ’95 had quietly been released on the platform on the evening of Friday, July 3.

For 48 hours, a movie that the censor board had repeatedly refused to clear was available (if only to Zee5 subscribers) without any of the 127-odd cuts the authorities had demanded.

By Sunday evening, however, the listing for Satluj had been replaced with a blank slate. Satluj stayed on longer on Zee5’s international markets, but it was dropped from there too. A film inspired by a human rights activist who had been abducted while trying to pierce the veil of darkness around extra-judicial killings and disappearances had itself disappeared.

Jaswant Singh Khalra was among the activists in Punjab in the 1990s who exposed police death squads accused of killing innocent Punjabis under the garb of curbing Khalistani terrorism.

The activists alleged that this strategy had the support of the police top brass and Punjab’s political rulers, with targets being set and promotions given to the participating policemen.

Eventually, a bunch of junior police officers were indicted for abducting and killing the real-life Khalra.

Satluj stars Diljit Dosanjh as Jaswant Singh, whose investigation leads him to a conspiracy orchestrated by senior police officers.

One of the central themes in Satluj – murkiness – is also obvious in the manner in which the authorities have treated the film. Till date, neither the censor board nor the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has explained what makes Satluj so dangerous that it must be stamped out of existence.

Following the Zee5 controversy, there has been a rash of newspaper reports attributed to unidentified “sources”. On July 7, the Hindustan Times reported that the I&B ministry had formed a “high-level interdepartment committee” to closely study the film. A ministry official shared this development with the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

The film was taken down from the platform, the anonymous source said, using the provisions of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. This allows the Union government to block or remove content that has the potential to disturb public order or challenge national security and the country’s sovereignty.

“Sources” also told The Times of India that Zee5 was instructed to pull down Satluj because of “security concerns”. An unnamed official told ANI that Satluj was pulled off since it had not completed the process of certification. “Instead of complying with the certification process, the makers changed the film’s title and released it on an OTT [streaming] platform on Friday,” the official grumbled.

The irony is hard to miss. Satluj cannot be viewed by the public until the censor board clears it. The censor board is in no hurry to permit the movie to be released in any form. The list of cuts that it has demanded is so lengthy (127 at last count), it is as good as banning the movie.

Some of these cuts border on the ludicrous: replacing Jaswant Singh’s name, not identifying the police as belonging to Punjab, removing the phrases “extra-judicial killings” and “human rights” and even excising such words as “Delhi”, “desh” and “Canada”.

The efforts to blank out Satluj extend beyond India’s shores. In 2023, Satluj, which was still being called Punjab ’95, was invited by the Toronto International Film Festival. That screening was cancelled, allegedly due to pressure from the Indian government, even though Indian films do not need censor certificates to be shown abroad.

If the film’s producers thought they could bypass the censors by landing on Zee5, they were mistaken – even though the censor board’s remit does not extend to films that are released directly on streaming platforms. While such releases are spared the humiliating process of seeking the censor board’s approval, they are not entirely free of censorship.

Streaming platforms follow a self-policing model. This means that they avoid picking up potentially controversial or politically loaded titles. This censorship by the market – motivated by a keen desire to evade government scrutiny – ensures that movies like Satluj don’t turn up even on streaming.

The statements attributed to the unnamed “sources” provide grounds for speculation. At the very least, it appears that Satluj is being punished for defying the censor board and the all-powerful I&B ministry.

Some “sources” have complained that Satluj does not adequately explore the role played by Khalistani militant groups, instead focusing on a few bad eggs in the police force. This argument entirely misses the point of what Satluj is trying to do.

The film is about the impunity that flows from unchecked power. When security agencies get drunk on their authority and behave in unconstitutional ways, they are no different from terrorists, the film shows.

Some of the issues raised by Satluj are bound to irk the current muscular government. In the film, Jaswant Singh travels to Canada to raise awareness about the human rights abuses in Punjab. When warned that he too could disappear, and advised to seek political asylum, he refuses.

But the grim narrative also inspires some hope. The movie shows politicians in Punjab and in Delhi reacting to, rather than ignoring, the clamour for answers.

The Central Bureau of Investigation probes Jaswant Singh’s disappearance. When the case reaches the courts, the judges act fairly. The state’s institutions kick in late, but they eventually do – and they act independently, free from political pressure.

In an interview with Scroll in 2025, director Honey Trehan had said, “I have made a film about a person who fought for a cause knowing that there was a threat to his life and family. If I cannot stand by him or a film that is based on his life, I have no right to make this film.”

When Satluj premiered on Zee5 on July 3, both Trehan and Dosanjh said they were sceptical about whether the film would actually stay on the platform. In separate interviews, Trehan and Dosanjh said that they “would not be surprised” if Satluj disappeared from Zee5.

Although Zee5 issued a statement asking viewers not to pirate Satluj, the film is now being illegally forwarded from mobile phone to mobile phone. There are also reports of public screenings of Satluj being organised in villages across Punjab by Sikh religious groups.

The relentless onslaught on Satluj attempted to disappear the film, but Satluj is on the lam, beyond the long arm of the censor board and ministry “sources”.

Also read: ‘Satluj’ review: A harrowing, heart-rending tale of impunity and courage

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

Baruipur rape-murder case. One of the persons accused in the alleged rape and murder of a minor in West Bengal’s Baruipur was killed in an alleged gunfight with the police. Prabhas Mondal attempted to snatch a weapon from the police and open fire at them when the crime scene was being reconstructed, claimed the district superintendent of police.

The police fired at Mondal “in retaliation”, the officer said, adding that he was declared dead at the hospital. Mondal was among the three persons arrested in the case. The body of the girl was recovered from a sack in a pond in the Surjyapur area.

Crackdown on Indian gangs. Indian police officer Gurinderjit Singh has been charged by the United States authorities for allegedly extorting $400,000 from a family in Los Angeles by threatening to file false murder cases against their relatives in India.

The US will seek the extradition of the officer from India, First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said. Singh is reportedly a station house officer in Punjab, where an inquiry has been launched against him.

He is among 37 defendants charged for organised crimes in three indictments unsealed on Tuesday. The charges are part of an action against India-based transnational gangs.

Those charged include gangsters Lawrence Bishnoi and Goldy Brar for organised crimes and ordering the 2023 killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. Bishnoi is in a Gujarat jail awaiting trial in several cases. Brar is absconding.

The law enforcement agencies in the US, Canada and Europe arrested 24 persons allegedly linked to three India-based gangs, the authorities said. Seven defendants were already in custody and the agencies are looking for 10 fugitives.

Ayodhya embezzlement case. A Special Investigation Team set up by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe the alleged embezzlement of donations at Ayodhya’s Ram temple found 70 instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes. The report submitted by the SIT, which Scroll has reviewed, pins blame for the dilution of the security protocol in the counting room on trustee Anil Mishra, whose resignation from the post was accepted on Monday.

The team examined security camera footage of the counting room from April 27 to June 5. Although the trust’s internal audits recommended the preservation of 180 days of footage, it “did not take these reports seriously, which led to the present problem”, said the report.

The SIT said that bank records of the accused and witness statements suggest that similar thefts were happening even earlier, but without camera footage.

Also on Scroll last week

• Why are so many trees falling in Mumbai?
• Education crisis in India puts spotlight on Cabinet ministers’ children studying abroad
• Naga-Kuki strife began with a drunken brawl. But five months later, Manipur fault lines run deeper
• What Mumbai’s rulers should realise about devastating rains: The exceptional is the new normal
• How the blind built a place of their own in Ranchi
• Bengal’s history of communal politics is fertile ground for BJP’s polarising agenda
• Road crashes, fires, death by suicide: Crime bureau data reflects India’s urban crisis
• How Japanese military officers freely scouted colonial India without raising British suspicion
• How indie film ‘The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb’ explores ‘emotional time’
• ‘The Invite’ review: A couple runs out of ways to insult each other

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

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Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh, has said that she will return home around December and surrender despite the death sentence handed down against her while she has been living in exile in India.

In a telephone interview with Reuters published on Friday, the 78-year-old said she would return alongside senior Awami League leaders to challenge what she called the unlawful dissolution of her party.

“They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” she said. “Still, I have to go. If death comes, I want it to come on my own soil.” She also called the courts that sentenced them “farcical”.

Hasina has been saying for months now that she will return to Bangladesh.

In an interview with NDTV on June 28, she said she would be back this year. Five days earlier, in an opinion article for The Print, she wrote that she would return to restore democracy, the rule of law and the spirit of the Liberation War. In late May, Times of Bangladesh reported that party activists had already been mobilised ahead of her return.

The Reuters interview, however, was different in two important ways.

For the first time, Hasina gave a specific timeframe, saying she would return “around December”. She also spoke directly to an international news agency over the phone – that too for nearly an hour as the report suggests – instead of issuing a written statement or a recorded message.

That alone made the interview major news in Bangladesh. Many local media outlets reported it prominently despite a December 2024 court order banning the publication of Hasina’s speeches. The government later reminded newspapers, television channels and online platforms to comply with that order.

Nevertheless, the interview dominated the country’s political discussion throughout Friday – a public holiday. However, very few people appear convinced that Hasina will actually return this year.

Awami League will rise again.
- Sheikh Hasina

Read the full interview here:https://t.co/AICIDgT1CV#Bangladesh pic.twitter.com/PQluQ2gh7T

— Bangladesh Awami League (@albd1971) June 28, 2026

Among political observers, the more common view is that this is another attempt to reassure Awami League supporters rather than a concrete plan.

When Hasina fled Bangladesh in August 2024, I argued in a piece on The Diplomat that the Awami League had no obvious successor and was entering a period of political uncertainty. Nearly two years later, that situation has barely changed.

Even Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who was highly visible during the first few months after her fall, has largely disappeared from public view. That leaves Hasina herself as the party’s only real source of political hope. Her promise to return has therefore become one of the few messages capable of keeping grassroots activists motivated.

Ironically though, Hasina has done little for those activists as of now.

Awami League leader Mohibul Chowdhury told ANI on Friday that more than 140 former MPs, along with many former chairmen and mayors, remain in jail. Thousands of party workers have also been arrested under Operation Devil Hunt.

The Awami League’s own website claims that more than 300 leaders, activists and supporters were killed between August 2024 and late 2025 through mob attacks, extrajudicial killings and deaths in custody.

The figure was not independently verified. But even if it was true, the contrast is difficult to ignore. Ordinary party workers have carried most of the risk, while the senior leadership, including Hasina, has remained safely abroad.

Seen in that light, Hasina’s latest promise looks less like a declaration of imminent return and more like an attempt to rebuild confidence among increasingly frustrated supporters.

Whether a telephone interview alone can achieve that is another question, especially when Hasina has not appeared publicly for once since leaving Bangladesh.

VIDEO | Dhaka, Bangladesh: "Sheikh Hasina must return to Bangladesh. We are ready to welcome her warmly," says Nahida Luna, Bangladesh Chhatra League (student wing of Awami League) leader.

Bangladesh's deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina is preparing to voluntarily return to… pic.twitter.com/MJDVMzKqog

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 10, 2026

The timing is significant as well.

The government and political parties in Bangladesh across spectrums are currently observing July as the month of the mass uprising that removed Hasina from power two years ago.

Her announcement comes in the middle of those commemorations and appears designed to challenge a political narrative that has largely been dominated by her opponents.

There may also be an electoral calculation behind it.

Union Parishad elections are expected to begin in October, with the election schedule likely to be announced in August.

Although the Awami League – whose activities are currently banned – was barred from contesting February’s parliamentary election, that restriction does not apply to local government polls. It became clear last month that party members who meet the legal requirements can still contest those elections.

If so, Hasina’s announcement may be aimed as much at energising local activists ahead of those polls as at signalling an actual return in December. Strong performances in local elections could help the party rebuild before attempting a national comeback.

Whatever her real intentions, the interview also creates a diplomatic opportunity for Bangladesh.

Dhaka has repeatedly asked India to extradite Hasina since she took refuge there. Most recently on Thursday, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam said there was no lack of diplomatic efforts to bring Hasina back to the country to face trial.

New Delhi, however, remained largely silent until April, when foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the request was being examined under India’s legal process. The carefully worded response neither accepted nor rejected Bangladesh’s demand.

Legally, Bangladesh has grounds to seek her extradition under the bilateral extradition treaty signed in 2013 and amended in 2016. The politics, however, are far more complicated.

Even if India agreed in principle, human rights organisations could argue that Hasina would not receive a fair trial in Bangladesh. That could trigger legal challenges and increase pressure on India to seek assurances before handing her over.

Grounds for asylum

Hasina could also apply for asylum in India on the grounds of political persecution, making extradition even more difficult.

However, her latest remarks point in the opposite direction.

Someone preparing to seek asylum is unlikely to publicly declare a willingness to return home and face arrest – or even death.

That gives Bangladesh’s government a stronger diplomatic argument.

Dhaka can now tell New Delhi that Hasina herself says she wants to return and face the courts. If that remains her position, Bangladesh can reasonably expect a clearer answer from India on its extradition request.

South Asian politics has never been short of dramatic declarations. Hasina may still not return in December, and India may still refuse to extradite her.

But by publicly saying she is ready to come back and face whatever awaits her, Hasina has made it harder for New Delhi to keep avoiding a more definite answer about her future in India.

Jannatul Naym Pieal is a Dhaka-based writer, researcher and journalist. His email address is jn.pieal@gmail.com.

Fifteen Indian tourists were killed on Saturday after a speedboat they were travelling in capsized off Vietnam’s Phú Quốc island, VN Express quoted the Vietnamese authorities as saying.

The boat was carrying 36 persons – 32 Indian tourists, three crew members and an attendant.

Twenty-one persons were rescued, according to the news outlet. Those who died included two women and 13 men.

The cause of the accident was being investigated.

The speedboat was travelling from Hon May Rut Island to An Thoi Port when it capsized about 400 metres from Hon May Rut Ngoai Island at around 1 pm, VN Express quoted authorities as saying.

Search and rescue operations were carried out by the An Thoi Border Guard Station along with the Navy and Coast Guard.

“Only a few people were brought out conscious,” a person involved in the rescue operation said. He added that several passengers were trapped inside the speedboat, making the rescue difficult.

The Indian embassy in Vietnam said it was monitoring the situation and had set up emergency control rooms in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to assist affected families.

“Exact details of the incident are being ascertained as search and rescue operations by local authorities are ongoing,” the embassy stated.

In a tragic incident, a boat carrying several Indian tourists has capsized near Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam a few hours ago.

Exact details of the incident are being ascertained as search and rescue operations by local authorities are ongoing.

In order to provide information…

— India in Vietnam (@AmbHanoi) July 11, 2026

It also published a list of the 32 Indian tourists who were travelling on speedboat.

As per information received from official sources, the following 32 Indian tourists were onboard the boat which capsized near Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam a few hours ago.

We are ascertaining further details of casualties and would update soon.@cghcm pic.twitter.com/geddttdpWB

— India in Vietnam (@AmbHanoi) July 11, 2026

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences to the families of those who died and said that Indian officials were in contact with the Vietnamese authorities to provide assistance to the affected tourists.

Extremely saddened to learn about the tragic news of a boat accident involving Indian nationals near Phu Quoc, Vietnam.

My sincere condolences to the families who lost their loved ones. My prayers for the early recovery of the injured survivors.

Our Embassy and Consulate are…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 11, 2026

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that he was deeply saddened by the accident and urged the Indian government to ensure that “every possible effort is made in the ongoing rescue operations”.

Deeply saddened by the tragic boat capsizing near Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, carrying Indian tourists.

My heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones. My thoughts are also with those who are still missing, and with their families enduring an agonising…

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 11, 2026

Vietnam’s largest island, Phú Quốc, has become one of the country's most popular tourist destinations in recent years.

Edited by Sneha.

The Food Safety Standards Authority of India said on Saturday that it has issued nine notices to Swiggy Instamart following complaints that the platform had supplied expired, spoiled or contaminated food products.

Despite complaints having been raised to the company, it took no action on the reported food safety concerns, the regulator added.

It said that the platform has been directed to submit an explanation and compliance report, failing which legal action will be initiated.

The notices were issued after consumers raised complaints about an infant food formulation that was reportedly found in a “highly deteriorated and unsafe condition, showing signs of contamination and improper storage and handling”, said the FSSAI.

“Even after the return of the same product, it was allegedly re-supplied,” added the food regulator.

It further said that complaints had also alleged that the platform delivered contaminated eggs and milk, along with damaged packaged food items.

The food regulator also found that the platform marketed “Noice Eggs” under a brand name not covered by the FSSAI licence. The quick commerce company was asked not to market products unless it was covered by a valid licence.

The FSSAI license is a unique 14-digit registration number that is issued to all food businesses by the food safety regulator. It is meant to ensure that food products are safe, hygienic and meet national quality standards.

In a press release, the food regulator said that complaints had also been raised about “Healthify 100% Whey Protein 1kg” and “Noice Homestyle Madras Mixture with Peanuts”, which were allegedly supplied after they had expired. “Akshayakalpa Organic Eggs” were sold even after they had started emitting a foul odour, added the FSSAI.

“Some complaints alleged that no satisfactory response, grievance redressal or corrective action was taken despite the complaints being forwarded or escalated, while one complaint stated that only a refund was offered without addressing the reported food safety concerns,” the food regulator stated.

In view of this, it said it had asked the company to submit a detailed explanation, supported by documentary evidence, about addressing the alleged non-compliances and the circumstances leading to the incidents.

The FSSAI has also sought details of the quality assurance processes the company undertakes and details of root-cause analysis and corrective actions to prevent such incidents from occurring again.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• How India’s ambitious plan to curb unhealthy food failed

• India’s food regulator flagged over 160 misleading claims. Years later, 120 are still around

When the Covid-19 lockdowns stopped migrant workers in their tracks, with little money, work or means to go back home, governments of destination states struggled to figure out how many migrants they had, in order to provide free foodgrain, support and medical help.

India’s migrant workers are an amorphous group, scattered across several states, moving for a variety of push and pull factors. To understand the profile of the average migrant, researchers from Azim Premji University looked at different government databases, and found some interesting trends.

Informal workers with lower levels of education, especially from the eastern states, travel the farthest for work. Migration is largely distress-driven, but spatial variations show economic distress and traditional corridors can dictate where one travels to for work.

And finally, workers from states with lower per capita incomes – which also have higher fertility rates – move to richer states with low fertility rates, leading to what the authors call a rebalancing of India’s demographic dividend.

IndiaSpend spoke with Tamoghna Halder, co-author of the State of Working India report 2026. Halder has a PhD from the University of California, Davis and teaches economics at Azim Premji University.

Edited excerpts:

India’s census counts migrants both within and across states. Given that the census is now 15 years old, what other datasets can we look at to understand the state of migrant workers across the country?

Currently in India, there are no official surveys that can present an accurate picture of migration at either intra or inter state level. The last official survey data on migration was collected through the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2020-’21 and the Multiple Indicator Survey (2020-’21).

However, the data not only suffers from the lack of reliable insights on several variables, it also was carried out at a time of massive uncertainties posed by the pandemic, which inevitably caused patterns of migration that are far from the usual. Thus, we do not have any reliable data on migration at the moment.

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has proposed to conduct a Survey on Migration during July 2026-June 2027. This also coincides with the census data collection timeline. What can we expect to see from these two sources?

If the data collected is accurate, we should be able to right away benchmark the census and the survey, although one may expect a difference in the timeline of release for these two datasets, with the latter expected to be released sooner.

It would be worthwhile to validate/update our general understanding of how migration works: In India, it is largely intra-state than inter-state; does that continue to be true?

Migration for formal work opportunities will constitute a relatively lower share than informal work-related migration. While the Census would not distinguish between these two types of work arrangements, the survey would be helpful to shed light on the same.

Finally, it would be important to verify if the reasons for migration have shifted. As of 2011, the median migrant in India is not a man moving for work but a woman moving for marriage-related reasons. Whether that remains to be the case or work-related migration has taken over would be important to check.

Your report finds that young men are increasingly dropping out of education to earn – rising from 58% to 72% between 2017 and 2023. Do these workers show up in your eShram migration data, and if so, how do they compare to the more educated migrants you describe?

The data sources behind these two claims are distinct and hence we cannot ascertain for sure. However, this is one of the plausible reasons why we find that younger migrants are more educated than their older counterparts.

The other plausible explanation that we cannot rule out is that the younger generation of Indians are more educated than older ones, and relatedly, the job opportunities in home state have shrunk such that it cannot absorb the local educated youth to an extent that it could have a few decades back.

If you were to compare India’s migration trends to other countries, what are the similarities and differences you observe?

We do not look at international migration statistics in the report so I can only comment from my general understanding.

At a surface level there are similarities that one may observe. For example, Vietnam would experience a similar migration pattern of rural to urban, from agricultural to industrial jobs.

But what makes India distinct is perhaps the impact of networks, especially caste and village networks, in determining migration flows and patterns.

Thus, even though migration patterns geographically may appear similar, the underlying structures driving it are different, with a strong desire to either break away or to remain within the caste networks that operate locally.

The report says that “for women, informality is not merely a transitional phase but a structural condition shaped by persistent constraints on occupational mobility”. What are the implications of this? And what other gendered patterns are visible?

The gendered patterns are somewhat obvious – women within the unorganised sector are more likely to be either in agricultural labour or work as domestic workers, and beauty-related services especially for younger women – all likely linked with migration along with the husband or the male head of household.

There is as such no implication of this in either policy or academic terms right away, but something for us to think about. For example, can we create socio-cultural and economic conditions, to enable a woman worker from say West Bengal, to migrate to Karnataka to work as a gig worker for an app-based food delivery aggregator?

While this may or may not improve income levels necessarily, it would increase opportunities for women to participate in a wider set of unorganised sector jobs from which they are currently restricted for no reason whatsoever.

Can you take us through the methodology of your analysis?

We looked at data from the eShram portal, a government registry of over 300 million workers in the unorganised sector. Registration in e-Shram is voluntary, so we compared the state-wise shares of informal workers between eShram and the Periodic Labour Force Survey. For most states, the two sources rank states similarly.

The pool of eShram workers shows roughly a similar age distribution as PLFS, except at the two extremes – below 25 and 40 and above. However, the subset of migrant workers in eShram capture an age distribution that is disproportionately young (See table below).

Workers below 25 account for 11.6% of the PLFS workforce but 20.3% of eShram migrants. The 25-29 age group tells a similar story, with only 11.4% in PLFS, but 21% among eShram migrants. At the other end, workers aged 40 and above make up nearly half (48.1%) of the PLFS workforce, but only 24.4% of eShram migrants.

In other words, unorganised sector migration, as per eShram, is disproportionately a young person's experience: Nearly two in five migrants are below the age of 30, compared to one in five in the overall unorganised workforce.

The education profile of migrants differ in a similar direction. Migrants with higher secondary qualifications account for 15.6% of eShram migrants, compared to 9.6% in PLFS and 13% among all eShram registrants. Graduate and above workers make up 12.8% of migrants, compared to 8.7% in PLFS.

The informal migrant, in other words, is not the lower educated older worker but increasingly, they are young and have relatively higher levels of education, reflecting a direct consequence of two decades of expanding educational enrolment across India.

Among migrants aged 29 or below, the share of those with higher secondary or graduate qualifications is visibly larger than among those aged 40 and above, where illiteracy and below-primary education dominate. Younger migrants therefore are systematically more educated than older ones. (See chart below)

How does education affect migration decisions?

Data from India’s eShram portal suggests that at least among unorganised sector migrants, it is the less educated who travel the farthest. The more educated tend to stay closer to home.

The maps below are built around a metric that captures how far migrants travel, conditional on their level of education.

For every destination district in India, the report identifies which zone the majority of its unorganised sector migrants come from – but only if that majority is clear, meaning more than 50% of migrants in the district originate from a single zone. If no single zone accounts for more than half, the district is classified as mixed and left uncoloured.

What the maps show, then, is not the full flow of migration across India, but rather the districts where one origin zone is dominant.

Each colour represents a zone: black for the East (Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal), red for the North, blue for the South, and so on. The two maps present this picture separately for two extremes of the educational distribution – one for the least educated migrants (illiterate and below primary), and one for those with graduate education and above.

The contrast between the two maps presents the distance paradox.

Eastern zone migrants with lower education levels are travelling long distances, crossing zonal boundaries, and showing up as the dominant source of workers in districts far removed from their origin states.

Northern migrants stay more contained within the northern belt; southern migrants largely dominate southern destinations. But the East stands out for the sheer geographic reach of its low-educated migrant streams.

The right-hand map, covering graduate and above migrants, tells an almost opposite story. The colours become more spatially contained. Eastern-origin dominance reduces sharply, to a much smaller set of districts.

In fact, when compared to the left-hand map, the right hand map shows that destination zones cluster closer to origin zones, that is, northern migrants dominate northern destinations, southern migrants dominate southern ones and so on. Higher-educated unorganised sector migrants, regardless of where they come from, do not travel as far as their peers with lower education.

What explains these patterns?

Higher education is often perceived as a factor that enables a worker to expand their radius of job search, as more opportunities open up if the worker is willing and able to travel.

For example, an engineer from Gorakhpur or Kolkata, can secure a white collar job in one of the glittering IT parks in Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune or Chennai. This is especially true when the local economy of the origin state fails to create enough jobs that meet the aspirations of a highly educated workforce.

Such a perception, however, may be limited only to the formal sector jobs – which in itself accounts for a small share of the workforce. For example, securing a job in these far away destinations, whether white collar or blue collar, may not be straightforward or even possible for an ITI trained plumber from Gorakhpur or Kolkata.

Several mechanisms could plausibly account for this pattern. Educated informal migrants may be more likely to treat their current jobs as transitional and staying close to home while actively searching for better formal opportunities nearby.

Regional language, cultural ties, and social networks may also anchor lower educated workers more firmly to distant yet familiar labour markets, especially as they are also likely to be older – they may be relying on familiar networks that help with some form of social safety nets at the destination, even if the destination is far away.

Less-educated migrants may also have greater economic compulsion and fewer reasons to stay within a familiar region, they follow work wherever it appears – even across long distances.

You identify three distinct migration channels. Can you walk us through them?

The report examines state-level migration patterns alongside indicators of state-level economic development such as per capita Net State Domestic Product.

States with lower per capita income tend to send out substantially larger numbers of informal migrant workers, while richer states exhibit much higher levels of net in-migration. In other words, the direction of migration depends on a state’s economic position to a great extent.

However, economic development is not the unique pull factor for migration in the unorganised sector. Examining the largest net-sending states [UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam] helps one identify three distinct migration channels, each shaped by a different combination of economic pressure, social networks, and geography.

The first is distress-driven, long-distance migration, most clearly associated with UP and Bihar. Migrants from these two states dominate destination districts across large parts of the country.

In certain districts of Maharashtra and Delhi NCR, more than 40% of all unorganised sector migrants originate from UP alone. Migrants from Bihar are also spread across India, in fact, at a higher rate than migrants from UP.

This migration is driven less by specific opportunities in destination states and more by the sheer pressure of large, young populations and limited local job creation. The report describes it as functioning as a systemic outlet for demographic pressure – workers pushed outward by the absence of viable options at home, rather than pulled by specific opportunities elsewhere.

The second channel combines economic distress with established migration networks, most visible in Jharkhand and West Bengal. Both states are well below the median Indian states in terms of NSDP per capita, but their migrants move along more specific and historically rooted corridors.

Migrants from Jharkhand tend to move northward; those from West Bengal are more likely to travel southward, with a notable concentration in districts across Kerala. These routes reflect long-standing social networks that channel workers toward particular destinations even under conditions of general distress – networks that have, over time, built the infrastructure of information, contacts, and trust that make certain destinations more accessible than others.

The third channel is characterised by spatial containment, most visible in Assam and Madhya Pradesh. Despite both states being low performers on per capita income, their migrants largely stay within proximate regions.

Assam’s migration is largely self-contained within the northeast. MP’s dominance is concentrated within the central zone and immediately neighbouring districts. Here, proximity, linguistic and cultural specificity, and regional labour market ties appear to constrain the geographic reach of migration even when the economic pressure pushes workers to leave. Unlike the first channel, where distress produces wide dispersal, here distress produces only short-distance movement.

What are the implications of these findings, for policy and planning?

These migration flows reflect something larger about how India’s workforce is being shaped. States that are net receivers of unorganised sector migrants, whether in the north or south, tend to be ageing states with higher median ages and tighter labour supply. States that are the largest net senders – UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha – are at the younger end of India’s demographic distribution, and consistently rank lower in economic performance.

Informal migration is thus functioning as one of the primary channels through which surplus labour from younger states is absorbed by older, more economically dynamic ones. The demographic dividend therefore, in part, is being spatially rebalanced through the movement of informal workers.

But the data also reveal a more nuanced understanding of this rebalancing. Younger cohorts entering the unorganised migrant workforce are more educated, a direct impact of two decades of educational expansion.

In fact, the report notes how younger workers, mostly on account of higher levels of education, are more likely to find informal jobs in sectors such as education, office administration, electronics and hardware, healthcare etc., while older and less educated workers are more prevalent in construction, agriculture, leather industry work, and domestic services. This shows that even if modest, higher levels of education helps workers find jobs in sectors that are more modern in nature, and more white-collarish within the blue-collar world of India’s unorganised sector.

Thus, as India moves through the remaining years of its demographic-dividend window, policymakers have a decision to make – how to best accommodate the aspirations of an increasingly educated and young workforce, whose aspirations for finding formal sector employment ties them closer to home?

Does the answer lie in creating more formal jobs locally? Or, should one focus on creating more jobs in the modern services within the informal economy itself, while subsequently strengthening social protection schemes for these unorganised sector workers?

Karthik Madhavapeddi is Managing Editor, IndiaSpend.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was trying to bring his government down by persuading MLAs of the National Conference to switch sides, reported PTI.

“Attempts are being made to break the National Conference,” Omar Abdullah said at a convention of party workers in Hazratbal on the 26th death anniversary of his grandmother Akbar Jehan.

Jehan was a politician who had represented Srinagar and Anantnag in the Lok Sabha.

On Saturday, Omar Abdullah alleged that an MLA from his party had told him that the BJP offered him Rs 30 crore and a ministerial berth to defect, reported PTI.

When that did not work, the MLA was told that Jammu and Kashmir would be given statehood if he were to support the BJP, the chief minister further alleged.

On August 5, 2019, Article 370 of the Constitution – which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir – was abrogated and the erstwhile state was split into two Union Territories: Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.

In December 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the 2019 order abrogating Article 370 and ordered the Centre to restore statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.

In October, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that statehood to Jammu and Kashmir will be restored at an “appropriate time” after discussions with political stakeholders.

On statehood demand

During the convention on Saturday, Omar Abdullah asked the Union government to clarify what it mean by an “appropriate time”.

“I ask them, for God’s sake, how will we know that the appropriate time has come,” asked the chief minister. “What do I and my colleagues have to do to reach that appropriate time?”

He also asked if the “appropriate time” implies the BJP coming to power in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Have the courage to say it publicly,” said Omar Abdullah. “At least, we will not remain in this deception that you will fulfil the promise.”

If the Centre was ready to talk to the people of Ladakh, “why not the people of Jammu and Kashmir”, PTI quoted him as asking.

The chief minister also said that the National Conference’s victory in the 2024 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir had become a “punishment” for the residents of the Union Territory.

“Why did you [let us] form the government if you will not allow it to function?” he asked. “What is the benefit? Then you should not have conducted the elections.”

He accused the BJP of controlling governance in Jammu and Kashmir through the lieutenant governor.

Protest for statehood

The remarks came two days after National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah urged leaders across political lines to join a peaceful protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on the opening day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, demanding that statehood for J&K be restored.

The Monsoon Session of Parliament will be held from July 20 to August 13.

Farooq Abdullah questioned why the Union government has offered “no timeline” for when statehood will be restored to Jammu and Kashmir.

“This is not merely a delay,” he wrote. “It is an affront to the democratic will of an entire people.”

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Assam government employees practising polygamy or the practice of having more than one wife, will be dismissed from their posts, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.

He also announced that those in a polygamous marriage would not be eligible for benefits under any government welfare scheme.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader made the announcement at a post-Budget press conference.

This came months after the state Assembly passed the 2025 Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill in November.

It proposes up to seven years of imprisonment for persons convicted of polygamy. It also provides for up to ten years of imprisonment for those found guilty of concealing a previous marriage.

It further states that parents, priests or village heads who conceal a polygamous marriage from the police, or “unreasonably” delay informing the authorities, would be held liable for abetting the offence.

At the time the bill was passed, Sivasagar MLA Akhil Gogoi said that it undermines constitutional protections pertaining to freedom of conscience and the freedom to manage religious affairs.

On May 27, the Assembly also passed the Uniform Civil Code bill, seeking to ban polygamy and make the registration of live-in relationships compulsory.

The Uniform Civil Code refers to a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

After the bill was passed, Sarma said on social media that the tribal population in the state would be kept outside the purview of the Uniform Civil Code. “It does not interfere with the religious practices of any community or traditional practices of our indigenous”, he said.

The code will override personal laws and will “ensure national integration by removing disparate loyalties to law, which have contracting ideologies”, Sarma added.

This paved the way for Assam to become the third state, after Uttarakhand and Gujarat, to introduce such a code after independence.

Introducing a common personal law has long been on the BJP’s agenda and several states ruled by the party have been making advances towards implementing it.

In its campaign for the Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand, the BJP had mainly targeted Muslim personal law, arguing that it discriminated against women as it allows Muslim men to practice polygamy, inherit a greater share of property, initiate divorce and deny alimony.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: In Assam, Muslim women cautiously welcome move to outlaw polygamy

The Supreme Court on Friday decided not to initiate contempt proceedings against a litigant who threw papers inside the courtroom and verbally abused Chief Justice Surya Kant.

When the hearing began, litigant Prabal Pratap said: “Mr judicial servant, I order you to order the registration of an FIR [first information report] against the assistant commissioner of police of Lucknow…”

Justice KV Viswanathan asked, “You are ordering me? You are ordering us?”

Pratap replied: “That is all from my side. Everything is on record.”

In videos of the proceedings widely shared online, Pratap can be seen throwing the cases papers in the air and is heard verbally abusing Kant in the courtroom, after which he was escorted out of the room by security personnel.

Kant was not part of the bench that was hearing the matter.

The bench of Justices Viswanathan and Alok Aradhe said that Pratap, the litigant who was representing himself in the matter, had made “incoherent and unparliamentary utterances” instead of presenting his case.

However, the judges said that they would not initiate contempt proceedings “considering the condition of the petitioner”. The court did not elaborate on what condition it was referring to.

The bench also refused to interfere with an order of the Allahabad High Court that the petitioner had challenged.

On April 6, the High Court refused to entertain a plea filed by Pratap seeking to quash a Lucknow magistrate court’s February order. The magistrate had converted his application under Section 173(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to a private complaint, along with subsequent proceedings arising from the case he had filed against a firm, Duplex Technologies Services.

Section 173(3) allows the police to conduct a preliminary inquiry before registering a first information report for offences that are punishable with imprisonment of three years to seven years.

Lawyers’ associations condemn incident

The Supreme Court Bar Association condemned the “incident of abusive and disrespectful behaviour” by the litigant, adding that “such conduct must be dealt with firmly and strictly” in accordance with law, Bar and Bench reported.

The association said that guidelines must be framed about the recording, editing and sharing of legal proceedings and videos “so as to prevent their misuse and to ensure that the dignity of the court and the administration of justice are not undermined”.

It also urged the Union government to take executive and legal measures to curb the sharing of videos or edited clips “that are used in a manner which undermines the dignity of the judiciary or lowers public confidence in the institution”.

The Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association also said that it “strongly disapproves” of the sharing of videos and other content relating to such incidents, Bar and Bench reported.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

July 4 marks the 250th anniversary of the day America’s colonists issued a declaration stating their desire to be free of British rule. The anniversary is an occasion to revisit two questions that are fundamental to US history: what motivated the American colonies to turn against their overlords across the Atlantic? And how did an outmanned colonial military defeat a superior British fighting force?

An unlikely country – India – factors into both answers. Let’s review them, in reverse chronological order.

In April 1775, war broke out between the American colonies and the British. The colonists won that first battle of what became known as the Revolutionary War. While the British had more experience, more troops, and more money, they could never conquer the colonists. For several years, the two sides battled to a stalemate. But the tide turned in 1781. What changed? To answer that, let’s look at a battle fought the previous year – in India.

Soldiers from the East India Company – a de facto arm of the British government – were enmeshed in what became known as the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The battle stemmed from Britain’s seizure of a port controlled by the French government in Mahé, on the Malabar coast, in 1779. Portions of India were under French rule at the time.

The port was closely aligned with Mysore’s ruler, Haidar Ali, and he responded to its seizure the following July by mounting a massive invasion of the Carnatic region, deploying 80,000 troops. Two months of warfare followed, with the decisive battle fought on September 10 in the town of Pollilur. The use of what was then cutting-edge rocket technology helped Ali and his troops prevail.

The East India Company suffered 3,000 fatalities and lost nearly half its officers. It was “the severest blow that the English ever sustained in India,” according to a leading British military official of the era, Sir Hector Munro.

The outcome was a wake-up call to the British, who feared French encroachment. Soon afterwards, the British doubled the number of troops they had in India, which meant reducing their presence in the Revolutionary War. It was a critical decision – and one that would have far-reaching consequences.

The reallocation helped the British achieve military parity with India in what become known as the Second Anglo-Mysore War, which concluded in 1784 with the Treaty of Mangalore. But this came at the expense of the fighting forces in the American colonies.

The British were henceforth short staffed, and unable to keep up with the colonists, who in January 1781 won a key battle in South Carolina. Nine months later, the two sides squared off in Yorktown, a city in Virginia. But the British, with 8,000 troops, could not compete with the nearly 20,000 troops representing the Americans and the French.

On October 19, Britain’s military leader in the American colonies, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, surrendered, effectively ending the Revolutionary War (though battles would continue for another two years). Soon thereafter, America’s political leaders gathered to celebrate the American victory.

At the event, they toasted Haidar Ali – “May he continue to be a scourge to the British!” The duke of Manchester later declared, “The neglect of not having a proper naval force in America was the cause of the calamity.”

That sentiment is amplified in a forthcoming book by the University of Chicago’s Steven Pincus: “In many ways the defeat . . . at Pollilur led ineluctably to Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown.” Pincus adds, “No explanation for the emergence of the American state can be complete without consideration of developments on the Indian subcontinent.”

Hyder Spanks the English

To show that the English did not have sole rights on myth making, here is a cartoon by Antoine Borel, showing Hyder Ali of Mysore giving a British officer a thorough spanking while a French soldier smirks and supplies the twigs. pic.twitter.com/6sAVrbRKYv

— Folkloristan (@folkloristan) May 22, 2025

The story of India’s role in American colonists wanting to break free of the British begins in 1757. That’s when the East India Company won a landmark battle in the Indian city of Palashi (often Anglicised as “Plassey”). The victory gave the East India Company control over Bengal, which was home to 25 million-30 million people at the time. And it led the British to assert themselves throughout India – taking control of taxation in Bengal and other regions.

But there was one element the British could not control: the weather. In 1768, North East India received little rain, and the following summer it received none. The ensuing drought was devastating. It severely handicapped the local farmers. By 1770, a full-fledged famine broke out; estimates of the number of deaths range from 1 million to 10 million. (The episode was memorialised a century later in the celebrated novel Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.)

The famine’s impact was exacerbated by the East India Company’s actions – or inactions. The East India Company had access to food that was not distributed, some rice was hoarded for profiteering, and tax collections continued – sometimes with higher assessments than in the pre-famine period. William Dalrymple, the eminent historian of India, has called the Company’s conduct during this period, “one of the greatest failures of corporate responsibility in history”.

Accounts of the East India Company’s malice in Bengal eventually made their way into publications that were read throughout the American colonies. And those accounts helped stir up the already smoldering anti-British sentiments that would lead to the Declaration of Independence.

One such account from 1771, titled “Letter from a Gentleman in India,” painted a gruesome portrait of what had happened in Bengal. The author wrote, “On our arrival here, we found a river full of dead human carcasses floating up and down, and the streets crowded with the dead and dying, without anyone attempting to give them relief.” It was reprinted in papers in American colonies such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

Later, in 1773, a prominent critic of British rule, John Dickinson, from the state of Pennsylvania, wrote a scathing article about the East India Company’s actions in India. He said their conduct “for some Years past, has given Ample Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellious, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain.” He went on to reference their “most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions and Monopolies,” which he said, “stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin.”

He blamed the East India Company for the famine, charging it with having “engrossed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate, that the Poor could not purchase them.” He warned that the Company’s chief minister was determined “to executive his Plan of enslaving America,” and that the company had “now, it seems, cast their Eyes on America, as a new Theatre, whereon to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty.”

In 1774, a celebrated bishop serving the colonies, Jonathan Shipley, delivered a speech in which he suggested that the famine in Bengal could be replicated in America. The speech was reprinted in large cities throughout the colonies.

THOMAS PAINE: "I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace." pic.twitter.com/8SOhUgRAa2

— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) May 13, 2026

The commentary undoubtedly influenced the thinking of Thomas Paine, another vocal critic of the British. The author of a celebrated anti-British pamphlet Common Sense, in 1774 he wrote a withering diatribe against the East India’s Company’s chief executive in Bengal, Robert Clive. “Fear and terror march like pioneers before his camp,” wrote Paine, “murder and rapine accompany it, fame and wretchedness follow in the rear.”

India, wrote Paine, was “a bloody monument of unnecessary deaths”.

The widespread commentary about the East India Company’s actions in India sparked fear among the colonists that they could meet the same fate as the people of Bengal. Coupled with several other measures, such as the British tax on Indian tea, the colonists’ revolutionary fervor steadily escalated.

When the Continental Congress in the US issued its Declaration of Independence in July 1776, there were references to the “long train of abuses”, “history of repeated injuries” and “absolute tyranny” of the British in the American colonies. The indictment mirrored commentary about British malfeasance in India.

The influence of Indians on America’s early history – both as military victors and as famine victims – is a potent reminder of the unlikely ways nations can be impacted by seemingly unrelated events in faraway places.

Today, India’s influence on the United States continues, though that influence looks very different from the past. It emanates from vibrant companies that export goods and services to America – and through millions of Indian-Americans who occupy prominent places in medicine, information technology, and other dynamic sectors of the US economy.

Matthew Rees, a former White House speechwriter, is the president of Geonomica, a US-based ghostwriting firm, and a contributing editor to the South Asian Herald.

The Bihar government will dismiss more than 3,000 teachers who secured appointments using allegedly fake degrees and forged educational certificates, PTI quoted state Education Minister Mithilesh Tiwari as saying on Friday.

The minister said that disciplinary action will be taken against the teachers.

The announcement came following an investigation by the vigilance bureau into the recruitment of teachers between 2006 and 2015.

More than 1,800 first information reports have been filed against several teachers, The Times of India reported.

The education department will recover the salaries and honorariums paid to the teachers during their tenure with interest, the newspaper reported.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Madras High Court on Friday restrained the Election Commission from notifying the bye-elections in five Assembly constituencies till July 31, Live Law reported.

The constituencies are Tiruchirappalli (East), Ambasamudram, Perundurai, Viralimalai and Karur.

The bench passed the interim order on a plea seeking that the constituencies not be declared vacant as election petitions challenging the poll results there are pending in the court.

The Tiruchirappalli (East) seat was vacated by Chief Minister Vijay as he retained Perambur, the other seat he had one. The other seats became vacant after the MLAs, who were elected in May, resigned.

The petitioner highlighted the possibility that if the bye-polls are held and the election pleas succeed, it would result in two MLAs having been elected simultaneously, Bar and Bench reported.

The court had earlier issued notices on the election petitions.

On Friday, the bench asked all respondents to file counter-affidavits. The matter will be heard next on July 31.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

This is a transcript of the keynote address delivered by Harsh Mander on Albert Schweitzer Day in Aspen on July 1.

We are living through profoundly troubled times. So much that is most precious in our world is badly broken – kindness, justice, love, courage, caring, compassion and empathy.

Look at the world today. Democracy is crumbling in country after country. We see the hubris of highly centralised, opaque decision-making that abandons the poor and is worryingly crony capitalist.

Never before in human history have so few men owned so much. Unimaginable levels of wealth are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, while millions continue to endure desperate hunger, dead-end insecure jobs at dirt wages, homelessness and disease.

A trillion dollars is the wealth today of one single man. If he spends a million dollars every single day, it would take 2,700 years for his wealth to get exhausted. Yet one in 12 people in the world sleep hungry every night, one in two are denied affordable healthcare, and one in five children are malnourished.

The pandemic dramatically laid bare, with ruthless moral clarity, the catastrophic public costs of inequality. Millions of lives could have been saved if over many decades, states had made much greater investments in public health provisioning. And the explosion of mass hunger and joblessness and the mass dislocation of millions of working poor people could have been averted, had labour protections, social security and wage levels of workers been secured, and had governments ensured more money in the hands of every poor person.

I am convinced that when the history of these times will be written, this will be recorded as one of the cruel periods of human history. There was of course much greater destitution, famine, epidemics in the past. But today the world has the resources many times over to ensure that no child sleeps hungry, no child dies because they cannot afford health care. We have the capacity to end all of this, but we choose not to.

Soaring inequality runs hand in hand with surging politics of hate: hate that threatens and targets vulnerable minorities, immigrants and the working poor. It has everywhere become more and more dangerous to be a minority of any kind. They face persecution for the colour of their skin, the god they worship, their caste, their gender, their language and who they choose to love.

Each day there are new stories, sombre stories of surging hate, fear and inequality. This fraught and pitiless age is a moment of profound moral crisis.

Humankind has clearly lost its way.

I stand here in memory of Albert Schwietzer. He spoke to humankind during another moment of civilisational crisis, when the world was broken like it is today – broken by deadly wars, colonial oppression, the devastation wrought by the nuclear bomb and the genocide of the Holocaust.

He spoke luminously of “reverence for life”, for every life. We need once again today to heed his words, to affirm that every life is worthy of reverence. No life is dispensable. No life is of any lesser dignity and worth.

In recent years, both my parents died, my mother in her late 80s, my father when he was 94. Over the years before they passed away, they were in and out of hospitals, sometimes for many months at a stretch. I tried always to be by their side, immensely grateful each time that they recovered, granting us a few more years, months, days of their lives.

But one thought would haunt me through all of this. My parents could afford the scandalous hospital bills only because of their privilege. If we were poor, there is no way my parents could have lived so long. While I was blessed that they were alive, I was continuously mindful of the cold reality that in my country – and in much of the world – a person’s access to health care does not depend on how urgent her need is. It depends instead on how lofty is her privilege. To be poor condemns you to early preventable death.

I think of the homeless mentally ill women I often see in our city streets squatting on trash dumps. Covered with grime. Matted, unkempt hair. Nearly naked. Name forgotten. Family forgotten. Muttering inscrutable words. Solitary. Profoundly lost to the world.

I long, achingly, for a world where she has exactly the same chances of life as my mother had, that she is treated in the same hospitals with the same respect, dignity and care where my mother received the healing that added many precious years to her life.

A world in which there is equal reverence for her life.

Can we draw people of every social class and identity into a wide public debate about building a new social contract that ensures that no human being is allowed to fall below an agreed floor of human dignity.

What is this floor?

For me, I imagine a social contract in which no child will sleep hungry, no child will sleep under the open sky, no child will be sent to work instead of a school which is as good a school as for any other child her age, no person will be subjected to discrimination or violence because of her identity, no person will be denied free, good-quality healthcare, and no older person will have to work or beg to live with dignity. We must demand that we find the resources for all of this by greater taxing of the super-rich.

Thinking of Albert Schwietzer’s life all these decades later, I feel a particular kinship to his years of work with people living with leprosy in Africa. Some of the most formative experiences of my early work life was also with people with leprosy. In the 1980s, the number of leprosy patients worldwide was over five million. Around half of these were in India, many of them indigenous people in the impoverished forested regions of central India where I served as an Indian civil servant.

My first posting was in a subdivision called Barwani. I was 27. A procession of protesters arrived outside my office one morning. This one was strikingly different from any that I had encountered. It was a motley gathering of “burnt-out” leprosy patients, led by a communist school teacher. I say “burnt-out” echoing the title of Graham Greene’s classic novel about a leprosy colony in the upper reaches of the Congo river – A Burnt-Out Case. These were people who had been infected with leprosy, people who displayed signs of the terrifying consequences of this infection – dreaded for millennia – such as discoloured skin, damaged eyes, broken noses and stumps in the place of fingers and toes.

When I sat with them in my office, I found that their demands were heartbreakingly modest. It was a time when it was not uncommon for towns and cities to have savagely segregated settlements for people with leprosy in their outer periphery. Exiled to an unsanitary patch of land outside the town, unserved by any public services, all they sought for their shabby neighbourhood was a drinking water point, some drainage for the lowland swamp which they inhabited and possibly some street lighting. I promised that I would ensure these. But I added that I would love to visit them in their homes.

My visit to their colony – to which I then kept returning – revealed to me a people more ferociously ostracised than any whom I have met before -or since. Their monumental tragedy was that although their infection was entirely curable, it contained within it the unbearable burdens of millennia of brutal stigma and prejudice. The result of this was that the moment their infection was detected and known, they would be cast away even by those they loved the most – their parents, their spouses, their children. They would be banished from their homes and their villages.

They would scour for food in waste dumps and ultimately find their way to a shabby ghetto of women, men and children who had similarly been expelled from home and family because of their infection with leprosy. There they would join a new community of exiles, often find a new partner and start a new family of the expelled. But they would be mercilessly and violently despised by the town residents. So would their children. None would give them work. None would admit their children in schools. To survive, they would line the streets all day, seeking alms by displaying their deformed limbs and sores to despising eyes. Some coins were thrown at them from a distance.

I recalled a slogan I had heard: I do not want your charity. I only want a chance. I asked the residents of the leprosy colony one evening who among them wished to give up begging and find dignified work. They immediately all raised their damaged hands and this, for me, lit up the skyline. I brought together a band of compassionate Barwani residents to work with me to help organise for them the “chance” that the slogan iridescently spoke of.

We organised for them very modest but clean housing, employment in weaving and brick making, a child care centre, admission in schools and a local clinic. We called their new settlement Asha Gram, or a Village of Hope. For decades after my transfer from Barwani, I would return to Asha Gram with my family to celebrate Diwali or the new year with them in friendship and to watch with wonder and admiration as they built dignity and hope from the ravages and ruins of their past lives.

After this, in every district I worked, I sought out the inevitable leprosy settlement and tried to help them escape the dark despair and degradation to which they had been banished by the stigma of their ailment. Many Sunday mornings, my routine was to go to the leprosy colony with my daughter in my arms and join the residents for a meal, as my daughter played with their children. Some lifelong friendships emerged.

The central lesson I learned was that their malady was not the bacteria; it was uninformed and brutal societal prejudice and hate. Once when these are overcome can humankind leave behind these horrific tragedies that have come down from centuries. This has begun to happen. The numbers of leprosy infections have reduced to 200,000. India still reports 60% of the cases.

With leprosy, two other maladies preoccupied me over the years. Both of these, not unlike leprosy, are the outcomes of stigma and gross impoverishment.

One of these is tuberculosis. The other is mental illness.

Let me speak here of TB. First, a brief biographical detail. In 2002, after a frenzy of religious violence largely targeting the Muslim minority in the western state of Gujarat (where the chief minister was Narendra Modi, destined to later become India’s prime minister), I quit my position in the civil service in protest, convinced that this was a state-sponsored massacre. I devoted a lot of my time after leaving the government to working with the survivors of hate violence in Gujarat and other parts of the country.

I also started work with rough-sleeping homeless people in Delhi and other cities, and on the questions of hunger and starvation. In the course of our work of street medicine, we learned that rough-sleeping homeless people were five to ten times more at risk of death than people who slept under a roof. We discovered also that one paramount cause of premature death among homeless people was TB. Friends from the University College of London actively screened the population of homeless men on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi and found among them, to their consternation and alarm, a higher incidence of TB than anything they had encountered anywhere in the world.

Why homeless men in Delhi show higher levels of TB than most other populations in the world, we don’t fully understand, except that TB is classically a malady arising from deep impoverishment. But we understand better the tragic trajectory typical of a homeless person who picks up the TB bacteria. After they contract the ailment, they continue to work until they become too feeble for physical labour, meaning they are unable to earn even minimal wages to buy food to stay alive. If, somehow, they do succeed in finding a bed in the highly overcrowded TB hospital, after a few days the doctor would discharge them to make room for the next in a long queue of waiting patients.

Perhaps the doctor would give them with terse but well-meaning counsel – “Go home, rest, be regular with your medicine, let your family take care of you, and eat nourishing food”.

But doesn’t the doctor understand? I don’t have a family, I don’t have a home, then what do I do?

I have no option except to return to the streets and die!

Unwilling to accept the incontrovertibility of this reality, we searched desperately for solutions to save the lives of homeless people who are infected with TB. And as with most worthy ideas, the solution in the end was simple. For at least a year after a homeless person is diagnosed with TB, we would create a space of rest, treatment, healing and care that substitutes for the absent family. We called these “recovery shelters” and opened these shelters in four Indian cities – Delhi, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Patna. There were numerous challenges in these efforts, but the results were immensely heartening. Many homeless people who came to us close to death recovered and walked out a year later, able now to return to the world.

The crises of our world are not just of inequality, or of the climate crisis. We are riven by the politics of hate, within and between nations.

The Nazi history of Germany in the early 1930s must always be a reminder that democracy is not just the rule of the majority, because that can mutate into fascism. Democracy is equally the protection of every minority, of all their freedoms, including their freedom to be themselves, to worship, speak, dress and love as they choose, and yet be equal citizens in every way.

Look at the flexing and rhetoric of war in the world today. One head of government is kidnapped, another assassinated. The most powerful countries in the world – including my own - are silent or actively support the televised slaughter of children, aid workers, doctors and press persons.

We are witness to a new arms race. I recall the words of President Eisenhower way back in 1953, that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He further warned that a world enmeshed in an arms race was expending not merely money, but “the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children”.

Let me speak mostly of my own country. There are terrifying echoes in India today not just of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but also of Jim Crow’s America, and the genocide of the Rohingya of Myanmar. The Indian people have strayed far from the dreams of India’s freedom struggle, and the pledges of India’s constitution that India would be a country that was just, equal and kind.

A country where it would not matter which god you worship or if you worship no god, it would not matter what was your caste, ethnicity, race, gender, wealth; you would be a fully equal citizen in every way, of equal worth and equal rights

Instead, India today is in the throes of an epidemic of hate. There was one partition in the land of India in 1947. Today in my country we are seeing a million partitions of the heart.

My country today, Modi’s India, is witness to the state at war with its Muslim citizens, and more covertly, with its Christian citizens’ freedom of worship. The people are today wrenched by the tumult of a state-led campaign of open hate targeting its religious minorities. The economic base of these minorities – their livelihoods and properties – are targeted using both changes in law and violent mob actions. Legal and social barriers have been erected to inter-faith sexual relations and marriages. These are described as “love jihad”. The state is rewriting history to demonize targeted minorities. It is also altering laws of citizenship to exclude Muslims from equal citizenship, and in the process of manufacturing mass statelessness.

It is not just the state. Lynching – reminiscent of Jim Crow’s America – have become commonplace. Crowds gather and performatively beat mostly Muslim men to death. The perpetrators themselves videotape the torment of the victims who scream piteously for hours, yet none come to their rescue.

A child born into the “lowest” caste is beaten to death because he touched the water container of his caste Hindu teacher.

Low-caste teenaged girls are routinely gang-raped.

And what about the ordinary citizen? It has become customary for the rest of us to look away as India’s Hindu supremacist government viciously targets India’s Muslim minorities: as their houses are bulldozed, their worship criminalised, their citizenship rights trampled, as some are thrown into detention centres of pushed at gunpoint across international borders.

To look away also when not just informal tenements but even homeless shelters are demolished to “beautify” the city for international guests.

To look away when are finest hearts and minds are incarcerated for years without trial because they dissent against the politics of hate and inequality.

These are just a few fragments of India’s growing darkness.

I think again of Albert Schwietzer. To be human is to affirm the will-to-live, he told us, but an ethical life is one in which one’s reverence of life leads one to live in the service of other people, and of every living being. He was inspired in part by ancient Indian spiritual texts and the ideal of ahimsa or non-violence.

From Gandhi, from Martin Luther King, we learn that you cannot fight hate with hate. You must find ways to fight hate with love.

With a group of fellow citizens, we have tried to counter new India’s epidemic of hate with a campaign of radical love. We call this Karwan e Mohabbat, or a Caravan of Love.

We resolved that we would go to the home of every person anywhere in the country where someone has been lynched. To share their pain. To seek forgiveness for what we have become as a nation. To assure them that we will be with them over the years as they pick up the broken pieces of their lives, and fight for justice. And that we will tell their story. We will continue to tell their story until the conscience of our people does not ache unbearably.

This video was during the second year of the Karwan. It is now nine years since we began this campaign. We have made more than a hundred journeys. Our journeys do not end because the hate does not end.

Families who have lost their loved ones to hate wonder where so much hate comes from. “Why did they torture him so much?”, they often ask us. “Why did no one come to his aid?” They feel alone and abandoned as they battle loss and the hate of their neighbours or strangers who attacked their loved ones. As we embrace and hold each other’s hands, our eyes turn moist as they weep. In each journey to the homes of the families of those who have lost their loved ones to hate and violence, we learn with humility how much our simple gesture of reaching out means to these distraught families.

The institutions of the state refuse to secure them the closure of justice. Even more painful is the profound lack of compassion and solidarity in local communities wherever these attacks have occurred. They rarely encounter empathy. They can no longer recognise this as a country to which they belong. Nowhere in our journeys of the Karwan have we heard reports of care and support for survivors of hate attacks by neighbours from other religions and castes. It is nothing short of a civilisational crisis that we have allowed hate to curdle even our capacity for compassion.

As I said, later generations will ask of each of us, and they did in Germany after the Holocaust. They will ask – when democracy was corroded, when millions were abandoned to lives of want, hunger and joblessness, and when the politics of hate triumphed, what did you do?

But you may ask: How do we fight the powerful forces of hate and inequality? How do we build a good society?

I am haunted by this question. I ask myself obsessively what is the way out of the profound civilisational crisis in which humankind finds itself.

The answer, Schweitzer told us, is reverence for life. I would say: equal reverence for every life.

One lesson from the pandemic was that no individual escape exits are possible. What has any chance of success is a struggle for collective human survival. Solidarity alone – between classes and gender, between nations, and between people and the planet – will enable us to overcome. We can only overcome together.

We must challenge the global “common sense” that the pursuit of the highest possible pace of economic growth should, in itself, be the highest goal of society. A market society pursues exclusively the goal – or mirage – of galloping economic growth; a good society must also preoccupy itself with everyone left out of this growth story.

Therefore, our new imaginations for the future must centre on the idea of solidarity and fraternity.

Solidarity is the recognition that there are no solo escape paths. We can only overcome together. Solidarity is many things. It is my capacity to feel your pain as my own. It is my incapacity to look away when you suffer. It is kindness. It is collective struggle. It is the moral resolve that we must take care of each other.

Fraternity literally means brotherhood, but this leaves out sisterhood and other genders. The Hindi word for fraternity in the Indian Constitution is beautiful – bandhuta. This means that whatever the differences in our faith, caste, skin colour, ethnicity and gender, we are bound to and with each other. It is the idea that we belong to and with each other. I suffer your pain, your injustice, as though it is mine.

There are many sibling ideas of fraternity. One of these is empathy. This is my capacity to feel your pain as my own.

Another is egalitarian compassion, compassion between people of equal worth.

And then there is caring. I love this luminous description of what constitutes the good society: a good society in one in which we take care of each other.

To mend and heal our broken world, most of all may we be driven by what I call radical love. This is love as politics, love as social philosophy, love driven by boundless courage. Love robust enough to risk danger, anger, loss, and isolation in order to protect another human being. Love based on such fierce courage and conviction that for my love and care for you, I should be willing if called upon, to go to prison, or even to give my life up.

The white and black people who fought racial segregation in the US and apartheid in South Africa, the millions on the streets of cities around the world including many Jewish women and men to protest the genocidal attacks on Palestine, all are driven by radical love

One towering, luminous historical example of radical love comes from the last months of Mahatma Gandhi’s life, culminating in his assassination. Rewind to 1947, when India was violently partitioned into two nations, India and Pakistan. A catastrophic frenzy of mass hate erupted as one million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims slaughtered each other. Rivers of blood flowed. Fifteen million people trudged across the newly created borders, often with just a bundle on their backs or even less, leaving behind forever their homeland of centuries. Among these was my own extended family.

The mass rage this fostered fuelled in India a demand that grew into a raging fire, that just as Pakistan was a country created for Muslims, India should be a Hindu nation. But Gandhi was resolute. Our promise was that India would be a kind and equal country, assuring equal citizenship for people of every faith including its Muslim minority.

Mahatma Gandhi was not in Delhi to celebrate India’s freedom on 15 August 1947. Instead, he was in Calcutta, trying desperately to end the ceaseless butchery that playing out there. He ultimately undertook an epic fast, pledging he would not eat a morsel until the last hand raised to kill and maim was not lowered. It was this that finally brought peace to Calcutta, as Gandhi pitched his frail ageing body against the mass rising of hate.

Gandhi returned from a Calcutta to a Delhi teeming with refugees, heaving with hate and violence. He implored Muslims not to migrate to Pakistan, that India was still fully their homeland.

Gandhi believed in this idea of India so resolutely that he was willing even to give up his life for it. I look back with immense gratitude for the immeasurable moral courage that he demonstrated at the time of India’s Partition. This was his most agonised but also his life’s finest hour.

His was what I call radical love, love of such conviction that it defied the harshest tempests of hate with the most resolute courage. On the evening of 30 January 1948, as he walked to lead his daily all-religion prayer meeting, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic. It was his insistence on humane and inclusive citizenship, and particularly that India would belong equally to its Muslim citizens, that led to his assassination.

It is radical love that illuminated also the struggle led by Martin Luther King Jr against racial hate. It is the same love that Nelson Mandela summoned even after 27 years in prison to heal his country torn apart by decades of apartheid.

Let me speak of another leader who more recently, in a moment of immense tragedy, with her people of New Zealand, showed a world riven by bigotry and hatred what solidarity and love can accomplish, even in the darkest times. It is a lesson which people in a bitterly divided world must heed. But will they?

In Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, a young man livestreamed as he shot dead 50 women and men who are in the Friday congregational prayers in two mosques.

The prime minister Jacinda Ardern immediately visited the mourning families to comfort them. In cultural solidarity, she covered her head with a black scarf. As she embraced them, her face mirrored their pain, making plain to those who had lost their loves ones in the shootings that she shared their suffering.

The following Friday the azaan was broadcast before the memorial service all across New Zealand. Outside the mosques where the terrorist had massacred the worshippers, and in mosques around the country, hundreds of men, women and children assembled in solidarity with the families of the dead. They locked their hands with each other, creating a wall around their Muslim brothers and sisters who prayed.

Ms Ardern again covered her head with a dupatta to show respect to a stricken people. Inspired by the prime minister’s gesture, women all over New Zealand – newsreaders, policewomen, ordinary people – covered their heads with hijab scarves.

The Imam Fouda , while leading Friday prayers in Christchurch in New Zealand one week after the terror attack, said to Ms Ardern, “Thank you for holding our families close and honouring us with a simple scarf.”

“We are broken-hearted”, he declared, “but we are not broken.” He explained: “We are alive, we are together, we are determined to not let anyone divide us.”

The crisis that I see in my country and in much of the world is that we stand witness to so much hate, oppression and deprivations, yet we are not broken-hearted. And this reveals how broken we have become.

In our surrounding darkness, there are moments when I wonder if our world can ever mend.

However, I am convinced that even in these times, despair is not an option. Hope is a public duty.

It is radical love, fraternity, solidarity and social caring - the mindfulness that we must take care of each other – these are the bricks necessary to build our radical imaginations for our shared futures.

May each of us join battle in small ways and big for a new world, a world that is kind, equal and just.

Let us together build this new world. A world in which your pain brings tears to my eyes. Your hunger and homelessness torment me. If there are chains on your feet, I feel my freedom is stolen from me.

Harsh Mander, peace and justice worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign in solidarity and support to victims of hate violence. He is a visiting faculty in the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His recent books are Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s Cities; and A Matter of Life and Death: The Unfinished Journey to Secure Healthcare for All.

West Bengal Police have arrested 35 persons for violence during protests on July 5 following the rape and murder of a minor, The New Indian Express reported.

While 30 had been arrested earlier, the police said on Friday that five more had been held.

“Others involved are being identified through multiple videos that went viral,” superintendent of police Arvind Kumar Anand told Reuters.

The body of the 11-year-old girl was recovered from a sack in a pond in the Surjyapur area of Baruipur town in South 24 Parganas district, a day after she was reported missing.

The case was initially registered as a missing person complaint on Saturday after her father reported her disappearance. Following the preliminary investigation, police added charges of rape, gang rape, murder, destruction of evidence and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The incident triggered widespread protests, with demonstrators blocking roads and a railway line, burning tyres and vandalising police vehicles.

During the unrest, residents allegedly caught two suspects and assaulted them. A 26-year-old man suspected of being associated with the persons accused in the matter was also lynched by a mob on Sunday.

Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that the man who was lynched was innocent.

Three persons Prabhas Mondal, Dibakar Sardar and Ananda Sardar were arrested. On Wednesday, Mondal was killed in an alleged gunfight with the police.

The police claimed that when the crime scene was being reconstructed, Mondal attempted to snatch a weapon from the police and open fire at them. The police fired at Mondal “in retaliation” and he was declared dead at the hospital.

The state government has set up a Special Investigation Team headed by Additional Superintendent of Police Pinaki Dutta to investigate the case.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The National Investigation Agency on Friday filed a chargesheet against six leaders of the separatist Hurriyat Conference in connection with a 1996 case of mob violence and indiscriminate firing on police personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar.

Those named in the chargesheet are Democratic Freedom Party chief Shabir Ahmad Shah, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, J&K People’s Conference founder Abdul Ganie Lone, J&K Liberation Front leader Javid Ahmad Mir, Islamic Students League chairman Shakeel Ahmad Bakshi, and Mohammad Yaqoob Wakeel.

The NIA said the proceedings against Geelani, Lone and Wakeel stood abated because they had died while the case was pending. However, it added that the chargesheet established their alleged roles in the criminal conspiracy and unlawful assembly.

The NIA took over the case from the Jammu and Kashmir Police in April 2026 on the directions of the Union home ministry.

The agency arrested Shah weeks after the 72-year-old secured bail from the Supreme Court in a separate 2017 terror-funding case, the Hindustan Times reported. Shah is in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail in connection with a separate Enforcement Directorate case.

The other two surviving accused, Mir and Bakshi, are based in Srinagar.

The agency charged all six under provisions of the Ranbir Penal Code pertaining to criminal conspiracy, attempt to murder, rioting and assault on public servants, as well as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

“All six accused had led an unlawful assembly and instigated large-scale violence against police personnel during a funeral procession of slain terrorist Hilal Ahmad Beigh at Naaz Crossing… [on July 17, 1996],” the agency said.

The NIA also alleged that the “mob violence was a part of a larger, pre-planned criminal conspiracy of the Hurriyat leadership to use the funeral procession as a platform for propagating separatist ideology, mobilising public support against [the Union government]”.

The agency claimed that the chargesheeted Hurriyat leaders had incited the violence, raising “anti-India, pro-Pakistan and secessionist” slogans.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.

About two weeks ago, the much-anticipated bilateral trade agreement between India and the United States seemed close to completion. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer led his team to New Delhi, and both governments aligned on claims that 99% of the deal was finalised.

Immediately after Greer’s visit, however, the Indian government unexpectedly pulled back from the deal.

Clarifying India’s position, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, claimed immediately afterwards that the bilateral trade agreement would remain on hold unless the US offered India “some competitive advantage over what is being given to countries like Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other neighbouring countries”.

This about turn was surprising given India’s long-standing enthusiasm to clinch the deal with its second-largest trading partner.

Negotiations began in early 2025 following political endorsement from the leaders of both nations, who launched “Mission 500” to double total bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. The bilateral trade agreement was to be the primary catalyst. Initially, both governments agreed that the first tranche of this multi-sector trade deal would be ready by the Fall of 2025.

This timeline proved overly ambitious for two primary reasons.

The “America First” Mandate of President Donald Trump’s trade policy explicitly stated he would “negotiate agreements on a bilateral or sector-specific basis to obtain export market access for American workers, farmers, ranchers, service providers”. This signaled that the US would prioritise its own stakeholders without guaranteeing reciprocal advantages to partner countries.

And, then there were tariff disputes between India and the US. President Trump repeatedly targeted India for maintaining high tariffs and enjoying a trade surplus with the US. It seemed, therefore, that the bilateral trade agreement was being envisioned as a mechanism for the US to extract market access concessions from India, particularly within its protected agricultural sector.

Interim agreement

Although the original deadline was missed, the two nations announced a framework for an “Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade” in early February. The Indian government enthusiastically hailed this as a “landmark trade victory” that unlocked the “$30-trillion US market for exports across key sectors”.

But this optimism did not match the actual terms of the framework.

India had agreed to eliminate or reduce tariffs on all US industrial goods as well as a wide range of agricultural products, but the US secured the right to apply a reciprocal tariff rate of 18% on originating Indian goods. By accepting these asymmetric terms, India was, in effect, opening its sensitive sectors even though the US could increase tariffs on Indian exports seven-fold, compared to July 2025 levels.

President Trump announced at the same time that India had committed to halting direct or indirect imports of Russian oil. In exchange, he said, the US had agreed to remove the 25% ad valorem duty it had imposed on India in August 2025 over these very oil imports.

For India, halting Russian oil imports represented a major geopolitical shift, considering Russia’s decades-long role as a dependable strategic partner.

The framework was quickly turned upside down when the US Supreme Court ruled that President Trump did not have the authority to impose “reciprocal tariffs” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This knocked the bottom out of the Trump administration’s trade unilateralism as it was ths act under which high tariffs were levied on 57 countries in April 2025.

The US Supreme Court ruling forced, therefore, both the Indian and US governments back to the drawing board.

India’s initial acceptance of the lopsided February deal remains difficult to parse. Its subsequent refusal to finalise the bilateral trade agreement, however, stems from sudden and new US provocations. Within weeks of the Supreme Court ruling, the Trump Administration initiated two separate investigations under Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974, which grants the United States Trade Representative unilateral tariff authority to investigate and take unilateral tariff actions against other countries it trades with.

Two investigations

In the first investigation, the United States Trade Representative is examining 60 trade partners for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour. India is among the 54 countries facing the prospects of additional import duties of 10%.

The second United States Trade Representative investigation is for determining structural excess capacity of the countries it trades with. Sixteen of them are being targeted for manufacturing overcapacity across 22 sectors. In India, seven sectors are targeted – including broad categories such as construction goods – meaning that any subsequent duties could broadly depress exports to its largest trading partner, the US.

Unlike the first investigation, the United States Trade Representative has not as yet specified the duty rates it intends to impose. For decades, governments have been forging bilateral trade agreements to provide a transparent and predictable trading environment to their businesses. The Trump Administration is clearly an exception in this regard; its trade dealings have been anything but predictable.

Given this situation, the Indian government faces some hard choices while continuing to negotiate the bilateral trade agreement. Surely, it would not like to be left in a situation where the US, after extracting all the concessions it is seeking, uses unilateral measures like Section 301 to deny benefits to Indian businesses.

Biswajit Dhar is Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Two persons have been arrested in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district in connection with the killing of six Naga civilians who had been abducted on May 13. Their bodies were recovered from the vicinity of the Leilon Vaiphei village on June 10.

Days later, Kuki-Zo Council chairman Henlienthang Thanglet said that the community had “made a grave mistake in killing the six Naga civilians” and apologised. The council soon clarified that the remarks had been “misconstrued as an admission of responsibility by the Kuki-Zo community”.

The developments came amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7. Read on.

Naga-Kuki strife began with a drunken brawl. But five months later, Manipur fault lines run deeper, reports Rokibuz Zaman

E20 petrol is “cleaner and superior” than fuel variants that do not have ethanol blended in them, the Union government said on Friday. The statement came in the wake of vehicle owners complaining that the fuel mix was reducing mileage and damaging cars.

“It is true” that fuel economy in some vehicles may be reduced by 3% to 5%, said the government, but added that “mileage is only one parameter”.

It added that the suggestion that petrol not blended with ethanol and E10 should be available at fuel stations alongside E20 “ignores the realities” of India’s fuel distribution network. Read on.

Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that she and senior members of her Awami League plan to return to the country from India around December. Hasina, who fled to Delhi in August 2024 amid widespread protests against her government, said that she will surrender to a court.

“They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” Reuters quoted Hasina as saying. “Still, I have to go.”

Hasina faces a death sentence in Bangladesh. Dhaka has repeatedly demanded that Hasina be extradited. In December, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wanted to return to Bangladesh. Read on.

On his first visit to Karur since the September stampede that killed 41 persons at his rally, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay blamed the police for neither alerting him about the increasing crowd at the site nor taking steps to cancel the event. “The police have all the right to cancel the meeting,” he added. “Without doing so, the police escorted us on the highway.”

Meanwhile, the Madras High Court allowed the state to give government jobs to the families of those who were killed in the stampede. The appointments would be temporary and subject to judicial review, the bench added.

The first information report into the stampede had alleged that while permission had been granted for 10,000 attendees, more than 25,000 persons gathered at the venue. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court directed Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee to provide his voice sample in a case related to the remarks he made during the Assembly elections. While campaigning for the polls, Banerjee had said that after the votes were counted, the DJs would play loud music that would make “ears ring”, in an alleged reference to political violence.

The TMC leader’s counsel submitted in court that Banerjee was not disputing the authenticity of the alleged voice recording. However, the court observed that the admission did not absolve him of the obligation to cooperate with the investigation. Read on.

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Two persons have been arrested in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district in connection with the killing of six Naga villagers, the police said on Friday.

In a social media post, the police said a joint team of the Manipur Police, National Investigation Agency and Central Reserve Police Force carried out an operation on the “basis of credible inputs from our own sources”.

The two arrested persons were identified as Pradip, and Ayingbi, both residents of Leilon Vaiphei village in Kangpokpi.

The case relates to the killing of six Naga persons in Leilon Vaiphei village after their abduction on May 13.

Their bodies were recovered from the vicinity of the village on June 10, leading to protests by Naga and Meitei groups demanding the arrest of those responsible, PTI reported.

Days after the bodies were found, Kuki-Zo Council chairman Henlienthang Thanglet apologised for the incident and called for an impartial investigation into all acts of violence linked to the ethnic conflict in Manipur.

“I admit the Kuki-Zo people made a grave mistake in killing the six Naga civilians. It was done out of emotion,” he said. “I strongly condemn it. I am very sorry and apologise on behalf of my people.”

After the bodies were discovered, Naga groups blocked routes to Kangpokpi district, resulting in a rise in the prices of essential commodities in the Kuki-Zo-majority district, the news agency reported.

A day later, the Kuki-Zo Council clarified that parts of Thanglet’s remarks had been “misconstrued as an admission of responsibility by the Kuki-Zo community”.

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

Ethnic clashes had first broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. At least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced since then in the conflict.

Biren Singh had stepped down as the chief minister in February 2025 amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

After he resigned, Manipur was under President’s Rule for a year until Yumnam Khemchand Singh took oath as chief minister on February 4.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Naga-Kuki strife began with a drunken brawl. But five months later, Manipur fault lines run deeper

A series of botched-up exams have once again put the spotlight on the Narendra Modi government’s failure to manage and regulate India’s higher education system. For weeks, protestors have been demanding the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

On social media, many have pointed out that until recently Pradhan’s daughter Naimisha was enrolled in an American university. As one user argued: “While political leaders can afford to send their children abroad for quality education, millions of Indian students are left battling a system plagued by paper leaks, recruitment scams, delayed results, and lack of accountability.”

But Pradhan’s daughter is not the only one. Scroll analysed publicly available information about the children of India’s cabinet rank ministers. Of the 21 children aged between 18 and 35 for whom information was available, 15 have a foreign degree or are currently studying in foreign universities, and one studied in India, while the educational background of five is not known. The age group was chosen since those within it are most likely to have been in college and university since 2014, after the Narendra Modi government came to power.

For instance, Arjun Jaishankar, the youngest child of S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, graduated in 2021, with a bachelor of arts degree from New York University. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s daughter Vangmayi Parakala obtained a master of arts degree from Medill School in Illinois’s Northwestern University.

Both the children of commerce minister Piyush Goyal completed their undergraduate and post graduate degrees abroad. His son, Dhruv Goyal, completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Harvard University and his daughter, Radhika Goyal, completed both her degrees from Oxford, and then earned a PhD from the University of San Diego.

Similarly, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s two children, Tanya and Rahul, have both studied in the United Kingdom.

“The fact that ministers send their children abroad shows the apathy that they have for the education system here,” said Niranjanaradhya VP, an education activist from Karnataka. “Those who can afford it will send their children abroad, but what are we doing to improve the system here? That’s a question that we need an answer to right now.”

More Indian students abroad

The choice of many ministers’ children to study abroad is in keeping with a larger trend in higher education in India. Even as chaos has unfolded around India’s entrance exams in recent years, an increasing number of students have enrolled to study at foreign universities.

This number has risen more or less steadily over the past few decades. In 2001, 2.2 million students left India to study abroad. By 2011, this number stood at 4 million, and by 2022, it had reached 6.9 million.

“People have lost trust in the exam system and the job market. Paper leaks every year, why will anyone have trust?” said Anil Kumar Roy, an education activist based in Bihar. “This is what is pushing so many students to go abroad to study.”

Concurrently, the number of international students choosing to study in India has plateaued or fallen in recent years. In 2000-’01, around 6,900 international students travelled to India to study. By 2013-’14, this number had risen to 39,517. Through those years, the number of international students travelling to India to study grew steadily, nearly doubling in some years.

Since 2014, however, the annual growth in this number has never crossed 10%.

Roy said that institutions were struggling without funds. “Funds are being cut for libraries, laboratories and research, why would students want to study here?” he said. “For all the talk of being a vishwaguru, the country is not willing to fund science and research.”

Publicly available information

Scroll looked through a range of public sources to identify the number, age, and educational background of the children of India’s 30 cabinet ministers. These included government websites, social media accounts, personal websites, corporate websites, LinkedIn pages and news reports.

Three ministers – Manohar Lal Khattar, Sarbananda Sonowal and Chirag Paswan – are unmarried and do not have children. Some ministers have young children. Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, for instance, has two children below the age of six. Kiren Rijiju also has two children who are still in school.

In the case of nine ministers, like Rajiv Rajan Singh, minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying; Jual Oram, minister of tribal affairs; and Mansukh Mandavi, minister of labour and employment, there was little or no information available online about their children’s ages, educational qualifications or places of study.

Among the other ministers whose children aged 35 or less have studied abroad are the minister of agriculture and farmers welfare, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. His elder son, Kartikeya Chouhan, graduated in 2023 with a masters of law from the University of Pennsylvania. His younger son, Kunal Chouhan, obtained an undergraduate degree at New York University in 2016.

JP Nadda, the minister for health and family welfare, has a son, Harish Nadda, who graduated from the University of London in 2019 with a masters in law.

The children of Jyotiraditya Scindia, minister of communication, also studied abroad. His daughter, Ananya Raje, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2024 and his son, Mahanaaryaman Scindia, graduated from Yale in 2019.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju’s eldest son is currently pursuing a bachelor of arts in a university in the United Kingdom. Suhasini Shekhawat, daughter of the tourism minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, obtained a diploma in advanced leadership from Oxford. The environment and forest minister Bhupender Yadav’s daughter obtained a degree from Parsons College in 2021.

Reflecting on this trend, Roy said, “Ministers only send their children abroad because they don’t trust the system themselves.”

Scroll emailed the ministers whose children have studied abroad, asking them about this criticism. After this report was published, Dharmendra Pradhan’s office responded that while his daughter Naimisha was enrolled in an LLB programme in OP Jindal Global University, she “qualified for a exchange programme, which enabled her to pursue an LL.M. programme at Tufts University, United States for a period of 1 year”. This report will be updated if there are any further responses.

Near the bus stand in Ranchi, Jharkhand, lies an informal settlement built by blind people. Called Andhra basti – the colony of the blind – it is an oasis for its residents in an otherwise chaotic city.

Living together, they say, has given them strength to face the vagaries of life. But their solidarity now stands threatened by an expansion of the bus stand.

Also read: How the blind built a place of their own in Ranchi

The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee to provide his voice sample in a case related to the remarks he made during the Assembly elections, Bar and Bench reported.

While campaigning for the polls, Banerjee had said that after the votes were counted, the DJs would play loud music that would make “ears ring”, the legal news outlet reported. This was allegedly a reference to political violence.

A voter filed a complaint alleging that his remark was intimidating and provocative.

On May 21, the High Court restrained the police from taking coercive action against Banerjee until July 31, while stating that the protection was conditional upon his cooperation with the investigation.

A trial court later allowed the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department to collect his voice sample. Banerjee challenged this order before the High Court. He has already been questioned by the agency in the case.

On Friday, while hearing Banerjee’s petition seeking an exemption from providing his voice sample, Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya noted that the High Court’s May 21 order was subject to his cooperation.

The judge criticised Banerjee for failing to comply with that condition and described the petition as “an abuse of due process of court”.

The TMC leader’s counsel submitted in court that Banerjee was not disputing the authenticity of the alleged voice recording.

However, the court observed that the admission did not absolve him of the obligation to cooperate with the investigation.

Towards the end of the hearing, Banerjee’s counsel stated that the TMC leader was willing to appear before the investigating agency if he was provided protection.

“Protect me from egg pelting,” Live Law quoted the counsel as submitting before the court.

The court then directed the police to ensure that Banerjee is not harassed or eggs are thrown at him when he appears before the authorities.

Several TMC leaders have been attacked since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in West Bengal on May 4.

Banerjee was attacked by a mob with eggs and stones during a visit to Sonarpur on May 30.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

E20 petrol is “cleaner and superior” than fuel variants that do not have ethanol blended in them, the Union government said on Friday. The statement came in the wake of vehicle owners complaining that the fuel mix was reducing mileage and damaging cars.

The E20 variant of petrol, which has 20% ethanol, is a “safe, cleaner, proven and scientifically validated fuel that Indian consumers can use with confidence”, said the Ministry of Petroleum.

Its quality, safety and compatibility had been validated by automobile manufacturers, testing and homologation agencies, oil marketing companies, and regulatory authorities, the ministry added.

The Ethanol Blended Petrol programme currently mandates the sale of petrol blended with 20% ethanol. India hit its target of reaching a 20% ethanol mix in petrol in July 2025, five years ahead of schedule.

The blending of ethanol with petrol is part of India’s broader energy transition strategy aimed at reducing dependency on fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting income for sugarcane farmers.

Fuel choice demand ‘ignores realities’, says Centre

On Friday, the government also said that the suggestion that petrol not blended with ethanol and E10 should be available at fuel stations alongside E20 “ignores the realities” of India’s fuel distribution network.

There are more than one lakh petrol pumps, besides a network of refineries, terminals, depots and pipelines, said the ministry.

“Maintaining multiple grades of base petrol across this vast supply chain would create an enormous logistical challenge, increase handling costs, complicate inventory management and reduce operational efficiency,” it added.

The Centre also said that while premium fuels are often cited as an example of simultaneous sale, they are “niche products sold in limited quantities” and “not separate nationwide base fuel streams”.

“It is true” that fuel economy in some vehicles may be reduced by 3% to 5%, said the government, adding that “mileage is only one parameter”.

It said that automobile maker Maruti Suzuki had serviced 2.8 crore vehicles in the financial year 2025-’26 that included 1.5 crore older non-E20-certified vehicles. The company reported no E20-linked corrosion, abnormal wear or component-life damage, the ministry claimed.

“This real-world evidence is far more reliable than isolated anecdotes,” it added.

The statement came soon after Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari told The Indian Express that while the average mileage of vehicles may have marginally reduced because of blending petrol with ethanol, the claims made online about damage to cars are “overblown” and part of a “false narrative”.

Consumer complaints

Consumers have complained that the new fuel mix damages engines and reduces their mileage.

An opinion poll by LocalCircles published on Sunday showed that 53% of the surveyed petrol vehicle owners said that they believe that the government’s handling of the E20 rollout was “disastrous” or “ineffective”.

Sixty-six percent of the respondents said that they were experiencing a more than 10% drop in mileage with E20. Forty-five percent of the surveyed users said that their cars had suffered a moderate to major increase in wear and tear, or needed repairs, according to the polling conducted in June.

A report in October, which analysed government and industry data, said that only about 20% of new petrol vehicles sold in India in the last 15 years were compliant with the E20 fuel blend.

On December 11, Gadkari told Parliament that the government had tested older vehicles running on E20 fuel and found no case of engine failure. The vehicles covered almost 1 lakh km in the tests conducted by the automotive research association, the minister said.

Gadkari had added at the time that the research association had observed “no impact” of E20 fuel on the vehicles’ performance, startability, driveability and metal capability.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay, on his first visit to Karur since the September stampede that killed 41 persons at his rally, on Friday blamed the police for neither alerting him about the increasing crowd at the site, nor taking steps to cancel the event, PTI reported.

The stampede took place on September 27 after Vijay’s rally in the district when he was addressing supporters from his campaign vehicle. The first information report alleged that while permission had been granted for 10,000 attendees, more than 25,000 persons gathered at the venue. The Supreme Court had ordered an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the stampede in October.

Addressing a public meeting in Karur, Vijay said on Friday that the deaths had deeply pained him.

“The police could have alerted us that the crowd was swelling and became unmanageable to control,” PTI quoted the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam leader as saying. “The police have all the right to cancel the meeting. Without doing so, the police escorted us on the highway.”

Vijay added that he had fully trusted the police. “Who is responsible for this?” the news agency quoted him as having asked. “Under whose instructions was all this done?”

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was in power in the state at the time. In May, the TVK emerged as the single-largest party in the Assembly elections and Vijay became the chief minister.

On Thursday, Vijay also announced that his party will construct a memorial for those who died in the stampede, PTI reported.

HC nod for jobs to victims’ families

The Madras High Court on Friday allowed the TVK-led government to give government jobs to the families of those who were killed in the stampede, Live Law reported. The appointments would be temporary and subject to judicial review, the bench added.

It also asked the member secretary of the Public Service Commission to file a report with respect to the guidelines to be followed while making the compassionate appointments and whether such guidelines were followed in the present case, the legal news outlet reported.

The court made the observations in a plea filed by a lawyer from Madurai.

The petitioner submitted that there is no uniform policy for providing permanent government employment in such cases of tragedy. He also contended that when government employment is provided in connection with one incident, it would raise concerns related to the constitutional rights of equality and equal opportunity.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Maharashtra has formed a seven-member committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai to prepare a draft for the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code in the state, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the Assembly on Thursday.

Desai also headed the panels that drafted Uniform Civil Codes for Uttarakhand and Gujarat.

The committee is expected to submit its report within six months, as the government is planning to introduce the draft legislation in the Winter Session of the Assembly, Fadnavis said.

The other members of the panel are former Bombay High Court judges RC Chavan and SG Mehare, former state Chief Secretary DK Jain, former Advocate General Virendra Saraf, constitutional expert Ramesh Patange and educationist Suvarna Rawal.

The Uniform Civil Code aims to introduce a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

It has long been on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda to implement a common personal law and several states ruled by the party have made progress towards achieving the goal.

In January 2025, BJP-ruled Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after independence. The Gujarat Assembly cleared a similar legislation in March amid protests by the Opposition.

The Assam Assembly on May 27 passed the Uniform Civil Code bill seeking to ban polygamy and make the registration of live-in relationships compulsory. The Opposition had demanded that the bill should be sent to a select committee for scrutiny.

A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

The Allahabad High Court earlier this week declined to entertain a public interest litigation seeking directions to prevent the Uttar Pradesh Police from allegedly interfering with the peaceful display of portraits of Islamic religious leaders, including former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on private properties.

The petition, filed by Islamic organisation Majlis Ulema-E-Hind, sought directions to district police chiefs, superintendents of police and station house officers across Uttar Pradesh to refrain from taking coercive action or detaining persons for peacefully displaying portraits of Shia religious leaders during mourning gatherings.

It also sought directions to restrain the police from removing or interfering with portraits, banners or visual representations of the religious leaders on private residential and commercial properties.

However, on Tuesday, a division bench of Justices Rajan Roy and Manjive Shukla declined to grant the relief, observing that the petition contained only “vague and general” allegations. The bench said that the petitioners only made “general and vague averments” about alleged police interference.

The bench noted that the petition did not identify any specific house or premises where posters had allegedly been displayed or removed.

The court added that if any individual had a specific grievance against a police officer, they could pursue legal remedies.

Khamenei served as Iran’s Supreme Leader from 1989 until he was killed in a joint United States-Israel military strike on February 28. He controlled all branches of the Iranian government and the armed forces.

He was considered a significant figure among Muslims from the Shia community.

After his funeral was delayed because of the conflict in West Asia that followed the strikes, he was buried on Thursday at the Imam Reza shrine in his hometown of Mashhad after a week of funeral processions and mourning ceremonies, Al Jazeera reported.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Mhatre was arrested on Friday for allegedly assaulting doctors and staff at a hospital in Dombivli, The Indian Express reported.

He had surrendered to the police on Wednesday but was taken to hospital after he complained of health problems. After being discharged, he was taken into police custody.

The assault took place at the Shastri Nagar Hospital on Monday after doctors asked the family of a pregnant woman to transfer her to another hospital because there were no beds available in the neonatal intensive care unit, which the newborn was expected to require.

The family contacted Mhatre, a municipal corporator from the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who arrived at the hospital with his supporters, according to the police.

Surveillance camera footage shared on social media showed the corporator and his associates punching and slapping the hospital staff.

Mhatre had been absconding till Wednesday. Three of his associates had been arrested earlier.

The police have registered a case against Mhatre and his associates under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to assaulting a public servant, voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation, unlawful assembly and rioting.

They were also booked under the Maharashtra Medicare Service Persons and Medicare Service Institutions Prevention of Violence and Damage or Loss to Property Act.

Mhatre has denied assaulting a woman doctor. He said that he had only tried to take her mobile phone while she was speaking on it during a discussion about the patient’s condition.

On Tuesday, the doctor who was assaulted resigned, saying that he does not feel safe returning to work. The 26-year-old resident medical officer at the hospital operated by the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation said he had left the city after receiving threats and would “never go back”.

“I have resigned because there is a lot of fear,” he told NDTV. “Goons are watching us, and I have already left the city. They are very dangerous people. The other doctors may continue working there, but I cannot.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah on Thursday urged leaders across political lines to join a peaceful protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on the opening day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, demanding that statehood for Jammu and Kashmir be restored.

The Monsoon Session of Parliament will be held from July 20 to August 13.

Among the leaders to whom Abdullah addressed the letter were Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

The Jammu & Kashmir National Conference President, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, has reached out to political parties across Jammu & Kashmir and leaders from across the country, inviting them to join our peaceful, democratic protest at Jantar Mantar on the opening day of the Monsoon… pic.twitter.com/rSW7HSvESL

— JKNC (@JKNC_) July 9, 2026

Abdullah questioned why the Union government has offered “no timeline” for when statehood will be restored to Jammu and Kashmir.

“This is not merely a delay,” he wrote. “It is an affront to the democratic will of an entire people.”

The National Conference chief remarked that what is at stake is “not merely the sentiment or the status of the people of Jammu and Kashmir alone”.

“The manner in which our State – once a constitutional entity with its own Assembly, its own government, its own identity – has been reduced and held in administrative subordination strikes at the very root of our federal polity,” Abdullah said.

On August 5, 2019, Article 370 of the Constitution – which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir – was abrogated and the erstwhile state was split into two Union Territories: Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.

The Supreme Court, in December 2023, upheld the validity of the 2019 order abrogating Article 370 and ordered the Centre to restore statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.

In October, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that statehood to Jammu and Kashmir will be restored at an “appropriate time” after discussions are held with political stakeholders.

The home minister claimed that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir has significantly improved since the abrogation of Article 370, stating that the Union Territory has taken a “complete U-turn”, highlighting that only one Indian resident had been recruited by terrorist groups over the past nine months.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

Ramachandra Guha: It is time for India to redeem its betrayed promises to Jammu and Kashmir

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday said that information about population growth in border areas caused by “abnormal factors” such as alleged undocumented migration should be communicated from the local to the highest level as quicky as possible.

“The Modi government is committed to curb unnatural demographic growth caused by abnormal factors with a ruthless approach,” Shah said at the Land Border Districts’ Superintendents of Police Conference in Delhi.

He said that the Demography Mission had been set up to study changes to the population, identify factors contributing to such shifts and recommend measures to prevent them.

“The primary cause of demographic changes in border areas is infiltration,” Shah said. “To make border security impenetrable, the Modi government has created a quadrangular security grid, transforming India’s approach from reactive to proactive.”

The conference was attended by police officers from 119 border districts, director generals of police of border states, intelligence officials and representatives of forces guarding the border.

“We are creating a robust system to make the country completely infiltration-free and to ensure that infiltration does not happen at all,” Shah said.

He added that the meeting had given an institutional shape to a comprehensive approach towards border security and that a similar approach would be followed for coastal border security.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

For Akla Chamar, owning even a small land parcel meant security.

For two decades, the 80-year-old farmer held on to government documents that identify him to be the “bhu-swami”, or land owner of 2.23 hectares in Dagadkhedi village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district.

One of them is a 4x6 inch land rights and loan booklet that the state revenue department issued in 2001 under a scheme for Adivasi farmers with small landholdings. The other is a notarised land registry document in his name from the same year.

The booklet has the signature of the tehsildar of Bhagwanpura under which Dagadkhedi falls, and carries entries of cooperative bank loans taken by Akla against his land over the years.

Yet, when Akla searches for his details on the land records portal, MP Bhulekh, he draws a blank. The portal allows users to search land records by district, tehsil, village, plot number or the landholder’s name. But the plot, or khasra number, listed in Akla’s documents does not exist on the portal.

Like Akla, around 40 Barela and Bhil Adivasi farmer families in Dagadkhedi village close to the Maharashtra border, face a similar predicament. They possess land rights and loan booklets acknowledging their ownership of land they have cultivated.

But on the land records portal, neither their names nor khasra numbers appear in the village records. This is part of a larger problem with how land records have been digitised in Madhya Pradesh.

In June, Akla and more than 100 residents of Dagadkhedi staged a protest outside the Bhagwanpura tehsil office for nine days demanding corrections in the digital land records of the village. With day-time temperatures crossing 40 degrees celsius, Akla and the others slept outside the office with only a tent for shelter and khichdi as their daily meal.

In response, the administration sent a 12-member team of patwaris, or revenue officials, to conduct a survey and demarcation exercise to determine who was cultivating the land. But the farmers say they want the digital records to reflect that the land is theirs.

For now, the farmers are waiting for the survey to be completed and the government to provide clarity on their land parcels. If the land records are not updated correctly, they will launch another protest.

Digitisation problems

Madhya Pradesh first began digitising its land records in 1999-2000 under the Centre’s land records computerisation programme. The initiative was later incorporated into the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme in 2008, through which the state continued to digitise and update land records in phases. In December 2023, the Union government’s department of land records claimed 99% of all records had been digitised.

It is not clear when Dagadkhedi’s land records went online.

Farmers in the village say they became aware of the digitisation only after the disbursal of government subsidies was linked to having an entry on MP Bhulekh, the state’s land record portal, sometime around 2014.

Until then, they could buy subsidised seeds and fertilisers and take cooperative loans using their land rights and loan booklet, said Subhash Bhai, who cultivates four acres of land and supports a family of seven. He showed his family’s booklet, now yellow with age, which had entries dating back to 1995 and 2013.

After they were unable to find their khasra or plot numbers online, the farmers approached the administration seeking help. Since 2022, they have submitted a letter or representation to the administration almost every six months.

But the matter became more urgent this year when the District Trade Industry Centre, Khargone, applied to allot around 200 acres from Dagadkhedi for an industrial zone under the MP Nazul Nivartan Niyam 2020, which allows the government to assign land classified as state property for commercial use. In February, the tehsildar wrote to the gram panchayat asking for a no-objection certificate before proceeding.

The same month, the Dagadkhedi Gram Sabha voted against the project and passed a resolution demanding its cancellation. The Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996, gives Adivasi communities in Scheduled Areas the right to govern land and natural resources within their jurisdiction. Madhya Pradesh notified its own PESA rules in 2022, after a long delay.

While the proposed industrial zone was to come up on government land, villagers said that the move sparked concern among the community about the status of the neighbouring parcels that they cultivate which are either missing from digital records or classified incorrectly.

“The land is all we have,” said Thebri Bai, Subhash Bhai’s mother. She said she had seen generations of her family farming their land. “If there is any attempt to take our land, it is better to take our lives.”

Subhash Bhai said that the administration should explain why there was a discrepancy despite them holding government-issued land records.“We don’t want to wait any longer, we want clarity,” he said, adding that despite this being the time to prepare fields ahead of the monsoon sowing season, many villagers had left their farms to protest.

The administration, however, said the villagers do not have a claim on the land. Satyendra Bairava, Khargone sub-divisional magistrate, said the land for which the community is protesting has been “government land for the last 100 years”.

“Using the land and treating it as private property is their choice,” he said.

When asked about the ownership records that farmers possessed, he refused to respond. “You can ask the tehsil office to show you the records,” he said.

The tehsildar who was in charge during the protest, Sanjay Chouhan, has been transferred. He refused to comment on the matter. The tehsildar who is to replace him is yet to join duty. This story will be updated if either of them respond.

Nitin, an activist who has been helping Dagadkhedi residents navigate the online records, said one possible explanation for the missing records is that most of the village land was classified as forest land until the 1960s, after which it was transferred to the revenue department. It is possible that the department did not update the records systematically, he said.

The gaps in records

Historically, land records have been poorly maintained in the Adivasi areas of Madhya Pradesh, said Madhuri, a member of the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, a collective that has worked for more than two decades on the rights of Dalit and Adivasi communities in the state.

“Most Adivasi families do not possess complete land records today, even if they once had them,” she said.

Ramesh Sharma, national coordinator at Ekta Parishad, a social movement working on land and forest rights, said a steady weakening of the revenue administration has added to the problems.

Earlier, the basis of land records in Madhya Pradesh was a process called girdawari, he explained. Twice a year, the patwari would visit every field in his jurisdiction, record who was cultivating it and what crop was sown. A farmer’s claim to land was linked to these entries which makes the land records more reliable.

“The girdawari process was stopped in Madhya Pradesh about 20-22 years ago,” Sharma said. The official reasons were lack of funds and staff. “After it stopped, the records were not updated and became easy to manipulate or lose track of,” he added.

He pointed out that the revenue department also no longer regularly updates the atikraman panji, or the encroachment register, which logs instances where land recorded as government property is being cultivated by farmers. Under revenue rules, updating this register would normally lead to regularisation of records on cultivation or other land use of parcels.

The digitisation of land records has further complicated the matter.

Land records became easier to access but digitisation also carried forward existing errors, said Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, founder of Land Conflict Watch, a data research organisation.

He explained that land records are maintained at the tehsil and block level. When paper records were transferred to digital systems, they were uploaded without adequate verification. As a result, mistakes or discrepancies in the original records continued into the digital database.

The activist Nitin, who is also a member of Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, said farmers find it difficult to verify land records on the MP Bhulekh portal.

The portal does not open on mobile phones or laptops easily and accessing it requires a level of digital literacy and stable internet connection that most farmers in Dagadkhedi do not have, he said. Scroll also faced difficulty accessing the portal on several occasions despite using a high-speed internet connection.

Activist Madhuri said the responsibility for maintaining and updating land records lies with the revenue department and not with the Adivasi community.

“If there are discrepancies, the government should produce the khasra registers and other revenue records from the 1970s and 1980s and establish what is on record,” she said. “If the records are inconsistent then a fresh field survey should be conducted in consultation with the Gram Sabha.”

The cost of being left behind

For the farmers of Dagadkhedi, the missing land records are leading to financial loss.

The family of Nan Bhaiya Narla, 45, has farmed land in Dagadkhedi for three generations. He cultivates maize on nine acres, but the family has records for only four.

One kg of maize seeds costs Rs 1,600 in the open market. The same would have cost Rs 600 if Narla could claim the government’s seed subsidy, which he cannot without a valid entry in the state’s digital land records.

Similarly, the government’s minimum support price for maize is Rs 2,410 per quintal, but Narla had to sell his last maize harvest at a nearby mandi for Rs 1,500-Rs 1,600 per quintal.

Nitin, the activist, said a valid khasra entry in the state’s digital land records is a mandatory to avail the minimum support price or crop insurance or the Rs 6,000 annual cash support that the Union government provides farmers under PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi.

For the already marginalised Adivasi community, being excluded from direct cash transfer schemes and agricultural subsidies cuts deep. Most small farmers cultivate on fragmented landholdings, so even small losses add up.

In a good monsoon year, Narla’s household earns around Rs 1.5 lakh. In a bad year, losses can reach Rs 70,000-80,000. Whenever farmer families face large crop losses, members travel to neighbouring Maharashtra for daily wage work to make up the shortfall, Narla said.

“Jo hai usse jod ke hum apne bachchon ko khila rahein hain,” Narla said. “We cobble together whatever we have to feed our children.”

The way out

The Khargone district administration has suggested a way out of the mess in land records. Shivram Kanse, a resident of Dagadkhedi, said officials said that the Adivasi cultivators could seek rights under the Forest Rights Act.

This process would first require the land to be classified as forest land and then converted back to revenue land, with the farmers having to prove their claims once again. Nitin, the activist, said that under Rule 17 of the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, the Dagadkhedi Gram Sabha can directly recommend corrections to existing land records.

Farmers in Dagadkhedi say there are similar problems in land documentation in nearby villages. However, officials refuse to pay attention to the complaints of one or two persons if they go alone, Kanse said.

What worked in their favour was collective action. “They agreed to halt the project and order a survey only because we refused to leave the tehsil office,” said Kanse, referring to the proposed industrial project.

The farmers are now preparing for the sowing season in the fields they have cultivated for decades.

On the night of February 7, a fight broke out between four drunk young men in a small town in Manipur’s Ukhrul district.

Two of them were Tangkhul Nagas, the majority community in Ukhrul. The other two were Kukis.

Typically, a brawl such as this would have been settled by village chiefs from both communities.

But the matter did not end there.

A day later, an abandoned Kuki home in a nearby village was set on fire. In retaliation, about 20 houses belonging to the Tangkhul Naga community were set ablaze.

For two more days, fires scorched villages around Litan, the tiny commercial town where the fight took place. Gunfights broke out. According to police records, seen by Scroll, 74 homes belonging to both communities were set ablaze.

By all accounts, the violence in Litan lit a fire between Kukis and Nagas in a state that has already seen a ‘partition’ on ethnic lines in 2023 after fierce clashes between Kukis and Meiteis left at least 260 dead.

A month after the arson and gunfights in Litan, the killings began.

At first, two Kukis were found in the hills near the town. They had been shot dead. In April, two Naga men were killed on the highway that connects Ukhrul to Imphal via Litan.

In the last six months, the violence between Nagas and Kukis has spread to more hill areas of Manipur, where both tribal groups live in close proximity, leading to a cycle of abductions, revenge killings and economic blockade. At least 25 people have died in the conflict so far. More buffer zones – to demarcate Kuki from Naga areas and vice versa, which neither side is allowed to cross – have come up.

But how did a petty fight in a town cascade into deadly clashes? Why did Nagas, who had been studiously neutral in the conflict between Kukis and Meities, harden their stance against another tribal community?

Scroll travelled to Ukhrul, Imphal, Senapati and Kangpokpi to investigate. We found that from Litan onwards, at the heart of the dispute is a contestation over land and territory.

Senior Manipur police officials and top central security officials called it a “fight of domain” or “jurisdictional control of land” between Kukis and Nagas, who have a history of animosity. What has strained the relationship further is the Kuki demand for a “separate administration” within Manipur and the narrative pushed by both Meiteis and Nagas that “Kukis are not indigenous to the state”.

The Litan brawl

The town of Litan abuts the National Highway-202, a storied mountainous road that runs between Imphal and Nagaland’s Mokokchung, and goes through Ukhrul.

On the night of February 7, two Naga men were walking by a road in Litan, when one of them switched a torch on. The light fell on two Kuki men, in an inebriated condition by the roadside. Tempers flared, an argument started. A group of five Kuki young men then arrived in “support” of the latter and badly beat up one of the Naga men.

That very night, Kuki residents told Scroll, the Naga man, Stalin Shimray, a teacher, went to the Kuki chief of Sereikhong village, where his assailants lived, and reported the violence against him.

Both parties decided to settle the dispute through customary law practices the next day.

“The intention was to solve the problem,” said 39-year-old Wungreikhan Kasar, the village chief of a Naga village Sikibung. “The culprits should have come to the customary court or the victims’ family. But they did not turn up.”

The Kukis, too, accused the Nagas of not turning up.

“On February 8, the Kuki chief and his cabinet waited for the Naga man to turn up,” said Mercy Khongsai, a member of a Kuki civil society group and an office bearer of Kuki Students’ Organisation, Ukhrul. “Definitely, the Kuki man was supposed to be penalised for spilling blood.”

Instead, she alleged, the Sikibung village chief, Kasar, and other Naga people went to the Kuki chief’s home and threatened him.

According to a first information report filed at the Litan police station, when the youths went to the Kuki chief’s home, demanding that the culprits be handed over, the situation escalated.

“This led to pelting of stones against each other,” the FIR read. Clashes and arson followed.

But was this about a drunken brawl in the first place? Scroll’s reporting shows that the Nagas and Kukis in the area have, for decades, been embroiled in a dispute over land.

‘Our forefathers gave them this land’

The Kuki settlement in Litan Sareikhong village, according to Naga accounts, dates to the 1940s.

“They forcibly settled here in the 1940s,” said Kasar, the village chief of Sikibung. The Naga village on top of a hill overlooks the Kuki village of Litan Sareikhong.

The Nagas claim that Sikibung has “jurisdiction” over Sareikhong.

Kasar told Scroll that the Kuki settlement had been evicted by authorities in 1955, but they “settled in a nearby area”. “Even in 1967, a district judge in Imphal had declared that Sareikhong and Litan belong to our village, Sikibung. But the state government did not evict the Kukis.”

In 1973, Kasar said, the Nagas “made a compromise” and signed an agreement allowing Kukis to stay there, if they paid the Nagas Rs 20,000.

“The land was given to them by our forefathers,” said Kasar. “But they breached the agreement.”

The Nagas said that the amount was never paid in full by the Kukis, “making the agreement invalid”. The Kukis deny the claim, saying the settlement was carried out in 1974.

The long-festering dispute came to a head in September 2024, when the Tangkhul Naga Long, the apex body of the community, issued an administration order declaring that Litan comes under the jurisdiction of Sikibung.

A month later, the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the largest and most influential of Naga insurgent groups, also declared that Litan is an “ancestral land of Sikibung since the days of the forefathers”.

The NSCN (I-M) is currently in talks with the Centre for a “sovereign” state of Greater Nagaland encompassing parts of Manipur’s hill districts.

In the backdrop of this disagreement, the fight at Litan was read by the Nagas as an example of Kuki aggression.

“They don’t honour us, the landlords,” said Kasar. “They are the tenants. They are staying at the mercy of Nagas. But they want to dominate us, they don’t want to live under Tangkhuls. They want to evict Nagas from that area in Litan bazaar.”

Lalboi Haokip, who heads the Kuki Students Organisation in Ukhrul, countered the Naga claim. “The dispute at Litan appears to be a completely local disturbance, but the Tangkhul Nagas have expanded it into a full-blown inter-communal conflict,” he said. “Taking advantage of a small incident, the Nagas want us to vacate the Litan area.”

Haokip also claimed that the land belonged to their “ancestors”. “The Ukhrul district does not belong to Tangkhuls only.”

There are around 14 designated Kuki villages in Ukhrul district, he said.

“These villages are duly gazetted and recognised by the government,” Mercy Khongsai, the Kuki Students Organisation member, told Scroll. “This essentially means the ownership of the land belongs to the villagers, not to Tangkhuls,” Mercy said.

Khongsai objected to what she called the dominating behaviour of the Nagas.

“They have a superiority complex,” she said. “They say Kukis should not reply but only listen and be well-behaved in front of the Tangkhuls. They openly said in front of the higher officials during the Litan dispute that the Kukis should know who the real landowners are.”

Kasar, the village chief of Sikibung, however, insisted that the Nagas had to assert their rights if they wanted to stop Kukis from taking over their land.

The fight in Litan was not a small incident, he said. “It is all linked as the Kukis want to expand the territory,” Kasar told Scroll. “They want to dominate the areas and eliminate the Nagas from the Litan area. They want to make it part of a Kuki homeland.”

Competing homelands

For decades, militant groups from each of Manipur’s ethnic groups have fought for their vision of a homeland.

Nagas have fought for Nagalim, a sovereign state that would include Nagaland, Naga-dominated areas of Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam as well as Myanmar. Kukis fought for Kukiland, which covers most of the Manipur hills, and overlaps with the proposed Naga homeland. Meitei militant groups have fought for a sovereign state of Manipur, encompassing the Imphal Valley as well as the hills – which Naga and Kuki groups resented.

The Nagas account for about 20 per cent of Manipur’s total population. Most of them live in the hills surrounding the valley, home largely to the Meiteis, the state’s dominant ethnic group.

The hilly terrain is also home to the Kukis, who constitute the third-largest demographic group in the state. Conflicts between groups have often arisen because of competing claims to land, which emerge from competing histories.

While there were reports of clashes since colonial times, the political demands and armed movements have only made the enmity more hostile and intensified.

In 1993, this Naga-Kuki dispute led to bloody ethnic clashes, which resulted in killings of hundreds, and burning of villages. Thousands of people were turned out of their homes. The violence lasted for five years.

According to Kukis, NSCN (IM) cadres “uprooted” over 350 Kuki villages. Many of the Kukis displaced in those clashes settled in Litan and the area around Sareikhong.

A map, an aspiration

Since the outbreak of ethnic clashes between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar communities in 2023, the Nagas have taken no side.

But the Kuki groups’ growing demand for a separate administration that would span most of the Manipur Hills has made the Nagas anxious.

A senior Naga police official from Manipur told Scroll that Nagas began to get restive after a purported map of Kukiland began to crop up on social media platforms. It included Naga areas like Chandel, Tengnoupal and a huge chunk of Ukhrul district and even Kamjong district.

Scroll could not confirm if this is a map endorsed by the Kuki groups.

“They are claiming so much land belonging to the Nagas as part of the separate administration,” he said. “Because of that aspiration the Nagas feel very threatened.”

The senior Naga police official added: “The Nagas think they need to fight back to protect their traditional land. It [conflict] is basically an issue of jurisdictional control of the land. It is not a drunken or superficial fight. ”

The Naga political leadership in the state agreed.

A Naga MLA told Scroll: “The Kuki people want to establish a separate administration, which will include many Naga areas especially in Kangpokpi, Chandel and Tengnoupal districts. But this is not their own ancestral homeland. That’s the root cause of the present conflict.”

A ‘reasonable demand’

Kuki leaders, however, said that the separate administration they have proposed will encompass only areas with Kuki habitations.

Seilen Haokip, spokesperson of the Kuki National Organisation, said that the Kukis have been demanding a union territory since 2023 because they cannot go back to live under the Imphal valley anymore.

“The Meitei, the majority in Imphal, have chased us out,” he said. “We can’t go back there. We have been forced back to our ancestral lands in those hill districts,” he said.

The KNO, a conglomerate of tribal armed groups, signed a ceasefire – called the suspension of operations or SoO agreement – with the Centre and the state of Manipur in 2008.

Since the 2023 clashes, the KNO is one of two Kuki umbrella groups negotiating with the Centre for a separate Union territory. “We submitted the demand to the Centre during talks on September 1, 2023. We reiterated that same demand in November 2025,” he added. “It’s a continuation. It’s not a new demand.”

The proposed territory would be under Article 239A of the Constitution, which empowers Parliament to create an administrative unit out of geographically fragmented areas, as in the case of Puducherry. “It will be an administrative map comprising areas in the hills of Manipur inhabited by Kukis,” Haokip said.

That map, Haokip said, would include Kuki inhabited areas in Churachandpur, Kangpokpi Pherzawl, Tengnoupal, and Chandel. “But there would be pockets in Ukhrul, Kamjong, Senapati, Tamenglong and Noney. We are not claiming all of those areas, only our inhabited areas.”

He argued that the demand was “reasonable”. “We are reasonable and rational enough not to include Kuki-inhabited areas in Nagaland, Meghalaya, or Tripura,” Haokip said. “We are doing it within the context of present-day Manipur. Unlike the NSCN-IM, we are not asking for territorial integration of all Kuki-inhabited areas. If the government is going to deny us that, then God help us.”

Janghaolun Haokip of Kuki Inpi, apex body of the community in Manipur, said the Centre’s negotiations with Kuki SoO groups have made the Nagas nervous. “These clashes may have been conceived as a way to block a separate administration agreement with the Centre,” he claimed.

The indigenous question

In the conflict, the narrative of Kukis as “unwanted and non-indigenous” and “illegal migrants” has gained strength.

The Naga MLA, for instance, claimed that Kukis are “very recent migrants, they only came around the 1830s”. “They are mostly from Myanmar,” he explained. “[Across the hills], the British would settle one Kuki village between two Naga villages. There were killings and fighting between 1840 and 1917. That sowed the enmity between us.”

Kuki scholars have disputed this. A Delhi-based scholar from the Kuki community pointed out that recent academic research, by historians like J Guite, used “latest genetic studies [to show] that Kukis have roots in the Indian subcontinent stretching to more than a millennia”.

“But figures like Thuingaleng Muivah, the head of the NSCN-IM, have been most successful in framing Kukis [as illegal immigrants] to mobilise and unite Manipur Nagas politically,” the Kuki scholar said. “For him, ‘othering’ the Kukis is instrumental in the construction and consolidation of modern Manipur Naga identity.”

The contestation is not only over history.

An advisor to Manipur Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand, who requested anonymity, alleged “that most of the recent Kuki migration” has happened in the hills and not the Meitei inhabited valley. “Nagas have realised this recently. There is an old anxiety among the Nagas that Kukis are taking away their land and this has been reinforced again.”

However, there is no official data on Kuki migration within the state.

The senior Naga police official added that the current conflict has brought Nagas and Meteis together on one demand – for a National Register of Citizens with 1951 or 1961 as a cut-off date to check “illegal Kuki migrants.”

Political scientist Kham Khan Suan Hausing warned that invoking an arbitrary timeline to determine who is “indigenous” in Manipur “is unconstitutional and only likely to promote violent conflicts”.

‘A long haul’

Five months after that first fight, Litan Bazaar resembles a war zone.

On the morning of June 21, when we reached there, most of the shops were either shut or had been abandoned. Burnt homes and charred two-wheelers, the remnants of the February 7 arson and violence, were strewn around.

Hundreds of central security forces had descended on the town, and were patrolling the area with armoured military vehicles.

In the hills surrounding Litan, Scroll found that bunkers had come up in the villages, where armed Nagas and Kukis took position, their guns trained at each other.

The bridge over the Thoubal river, next to the Litan police station, had been turned into a de facto “border”. No Kuki can travel to Ukhrul beyond this point while Nagas cannot cross the bridge without the escort of security forces.

The Naga MLA alleged that the Litan clashes had been engineered to “extend the boundary of the Kangpopki district”, where the Kukis are in the majority, to Thoubal river right next to the Litan police station.

He pointed out that Kuki armed groups had opened fire at Sanakeithel, a Tangkhul Naga village encircled by at least 11 Kuki villages, along the highway. “They want to eliminate that village to create a passage from Kangpokpi to Ukhrul.”

Lalboi Haokip, from the Kuki Students’ Organisation, countered that Kuki villages in the Litan area have come under heavy fire because Naga armed groups want to wipe out their villages and force all Kukis out of Ukhrul.

Their villages, he said, had been “isolated” and surrounded. The supply of essential commodities was down to a trickle. “The administration has not done anything to make us feel secure,” he said.

A central security official posted in Ukhrul also told Scroll that “the Tangkhuls now want to drive Kukis from the Litan area.”

A senior office bearer of United Naga Council, the apex body of Nagas in Manipur, told Scroll that there “has been increasing pressure on the Naga armed groups to flush out these Kuki villages in Litan”.

“It would take them only a few hours to clear the villages but they are not doing it as they are in a ceasefire agreement with the government and because of the presence of Army and Assam Rifles,” he added, referring to the NSCN(IM).

Both communities told Scroll that they were in it for the long haul.

“This won’t stop soon,” said another security official posted in Litan. “The Kuki-Naga conflict lasted for four-five years in the 1990s. They are prepared for a longer run.”

The Jammu and Kashmir government has directed heads of government and recognised private schools, as well as coaching centres in the Kashmir division, to review all books on their premises for “inappropriate or objectionable content”, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

The Kashmir Directorate of School Education has asked institutions to screen books in libraries, offices, classrooms and staff rooms, including recently acquired titles and older publications, the newspaper quoted the directive as saying.

The heads of institutions have also been instructed to submit certificates to their respective chief or zonal education officers confirming that no book on campus contains any “objectionable material”.

The order issued on Monday, said the screening was intended to ensure that “no book contains inappropriate or objectionable content”.

“This includes material that may violate religious sentiments of any section, be it inappropriate content for students, content against prevailing laws with the potential to harm national interest, affect educational values, and established norms,” it stated.

If any objectionable content is found, heads of institutions have been asked to provide a detailed report including the book’s title, author, publisher, year of publication and the number of copies available, The Indian Express reported.

The information is then to be submitted to the higher authorities for review within seven days.

Chief education officers have also been asked to monitor compliance and submit reports to the Director of School Education by July 19, The Times of India reported.

The directive comes days after the Bharatiya Janata Party protested against the procurement of certain books by government schools, accusing the Union Territory’s National Conference government of promoting “academic jihad”.

The protests followed the withdrawal of two books from school libraries and the suspension of eight officials and termination of a contractual employee over the inclusion of what the government described as “pro-separatist content” in the books.

The withdrawn books, Personalities and Legends of J&K by Hilal Ahmed and Santosh Meena, and Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir by Dr Sushant Giri, were supplied to school libraries under the Samagra Shiksha programme for higher secondary classes.

The police also searched the premises of a publisher linked to one of the books after a first information report was registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, The Indian Express reported.

Several political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir questioned the directive to remove the books and remarked that it amounted to erasing history.

National Conference MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi called the order “deeply troubling”. “Libraries exist to preserve knowledge, not curate political narratives. Erasing books does not erase history; it only impoverishes scholarship,” he wrote in a social media post.

Peoples Democratic Party leader Waheed Para told The Indian Express that the order was an attempt to “rewrite our collective memory”. “This is an attempt to rewrite our collective memory and erase our own history from the curriculum. It promotes selective learning while taking away future generations’ ability to question, think critically, and understand their past.”

He also questioned Jammu and Kashmir’s National Conference government for approving the directive. “We elected a local government to resist such actions and preserve our history,” he remarked. “Sadly, the Directorate of Education, under the elected minister’s authority, has approved and issued this directive.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The authorities in the United States on Tuesday charged Indian police officer Gurinderjit Singh for allegedly extorting $400,000 from a family in Los Angeles by threatening to file false murder cases against their relatives in India.

“I think he actually did file the murder charges against the family in India till the victim eventually agreed to pay the money,” First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli alleged at a press conference.

Essayli said that the police officer was not in custody, “but he will be shortly”. The US will seek the extradition of the officer from India, he added.

While the US authorities described Gurinderjit Singh as a “police chief”, it was unclear where he was posted. Singh is reportedly a station house officer in Punjab.

The US federal indictments alleged that he colluded with members of an organised crime group led by Jaggu Bhagwanpuria to target perceived rivals with threats of false cases and demands for money, The Tribune reported.

The indictment alleges that in April, a California-based member of the Bhagwanpuria syndicate named Gurlal Singh threatened a victim in the United States before passing on the person’s details to a “corrupt law enforcement officer” in Punjab.

Gurinderjit Singh allegedly implicated the victim, as well as the victim’s father and sister in a murder case in Punjab in connection with the killing of a person in January, The Tribune reported.

Gurinderjit Singh claimed that he had no idea why he was named, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

He was shifted to the Police Lines in Hoshiarpur and an inquiry has been ordered against him, the newspaper reported.

FBI announces three indictments charging 37 in an international organized crime operation based in India: "These criminal organizations have engaged in widespread violence including targeted killings, extortions and kidnappings." pic.twitter.com/2oc9HR7vlm

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2026

Crackdown on Indian gangs

Gurinderjit Singh is among 37 defendants charged for organised crimes in three indictments unsealed on Tuesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said. The charges are part of an action against India-based transnational gangs.

Those charged include gangsters Lawrence Bishnoi and Goldy Brar for organised crimes and ordering the 2023 killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

Bishnoi is in a Gujarat jail awaiting trial in several cases. Brar, whose real name is Satinderjeet Singh, is absconding.

The US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of Brar. He is a designated terrorist in India under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Those charged in the US include two “who ran their global criminal syndicates while imprisoned” in India, the federal authorities stated.

The law enforcement agencies in the US, Canada and Europe arrested 24 persons allegedly linked to three India-based transnational organised crime groups, the authorities said. Eleven of them were arrested in California, and one each in Indiana and the state of Georgia.

Apart from those arrested in the US three defendants were held in Canada and one defendant in Spain. Seven defendants were already in custody.

The agencies are looking for 10 fugitives, seven of whom are in the US, two in India and one in Europe, the attorney’s office said.

The persons have been charged with several criminal acts.

The arrests on Tuesday – codenamed “Operation Hard Ball” – followed a years-long federal investigation into Indian crime syndicates, the attorney’s office said.

The groups are alleged to be involved in racketeering, targeted killings, shootings, extortion and the smuggling of narcotics, among other crimes “whose impact is especially felt in the Indian diaspora”.

During the investigation, the agencies seized about 1,000 kg of cocaine, 1 kg of heroin, $40,000 in cash and a dozen firearms.

Indian High Commissioner to Canada Dinesh Patnaik welcomed the charges and arrests, telling The Globe and Mail that New Delhi had been asking for North American countries to crack down on transnational gangs.

“For a long time, there was a feeling in India that the countries in North America have been turning a blind eye, but the very fact that now you’re taking action and the Americans are taking action is good news,” Patnaik was quoted as saying.

Asked whether New Delhi would extradite Bishnoi and others to the US, the diplomat told the newspaper that the Indian courts would decide once Washington submits formal requests.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Tamil Nadu chief minister and actor Vijay’s Jana Nayagan film has been cleared for release after the Central Board of Film Certification awarded the film an “A” (suitable for adults only) certificate, ending a months-long certification process that delayed its theatrical release, Scroll has learnt.

Jana Nayagan was originally scheduled for release on January 9, ahead of Tamil Nadu’s harvest festival, Pongal

It was submitted to the Central Board of Film Certification on December 19, which requested several changes. According to reports, after the makers implemented the modifications suggested by the examining committee, Jana Nayagan was initially considered suitable for a “U/A” certificate.

A U/A certificate allows children below the age of 12 to watch a film under parental guidance.

However, the certification process reportedly stalled when a committee member raised an internal objection, claiming certain scenes could hurt public sentiments, leaving the film without the censor certificate required for its release in India, PTI reported.

The film is now due to be released worldwide on July 24, the producers told The Indian Express.

Directed by H Vinoth and produced by KVN Productions, Jana Nayagan stars Vijay as a former police officer who becomes a vigilante and takes on a criminal played by actor Bobby Deol.

The cast also includes actors Pooja Hegde, Mamitha Baiju, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Prakash Raj, Narain and Priyamani.

The film had been widely described as Vijay’s final film before entering full-time politics. However, it will now be released after he has already taken office as Tamil Nadu’s chief minister.

On January 6, KVN Productions approached the Madras High Court, seeking directions to expedite the certification process.

After nearly a month of legal proceedings, including a hearing before the Supreme Court, the producers withdrew their petition and instead chose to present the film to the censor board’s revising committee.

While the certification dispute continued, an unfinished high-definition version of the film was leaked online in April, The Indian Express reported.

During subsequent proceedings before the Madras High Court, prosecutors said the pirated copy had been viewed nearly 1.2 crore times before access was blocked, The Indian Express reported.

The Tamil Nadu Police later arrested several persons in connection with the leak, including a freelance film editor who allegedly obtained the footage from an editing website.

On July 2, the Madras High Court refused bail to two of the accused, citing the seriousness of the allegations and the continuing investigation, The Indian Express reported.

The prosecution also told the court that two suspects were still absconding and that their arrest was important to trace the financial transactions linked to the alleged piracy network.

Inputs from Nandini Ramnath. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

When I watched Main Vaapas Aaunga with school friends recently, it felt almost as if my ancestors were asking me to come back home to Lahore.

A young couple sitting next to me were asking one another whether the story was based on fact or fiction. My answer to them: regardless of the details, the movie did capture the texture of some lives affected by Partition, such as those of my father and mother.

In many ways my parents’ story is quite different from that of Keenu and Afsan in the film. Unlike Keenu and Afsan, they were able to find a life together after Partition. They were both Hindu. And neither of them expressed a wish to return to the Lahore they had grown up in.

For my mother it was fear; for my father it would be like visiting a ghost.

But there were other resonances. Like Keenu, my mother developed severe dementia late in life, and in that phase, she became lost in Lahore. One day she looked really busy. I asked her what she was doing. She said, “I have a lot of work to do. Everything is all over the place. Taji’s clothes have to be put back in the cupboard”. (The family always referred to her father as Taji, short for Pitaji.)

A few days later she said, “Are you coming with me to Lahore?” I tried to explain that she needed a visa. She got really upset. “You are always so negative,” she said. “I am driving with William [her driver] to Lahore. I will go alone if you don’t want to come.”

Some months later, I told her I was going shopping for a sofa. “Don’t buy one. I have one at home,” she said. “You can take it.” The sofa she had in mind had been left behind in Rattigan Road more than 60 years ago.

Alok Sarin, our wonderful psychiatrist, told us that we should not contradict her. She died in June 2019 with memories of Lahore firmly etched in her mind.

My mother was a grandchild of the well-known public figure, Professor Ruchi Ram Sahni and grew up in a large compound on 22 Rattigan Road, adjoining Bradlaugh Hall. By June 1947, her uncles had persuaded Ruchi Ram Sahni to leave for Bombay. As a result only her family was left in the large compound.

Every day vehicles full of young people shouting “Pakistan leke rahenge” and “Allah o Akbar” passed on the streets. We will take Pakistan. God is Great.

This would be followed by saffron-clothed mobs shouting “Har Har Mahadev”, hail Lord Shiva.

She used to tell us how frightening it was to be living in Lahore those days, watching the city burn from their roof-top, not knowing who had left, who was still around and who had died.

At night, she and her older brother would keep vigil on the roof. The lights would be switched off and they could hear armed people moving around the compound.

My mother’s father was a small-time journalist and editor, not a very successful one at that – he had to keep selling family jewelry to run his printing press. When my Nani pressed him to leave Lahore like her other relatives, he refused.

“Where will we go?” he retorted. “I have a printing press. We can’t carry it with us to India. In any case, Hindus have lived under Mughal rule for centuries. We can also continue to live in Lahore under Muslim rule. The Sikhs have been living in Afghanistan for generations and they seem to be fine.”

One day my mother was warned in college by her Muslim classmates that her father was on a “hit list” and should leave Lahore immediately. She never forgave herself for not passing on this message to him. He was apparently a target because of his efforts to persuade his Hindu friends to stay on.

On August 14, 1947, as he was returning home for lunch, he was stabbed by a mob just outside his house. He cried out, “Marra gaya, marra gaya.” I have been hit.

My mother and her older brother rushed to the gate, where they saw him die before their eyes. They could not reach him because they were pushed back by the crowd that had gathered on the busy road. Later they were told that some workers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had picked up the body and had performed his last rites.

The family jumped over the broken wall into the compound of Bradlaugh Hall where they were rescued by some army personnel.

The family was lucky to escape to Ferozepur, and then to Lucknow, where they stayed in the house of her uncle, the scientist Birbal Sahni. My mother was almost 20.

My father had seen my mother at a wedding in Lahore and decided that he was going to marry her. But they belonged to different castes. His father, a senior government official, wanted his son to marry a woman from a wealthy family, since he himself was a self-made man. When he learnt about this budding romance, he got my father a job in Simla, hoping that he would forget my mother.

The day before my father was to leave for Simla, he took the bold step of visiting my mother at her home and gifting her a book of love poems by Omar Khayyam. Mum was too scared to accept a gift from a man, largely because her own father would have been very upset at this. But they promised to stay in touch.

But then came Partition and my father could not go back to Lahore. His father, meanwhile, was comfortably placed in Delhi in a huge property, which is now the Iranian Cultural Centre.

In Simla, my father learnt about the killing of my mother’s father from The Times of India, but had no news about the others. He left immediately for Delhi, hoping to find my mother.

Every evening after work, he would make the rounds of Connaught Place, hoping to meet someone who could give him news. Then one day by chance he bumped into Mum’s older brother and learnt the story of their escape from Lahore to Ferozepur. (Mum used to tell us that it was the worst monsoon she had ever experienced; the rivulets they could see were red with the blood of dead refugees.)

Dad was desperate to meet my mum. Knowing that his father would not give him money for the train ticket, he sold his watch and landed up in Lucknow, where they had moved from Ferozepur. It was winter and bitterly cold, and she had no warm clothes.

She later explained to him that while leaving Lahore; she had hastily packed only a few vessels and the clothes that were easily accessible. She was able to load only a few trunks in the truck on which they escaped to Ferozepur. She had assumed they contained warm clothes; instead, they contained phulkaris that her paternal grandmother had embroidered in Chakwal in the late 1880s under candle light).

My father bought her a coat, and later escorted her to Amritsar so that she could sit for her final MA exam – because of sporadic rioting, it was not safe for her to travel alone.

My mother had a difficult time trying to support her family with teaching jobs; she was young and beautiful and faced harassment from male colleagues. PG accommodation was not safe for her. She moved from job to job – Sitapur to the Patna Women’s College and finally, back to Lucknow because it was not safe for her to live alone.

There was more to the story of their romance and the problems they faced, as I realised when I found in the packet of letters they exchanged in the late 1940s.

But marry they did in June 1950, in the face of great resistance from my father’s family.

Mum insisted on a civil marriage because she didn’t want her brother to be indebted by a traditional wedding. No dowry, she told my father: she was only going to come with her own clothes and bedding.

We grew up in Delhi, where my parents lived and died, with stories of Lahore, love, and loss. And that is why Main Vaapas Aaunga hit so close to home.

Neera Burra is a sociologist, an amateur historian and a writer of this and that. Her latest book, an edited volume, is titled A Memoir of Pre-Partition Punjab: Ruchi Ram Sahni 1863-1948 (2017), Oxford University Press, Delhi. Her other book is Born to Work. Child Labour in India (1997), Oxford University Press, Delhi. Her blog can be accessed here. Her email address is neeraburra@gmail.com.

Former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MPs Sushmita Dev, Prakash Chik Baraik and Sukhendu Sekhar Roy joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday. Hours later, the BJP nominated them to the Rajya Sabha.

Dev, Baraik and Roy had resigned as Rajya Sabha MPs in June. On Thursday, they were inducted into the BJP in the presence of state party president Samik Bhattacharya.

The TMC has been grappling with factionalism after its loss in the West Bengal Assembly elections in May.

On June 14, a delegation of 20 TMC MPs met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and requested that their group be merged with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens’ Party, which is a part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.

TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee wrote to Birla on June 19, demanding that the rebel MPs be disqualified.

On June 3, nearly 60 out of the TMC’s 80 MLAs rebelled against the party leadership to choose Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the House.

Recently, on July 5, former West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, who was a key loyalist of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, resigned from all party posts.

After joining the BJP, Devi said that the “massive wins” of the BJP in West Bengal and Assam prove that the “faith of the public in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision is only growing”.

#WATCH | Kolkata, West Bengal: On TMC MP Mahua Moitra's statement, Former TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev says, "Her biggest problem is that no one wants to take her into their party; that is why she remains with the Trinamool."

On joining the BJP, she says, "The massive… pic.twitter.com/1qc1anlcoM

— ANI (@ANI) July 9, 2026

“One might praise or criticise a government or point out its shortcomings,” Devi said, “...but when it comes to last-mile delivery, the work Modi-ji has accomplished is something no other party in the history of this country has managed to do.”

Bhattacharya welcomed the three leaders and said that “this is a joyous occasion for us and the entire BJP is delighted”.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha and Neerad Pandharipande.

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

Forest fires in the Himalayas typically occur between November and June, during the drier months. However, out-of-season and higher elevation fires have sparked concerns about their effective management in a changing climate. A new study from the Western Himalayas provides more clues into the underlying factors driving forest fires in the region.

A higher frequency of forest fires was associated with a decline in floristic diversity and the promotion of fire-dominant plant species in Uttarakhand – the most fire-prone state in the Indian Western Himalayas, according to the Forest Survey of India.

Fires in the Himalayas are also particularly worrisome because they threaten to erode carbon stocks. Including the Eastern Himalayas, the Himalayan forests are estimated to hold 3,273.1 million tonnes of carbon.

For the Western Himalaya study, researchers from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, and Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, considered a host of bioclimatic, anthropogenic, and topical variables that could influence forest fire dynamics in the region. “What we tried to do was study 10 years of past data to understand how these variables interact with each other. Temperature had the biggest edge out of all of them,” said Amit Kumar Verma, a senior technical officer and faculty member with the Forest Research Institute (FRI) who authored the study.

Adding fuel to fire

The study’s findings add to a growing body of evidence of forests’ sensitivity to environmental fluctuations – and temperature in particular. Though most forest fires are triggered by human activity in India, every one degree celsius rise in mean summer temperatures was associated with approximately 128 additional fire incidences, the study found. The results align with other studies from across India, including central forests, which find temperature to be a leading [variable] in forest fire occurrence.

The analysis took into account over 18,000 independent fire locations between 2013 and 2022 in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh. Across 39 different variables — including proximity to human settlements, topography, precipitation, soil moisture and wind intensity, among others — temperature thresholds proved to have an outsized impact on forest fire occurrence.

Fire incidents rose in response to degree rises in annual mean temperatures, and maximum and minimum temperatures during the hottest, coldest, wettest, and driest months. “If you don’t have good rainfall, and that is followed by a weak winter, then there’s less moisture content on the forest floor which makes it flammable,” explained Verma.

March, April, and May were months that were the most favourable for forest fire occurrence. “The pre-monsoon period represents a convergence of climatic and anthropogenic drivers, where accumulated dry biomass from winter senescence (degradation) coincides with rising temperatures, low relative humidity, and enhanced human presence in the forest for grazing, fuelwood collection, etc,” says the paper.

Significantly seasonal precipitation was also found to be a contributor, “as the accumulation of biomass during wet months becomes highly combustible when rapidly dried during seasonal drought,” the study says. Dried pine cone needles, leaf litter, and understorey are all fuel in these circumstances.

VK Dhawan, a former scientist and forestry expert with the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education who was not involved with the study, said that lack of snowfall in the winter months also had a role to play in worsening fires. “Shifting glaciers, reductions in winter precipitation and rainfall have all contributed to less moisture on the forest floor,” he said.

In January, the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing reported an “alarming decline” in winter precipitation, of deficits between 60% and 116% from October to December 2025. Reductions in rainfall and snow “also controls the soil moisture recharge and forest fuel conditions, which has cascading implications for forest disturbance and wildlife dynamics,” the IIRS warned.

Managing forest fires

Apart from temperature, higher forest fires were also associated with closer proximity to roads and human settlements. Scatter graphs of fire locations revealed a “pronounced concentration of fires within the first 0 to 1 km from roads, beyond which fire counts drop sharply and remain consistently low at greater distances,” the FRI study says.

“Roads improve mobility and give people greater access to forests,” explained Verma.

A majority of forest fires originate in human activity. Himalayan communities have traditionally used fire to improve the soil fertility in forests and grow fodder for their cattle. Fires can also result from the improper disposal of cigarettes and bidis, or are intentionally lit by poachers. “People light the fires, but climatic conditions like hotter temperatures, low moisture, can trigger a wider spread,” said Dhawan, adding, “Accidental fires by the roadside are a common occurrence during the fire season, which is why we need better prevention methods.”

In 2018, India released its National Action Plan on Forest Fires which outlined fire management strategies that states could refer to, such as community inclusion in fire mock drills, floor biomass management, and improving fire detection and alert systems. According to Dhawan, reviving fire lines and clearing biomass through controlled fires are critical to controlling the spread of forest fires in the Himalayas.

The central government gave the Uttarakhand government permission to fell trees in order to revive and maintain fire lines at elevations exceeding 1000 meters in December 2025. Tree felling and green cover removal at these elevations had been banned by the Supreme Court earlier. “Fuel needs to be removed from the forest floor ahead of the fire season, through controlled burning along roads and fire lines. Communities should also be incentivised and compensated for co-operating with the forest department,” said Dhawan.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Telangana High Court on Thursday granted bail to Bandi Bhageerath, the son of Union minister Bandi Sanjay Kumar, in a case pertaining to the alleged sexual assault of a girl reported to be 17 years old, The Times of India reported.

He had surrendered before the Telangana Police on May 16, hours after the High Court declined to give interim protection from arrest in the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act case. The police, however, have maintained that he was apprehended on the outskirts of Hyderabad, The Times of India reported.

The parents of the girl have alleged that Bhageerath befriended their daughter on the pretext of marriage and sexually assaulted her at a farmhouse in Moinabad on December 31.

Based on the girl’s statement, the police added charges of rape under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the Pocso to the first information report.

Bhageerath has denied the allegations and registered a complaint accusing the girl and her family of blackmailing and extorting him of Rs 5 crore. Based on his complaint, the police registered a case of extortion and criminal intimidation against the girl and her parents.

On June 20, he was granted four-day interim bail to appear for an exam, The Hindu reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Calcutta High Court allowed the Trinamool Congress to use the funds from its three bank accounts that were frozen by the West Bengal Police and the Enforcement Directorate. The party has been allowed to use the funds for day-to-day operations under the supervision of a court-appointed special officer till September 30.

The police had frozen the accounts after rebel TMC MLA Biswanath Das filed a complaint alleging that party funds had been misused. The High Court also observed that at the interim stage, it was unable to find sufficient material justifying the “abrupt” freezing of the accounts within a day of a first information report being registered.

The party had described the ED’s action on Wednesday as “politically motivated”. Read on.

Australia will begin exporting uranium to India for peaceful purposes after the two countries finalised the arrangements needed to implement a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. The pact had been stalled since 2014.

The announcement came during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Australia, where he met his counterpart Anthony Albanese. The leaders did not announce how much uranium Australia would export or when shipments would begin. Read on.

About 3,000 liquefied petroleum gas cylinders were swept away because of heavy rainfall into the Patalganga river from a bottling facility of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation in Panvel, in Maharashtra’s Raigad district. The cylinders were filled and empty.

In Thane, three persons were killed in rain-related incidents and 800 were evacuated in the past week.

Delhi received near-continuous rainfall for the second consecutive day, leading to waterlogging and traffic congestion. Read on.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari told The Indian Express that the claims made online about damage to cars because of blending petrol with ethanol are part of a “false narrative”. He added that the average mileage of vehicles may have been marginally reduced because of the ethanol fuel.

“Show me a single car that has suffered damage because of E20 fuel,” he told the newspaper. Meanwhile, consumers have complained that the new fuel mix damages and reduces their mileage. Read on.

The toll in the landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad reached five with the recovery of two bodies at the disaster site. Search operations were underway to locate three persons who are still missing.

Three of the 10 persons injured in the landslide, which occurred two days ago, had been discharged and four remained in hospital in stable condition. Three persons were in the intensive care unit, including two in critical condition. Read on.

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The Calcutta High Court on Thursday allowed the Trinamool Congress to use the funds from its three bank accounts that were frozen by the West Bengal Police and the Enforcement Directorate, Bar and Bench reported.

The party has been allowed to use the funds for day-to-day operations under the supervision of a special officer, retired judge Justice Subrata Talukdar, till September 30, said Justice Saugata Bhattacharya.

On June 19, Kolkata Police froze debit operations on the three accounts, a day after rebel TMC MLA Biswanath Das filed a complaint alleging that funds had been misused. The party has been grappling with factionalism after its loss in the West Bengal Assembly elections in May.

On Wednesday, the Enforcement Directorate said that it had frozen three bank accounts of the TMC, holding deposits worth Rs 440 crore, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The party described the agency’s action as “politically motivated”.

On Thursday, the High Court observed that at the interim stage, it was unable to find sufficient material justifying the “abrupt” freezing of the accounts within a day of the first information report being registered, Bar and Bench reported.

The TMC can use the money in the accounts only for the day-to-day expenses needed for running the party and for legal expenses, the legal news outlet quoted the court as saying.

The court also questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government and the West Bengal Police for freezing the bank accounts of the TMC at a “lightning speed”, Bar and Bench reported.

“When a poor citizen comes to a police station, the police is not activated,” Bar and Bench quoted the High Court as saying. “But when a complaint is lodged on evening 6 pm with respect to three accounts, next day freeze occurs.”

The court noted that the complaint made by Das did not highlight any particular incident or transaction.

Taking strong exception to the conduct of the rebel MLA, the court added that Das prima facie acted opportunistically and did not raise any concern of financial irregularity before the Assembly elections.

“Why the complainant did not raise the issue before May 4 [day of Assembly election results],” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “It is nothing but sheer opportunism.”

Edited by Sneha.

Heavy rainfall led to waterlogging and traffic snarls in parts of Delhi and the National Capital Region on Thursday.

Thursday was the second consecutive day of near-continuous rainfall in the region.

The Mehrauli-Badarpur road was among the worst affected by waterlogging, ANI reported. Waterlogging was also reported at Burari in the northern part of the national capital and on NH 24 near the Akshardham temple in southeastern Delhi.

Trees also fell in parts of the city.

In Ghaziabad, waterlogging was reported in the Indirapuram and Abhay Khand areas. Roads were also submerged in Noida’s Sector 75 after overnight rainfall.

Several areas in Gurugram were flooded on Wednesday after heavy rainfall.

VIDEO | Ghaziabad: Heavy rainfall leads to waterlogging in parts of Delhi- NCR. Visuals from Indirapuram.

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/n147TvrpG7) pic.twitter.com/jmssgFZStz

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 9, 2026

#WATCH | Delhi | Traffic snarls on NH-24 near Akshardham temple as the national capital has been receiving continuous rain since last night pic.twitter.com/HDCaabF4Jg

— ANI (@ANI) July 9, 2026

VIDEO | Delhi: Heavy rain hits parts of the national capital; Sangam Vihar witnesses waterlogging.

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/n147TvrpG7) pic.twitter.com/XPFufx74JX

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 9, 2026

3,000 LPG cylinders swept away

In Maharashtra’s Raigad district, about 3,000 liquefied petroleum gas cylinders were swept away because of heavy rainfall into the Patalganga river from a bottling facility of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation in Panvel, said Collector Kishan Jawale. The cylinders were filled and empty, the official said.

The administration said that citizens should not keep or use the cylinders if they find them. The cylinders should be deposited at the Hindustan Petroleum dealers, the tehsildar office or the office of the sub-divisional officer in Pen, it added.

🚨 महत्त्वाचे आवाहन | रायगड

अतिवृष्टीमुळे एचपीसीएल पाताळगंगा एलपीजी बॉटलिंग प्लांट (चावणे, पनवेल) येथून अंदाजे 3,000 एलपीजी सिलेंडर (भरलेले व रिकामे) पाताळगंगा नदीत वाहून गेले आहेत.

— जिल्हाधिकारी किशन जावळे#Raigad #HPCL #LPG #DisasterManagement #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/30vTFdm8EL

— Raigad District Collector (@CollectorRaigad) July 8, 2026

Three killed, 800 evacuated in Thane

Three persons were killed in rain-related incidents and 800 evacuated in the past week in Maharashtra’s Thane district, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

Two persons, including a teenage girl, were injured in a lightning strike on Wednesday. Both are out of danger now, the officials told PTI.

Meanwhile, search was on to find the bodies of two boys who drowned in separate incidents in a river and a nullah in Bhiwandi, the news agency quoted the officials as saying.

Torrential downpours have caused widespread disruption, prompting emergency teams to rescue and relocate 797 persons from 229 families to safer locations.

Edited by Sneha.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has told The Indian Express that while the average mileage of vehicles may have marginally reduced because of blending petrol with ethanol, the claims made online about damage to cars are “overblown” and part of a “false narrative”.

“Show me a single car that has suffered damage because of E20 fuel,” the newspaper on Thursday quoted him as saying. “What is being circulated on social media is part of a concerted false narrative.”

Gadkari said that vehicle manufacturers had been asked to replace parts of older cars during servicing that may have suffered minor damage.

The comments came amid criticism by vehicle owners that E20 fuel was reducing mileage and damaging cars.

The minister said the E20 variant of petrol, which has 20% ethanol, was introduced across the country in 2025 after it had been cleared in multiple tests carried out by vehicle manufacturers and Pune-based government-run testing lab Automotive Research Association of India, the newspaper reported.

The minister was quoted as saying that there is a difference in calorific value between ethanol and petrol. “...mileage also depends on driving conditions, especially in cities such as Delhi or Mumbai, where vehicles stay in lower gears due to driving conditions…” he told the newspaper.

Gadkari cited the automotive research association’s report as saying that there was no problem with mileage efficiency for cars specifically built with flex-fuel engines. He added that the flex-engine technology was being worked on.

Not decided policy alone, says Gadkari

Gadkari has been defending the government’s 20% Ethanol Blended Petrol programme, claiming on Wednesday that no car in the country was facing problems because of E20 petrol.

On Wednesday, Gadkari told India Today that the ethanol blending policy was framed collectively by government departments and not his decision alone. “The entire process is conducted after consultation with the petroleum ministry, the Cabinet and scientific research,” he was quoted as saying.

The programme currently mandates the sale of petrol blended with 20% ethanol. India hit its target of reaching a 20% ethanol mix in petrol in July 2025, five years ahead of schedule.

The blending of ethanol with petrol is part of India’s broader energy transition strategy aimed at reducing dependency on fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting income for sugarcane farmers.

Consumer complaints

Consumers have complained that the new fuel mix damages engines and reduces their mileage.

An opinion poll by LocalCircles published on Sunday showed that 53% of the surveyed petrol vehicle owners said that they believe that the government’s handling of E20 rollout was “disastrous” or “ineffective”.

Sixty-six percent of the respondents said that they were experiencing a more than 10% drop in mileage with E20. Forty-five percent of the surveyed users said that their cars had suffered moderate to major increase in wear and tear, or needed repairs, according to the polling conducted in June.

A report in October, which analysed government and industry data, said that only about 20% of new petrol vehicles sold in India in the last 15 years were compliant with the E20 fuel blend.

On December 11, Gadkari told Parliament that the government had tested older vehicles running on E20 fuel and found no case of engine failure.

The vehicles covered almost 1 lakh km in the tests conducted by the automotive research association, the minister said.

Gadkari had added at the time that the research association had observed “no impact” of E20 fuel on the vehicles’ performance, start ability, drive ability and metal capability.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.