Scroll’s Rokibuz Zaman on Tuesday won the 2026 Biswajit Roy Memorial Award for people-centric journalism.

He was awarded in the emerging journalist category for his commitment to people-centred journalism.

Zaman won the prize for his ground reporting from West Bengal, Assam and the rest of the North East on matters of citizenship, identity, displacement and the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

His reportage has “consistently tried to put the people affected by these processes at the centre of the story, rather than treating citizenship and electoral issues only as political or statistical questions”, the organisers said.

The award will be presented at an event in Kolkata on Saturday.

Read Rokibuz Zaman’s stories here.

Four Central Industrial Security Force personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua after their colleague allegedly opened fire at them with his service rifle following an argument, reported The Hindu.

All the personnel were posted at the Sewa Hydel-II power project. The accused head constable, Avdesh Kumar Singh, has been arrested.

It is unclear what led to the incident.

Singh and his wife work for the Central Industrial Security Force, reported The Indian Express. A police officer investigating the matter told the newspaper that Singh had an argument with his colleagues and company commander Ankit Kumar Pandey for bringing his child to the project site frequently.

“The couple worked in different shifts at the same site,” the unidentified officer added. “So, when one parent reported for duty, they would bring the toddler along to hand him over to the spouse returning home.”

The officer said that the couple was asked not to bring the child to the project site. On Tuesday, when the child was at the site, “someone complained about it to the company commander”, which led to the argument, he added.

Apart from Pandey, the others who were killed are sub-inspector Lakshman Singh and constables Sanjeev Kumar and Muhammad Rafiq.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

In March 2022, Rahul Kumar’s family hired a nurse from a private agency to assist him for three days.

Kumar had been diagnosed with a motor neurone disease five years earlier. He was in his late thirties, and had begun losing sensation in his toes. Before long, he found it difficult to lift or move his feet.

While doctors did not immediately understand the cause of these symptoms, a series of diagnostic tests helped rule out possibilities such as inflammation from allergies and heavy metal toxicity. Neurological examinations eventually pinpointed his ailment.

Doctors told Kumar that the disease would cause muscles that control activities like walking, speaking, swallowing and breathing to weaken over months or years. Its progression could not be predicted, and it could not be cured. All he could hope to do through treatment was manage the symptoms.

Within five years, Kumar had become wheelchair-bound and dependent on caregivers to support his daily needs. His family hired a full-time helper who could assist him with everyday activities, as well as typing on a computer and phone. In March 2022, the family hired the home nurse from a private agency because the regular helper was unavailable. The service cost them Rs 8,300.

On the second day of working in Kumar’s home, the nurse helped him to the bathroom, left him there and fled with several of the family’s belongings.

When the family contacted the agency, they agreed only to repay Rs 4,900 of the fee for the nurse, and no other costs. “They also told us that they had not checked the man’s criminal record before hiring him as a nurse and sending him to our home,” said Kumar’s brother-in-law, Sumeet Parikshit.

Parikshit had a broader perspective of the incident because he works as a programme manager at the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, in Delhi. He explained that his family’s ordeal was revealing of the massive challenges that disabled people and their families face in securing regular care. The problem is particularly acute for families of individuals with intellectual or neurological disabilities, many of whom need a high level of support with day-to-day tasks.

“The cost of living with a disability is high,” he said. For one, he explained, families incur medical expenses, such as of medicines and nurses. In addition, families also incur “housing-related expenditures”, he said. “There are no accessible houses in Delhi, and the monthly rents for those that are somewhat accessible may go upwards of Rs 45,000.” He noted that “for persons with neurological or intellectual disabilities particularly, this is a big burden, because their condition often does not allow them to hold a full-time job”.

In fact, the theft in the family’s house was an indirect result of financial burdens – Parikshit’s sister took care of Kumar earlier, but she was forced to take up a job to meet their high expenses. Thus, “The family became dependent on the caregiver,” Parikshit said.

He added that the absence of a “dedicated, trained cadre of caregivers for persons with disabilities, and the sector being unregulated, left my brother-in-law vulnerable”.

The Sahyogi scheme

Families like Kumar’s are particularly disheartened about their struggle to find trained caregivers because the Indian government launched a scheme in 2015 to tackle this problem, only to wind it up in four years, with few results to show for it.

The Sahyogi scheme was aimed at creating a skilled workforce of caregivers for persons with multiple disabilities, autism and cerebral palsy. Parikshit explained that the idea underpinning the scheme was that crises such as the one his family faced “could be avoided if families have a formal cadre of caregivers to choose from”.

The scheme was open to candidates who had completed schooling till at least Class 8. It aimed to train them in helping disabled people carry out activities of daily living and using assistive devices, as well as in matters of health and nutrition.

Candidates were also to be trained in mobility and sensory-motor stimulation, a form of therapy that uses sensory signals such as touch, vibration, or mild electrical currents to help the brain and muscles improve movement.

Scroll filed a Right to Information query with the National Trust, a statutory body under the ministry of social justice and empowerment responsible for implementing the Sahyogi scheme, to try to find out how many people had been trained under the scheme. In its response, the body said that between 2015 and 2019, only 1,762 persons were trained as caregivers.

By comparison, according to the 2011 census, India had 2.68 crore individuals living with disabilities (The census does not break down this figure into the number of persons with specific disabilities).

“Despite this lack of data, it is clear to us that the demand of families of persons with autism, or other intellectual or neurological disabilities, could not be met with so few caregivers,” said Rubina Lal, trustee of the Mumbai-based Society of Parents of Children with Autistic Disorders. Lal, whose daughter Shinjini has autism, has been working in the field of disability rehabilitation for more than 30 years.

In 2019, the National Trust shut the scheme down. Many were dismayed to realise that they could not find any information even about the small number of individuals who had been trained under it. “We do not know where they are now,” Lal said. “The National Trust never kept a register.”

Lal has also served as chairperson of the expert committee on autism and multiple disabilities of the Rehabilitation Council of India, the apex government body that regulates courses and training programmes for professionals that wish to work with people with disabilities. She pointed out that one of the reasons for the scheme’s dismal performance was that the organisations that had registered to run the training programme did not successfully place many trainees in jobs as caregivers.

“The trainees did not know where to look for jobs,” she said. “The families who needed them did not know where to find these caregivers. So, there was no amalgamation of the demand and supply.”

In addition, she said that the scheme’s design was itself limiting in terms of ensuring that candidates were employable. The scheme provided for two levels of training – a three-month-long primary programme and an advanced six-month course.

Even in the latter time frame, she noted, participants could only be trained on supporting disabled persons with their everyday tasks, and not in more advanced skills, like administering injections.

“Naturally, families were not ready to hire someone with such limited skill sets for the long term,” said Seema Chadha, deputy director of the Delhi-based Muskaan – Parents Association for Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disability.

“Caregiving is a long-term commitment,” she added. “In most cases, especially with adults, there is no scope for any marked improvement in the conditions of those with intellectual disabilities or degenerative neurological disorders.”

Lal explained that when trainees found that there was limited demand for caregivers with their skill level, they began to seek out nursing courses, which they believed could help them secure full-time jobs. They were further discouraged from pursuing work through the scheme upon realising that after rolling it out, the government had not standardised the pay for home-based caregivers.

“This made the work less lucrative,” said Lal. “Eventually, people just stopped applying for the training programme.”

A lack of political will

Parikshit argued that the government should have learnt from the failure of the Sahyogi scheme and continued to evolve other approaches to the problem. “But that requires political will, which is missing when it comes to strengthening the caregiving sector for disabled people,” he said.

Lal noted that, in contrast, the government had shown significantly greater will in training caregivers for elderly people.

For instance, in 2022, the ministry of social justice and empowerment announced the PM Special (Training of Geriatric Care Givers) scheme, which aimed to train 1 lakh caregivers over three years. This was to be implemented by the ministry with the help of the National Institute of Social Defence.

In March 2025, the union minister of state for social justice, BL Verma, told Parliament that in the financial year 2023-’24, 36,785 persons had been trained under the programme.

Lal pointed out that this year, the government seemed to have further strengthened the scheme. She recounted that in an ANI podcast, Shamika Ravi, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council, stated that the Union Budget announced in February had envisioned building a “strong care ecosystem, covering geriatric and allied care services” by training 1.5 lakh caregivers.

“To my mind, it is natural that we link this to caregiving for persons with disabilities,” said Lal. “Caregiving is labour intensive, a job that technology definitely cannot replace. Maybe we need to be experimenting with different models of it.”

She observed that another scheme aimed at caregiving for disabled persons had also seen limited progress. The scheme, called the Samarth-cum-Gharaunda scheme, entailed the establishment of residential care facilities specifically for orphaned individuals who have autism, cerebral palsy or intellectual disabilities, or multiple disabilities, and whose families live below the poverty line. The scheme is implemented through non-profit organisations that are registered with the National Trust.

There are currently only 11 such registered organisations. No facility under the scheme is operational in Delhi.

In principle, the scheme was a sound one, Lal observed. “This would have meant that persons with disabilities were not isolated, instead were living and learning some vocational skills in a community,” she said.

But its focus on only one specific set of individuals and families meant it could not reach many who could have benefited from it. Thus, it “fails to quell the anxieties of a large number of parents who are dealing with the question of who will take care of their disabled children after them”, said Chadha.

Financial hurdles

In the absence of adequate government support, families with disabled individuals face huge financial hurdles. Kajal Kashyap, who is 28, and whose six-year-old daughter Ridhisha has cerebral palsy, explained that the child was enrolled in a school run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi that does not currently have a special educator to adapt the curriculum to the needs of children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

More specialised education is out of reach for the family, whose monthly income is Rs 20,000. “The special schools are either too far away, or cost upwards of Rs 5,000 per month,” said Kashyap. “That is, of course, not affordable for families like ours.”

Ridhisha could avail of free schooling at a government facility for children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities. But there is only one such school in Delhi, located in east Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, around 13.5 km from the family’s home in Okhla Phase-3 in the capital’s south-east. “I had to fight a long battle against my family members even to get her admitted to the nearby government school,” said Kashyap. “None of them support me. In fact, they berate me for giving birth to a child with special needs.”

Fighting back tears, she said she remains focused on helping her daughter become self-reliant in the future. “The hope is that there are also some formal systems in place to provide support for my daughter when I am no longer around,” said Kashyap.

There are some avenues through which the government offers financial support for people with disabilities. The Delhi government, for instance, pays a monthly pension of Rs 2,500 to disabled individuals. Further, in September 2025, the Delhi government announced a financial assistance scheme to provide a monthly allowance of Rs 6,000 to those with “benchmark disabilities” – the term refers to individuals whom a doctor has certified as having an impairment of more than 40%.

But to access either of these schemes, individuals have to possess a Unique Disability ID card. By the Union government’s own admission, a disabled person may need to wait up to 264 days to receive the card after application.

In fact, parents of children with intellectual disabilities, autism or cerebral palsy, whom Scroll met, said that they have had to wait more than a year to receive their cards. “I had applied for UDID for my 10-year-old son Shivansh in September 2025,” said Rajveer Singh, a resident of Okhla. “I have only received an appointment for February 2027 to get his medical assessment done at Safdarjung Hospital.”

Pratik Aggarwal, executive director of the Delhi-based non-profit organisation Astha, explained that there was also a need for programmes that could support caregivers, who were typically mothers. “The National Trust needs to find a way to put money in the hands of mothers,” he said. “They require this fund to ensure therapy for their children, and to drop and pick them up from schools, to start with.”

In the absence of this support, Astha’s helpline and Aggarwal individually get phone calls every week from parents who request the organisation take in their children. “The team has been tackling these situations by counselling the families about the schemes available for them, including the disability pension,” said Aggarwal. “But with its rollout being mired in several problems, sometimes I am dumbfounded about where to refer them.”

Filling the gaps

Some private organisations have sought to bridge this gap in care for disabled people. Among them is an assisted living facility for adults with autism, cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities at southwest Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, founded by Muskaan.

Chadha, the organisation’s deputy director, lives on the campus with her 33-year-old daughter, Isha, who has cerebral palsy.

The facility is open to individuals above the age of 20, and can house up to 16 residents. While living here, they are trained in vocational skills, like making lamps and paper bags, and packaging spices, as well as working on assembly lines. Residents also participate in taking decisions about household tasks and planning events for various festive occasions. “This helps strengthen their confidence and build autonomy,” said Chadha.

In the year 2024-’25, the residents produced 200 mufflers. When these were sold, the profits were distributed equally among them. “Efforts like these don’t just help build the confidence of persons with intellectual disabilities, it also tells the world that these individuals can be productive members of society,” Chadha said.

She also noted that living in close quarters and working with each other helps build camaraderie among the residents. The centre also provides counselling to help them deal with feelings of isolation that arise because they live away from their families.

Chadha explained, however, that running the facility required significant money and resources: the 16 residents are supported by a dedicated staff of 15, who have been trained in assisting them with hygiene, helping manage behavioural challenges and administering medication.

The centre meets its expenses through fees that families of residents pay. “Families may have to incur costs up to Rs 42,000 for the disabled persons to get the support they absolutely need,” Chadha said.

She added, “This means that the impact that residential facilities like Muskaan can make is limited in the larger scheme of things. Our hope is that the government treats us and other such facilities as paradigms after which it can model the care homes it runs.”

This story was supported by the International Foundation for Disability Inclusion’s Journalism Fellowship on Disability Inclusion.

A first information report has been registered against Aam Aadmi Party leaders Saurabh Bharadwaj and Jarnail Singh, and other party workers for allegedly assaulting a head constable, ANI reported on Tuesday.

The incident took place on Monday when AAP leaders, led by former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, went to the Tilak Nagar, a day after Delhi minister Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma slapped a man in the area.

On Monday, the constable was recording videos in the area when a crowd of AAP supporters surrounded and allegedly assaulted him, police said.

The AAP leaders have been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to voluntarily obstructing a public servant in the discharge of public functions, using criminal force against a public servant while discharging their duty and voluntarily causing hurt.

Bharadwaj alleged that the police were trying to intimidate AAP leaders by implicating them in false cases.

“Police personnel are scared,” The Times of India quoted Bharadwaj as saying. “They think that implicating us in false cases will scare us. This hooliganism by police won’t work.”

Delhi minister slaps man

On Sunday, Verma had slapped Sahib Singh during an altercation over the alleged poor quality of a road in Tilak Nagar. Sahib Singh handles social media for Tilak Nagar MLA Jarnail Singh.

In a video shared by the Opposition party, Verma was seen grabbing Sahib Singh’s mobile phone before he hit him.

An FIR has also been registered against Sahib Singh for allegedly assaulting the constable.

On Sunday, Sahib Singh said that he had pointed out sections of the road where the surface was breaking apart, after which the Bharatiya Janata Party leader slapped him.

Jarnail Singh claimed that instead of addressing concerns about the road, Verma slapped his colleague.

However, Verma claimed that the AAP worker had allegedly abused his family. He also alleged that Jarnail Singh arrived at the site with “history-sheeter goons” and used abusive and indecent language.

On Monday, the police registered a non-cognisable report against Verma for voluntarily causing hurt.

Separately, they filed an FIR against Jarnail Singh based on a complaint by a Public Works Department official for obstructing a public servant from discharging his duties and interfering with government work.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Two home ministry officials were arrested on Monday for allegedly seeking a bribe from an association in return for facilitating its pending registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Registration under the Act is mandatory for non-profit organisations to receive foreign funds.

One of the officials was posted in the ministry’s Foreigners Division, while the other worked in a Pay and Accounts Office and had previously been posted in the Foreigners Division, the Ministry of Home Affairs stated on Tuesday. Both officials were accountants.

“Preliminary questioning indicates that they were in contact with certain associations for facilitating their registration and renewal in lieu of illegal gratification,” the ministry added.

The investigation is underway.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Congress on Tuesday accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of organising a “vote chori”, or vote theft, campaign on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

The Opposition party demanded that the three resign to ensure the “safety of the Constitution and hard-earned democracy”.

The demands were part of a resolution adopted at a meeting by the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body.

To Save Democracy 👇 pic.twitter.com/DC10biarSW

— Congress (@INCIndia) September 29, 2026

The Congress also called for the suspension of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, citing concerns about the Election Commission’s functioning following “recent reports of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party’s capture of the entire electoral process”.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the BJP.

The resolution came after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

CONGRESS WORKING COMMITTEE RESOLUTION.

Indira Bhawan, 28 September 2026 pic.twitter.com/nfeU2c8pC0

— INC Sandesh (@INCSandesh) September 29, 2026

Their objections were reportedly related to the changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The two election commissioners had also raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

The Election Commission has rejected reports of a rift, saying differences in views and observations are a normal part of its deliberations.

However, the Congress said that the reports raised questions about the constitutional validity of the SIR process. It argued that a process that already shifts the burden on voters to establish their eligibility had been “executed in haste without transparent safeguards”.

“An exercise of doubtful constitutional validity cannot be allowed to decide who may vote in the world’s largest democracy,” the resolution said.

The party also called for the restoration of 13.3 crore names that it said had been removed from electoral rolls as part of the voter list revision process.

The Congress also demanded independent and time-bound inquiries wherever evidence of serious discrepancies in the electoral rolls emerges.

“The BJP and its handpicked officials must understand that this brazen theft of the people’s franchise will not go unanswered,” the resolution said.

The demands came a day before the Opposition INDIA bloc is set to meet in Delhi to discuss a possible nationwide campaign against alleged electoral irregularities.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Conflict of interest concerns follow CEC Gyanesh Kumar from Sambhal to the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court quashed the detention under the National Security Act of a man who was accused of being responsible for the November 2024 Sambhal violence. “Confessional statement cannot be the sole ground for detention,” a bench held.

Mulla Afroz had been arrested about 54 days after the violence. Although the Allahabad High Court had granted him bail, the Uttar Pradesh government passed an order to detain Afroz under the National Security Act on October 13, 2025, on the basis of a confession he made while he was in police custody. Read on.

How a court order sparked a deadly dispute over a mosque, explains Abhik Deb

The Congress accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of organising a “vote chori”, or vote theft, campaign on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The Opposition party demanded that the three resign to ensure the “safety of the Constitution and hard-earned democracy”.

It also demanded that the special intensive revision exercise be suspended, saying that it had been “executed in haste without transparent safeguards”. The demands were part of a resolution adopted at a meeting by the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body.

The resolution came after The Indian Express reported last week that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge. Read on.

Conflict of interest concerns follow CEC Gyanesh Kumar from Sambhal to the Supreme Court, writes Ayush Tiwari

After Instagram restricted the account of political cartoonist Satish Acharya in India following a legal request from the government, another cartoonist, Manjul, said that the Meta-owned platform had also blocked access to one of his cartoons about the Election Commission.

Acharya told Scroll that he had not received any communication from Meta before some of his posts were taken down. He later received a notification saying that his profile would be unavailable in India. “This regime boasts about being the most powerful and fearless government,” he said. “But every bit of criticism scares this government, forcing it to resort to cowardice measures.” Read on.

Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online, writes Nachiket Deuskar

The Calcutta High Court granted interim bail to Congress’ Nandigram candidate in six criminal cases from 2007. The court allowed Milan Pradhan to campaign for the October 6 bye-poll. He has been directed to surrender before the trial court by October 21.

Pradhan had been arrested on September 18, just hours after former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that her faction of the Trinamool Congress would support Pradhan in the October 6 bye-poll.

A separate bench dismissed a petition by the West Bengal Congress challenging an alleged discrepancy in the election affidavit of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nandigram bye-poll candidate. The petition had questioned the difference between Hasirani Rath’s declared age and the year in which she claims to have passed her Class 10 examination. Read on.

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The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday granted interim bail to Congress’ Nandigram candidate in six criminal cases from 2007, allowing him to campaign for the October 6 bye-poll, Live Law reported.

Milan Pradhan has been directed to surrender before the trial court by October 21, PTI reported.

Pradhan was arrested on September 18 in connection with a 2007 murder case. He was subsequently shown to be arrested in five other cases.

The arrest had come hours after former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said her faction of the Trinamool Congress would support Pradhan in the October 6 bye-poll. Minutes earlier, the faction’s candidate had withdrawn her nomination, shortly after photographs of her meeting West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari were shared online.

On Tuesday, Justice Tirthankar Ghosh said that Pradhan had been arrested after filing his nomination papers and should be given an opportunity to contest the bye-poll.

Pradhan has been booked in cases related to the protests in Nandigram in 2007 against the plans by the Left Front government at the time to set up a chemical hub. Fourteen persons were killed in police firing during the protests.

On Tuesday, the High Court noted the police had “more than sufficient” time to execute the warrants against him, and that the state government had produced no material to show that he had been wanted in any case after 2007, Live Law reported.

The court directed Pradhan to furnish a bail bond of Rs 20,000 in each of the six cases.

On Thursday, the High Court had said that it was “surprising” that Pradhan was arrested in a sixth case from 2007 while he was in custody.

Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya had directed the police not to take any coercive action against Pradhan in connection with the sixth case till October 12, adding that the Congress candidate should not be treated as arrested in the case.

The Nandigram bye-poll was necessitated after Adhikari vacated the seat. The chief minister had won the Nandigram and Bhabanipur seats during the Assembly elections in May.

Campaigning for the bye-poll will end on October 4 while counting of votes will be held on October 9.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Online hate in the United States against South Asians surged 240% between January 2024 and June 2026, according to a study by Washington-based think tank Center for the Study of Organized Hate.

More than half a million posts with racist, dehumanising and xenophobic slurs and narratives targeting South Asians appeared on social media platform X between January 2025 and June 2026, found the study published on Monday.

The monthly volume had risen by 75% during this period and 240% between January 2024 and June 2026, it added.

Such posts had “dramatically increased” across mainstream and fringe social media platforms, the study found.

The study examines the scale, nature and tactics of online hate targeting South Asian Americans, including those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other South Asian backgrounds across social media platforms such as X, 4chan, 8chan and Gab.

The think tank identified nearly four lakh hateful and dehumanising posts targeting South Asians across platforms such as 4chan, 8chan and Gab in 2025.

Five of the six highest-volume months were between November 2025 and June 2026, it said.

This indicates that anti-South Asian hate was “intensifying rather than receding”, said the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.

The study found that anti-South Asian hate was cutting across national, religious and political identities. “Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and other South Asian communities are frequently collapsed into one another and targeted with interchangeable racial and religious stereotypes,” it said.

The hate against South Asians was driven by state power, racist policy and incendiary rhetoric; digital amplification of hate; political visibility and perceived demographic threat; racial hostility; economic resentment; and xenophobic nationalism, added the study.

Posts portraying South Asians as invaders, job thieves and a demographic threat comprised 45% of anti-South Asian hate on X, with H-1B visas and immigration serving as major drivers, the study found.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows companies in the US to temporarily employ foreign workers for special occupations.

In the past few years, Indians have constituted the majority of H-1B visa holders. Indians comprised 72.3% of all H-1B visas issued by the US in fiscal year 2023.

The narratives included the Great Replacement and “remigration” rhetoric, while on fringe platforms they overlapped with antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“Great Replacement” is a Western far-right conspiracy theory, which claims that white populations are being culturally and demographically “replaced” by non-white persons through immigration and differential birth rates.

Slurs and dehumanisation aimed at South Asians were noticed on every platform, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate said.

The slur “pajeet” and its variants appeared in 30% of all posts on X and 45% of mentions on fringe platforms, the study found. Dehumanising discourse related to the “unclean and unhygienic character” of South Asians grew the fastest of all narratives on X, rising 171%.

The study found that generative artificial intelligence was rapidly amplifying visual hate, turning anti-South Asian slurs and stereotypes into degrading and racist caricatures “at unprecedented speed and scale”.

In September 2025, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate said that the tariff dispute between India and the United States and the outrage based on specific incidents such as an accident by a Sikh truck driver that left three dead in Florida had coincided with a spike in racist social media posts against Indians.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• ‘Pajeet’: The white supremacist slur weaponised by South Asians is amplifying anti-Indian hate
• Surge in anti-Indian hate should come as no surprise – it has deep, racist roots

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday added fugitive gangster Satinderjeet Singh, also known as Goldy Brar, to its 10 most wanted list.

The agency also increased the reward to $1 million from $50,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Brar is wanted for his alleged involvement in the Lawrence Bishnoi organised crime group, which is accused of violent crimes in southern California, and across the US and Canada, the FBI said.

He is alleged to be a leader of the group in North America.

The FBI said that Brar is considered armed and dangerous and an escape risk. The law enforcement agency warned the public to “avoid interaction” with him.

The US authorities have charged Brar with conspiracy to run a criminal organisation, extortion-related offences and drug trafficking.

A federal arrest warrant was issued for Brar on July 1, and charges against him were announced on July 7 as part of a wider crackdown on three India-based gangs.

One of the indictments focuses on the Bishnoi enterprise, a criminal organisation led by gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.

According to the indictment, Brar allegedly helped Bishnoi direct members and associates of the organisation around the world.

The indictment also alleges that Bishnoi and Brar ordered the 2023 killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

Nijjar was killed by masked gunmen. His killing had led to a deterioration in the relations between New Delhi and Ottawa after Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister at the time, told Parliament that intelligence agencies were examining “credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder. India has rejected the allegations.

Nijjar was an advocate for Khalistan, an independent Sikh nation sought by some groups. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is a designated terrorist outfit in India.

On Monday, the FBI said that Brar is known to reside in California and parts of Canada. It has asked anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact the bureau, its local office, a US embassy or consulate, or submit information through its online tip system.

Brar is the 543rd person to have been added to the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives list, since it was established in 1950.

He is a designated terrorist in India under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Calcutta High Court dismissed a petition by the West Bengal Congress challenging an alleged discrepancy in the election affidavit of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nandigram bye-poll candidate, Live Law reported on Tuesday.

The petition had questioned the difference between Hasirani Rath’s declared age and the year in which she claims to have passed her Class 10 examinations.

Rath has not mentioned her date of birth in the affidavit but has stated her age as “60+ years”. In her educational qualifications, she has stated that she passed the Class 10 examination in 1965.

If Rath is between 60 and 65 years of age now, she would have been between four and nine years old in 1965, when she has stated that she passed Class 10.

The Congress argued that the two details were prima facie inconsistent and questioned whether the Election Commission and the returning officer had properly scrutinised her nomination papers.

The party said that if Rath’s declared age was correct, her educational details needed to be verified, and vice versa. It asked the court to direct the authorities to examine the documents submitted by Rath, PTI reported.

During the hearing, the Congress’ lawyer clarified that the party was not seeking cancellation of Rath’s candidature or any order that would delay the election.

The Election Commission opposed the petition, arguing that the objection had been raised after the statutory period for challenging the nomination papers had ended, Live Law reported.

Its lawyers said no objection had been raised by the Congress during scrutiny on September 17 and that the alleged discrepancy did not affect Rath’s eligibility to contest the election.

The poll body’s lawyer also said there was no maximum age limit for contesting an election.

The High Court had reserved its order on the matter on Friday.

The Nandigram bye-poll is scheduled for October 6 after Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari vacated the seat. Adhikari had won both Nandigram and Bhabanipur in the May Assembly elections, defeating former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur.

The BJP has fielded Rath, who is the mother of an aide to Adhikari who was shot dead two days after the Assembly election results were announced.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Instagram account of political cartoonist Satish Acharya has been restricted in India after the Meta-owned platform received a legal request from the government.

A message displayed by the platform when users try to access the account says: “We reviewed it against our policies and conducted a legal and human rights assessment. After the review, we restricted access to the content in the location where it goes against local law.”

Another political cartoonist, Manjul, also said that Instagram had restricted one of his works about the Election Commission to users in India “pursuant to a notice from the Government of India/Law Enforcement”.

Acharya’s account was blocked under the 2021 Information Technology Rules, which require social media platforms to remove “unlawful content” within three hours of receiving directions from the government or a court.

Among Acharya’s recent works were cartoons on The Indian Express investigation from September 23 that revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Acharya told Scroll that he had not received any communication from Meta before some of his posts were taken down. He later received a notification saying that his profile would be unavailable in India.

“This regime boasts about being the most powerful and fearless government,” he said. “But every bit of criticism scares this government, forcing it to resort to cowardice measures.”

On Monday, the cartoonist said on X that he had never seen a government that is “so scared of cartoons”.

I have never seen a govt which is SO SCARED of cartoons! 😀 https://t.co/gbETc5mpUk

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) September 28, 2026

Acharya also shared a news report from 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that cartoons do not hurt, but have a “healing power”. Cartoonists are “closer to god” as they can minutely observe characteristics of human beings, Modi had said at the time.

On whether he was planning to challenge Meta’s action, Acharya said that he was trying but had not been able to contact Instagram’s help centre.

“Everything is [Artificial Intelligence]-controlled, which makes it difficult to get any solution there,” he said.

“I have heard that the only solution is to approach the court,” Acharya told Scroll. “For any institution or any organisation, it would be easier to take legal route, but for an independent cartoonist like me it is not affordable.”

Invincible Modi Image? #ECI #SIR #ECIexpose https://t.co/96I1LEOlKi

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) September 24, 2026

Also read: The Art of Resistance: Satish Acharya, Manjul bring smiles (and insight) to a world of despair

Manjul’s cartoon was also about the Election Commission. He said Instagram had restricted access to it in India.

“When satire gets censored, perhaps the cartoon has made its point,” he said on X.

In a separate post, Manjul alleged that other cartoonists had also had their posts blocked or restricted following government orders, but flagged that some may not speak publicly about it because they are associated with organisations and fear that doing so could affect those associations.

Instagram has restricted this cartoon in India.

I am posting the cartoon again, along with the notice I received from Instagram.

According to the notice, access has been restricted in India “pursuant to a notice from the Government of India / Law Enforcement” and based on… pic.twitter.com/y3UXWCCDIg

— MANJUL (@MANJULtoons) September 27, 2026

The blocking orders came nearly a month after The Indian Express reported on August 19 that the government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content.

This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.

In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, the newspaper quoted Right to Information records as having shown.

Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders.

The integration allows content flagged through government directions on the portal to be automatically removed from Meta’s platforms without a separate human review.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online
• Centre amends IT Rules to allow only senior officials to issue content takedown orders

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday quashed an order by India’s food safety regulator barring Austrian beverage maker Red Bull from using the “energy drink” label on its cans, saying the company was not given an opportunity to present its views, Reuters reported.

Red Bull had challenged the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s June order, which barred makers of high-caffeine beverages from using the “energy drink” description.

The beverage maker’s Indian subsidiary argued before the High Court that the “abrupt prohibition” was affecting its existing and planned investments in India. It also alleged that the regulator had not followed due process before reaching its decision.

The court agreed with Red Bull that the regulator had acted “without affording any opportunity” to the company to present its views and quashed the order.

Th food regulator’s order had come amid a crackdown by the food regulators on food adulteration and misleading advertisements of products in recent months.

Edited by Sneha and Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Food regulator took credit for a ‘crackdown’ on Bournvita. But it gave the drink a clean chit
• India’s food regulator flagged over 160 misleading claims. Years later, 120 are still around
• How India’s ambitious plan to curb unhealthy food failed

The Supreme Court on Tuesday quashed the National Security Act detention of a man who was accused of being responsible for the November 2024 Sambhal violence, Bar and Bench reported

“Confessional statement cannot be the sole ground for detention, surrounding circumstances have to be looked into,” held a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu.

Mulla Afroz had been arrested about 54 days after the violence. Although the Allahabad High Court had granted him bail, the Uttar Pradesh government passed an order to detain Afroz under the National Security Act on October 13, 2025, on the basis of a confession he made while he was in police custody.

The Act allows authorities to detain a person without trial for up to a year.

The Sambhal violence broke out on November 24, 2024, after a group of Muslims objected to a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town of Sambhal. The survey had been ordered in a suit claiming that the mosque was built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of an ancient Hindu temple. The violence left five persons dead, with locals alleging that four of them were killed in police firing.

On Monday, the bench imposed costs of Rs 10 lakh on the Uttar Pradesh government for the “illegal preventive detention order” of Afroz.

It also set aside a June order of the High Court that had upheld Afroz’s detention.

The court held that the detaining authority had “illegally exercised” its power of detention.

The bench had reserved its order in the matter on September 8 after questioning whether the alleged custodial confession could form the basis for preventive detention.

“Detention order is preventive, not punitive and it cannot be invoked as a mantra to be invoked before the court to defeat every challenge,” the bench had said earlier. “Therefore, there has to be some material on the basis of which you are subjectively satisfied.”

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:‘Ayodhya happened, now Sambhal’s turn’: How a court order sparked a deadly dispute over a mosque

The Securities and Exchange Board of India on Monday cleared Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani, four companies of the conglomerate and 13 others in proceedings related to alleged violation of minimum public shareholding norms by paying a settlement amount of Rs 1.4 crore.

In India, listed companies must maintain a minimum public shareholding of 25%.

The securities market regulator had initiated proceedings against Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, and Adani Transmission, now known as Adani Energy Solutions, as well as their directors, after receiving complaints in June 2020 and July 2020 that they had failed to comply with the rule.

In its settlement order, SEBI has not made any mention of the ‌regulatory ⁠finding on the alleged violations.

The proceedings were part of the 24 investigations that the regulator undertook against the Adani Group after American short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report in January 2023 accusing the Adani Group of pulling off the “largest con in corporate history” through accounting fraud, money laundering and stock price manipulation, reported Reuters.

The Adani Group rejected the allegations, but the report pummelled the stocks of its listed companies and wiped out more than $100 billion of investors’ money at the time.

Vinod Adani cleared

On Monday, the regulator also cleared Vinod Adani, the elder brother of Gautam Adani, of allegations that he controlled investments through two foreign portfolios in Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, and Adani Energy.

It was alleged that this was in violation of the minimum public float rules and the Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices regulations.

The regulations prohibit manipulative, fraudulent and unfair trade practices in the Indian securities market.

However, the regulator said that the “foundational allegations” of effective control by Vinod Adani over foreign portfolios – Excel Investment and Global Opportunities Management Limited – as well as Opal Investment Private Limited were not established.

It noted that Vinod Adani’s role in the two foreign portfolios was advisory. This “does not automatically imply control unless such rights confer the ability to determine the composition of the Board of Directors or positively direct the management or policy decisions”, held SEBI.

Referring to allegations regarding Vinod Adani’s business relations with Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung Ling, who were accused of acting as channels for investments into Adani Group companies, the regulator held that business or financial ties cannot establish control.

However, it imposed a penalty of Rs 20 lakh each on Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung Ling for failing to provide complete and accurate information during the proceedings.

On September 22, SEBI also allowed five companies of the Adani Group to settle adjudication proceedings launched after the report by Hindenburg Research, by paying a combined amount of Rs 1.5 crore.

The proceedings involved the conglomerate’s flagship company Adani Enterprises, and subsidiaries Adani Total Gas, Adani Green, Adani Energy Solutions, formerly known as Adani Transmission, and AWL Agri Business Limited, which was previously named Adani Wilmar.

SEBI had begun adjudication proceedings based on the findings of the check it had carried out.

The Adani Group firms proposed to settle the proceedings under the 2018 settlement regulations, without admitting or denying the findings.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Monday disposed of a petition filed by a mosque committee in Ujjain challenging a notice issued by the municipal corporation to remove a portion of the Shahi Masjid for a road widening project, Live Law reported.

The bench took note of a settlement reached between the Shahi Masjid Waqf Panch Mochiyan and the Ujjain Municipal Corporation. The details of the settlement were not placed before the court.

However, the demolition of part of the mosque is underway, the police said.

The administration is widening the road ahead of the Hindu religious gathering called the Simhastha to be held in March 2028. The gathering is held every 12 years on the banks of the Kshipra River.

On Monday morning, violence erupted near the Shahi Masjid as police fired tear gas at Muslim residents protesting against the notice over the demolition. The demonstrators threw stones at police personnel during the clashes.

A sit-in protest against the proposal had begun at the Shahi Masjid on Sunday, with some demonstrators staying inside the premises overnight to prevent the removal. On Sunday night, police and municipal teams brought heavy machinery to the area, while several companies of police were also deployed.

Tensions escalated the next morning when the Ujjain Municipal Corporation began tearing down portions of the mosque. Fifteen persons have been detained and seven others were booked, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

Before the clashes, Ujjain Superintendent of Police Pradeep Sharma had said that the police were attempting to resolve the matter through dialogue and that the demolition had been stalled.

In the evening, Sharma told The Indian Express that the removal of the portion was continuing with the consent of the mosque committee.

Ujjain Qazi or religious leader Khalil Quresh Rehman who was involved in the discussion with the administration said that the matter had been resolved on Sunday night. He also urged the residents to not go near the site and pay attention to any rumours, The Indian Express reported.

Sharma added that the police was monitoring social media and that action will be taken against those posting “provocative material”, the newspaper reported.

On September 9, the High Court’s Indore Bench dismissed two petitions challenging the municipal corporation’s proposal. It had held that the proposed removal of a part of the mosque that falls within the proposed widened alignment of the road does not violate Articles 14, 25, 26 or 300A of the Constitution.

These articles deal with fundamental and constitutional rights concerning equality, freedom of religion, and property ownership.

The court had also noted that the road was important for traffic management during Simhastha.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The gentle cow – beloved in the Indian tradition for millenia – has today been weaponised by Bharatiya Janata Party governments and Hindutva mobs. Weaponised for hate and fear, for lynching, for incarceration, for erasure and for mass impoverishment.

Cow slaughter is now legal only in eight states, including Kerala, Goa, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura. Most other states under Bharatiya Janata Party governments have seen cow protection laws from the past made harsher, more stringent, and punishments comparable or higher than those for manslaughter.

In many states, the definition of the cow has been widened to include more bovines including those that become unproductive, trade and often even the transport of cows been criminalised, the role of “vigilante” groups in working with the police to enforce the ways legitimised, the powers of the police massively broadened, and punishments for violations rendered much more severe.

Until 2005, the Supreme Court had ruled that a complete ban on slaughter of cattle, including of bulls and bullocks, was legally impermissible because it violated the fundamental right to trade of butchers.

But a major seven-bench judgment in 2005 reversed this, maintaining that a complete ban was only a reasonable restriction on this fundamental right, and not its violations. Armed with this ruling, many state governments ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have imposed various versions of beef bans. It is the Supreme Court that opened the doors wide for such harsh statutes.

Livelihood impact

The beef ban has severely impacted the livelihoods of farmers, traders, and workers involved in the cattle and meat industries. The tightening of laws preventing cow slaughter have crushed or erased the livelihoods of a long chain of workers who are connected with meat, leather and a range of other products derived from cows. These are mostly people of Muslim or Dalit identity, because the handling of human or animal carcasses is treated as ritually polluting by caste Hindus, and therefore this work has mostly been left to the outcaste Dalits or Muslims.

For generations farmers have exercised the freedom of choice to sell the animal when she is no longer productive. It is this freedom that cow protection laws have snatched away, leaving in its trail the unprecedented decimation not just of the farmer’s economy but of millions of lives and livelihoods connected with the cow.

Innumerable livelihoods converge around the cow and other cattle, but most of these depend first on the agency of the farmer to sell the animal when it is no longer productive. Apart from the meat, economic activity from cattle includes hides and skins; bones for processing into gelatin, ossein, di-calcium phosphate; casings from the intestines; horns and hooves; blood for the pharma industry; meat and bone meal; tallow and pet foods. But farmers in all states with severe beef bans no longer have this freedom.

Shivraj Mahendra, in a detailed research paper, established how the beef ban in India, driven by political and religious motivations, has substantial economic consequences for various stakeholders, particularly affecting the poor and marginalised communities. Many farmers rely on the sale of cattle for additional income, especially after the lactation period. The ban disrupts this cycle, causing financial strain. The ban has led to the collapse of cattle markets. Farmers can no longer sell aged or unproductive cattle, leading to increased costs for maintenance and feeding.

The meat industry, which employs a significant number of people, particularly from marginalised communities like Dalits and Muslims, has faced economic hardship due to the ban. The reduction in beef availability affects those who depend on it for their primary source of protein, leading to nutritional and economic issues.

Due to the ban, there has been an increase in illegal cattle trade. Farmers and traders, in an attempt to recover some financial losses, resort to unlawful means, risking legal repercussions and further economic instability. The rise of cow vigilante groups has instilled fear among those involved in the cattle trade. The threat of violence and legal action deters farmers from selling cattle, exacerbating economic hardships.

Leather trade in Agra

Reuters reported as far back as in 2017 the immediate impact of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath’s closure of unlicensed abattoirs on livelihoods in the backstreets of Agra’s Muslim quarter, where shoes have been made for centuries. Agra produced millions of pairs of shoes a day for domestic buyers and European labels including Zara and Clarks. An estimated 40% of the population of the city depends on the industry.

When reporters visited the narrow shoemaking lanes of Agra, Muslims workers said that they were no longer safe to trade buffalo, buy cow leather for shoes or to do work that their community has done for centuries for fear of being attacked by Hindu vigilantes. Muslims and Dalits who transport cattle, work in tanneries and make shoes, bags and belts suddenly lost the livelihood that was their succour for generations.

The resultant collapse of the leather industry was precipitous, Reuters found. India’s exports of leather shoes had fallen already by 2017 by more than 13%, as leading global brands turned to China, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan to secure supplies. Nazir Ahmed, CEO of shoemaker Park Exports, told Reuters, “The writing was already on the wall. We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Much of India’s meat and leather trade took place in the informal sector, and for them it is hard to get licences, especially for smaller units. Brands like H&M, Zara and Clarks cut back their orders to India because they were sceptical of India’s ability to meet their requirements. Instead, they moved to rival suppliers in Asia and southeast Asia. Because of the cow laws and the actions of vigilante mobsters, many tanneries ran out of leather.

Manufacturers of leather goods were forced to import hides from the US, Australia, and some European nations, raising the cost of production and squeezing margins. “My business has come to a standstill because I don’t have any inventory at all. Most large shoemakers are importing hides now,” said a tannery owner. Locals estimate that nearly a third of the roughly three million-strong workforce, mostly lowly-paid casual workers employed in the leather sector, lost their jobs in just six months.

The Karnataka story

I will illustrate this further with the striking example of Hindutva politics in Karnataka, because of which the BJP annihilated millions of livelihoods with its beef bans. In February 2021, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka legislated a complete ban on the slaughter of bulls and bullocks and male and female buffaloes below the age of 13 years, in addition to cows, through the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020. The transport, sale, export, purchase or disposal of these categories of cattle for the purpose of slaughter within or outside the state were also completely prohibited.

An outstanding report by Dr Sylvia Karpagam and Siddharth K Joshi traces expertly the entire economic chain that existed around cattle before the tightened cow slaughter bans. This began with farmers who procured and reared cattle primarily for dairying and/or agricultural purposes. When the cattle became unproductive, they were sold in thriving animal markets across the state, and replaced with more productive cattle.

The animals that were sold were either used by other farmers for dairy or draught or by butchers for meat, mostly the latter. Transporters took the cattle to slaughterhouses from where the meat was bought by butchers, who in turn sold the meat to consumers, hotels, small eateries, street vendors etc. Hides which were sold to the hide merchants were salted and cured and later sold to agents for manufacture of leather products. Parts such as the intestine, bones and hooves could also be sold to pharma companies etc.

The report reveals how the cattle slaughter ban has damaged or broken all these essential links in the economic chains of the cattle economy by its restrictions on cattle trade and slaughter. To begin with, it finds that before the law, there were 2,000-3,000 thriving cattle markets in Karnataka and cattle from across the state used to come to these markets; these have plummeted after the law to 100 and even these are not functioning like before. This has thrust all farmers, especially dairy farmers into an even more dire economic situation than which they already endured.

Earlier, in these cattle fairs, hundreds of buyers and sellers would gather with different types of bovines. Healthy bovines would be bought by other farmers for dairy or draught purposes. Those that were sick, aged, unable to yield milk or move around were sold for slaughter to the cattle traders.

The researchers found just within a year of the passage of the law that the numbers of animals were down to a third, because it had made the sale and transport of unproductive animals very risky. “There was an air of despair in the market, and later we realised that many of the farmers would end up taking their unsold cattle back home, essentially due to a sharp decrease in the numbers of buyers since the cattle slaughter ban was enacted.” Muslim buyers said the fear of the police or vigilantes stopping cattle carrying vehicles discouraged both sellers and buyers.

The combination of the cattle slaughter ban and “vigilantism” meant that farmers could not sell their unproductive animals and would have to continue taking care of the animal which they found economically unviable.

Gajagandra, a farmer from Nedungudu village, Hosapete said, “We would bring sick, old and lame cattle to the market. … They keep telling us to protect these animals. Now who will take care of these animals when they are sick? The cost of everything is going up. Even to take the cattle for short distances for treatment, we have to pay a minimum of Rs 500.” Ramanna, a small farmer from T Hosahalli, explained, “Some of the cattle stop eating or drinking, some start losing weight, some may have injuries and find it difficult to walk or get up. So we have to sell them”. But cattle trade in such animals has almost been killed. “You expect us to take care of the cattle till the end of their lives. How will we manage? Don’t throw stones at our livelihood.”

“Cattle get old. They can neither be used for any farm work nor maintained. They are of no use to the farmers. Farmers usually sell these to butchers but now they are not able to. This is anyaya [injustice] to the farmers. How can the farmers maintain such animals? This law has created a huge problem for farmers. Banning cow slaughter is not acceptable,” said another dairy farmer despondently.

A farmer explained, “In the 20-22 years lifetime of a cow, it gives milk only up to age 12 years, according to one person interviewed. After 12 years, it neither has calves nor gives adequate milk. In the case of the buffalo, this is around 15 years. The farmers ask how they will look after these cattle for six-eight years till they die a natural death”. Yet another said, “All this makes farmers appear like criminals. Even if there is a small issue, cases are filed on us, we are charged fines and the cattle are taken away.”

The Print records the impact of the beef ban also on farmers who could no longer transport or sell their cows. Four farmers were arrested in Raichur in 2022 on charges that by selling their cattle, they had committed a crime under the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020.

One of them, Shivaputra Gowda asked angrily, “For generations, farmers have been trading in cattle, especially when they are unproductive or sick, or as a means to raise money. It’s my cattle. Why can’t I sell it?” He explained that the farmers sold their cattle to meet urgent needs. He described how farmer Shivarayappa was arrested because he “sold his cattle to raise money for hospital bills. His daughter had undergone a caesarean delivery at a private hospital. Hulagappa was to undergo a heart surgery the next day with the money he got from the cattle trader. The farmers are paid between Rs 11,000 and Rs 16,000 for their cattle.

“Each of us paid Rs 9,000 as bail money to the court when we were already cash-strapped. Cattle are supposed to supplement our agricultural income. With this law, this government has destroyed our livelihoods. This will make it impossible for farmers to rear cattle or depend solely on agricultural income,” Gowda said.

Earlier the farmer who sold the animal got around three-fourth of the money that he spent when he bought the animal. Now, that economic option has suddenly been snatched away by the law and vigilantes. They are forced instead to hand over the unproductive animal to a gaushala free of cost, or to abandon them. This means that much fewer unproductive cattle are sold to traders who transport them to slaughterhouses, because the 2020 law essentially criminalises the traders who buy bovines for slaughter from the cattle market.

They are also made to pay a maintenance charge for the upkeep of their confiscated animals in a guashala. But “we visited the cowshed (to see our cows) and the situation is pathetic. There’s no one to even pick up the cows that collapse due to sickness,” Gowda claimed.

Threat of beef-lynchings

In addition to not being able to get a good price for their cattle, farmers report that the Act renders farmers vulnerable to being criminalised for cattle transporting. “Now, farmers transporting cattle to and from the cattle market regularly face the possibility of their vehicles being stopped either by police or self appointed vigilante mobs and asked to pay an extortion fee or run the risk of having their cattle confiscated. This makes, what should have been a fairly routine practice, into one fraught with danger”.

All of this has greatly aggravated “beef lynchings”. A farmer said, “I used to buy buffaloes here and sell them in Kerala, but we can never be sure if it will reach Kerala or not. We are still stopped on the highway by police or ‘gau rakshaks’ and they ask us so many questions about the age of the animals. This just becomes an excuse to seize our vehicles. Even trying to do legitimate business, I am losing money. I have been beaten so many times by these gau rakshaks. I have filed several FIRs against them but nothing has changed”.

Another meat seller said, “Police and rakshaks keep seizing the maal [animal]. We have a lot of difficulty. Because of this, we had to increase the cost of beef. Earlier we used to sell for Rs 160-Rs 180 rupees per kg here, but now it has gone up to Rs 240 rupees. … Earlier we used to buy eight-10 cattle a day. Now it has come down to four-five. We are given a receipt when we buy the cattle, but these receipts are ignored when they stop our vehicles. They take money from us and also seize vehicles. They ask questions we cannot answer. We have huge losses because of this.”

The report finds that before the law, traders or individual butchers would buy their animals from the weekly livestock markets and bring them to slaughterhouses. The researchers visited a 150-year-old slaughterhouse on Tannery Road in Bengaluru. Once thriving, they found it mostly empty with only a small number of buffaloes slaughtered there. The Act has now almost completely decimated the livelihoods of those who used to work in the butcher shops and slaughterhouses; the cleaners and sanitation workers involved in waste disposal have all been rendered unemployed. They report that a new modern corporate-owned abattoir near Harohalli Industrial area is under construction, and the old tannery that gave livelihoods to hundreds of poor workers, mostly Muslim or Dalit, will be closed down.

The crisis of leather production

The tightened cow protection laws are also gravely impacting India’s leather production which is closely interwoven with caste. Animal skins and carcasses are ritually polluting to Hindus, and these livelihoods were mainly left to Dalit and Muslim workers. This has not changed even when leather is transitioning from a traditional craft to an industrialised sector. Reuters estimates that harassment by cow “vigilantes” has badly disrupted India’s leather industry, which employs almost 2.5 million mainly Dalit and Muslim workers. This work also carries with it great health hazards, with no protection from several chemicals, which they handle without adequate protection, affecting the skin, lungs and eyes.

But even this precarious livelihood is greatly threatened. The researchers visited the Devarajeevanahalli and Kadugondanahalli area in Bengaluru that used to have several tanneries. These tanneries used to depend on the curing units mostly located in the DJ Halli area, which in turn used to buy the skins and hides from the government slaughterhouse on Tannery Road.

Chowdary Rizwan-Ul Khureshi, who owns a tannery unit in Bengaluru, said to The Print that labourers who earned Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 per month are now out of jobs. “From 70 labourers, all Dalits and Muslims, working at my tannery firm last year, I could only retain 15. After this Act was enforced, my business took a huge hit since hides were no longer locally available. Now, I import animal hides from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh,” Khureshi said.

“There used to be 250 curing units here about two years back,” a worker reported. Now there are only 10-15. Skins of at least 250 animals would be bought every day earlier. Now it is 10-15.” The masses of workers who used to be carrying hides and skins in and out of the units, have vanished. One of the few remaining workers explained that there used to be different groups of workers to load and unload the skins, to apply salt on the hides and then to clean and dispose of the waste. Now the few workers have to do all of these. Earlier each skin sold for Rs 1,000 but now they barely fetch 50-60 rupees. Sometimes there is no work for weeks. "We are struggling for food.”

The report indicates that as technology in the leather industry has advanced, the ownership of the business has shifted away from Muslims as they were not able to invest in expensive new machines or adopt the latest technology.

But as AJ Khan, State Secretary, Dalit and Minority Sene, explained, even if Dalit, Muslim and other backward communities are not the owners of big leather businesses, a large part of the workforce in the sector still comes from these communities and a forcible decline of the small-scale units involved in skin curing and tanning work is essentially an economic blow to these communities.

The disappearing beef trade

In 2018-’19, the estimated market value of cattle and buffalo meat produced in Karnataka was Rs 270.6 crore and Rs 185.5 crore respectively. Nearly 40% of beef produced in the State is consumed in Bengaluru. The impact of the law is that “In DJ Halli itself, there used to be 100-150 beef shops and each shop employed four-give people. Now almost 60 shops have closed down. Together these shops used to sell 4,000 kg per day, but now it has come down to 2,000 kg. Many lost their jobs and are now forced to take up work like painting, furniture work, driving auto etc. Kabab centres, biriyani shops, street vendors have all been badly affected.” This again is the direct impact of draconian statutes and the vigilantes working with impunity and tacit support of the state.

The Wire opines that the political context in which this law was enacted was that it was brought in at a time when targeted attacks on the Muslim community especially on the pretext of cow protection were at its peak. The law seems to tilt more towards targeting the Muslim community rather than protecting and preserving cows or cattle.

As we saw, it has snatched away the livelihood and essential nutrition of many vulnerable communities in Karnataka – Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim and other minorities – without any alternatives or compensation, thus pushing them into economic and social vulnerability. It has done this by converting a legitimate trade into illegality or a crime. It provides a faux moral tool to vigilante groups as well as to police and other state officials to enable their systemic harassment.

Nanjundaswamy Chukki, an activist of the Karnataka farmers movement for over 20 years agrees. The government, he says, is cashing in to selectively appeal to a majoritarian sentiment and hyper-nationalism, rather than any real concern for its constitutional obligations. The law will destroy the livelihoods of many from rural areas dependent on bovine rearing, processing and consumption – cattle herders, dairy farmers, butchers and leatherworkers.

We have no doubt, he says, that the indigenous cattle of India have dwindled steadily over the years. Such laws will further reduce bovine populations even more since farmers have nowhere to sell their older cows and buffaloes, thus reducing their ability to rear them. This is already happening in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states. If the BJP really cared about protecting cows, it should allow farmers to rear them and sell them and allow consumption of beef to continue.

Siddharth Joshi observed, “Some 30% of meat shops selling beef shut down right when we were compiling our report. It isn’t as if the Act has stopped cattle trade. It has made life difficult for farmers and traders but has turned the business into a criminal enterprise, where people with links and political patronage are benefiting.”

Khasim Shoaib Ur Rahman Qureshi, president of the All India Jamiatul Qureshi, an organisation of butchers, also confirmed that where the Bengaluru slaughterhouse at Tannery Road once employed 5,000 workers, there were just 150-200 now. “A head butcher would earn about Rs 700-Rs 800 per day for a strenuous 12-hour job. Skinners and cleaners earned a measly Rs 200-Rs 500 per day. All of them have lost their jobs and have migrated to neighbouring states.”

“Members of right-wing organisations beat up our staff, tear up permits, and accuse us of violating rules. The police book us and we run from one court to another. Farmers are suffering, we are suffering for one party’s political gain,” Qureshi alleged.

Little changes under the Congress

Bans on selling meat during Hindu festivals have become routine even in Congress-ruled states. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has announced a ban on the sale of meat in Bengaluru on the occasion of Mahaveer Jayanti in 2024. This was under the Congress government. The ban, enforced by the BBMP’s Animal Husbandry Department, prohibits both the sale of meat and animal slaughter for the day.

This decision follows a similar ban imposed during Ramanavami celebrations. The same happened in Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam- ruled Tamil Nadu. The Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation has announced a ban on the slaughter and sale of meat in Coimbatore on the occasion of Mahaveer Jayanti in 2024. This decision is in line with the observance of the Jain festival, which emphasizes non-violence and vegetarianism. The ban will be enforced for the entire day, affecting all meat shops and slaughterhouses in the city.

Dr Sylvia Karpagam, the public health expert who co-compiled the report on the impact of the law, told The Print that the law might have the opposite of the intended effect of increasing cattle population. “Studies have shown that such a ban and punitive measures will only discourage farmers from rearing cattle and that will lead to further decline in their population. The government should focus on providing citizens with nutritious and affordable food. Beef is one such,” Karpagam said.

There were great hopes when the Congress was emphatically voted into power in 2023, that the government would rescind the cow slaughter laws to rescue and restore the livelihoods of millions of Muslims and Dalits in the state. The government is now in its third year, but has not had the political courage to undo the damage of the earlier government to the working poor of these communities. They continue to languish under laws that have criminalised and endangered the ways in which they survived for centuries.

I am grateful for the research support of Sumaiya Fatima and Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi.

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.

Former Union minister RK Singh on Monday alleged that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar “and his bosses” were violating the law through the manner in which they were conducting the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Singh said that the order to conduct the SIR across the country was illegal as section 21 of the 1950 Representation of the People Act says that the exercise can be undertaken only in specific cases, “for reasons to be recorded in writing in each case; and that also only in any constituency or part of a constituency”.

An exception allowed for special cases cannot become a rule, he said on social media. “The Supreme Court order upholding the general SIR was wrong,” he added.

Singh said that the Union government and the Election Commission’s efforts have always been to enrol all eligible voters to deepen democracy. “This is the first time in the history of the country that the mission is to disenfranchise people,” he added.

Singh was a minister in the Narendra Modi government between 2019 and 2024. He was the Union home secretary between 2011 and 2013 in the Manmohan Singh government.

He resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party in November after he was suspended for alleged activities against the party.

Also read: Conflict of interest concerns follow CEC Gyanesh Kumar from Sambhal to the Supreme Court

In his social media post, the former minister alleged that Kumar added a new appendix to Form 6, which is used to register new voters. “He was not authorised to do so, as Form 6 is mandated by statutory rules,” Singh alleged. “And he added this himself – against the views of the two election commissioners.”

Singh’s allegations came five days after The Indian Express reported on September 23 that two of them, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were related to the registration of new voters and changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

One of the objections raised by Sandhu and Joshi pertained to the changes to Form 6.

On Saturday, in their first meeting since The Indian Express’ report, the election commissioners said that the old version of Form 6 will be used in periods when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is not underway. However, the poll panel claimed that the declaration attached to Form 6 for the voter roll revision exercise had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Who filed objections to delete voters, asks Singh

On Monday, Singh alleged that objections to the inclusion of voters in the electoral rolls through Form 7 had been filed in bulk. “Who filed them?” he asked. “How were the forms accepted and acted upon when the persons who signed it did not appear?”

Singh asked whether the poll panel and “some people from a political party were acting in cahoots” to get “bogus” Form 7 objections filed in bulk and delete names.

Singh said that a “ridiculous thing”, called “logical discrepancy”, was brought up. “Gyanesh Kumar does not have any idea of how the poor live in India,” he added.

Logical discrepancies refer to what the panel considers inconsistencies such as a mismatch with the spellings of names of the voters’ parents, an unreasonably low gap between the ages of parents and children or if parents have more than six children.

“The only authority designated by law to add or delete names and publish the electoral rolls is the electoral registration officer,” he said. “Contrary to this, the electoral roll was centralised and the revision happened centrally. This was illegal.”

Sandhu and Joshi had also reportedly raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

Each constituency’s electoral roll is maintained by its electoral registration officer, a statutory authority. But Joshi and Sandhu questioned whether these officers were being given access to the database, The Indian Express had reported.

In May, Joshi flagged that there was a “gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database” and proposed an audit to certify that “no one, except the concerned statutory authorities, has credentials to make any change in the database”.

Also read: SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

‘Deleting voters before verification is a heinous offence’

Singh alleged on Monday that Kumar had removed the names of “all the voters who had been listed by the EROs after 2003, without any basis, without any enquiry, and without any show cause to the registered voters” and that the process was “blatantly illegal”.

He stated that persons whose names were removed having to apply as a new elector and give evidence of their eligibility was a violation of a 1995 Supreme Court judgement. The ruling held that “the enquiry authority or the objector and not the voter – must bring forth material evidence to back any claim that an enrolled voter be disqualified,” Singh contended.

“Deleting voters names before verification is a heinous offence, and Gyanesh Kumar is guilty thereof,” Singh alleged.

Singh asked whether Kumar had committed “all these illegalities himself or was he directed to do so by his bosses”.

He called on the Opposition to file a criminal case against the chief election commissioner.

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

The Opposition and civil society groups have been demanding the removal of Kumar over revelations in The Indian Express report.

Kumar has not yet commented on The Indian Express’ investigation. However, after the report was published, the Election Commission had said on Wednesday that “operational queries or inputs raised by commission members during draft stages are part of standard administrative practice” to safeguard voter rights.

“Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution,” the poll panel stated. “They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken.”

The commission added that highlighting specific internal notes made over 10 months “while overlooking the much larger body of approvals, decisions, instructions and initiatives give only one part of the picture”.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR

The Supreme Court on Monday said that there was “no question” of examining any challenge to the discharge of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the alleged staged “encounter” killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati, and the alleged murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh’s wife Kauser Bi in Gujarat, reported Bar and Bench.

Hearing an appeal by Rubabuddin Sheikh, the brother of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, the court sought responses from the Central Bureau of Investigation and 22 persons, including 21 police personnel, who had been accused in the case.

Rubabuddin Sheikh has challenged the Bombay High Court’s May 7 decision to uphold the acquittal of the 22 persons accused in the case.

Sohrabuddin Sheikh, who was a wanted criminal, was killed by the Gujarat Police in November 2005 in an “encounter”, which is alleged to have been staged. He and his wife were travelling by bus from Hyderabad to Sangli in Maharashtra when they were stopped by the Gujarat and Rajasthan police, allegedly abducted and shot dead near Gandhinagar.

A sub-inspector also allegedly raped Kauser Bi before murdering her. Prajapati was the sole witness to the murders. He was in police custody after the incident but was shot dead in another “encounter” in December 2006, when the police claimed he was trying to escape.

Shah had been accused of allegedly ordering the fake “encounter”. The Gujarat Police reported to Shah at the time, as he was the state home minister. He was investigated for both destruction of evidence and murder.

A special Central Bureau of Investigation had discharged the Bharatiya Janata Party leader in the case in 2014. In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld the decision, rejecting an appeal by activist and former bureaucrat Harish Mander seeking a reinvestigation into Shah’s role in the case.

Out of 210 witnesses examined during the trial in the case, 92 were declared hostile.

On Monday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said this was a “serious concern”, reported Live Law. “Although it was a concurrent finding, whether there was a fair and just trial, that’s to be considered,” said the bench.

It said that it would do so by examining the witness statements, reported Bar and Bench. The court asked both sides to submit the witness statements that they would be relying on to back up their arguments.

In December 2018, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court acquitted all persons accused in the matter. In its judgement, the court had held that the prosecution had failed to prove a conspiracy beyond reasonable doubt.

In April 2019, Sohrabuddin Sheikh’s brothers, Rubabuddin Sheikh and Nayabuddin Sheikh, challenged the acquittal before the Bombay High Court, alleging that the trial was flawed and that several witness statements had not been recorded accurately.

In October 2025, the CBI told the court that it would not challenge the acquittals in the matter.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

A group of former bureaucrats on Monday demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for alleged irregularities in the conduct of special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the country.

In an open letter, the Constitutional Conduct Group said that the Election Commission’s functioning has become “imperious, autocratic and dictatorial” because of Kumar. It added that his actions around the SIR exercise represented “serious infringement” of constitutional functioning and legality.

On Saturday, the group had called on the Election Commission to scrap the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The letter came amid similar demands by the Opposition and civil society groups for Kumar’s removal over alleged irregularities in the functioning of the poll panel. The demands came after The Indian Express reported on Wednesday that two election commissioners had objected to decisions related to the SIR.

The newspaper’s investigation showed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were reportedly related to the changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The two election commissioners had also raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

‘Sandhu, Joshi not blameless’

The retired bureaucrats also demanded amendments to the 2023 Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act to “democratise” the selection process.

The Act states that the chief election commissioner and the two other election commissioners are appointed on the recommendation of a selection committee comprising the prime minister, a Union Cabinet minister and the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. This gives the government a 2:1 majority on the committee over the leader of the Opposition in case of a difference of opinion.

The group also demanded that the immunity given to the election commissioners should also be removed. Section 16 of the Act protects current and former election commissioners from civil and criminal proceedings for acts, things or words done or spoken in the discharge of their official duties.

Reiterating its earlier demand to scrap the SIR exercise, the group said the process had caused “untold trauma and anxiety” among citizens eligible to vote.

It accused the poll body of “weaponising” its constitutional powers by introducing the SIR and putting in place “unnecessarily complicated” procedures that enabled “large-scale manipulation” of electoral rolls.

It added: “The decision on SIR was reportedly conveyed on WhatsApp and there is no file on this in the ECI.”

The former bureaucrats alleged that the “incompetent, arbitrary, autocratic and unprofessional” implementation of the SIR could disenfranchise 15% to 16% of India’s electorate, particularly minorities, marginalised groups and the elderly, without providing quick avenues for redress.

While the group accused Kumar of violating the law governing decision-making in the Election Commission, it said the two other election commissioners were “not entirely blameless either”.

“They might have made objections internally to the CEC’s decisions, but they allowed SIR to be conducted in state after state, disenfranchising millions of voters, without speaking out,” the group said.

It also demanded that existing Electors Photo Identity Cards continue to be treated as valid, except where corrections are required for errors found during the revision process. It also urged the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision upholding the SIR.

The letter was signed by 74 people, including former Maharashtra Principal Secretary Sandeep Bagchee, former Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Administrative Reforms and Decentralisation Commission JL Bajaj and former West Bengal Additional Chief Secretary G Balachandhran.

Concerns over SIR

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Shiva Shekhar, a 40-year-old farmer from Padavalapatna village in Mandya district’s Nagamangala taluk, could not sow ragi this kharif. “I kept waiting for the rain but it never came, so I sowed cowpea instead, which is more drought-tolerant,” he said on September 16.

Karnataka is the largest ragi-producing state in the country. In 2025-’26, India produced 2 million tonnes of ragi, of which 1.47 million tonnes came from Karnataka, according to the Third Advance Estimates for the year from the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The state also accounted for about 73% of the area under ragi that year, at 979,000 hectares. Of that, Mandya –located about 40 km north of Mysuru – accounted for about 53,300 hectares.

Broadly, ragi sowing at the national and state levels has kept pace with last year. But in Mandya, against a target of 63,385 hectare for this year, ragi was sown in 1,213 hectare (1.91%) by September 11, data shared by Jayaswamy, joint director of agriculture for Mandya, show.

By September 11, Karnataka had an overall decline of 1.5 million hectares in kharif sowing area compared to last year. Of this, roughly a third each was in paddy, and the broad category of millets and coarse cereals.

“The seasonal decline in Kharif millet acreage during low-rainfall years reflects practical, farm level adaptation rather than a loss of confidence in the crop,” said C Tara Satyavathi, director of ICAR’s Indian Institute Of Millet Research.

“When monsoon showers are delayed or substantially deficient, topsoil moisture drops below the threshold required for seed emergence,” explained Satyavathi. “If the mid-August window passes, sowing full-duration varieties can expose the crop to terminal moisture stress later in October-November.”

For Shekhar, shifting to cowpea did not help either. “Due to the lack of rainfall and soil moisture, this crop [cowpea] is also drying up. There seems to be no chance of yield,” he said.

“July had an 83% rainfall deficit and August a 70% deficit. In the last two months, we have hardly had even one rainy day in the district,” said Jayaswamy.

The rainfall deficit

On August 27, the state government had declared drought in 101 taluks, with assessments continuing in other areas. All seven taluks in Mandya were in the list. The district had also submitted a proposal covering around 48,000 hectares of crop loss, Jayaswamy said.

As of September 16, Mandya received 130 mm of rainfall, 45% less than normal, data from the India Meteorological Department show. The state, as a whole, had a 30% deficit. Only four districts recorded normal rainfall. This week, Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said more than 200 of the state’s 239 taluks were facing drought conditions.

In May 2026, ISignal had explained the concerns about this year experiencing a “super El Niño” event beginning in the second half and stretching on to early next year. El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of the global ocean atmospheric phenomenon El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a powerful atmospheric-ocean phenomenon.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes the phenomenon as follows: “During normal conditions in the Pacific ocean, trade winds blow west along the equator, taking warm water from South America towards Asia. To replace that warm water, cold water rises from the depths…. During El Niño, trade winds weaken. Warm water is pushed back east, toward the west coast of the Americas.”

El Niño is associated with increased rainfall and flooding in parts of South America, East Africa, and the southern United States; drought conditions in eastern and northern Australia, Indonesia, southern Africa, and parts of South Asia due to suppressed monsoon activity; and reduced Atlantic hurricane activity, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Karnataka’s drought, however, cannot be explained by El Niño alone, and other oceanic and atmospheric factors also influencing the monsoon, Raghu Murtugudde, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, explained.

While the monsoon onset was delayed only slightly, rainfall became highly erratic and unevenly distributed. Murtugudde said global warming is further complicating these patterns: rapid warming over the Middle East and Europe has shifted Arabian Sea winds northward, which can alter the tracks of cyclonic low-pressure systems and leave peninsular India, including Karnataka, with less rain. “How the weather shifts is now a very complicated mix of El Niño and global warming, and it is not easy to separate,” he said.

“Our farming depends entirely on rainwater. The groundwater level in our area is quite low. We have to dig up to 1,000 feet for a borewell. The land in the region is rocky. We have no means of irrigation,” Shekhar said.

Ragi not drought-proof

“Karnataka’s Southern Dry Zone (Tumakuru, Hassan, Mandya, Ramanagara, Kolar, and Chikkaballapura) is predominantly rainfed, with ragi serving as the traditional nutritional and economic backbone,” Satyavathi explained.

Thirty-five-year-old Rudresh, a resident of Melehalli village in Tumakuru, relies entirely on rainfall for his farming. Tumakuru is a major ragi-producing district, where nine out of 10 taluks have been declared drought-affected.

First, he transplanted ragi at the end of June, but it dried up. A second attempt in August did not help. “It is drying again; there is no yield this time,” he said. Rudresh spent Rs 60,000 on the two attempts. He borrowed Rs 20,000 from a fellow villager to prepare ragi nursery and for transplantation, and owes Rs 1.5 lakh against the Kisan Credit Card.

Rudresh approached the Grama One Centre – a village-level state government chain providing access to services – for crop insurance, but said that the personnel told him “there's no guarantee” that his claim will be processed due to his KCC loan. Tumakuru Joint Director of Agriculture Laxman SK said no such rule exists.

Agricultural crops account for around 45% of Tumakuru’s cultivated area, according to Laxman. Of this, around 95% is rain-fed and only 5% irrigated.

“We received very little rain in the last week of July and the first week of August, and farmers sowed around 152,000 hectares of ragi. After sowing, we have not received any rain. Without rain, it cannot yield,” added Laxman.

“In July, the rainfall deficit was around 80%. Even horse gram is a very hardy crop, but to sow it and get at least some yield, we have to receive rain,” said Laxman.

While finger millet (ragi) is “exceptionally drought-resilient once established”, Satyavathi explained, it requires adequate topsoil moisture during the June-July window to germinate. “When early rains fail, farmers prudently adopt institutional contingency plans, shifting land to ultra-short-duration pulses (such as horse gram or cowpea) or fodder crops to prevent seed loss.”

“Ragi requires only 350-450 mm of water across its entire life cycle – roughly one-third of the water needed for paddy (1,200-1,500 mm) and significantly less than maize (550-650 mm).” said Satyavathi.

A six-year field study in south interior Karnataka found that relatively small differences in available soil moisture could translate into steep yield losses in ragi. At 58% available soil moisture, ragi produced only half its normal yield – about 1,500 kg per hectare. When moisture fell to 40%, farmers could expect just a quarter of the normal yield.

Satyavathi explained how ragi’s sensitivity to rainfall changes as the crop matures. In the first 35 days, during establishment and tillering, ragi has “high natural resilience”, she explained, pointing to measures such as inter-cultivation to create dust-mulch and conserve moisture.

The next phase – panicle initiation to flowering – is critical: Severe stress can affect spikelet fertility, Satyavathi explained. During this phase, life-saving protective irrigation (40mm–50 mm) via farm ponds or sprinklers can help. But in times of drought, as Shekhar explained, this is difficult in areas with no irrigation and low groundwater levels.

“While prolonged drought during the flowering stage does impact yield, ragi exhibits a remarkable vegetative recovery capacity: once rains resume, dormant tillers revive quickly, a physiological trait rarely seen in commercial cereals,” Satyavathi said.

“State convergence with initiatives like the Krishi Bhagya scheme – deploying polythene-lined farm ponds paired with micro-sprinklers – is actively bridging this by providing the one–two protective irrigations needed during critical flowering stages to secure yields,” she added.

During the 70-85 day period after sowing, the crop is in the grain filling stage, and “water deficit can lead to lower test weight”, she explained.

Changing rainfall patterns

Ankappa, a 53-year-old farmer from Anigere village in Ramanagara district, prepared ragi saplings in a nursery and later transplanted them into the field instead of sowing directly.

“Ragi can be raised in a nursery while farmers wait for the rains,” explained G Krishna Prasad, advisor to Devadhanya Farmer Producer Company. “When the rain arrives, they can transplant seedlings that are already around 25 days old, rather than starting the crop from seed at that point. This principle is at the heart of the traditional Ragi Guli system, an indigenous method of intensifying finger millet cultivation.”

Ramanagara district received 34 mm rainfall as of September 16, which is 91% less than normal.

For Tumakuru’s Rudresh, even this transplantation method did not help.

According to Prasad, the problem is also about how rainfall is distributed through the season. As ISignal has explained earlier, even in places or years with “normal” rainfall in the season, extended dry spells and short bursts of extreme rainfall events have become increasingly frequent.

As a result, the sowing season has also gradually shifted, Prasad explained. Farmers who traditionally sowed around May increasingly moved to June and July. This year, he said, there was inadequate rain even by the end of July in some areas.

Prasad questioned what the government is doing to help farmers cope with climate change and whether agriculture departments are doing enough to learn from these practices. He said the response to climate change often revolves around workshops and seminars, while more attention should be paid to farmers’ indigenous knowledge.

He suggested studying how rainfall has changed over the past few decades and using local rain gauges and weather forecasts at the panchayat level to guide farmers. Traditional knowledge, he argued, should be adapted to present conditions rather than simply abandoned.

IIMR is addressing this, Satyavathi said. It has helped establish decentralised millet seed hubs that supply short-to-medium duration, drought-tolerant varieties tailored to specific rainfall cut-off windows.

“The promotion of any crop by ICAR institutes is about distributing high yield varieties, making fertilizer, pesticide and irrigation recommendations,” said Ramanjaneyulu GV, executive director of Center For Sustainable Agriculture, a non-profit, independent research organisation. “Farmers choose millets only if they have better cooking quality and taste or grow without water and chemicals. If they can afford all these they go for rice or cotton or other commercial crops which give better yield or price.”

Many of the drought-resistant varieties do not have better cooking quality, he explained. “Many varieties popular now are 50 to 60 years old,” Ramanjaneyulu said. “The seed system for these varieties should be very different. We need participatory breeding and varietal selection. Breeder seeds should be given away to FPOs and farmers to multiply and distribute locally. Contingency plans for seed supply are a must in rained areas. So the more local, the better.”

ISignal reached out to the Secretary and Director of Karnataka’s Agriculture Department on September 15, seeking responses on the sharp decline in ragi and millet sowing, its link with deficient rainfall, drought mitigation measures, climate adaptation, and support available to farmers. We will update this report if we receive a response.

Shivam Bhardwaj is an independent journalist based in Bareilly.

The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Monday passed a resolution, moved by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, seeking statehood for the Union Territory amid protests by Bharatiya Janata Party legislators, The Hindu reported.

While the Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party MLAs supported the move, the BJP legislators shouted slogans against it over its reference to the resolution passed by the Assembly in 2000.

In June 2000, the National Conference government led by Farooq Abdullah passed a resolution in the Assembly calling for restoration of greater autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir as it existed before August 1953. However, it was rejected by the then-Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre.

The text of the fresh resolution moved by Abdullah on Friday says that in addition to the resolutions passed by the Assembly in June 2000 and November 2024, the House was calling on the Union government to urgently restore Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood.

In November 2024, the Assembly passed another resolution calling for the restoration of the special status the erstwhile state had under Article 370 of the Constitution, which was abrogated by the Union government in August 2019.

On Friday, the chief minister said that the latest resolution neither replaced nor subsumed the Assembly’s previous decisions. It was merely for the Union government to restore Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, he had said.

On Monday, Abdullah reiterated that the fresh resolution only sought support for restoring statehood and did not ask the Assembly to vote in favour of Article 35A or Article 370, The Hindu reported.

“Unfortunately, some of my own party leaders have come under their [BJP’s] trap,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Article 35A of the Constitution empowered the legislature of the erstwhile state to define its permanent residents. It also granted them certain privileges, including exclusive rights to purchase land and obtain government employment.

The BJP-led Union government abrogated Article 370, which gave special status to the erstwhile state, in August 2019. It also bifurcated the state into two Union territories: Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The police in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain fired tear gas at Muslim residents protesting against the demolition of a portion of a mosque. The protesters threw stones at police personnel.

The Ujjain Municipal Corporation carried out the demolition to widen a road ahead of the Simhastha religious gathering, scheduled to be held in March 2028. Crowds had also gathered outside the Shahi Masjid on Sunday night to protest against the demolition. Some people stayed in the mosque overnight.

Tensions escalated in the morning, when the administration began the operation. Read on.

The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to decide within four months which of the two Trinamool Congress factions is authorised to use the party’s original name and symbol. The factions have been given one month to complete their pleas before the poll body after which the panel will have three months to decide the matter.

On September 17, the Election Commission barred both factions from using the party’s original name and symbol in the October 6 bye-polls. The next day, it allotted new names and symbols to the factions as an interim measure.

Meanwhile, the court also asked the West Bengal Assembly speaker to decide by October 8 on petitions seeking the disqualification of 10 rebel Trinamool Congress MLAs. Read on.

The Supreme Court refused to advance the hearing of a petition about appeals pending before tribunals against decisions taken during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal. With bye-polls in two Assembly constituencies scheduled for October 6, an earlier hearing had been sought in the case.

“These are only bye-elections, that’s all,” Chief Justice Surya Kant said. Read on.

In half the seats BJP won in Bengal, total SIR deletions outnumber victory margin, reports Anant Gupta

The Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of the spate of rape cases in Delhi, saying it underlined a “systematic failure” of the law enforcement authorities and the administration to guarantee basic public safety. At least 13 cases of sexual assault have been reported in Delhi this month.

These include the gang rape of a 17-year-old allegedly by three men who posed as police personnel in a park near Lady Shri Ram College on September 21. Read on.

The bid to improve safety in public parks cannot involve keeping the public out, writes Tanya Shrivastava

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The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Election Commission to decide within four months which of the two Trinamool Congress factions is authorised to use the party’s name and the “flowers and grass” symbol, Bar and Bench reported.

The court gave the factions one month to complete their pleadings before the Election Commission, after which the panel will have three months to decide the matter.

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant was hearing a writ petition filed by former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee challenging the Election Commission’s decision to freeze the party’s original name and symbol amid a dispute between the two factions.

On September 17, the Election Commission barred both factions from using the party’s original name and the “flowers and grass” symbol in the October 6 bye-polls.

The next day, it allotted new names and symbols to the factions. The group led by Mamata Banerjee was assigned the name “Mamata All India Trinamool Congress” and the “football player” symbol. The Arup Roy-led rebel faction was allotted the name “Democratic Trinamool Congress” and the “envelope” symbol.

The poll body had clarified that the new names and symbols were only an interim arrangement and did not constitute a final adjudication of the rival claims.

During Monday’s hearing, the Election Commission’s advocate told the court that disputes over political symbols take time because “lakhs of affidavits” are filed by party workers, Live Law reported.

Justice Joymalya Bagchi suggested the poll panel can make use of artificial intelligence tools to decide the matter within three months, the legal news outlet reported. The bench pointed out that three months have already passed since the matter was brought before the Election Commission.

Also read: Trinamool symbol order: EC gave repeated extensions to rebel faction, then said ‘time not adequate’

Disqualification pleas against 10 MLAs

The same bench also directed the West Bengal Assembly speaker to decide by October 8 on petitions filed by Mamata Banerjee’s faction seeking the disqualification of 10 rebel TMC MLAs, Live Law reported.

The petitions were filed on July 8. As per an earlier Supreme Court ruling, disqualification petitions should be decided within three months, making October 8 the deadline in this case.

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioner, told the court that there was a “pattern” of delaying disqualification petitions filed under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, allowing the breakaway faction to eventually be declared the “real party”.

The bench responded that the speaker is “fully cognisant of the principles” and will make “all endeavour to take appropriate decision within [the said period]”, the legal news outlet reported.

The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution contains the anti-defection law, which provides for the disqualification of legislators who voluntarily leave their political party or vote, or abstain from voting, contrary to the party’s directions.

It aims to prevent leaders from switching parties for office, personal gain or other incentives.

However, it also exempts disqualifications in some cases. As per the law, “a member of a House shall not be disqualified if “his original political party merges with another political party”. This merger, in turn, only holds “if, and only if, not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such merger”.

Rift within TMC

The TMC has been beset by internal divisions and rebellions after it lost the Assembly elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party in May. Nearly 60 out of the TMC’s 80 MLAs have rebelled against the party leadership to choose Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. The faction later appointed Roy as its chairperson.

The group was also recognised by the Assembly speaker as the TMC’s legislature party in the House, and Ritabrata Banerjee has been recognised as the leader of the Opposition.

At the national level, 20 of the TMC’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs in June announced a merger with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India. The group is supporting the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lower House of Parliament.

Ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament in July, the Lok Sabha speaker accepted the request of the rebel MPs to sit separately in the Lok Sabha. However, the group is yet to be recognised as the Nationalist Citizens Party of India in the House.

In the Rajya Sabha, four TMC MPs have resigned since June. Three of them joined the BJP and were re-elected unopposed to the Upper House of Parliament on the Hindutva party’s tickets. With this, the TMC’s strength in the Rajya Sabha fell to nine from 13 in May.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The police in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain on Monday fired tear gas at Muslim residents protesting against the proposed demolition of a portion of a mosque, ANI reported.

Stones were thrown at the police personnel during the clashes, the news agency reported.

The administration has sought to demolish a portion of the mosque to widen the road ahead of the Hindu religious gathering called the Simhastha to be held in March 2028. The gathering is held every 12 years on the banks of the Kshipra River.

A sit-in protest against the proposal had started at the Shahi Masjid on Sunday, with some demonstrators staying inside the premises through the night to prevent it from being demolished, The Indian Express reported.

Stone-pelting was reported in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh amid protests against the proposed removal of the Shahi Masjid for the Simhastha Kumbh preparations. Police fired tear gas shells to control the crowd. pic.twitter.com/17d2LhjMeL

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) September 28, 2026

On Sunday night, the police and municipal teams brought heavy machinery to the area. Several companies of the police had also been deployed, The Indian Express reported. The administration was reportedly trying to persuade residents and members of the committee that manages the mosque to cooperate with the proposed demolition.

Tensions escalated on Monday as the Ujjain Municipal Corporation began to tear down portions of the mosque, The Indian Express reported.

Before the clashes, Superintendent of Police Pradeep Sharma had told The Indian Express that the police were attempting to resolve the matter through dialogue and that the demolition had been stalled.

A petition filed by the mosque committee against the proposed demolition will be heard in the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Monday.

On September 9, the High Court’s Indore Bench dismissed two petitions challenging the municipal corporation’s proposal. It had held that the proposed removal of a part of the mosque that falls within the proposed widened alignment of the road does not violate Articles 14, 25, 26 or 300A of the Constitution.

These articles deal with fundamental and constitutional rights concerning equality, freedom of religion, and property ownership.

The court had also noted that the road was important for traffic management during Simhastha.

Members of the Muslim community have asked why the road cannot be widened by demolishing a building opposite the mosque, the newspaper reported.

Several other structures are being demolished for the widening of the road in Ujjain. On Sunday, the administration also demolished a part of Chief Minister Mohan Yadav’s ancestral home in the Abdalpura area.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the Union government’s decision to allow fee to be levied on Unified Payments Interface transactions above Rs 2,000, Live Law reported.

However, the court sought the government’s response on the petition challenging the move.

On September 14 and September 15, the Ministry of Finance issued notifications stating that UPI payments to merchants valued above Rs 2,000 would attract a merchant discount rate of 0.4%.

Merchant discount rate is a fee charged to businesses by banks to cover the costs of processing transactions. The rate typically ranges from 1% to 3% of the transaction value for credit card payments and can be up to 0.9% for debit card transactions.

The petitioner submitted before the court that businesses may pass on the additional cost of the UPI charges to consumers.

Additional Solicitor General N Venkataraman, appearing for the Union government, submitted before the court that 96% of transactions would not attract the charge, Live Law reported. The charges would take effect on October 15.

“It is neither a tax nor a fee,” he was quoted as saying.

Chief Justice Surya Kant said that the government should place these facts on an affidavit as “it is more of a technical issue”, the legal news outlet reported.

Venkataraman also submitted that the Union government would not receive any money from the charges, Live Law reported. Instead, it would be paid between payment aggregators and banks as settlement fees.

On September 15, the government had clarified that the 0.4% fee had been capped at Rs 300 per transaction for payments of Rs 75,000 and more. The ministry had said that the new framework will have no impact on person-to-person transactions, “irrespective of the amount transferred”.

It had also “advised” banks to ensure that the charges are not passed on to the customers.

The government’s notification on UPI transactions had sparked concerns among the Opposition parties, retailers and consumers.

The Opposition has demanded that the Union government roll back the charges on UPI payments.

On September 23, several traders and shopkeepers in Madhya Pradesh had also staged a protest against the government move by covering the quick response code or the QR code and requesting customers to pay in cash, The Hindu reported.

The All India Mobile Retailers Association has planned a nationwide “No UPI Day” on Friday in protest, PTI reported.

In 2025-’26, transactions exceeding Rs 2,000 accounted for just 4% of person-to-merchant UPI payment, The Indian Express reported. However, these transactions represented nearly two-thirds of the total value of person-to-merchant UPI payments.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to advance the hearing of a case pertaining to the pending appeals against decisions taken during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal, reported Bar and Bench.

With bye-elections in the Rejinagar and Nandigram Assembly constituencies scheduled for October 6, a mention was made before a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant seeking an earlier hearing.

A counsel had verbally mentioned that the case had been listed for Tuesday but had not appeared on. the cause list.

“These are only bye-elections, that’s all,” Kant responded. The bench listed the matter for October 5.

The lawyer had also told the bench that if the pending appeals are not decided before the bye-polls, this would be “the second time these people would be missing out on their vote”, reported The Hindu.

He was referring to the Assembly elections held in the state on April 23 and April 29. By April 6, the Election Commission had removed about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of West Bengal’s electorate before the revision process began, from the electoral rolls.

Since that month, 19 appellate tribunals, set up after a Supreme Court order on March 10, have been hearing appeals against decisions taken during the voter roll revision.

On September 16, the Election Commission told the court that of the 38.2 lakh appeals, only around 1.2 lakh had been decided by then – which translates to 3.1% of the total appeals filed.

The poll panel also said that of the total appeals filed before tribunals, 22.2 lakh were filed by voters whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls.

These 22.2 lakh appeals make up around 82% of the 27 lakh voters whose names were deleted and placed under adjudication during the revision ahead of the Assembly elections.

At least 16.1 lakh appeals were filed against the inclusion of voters. The Election Commission did not specify who had filed these appeals.

The Election Commission also said that it may increase the number of appellate tribunals in West Bengal to 42, corresponding to the number of parliamentary constituencies in the state.

While hearing a petition in July, the Calcutta High Court had verbally observed that it “will take 21 years for all appeals to be disposed of” if the appellate tribunals function at the current pace.

Since the nationwide exercise to revise electoral rolls began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters and even shape poll outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: In half the seats BJP won in Bengal, total SIR deletions outnumber victory margin

The Supreme Court on Monday took suo moto cognisance of a spate of rape cases in Delhi, saying it underlined a “systematic failure” of the law enforcement authorities and the administration to guarantee basic public safety, Live Law reported.

At least 13 cases of sexual assault have been reported in Delhi this month, The Print reported.

These include the gang rape of a 17-year-old allegedly by three men who posed as police personnel in a park near Lady Shri Ram College on September 21.

On September 13, the body of a 16-year-old girl was found decomposed in Swaroop Nagar, two days after she was allegedly raped and murdered, The Hindu reported.

On August 4, a 17-year-old was gang raped by a bus driver and conductor inside a moving bus as it covered a distance of nearly 47 km from Greater Noida to Kashmere Gate without being checked at any police picket, The Indian Express reported.

On Monday, the bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said that they were distressed by these reports and highlighted the need to fix accountability.

While referring to the August 4 case, the bench said that “one cannot help but draw painful parallels to the Nirbhaya incident of 2012”.

On the night of December 16, 2012, six men raped and assaulted a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in Delhi. The woman succumbed to her injuries two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore. The gang rape, known as the Nirbhaya case, had triggered huge protests across the country.

Pardiwala said that the recent cases raise the question “of whether systemic law-enforcement mechanisms have made any meaningful progress in the decade since then”, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench observed that the right to live with dignity, free from the fear of violence, is an important aspect guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution that protects the fundamental right to life and personal liberty.

The court said that public spaces cannot be permitted to become “zones of high risk” because of inadequate illumination, poor surveillance and other preventable deficiencies, Bar and Bench reported.

Further, the judges said that statements made by the authorities and elected representatives expressing concern over such cases, fall short of providing accountability and addressing systemic problems.

“Expressing solidarity is not a solution to this social evil,” the court said.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• The bid to improve safety in public parks cannot involve keeping the public out
• No curtains, ensure panic buttons are working: Delhi tells bus operators after rape of minor

Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, said on Monday that the political campaign will start a “jail bharo andolan”, or mass voluntary arrest movement, in Mumbai on October 2, after the police denied the political campaign permission to hold a protest in Shivaji Park.

The Cockroach Janta Party had sought permission to hold the protest on October 2 to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The Mumbai Police denied it permission on Sunday, saying that Shivaji Park can only be used for sports, as per a 2013 Bombay High Court order.

The police also said that the protest could cause “noise pollution” in the residential locality. “Furthermore, as there are several major hospitals in the vicinity, the resulting traffic congestion could affect the movement of patients,” it added.

In response, Dipke shared a video of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde addressing a gathering at the venue in January and asked how he had been granted permission for his event.

The Cockroach Janta Party is demanding Kumar’s resignation and criminal proceedings against after an investigation by The Indian Express on Wednesday revealed that two election commissioners had objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions about the poll panel’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The newspaper reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected to decisions related to the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

On Friday, the Cockroach Janta Party said that it would launch a nationwide protest on October 2 if Kumar did not resign by Saturday. “This Gandhi Jayanti, let’s pledge to save democracy,” Dipke had said, adding that the agitation would begin in Mumbai and be taken to other cities.

The police on Sunday asked the political campaign to look for alternate venues for its protest and seek permission again.

What the newspaper report revealed

Sandhu and Joshi had reportedly objected to changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The two election commissioners had also raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

The Opposition has also demanded the removal of Kumar.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR

• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

Chhinari is a medium-sized village of about 80 households nestled in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district. Most of its residents are Adivasis from the Muria Gond community, while around 13 families belong to the Yadav community.

For two decades, the conflict between Maoist insurgents and the police violently disrupted their lives, bitterly dividing both Adivasi and Yadav families. Now, with the state announcing a victory over the Maoists, the residents of Chhinari are attempting to repair the ruptures in their social fabric and return to an older rhythm of life.

But this was proving to be difficult – or so I heard from local contacts in the area.

One Saturday in June, I decided to find out more by travelling to Chinnari to attend the weekly village meeting where residents gather to discuss matters of common concern.

Around 7 am, when I reached the village, I found both the young and the old were walking down to the meeting point – an open space that once held two Maoist memorials, but is now ringed by a newly built panchayat bhavan, a primary school and a community centre.

The two memorials, now razed to the ground, had been erected in the memory of Mangtu Vinod and Karuna Somari, Maoist cadres from Andhra Pradesh with adopted Adivasi names, who had been killed by the security forces in 2005, I was told. Six years later, the security forces had returned to the area and used explosives to blast away the memorials, the villagers said, as some of them sat down on the brick rubble that still lay scattered around.

The year 2011 also saw an exodus of many Yadav families from the village. This left an indelible mark on Chhinari and its residents, as I would eventually discover – a social wound left to fester for 15 years, its pain and scars still woven into the lives and memories of those who live here.

“Those who left the village, abandoned us to our circumstances,” said Manket Salaam, among those perched on the brick rubble and on narrow wooden planks fixed on tree stumps. “Can they simply return now as if nothing ever happened?”

Based on fragments of information shared by several villagers at the meeting and in subsequent conversations which often brimmed with anger and indignation, I gradually came to understand what had happened in Chhinari, and how deeply the events of all these years had shaped the lives of those who remained as well as those who left the village.

This is a story that is not unique to Chinnari – it echoes across the wider Bastar region, of which Narayanpur is a part. Until recently, the region was a stronghold of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which waged an insurgency against the Indian state for over four decades. Over the past two years, however, the majority of its top leaders have either surrendered to the police or been killed.

As conflict abates in the villages, a painful search for truth and reconciliation has begun. Our series documents this process. This is the first part.

The first killing

In their quest to establish a parallel government in the forests of central India, the Maoists created an elaborate hierarchy. At the top was the regional committee called the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, which was divided into three bureaus, nine divisions and more than 20 area committees.

Chhinari came under the jurisdiction of the Bayanar area committee, one of four such committees under the Purvi Uttar Division, covering around 75 villages.

As the Maoists began making inroads into the Bayanar area in 2000, the same year that Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh, they identified Sukkanand Yadav as their contact person in Chinnari.

Even though the village had less than 15 Yadav families, the Adivasi-dominated village endorsed their choice. Sukkanand Yadav was “extremely helpful, vocal and a good leader,” recalled Jaggaram Salaam, a resident of Chinnari.

Sukkanand Yadav rose to become the president of the local unit of the Dandakaranya Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, or DAKMS, a mass organisation of the Maoist party. He came to be known by a pseudonym, Vijay.

Eleven years later, in October 2011, the police killed him in an alleged gunfight or “encounter”, identifying him as Negi Rawat, a Maoist cadre carrying a reward of Rs 5,000.

“There was no encounter,” said Sanjay Kumar, Sukkanand Yadav’s eldest son. “Security forces entered our house and shot him dead.”

Sanjay sat alongside his younger brother and other villagers as he recounted the events from 2011.

Then 16 years old, he recalled, he was enrolled in a government school in Daudhai, about 12 km from Chinnari, and had come home for a break when security personnel stormed their house and killed his father.

Did the family report the killing to the police? “There was no possibility in those years of going to the police to file a case against the forces,” he said.

While acknowledging that his father had been an active member of the DAKMS, Sanjay insisted he was not an armed Maoist and did not possess any weapons. “The police could have easily arrested him instead of killing him so brutally,” he said, as the others around him nodded in agreement.

An exodus

Sukkanand Yadav’s killing sparked a chain of reactions that opened up a social chasm in Chinnari.

The Maoists conducted an investigation and concluded that Palli Yadav, Sukkanand’s cousin, had leaked information about him to the police. Within a month of Sukkanand’s death, the party held a jan adalat – a public trial – and pronounced Palli guilty, after which he was taken away and killed.

Fear gripped the rest of the Yadav community, and many families began considering leaving the village en masse.

When other villagers heard of their plans to leave, they tried to stop them. The Maoist leaders of the area also sent a message saying no one in Chhinari needed to fear any further retaliation.

And yet, two months later, one early morning, the village woke up to find that nine of the 13 Yadav families had left overnight with all their belongings.

The Yadav families even took away the village deity, provoking intense hurt, said Manglu Gawde, the wadde or healer of the village. “Taking away the devi means they want to settle elsewhere,” said Gawde. “They don’t care about what happens to the village.”

In Bastar, every village is believed to have a foundational deity around whom community life revolves. In the absence of the deity, the ghotul or community centre in Chinnari lost its spirit, said Gawde.The Yadav families that left Chinnari, while denying they had taken the deity, said they had no other choice but to leave. “The villagers did not convince us that they would stand by us,” said Mahesh Kumar Yadav, Sukkanand’s younger brother, who now lives in the Narayanpur district headquarters. “Otherwise, we would never have left our land and homes in a village that the Yadav community had founded.”

Not all Yadav families left, though. A few, including Sukkanand’s children, chose to stay back, only to find themselves confronting another kind of fear.

A few months after the Maoists killed Palli Yadav, the security forces descended on the village and took away Sukkanand’s son Sanjay, who had turned 17 by then, along with Jagaram Salaam, then 16.

The two were taken to the Narayanpur police station, where Sanjay alleged they were beaten in custody. After nine days in custody, they were produced before a magistrate, with the police levelling serious charges against them and claiming they were in their twenties. But Sanjay mustered the courage to tell the magistrate that they were both under 18. The magistrate, Sanjay recalled, reprimanded the police and ordered that the two boys be sent instead to the juvenile home in Jagdalpur. They were released six months later.

Police make inroads

In Narayanpur town, the headquarters of the district, the Yadav families from Chinnari came under the police radar. One of Sukkanand’s brothers and a cousin were recruited as gopniya sainiks or secret police personnel. Their job was to accompany the security forces on search operations in the Bayanar area, and help identify suspected Naxal supporters and jan militia members.

I managed to trace the phone number of Sukkanand’s brother, Sukhchand. When I called him, he was in Tamil Nadu, looking for wage work. He told me that he had worked with the police for five years, but had been fired from the job in 2017 after he skipped duty for 21 days to care for his wife after she had given birth to their child. His cousin, Manturam Yadav, who had been recruited with him, also quit in solidarity, Sukhchand said. In five years, their salary had risen from Rs 5,100 to 12,000, he said.

As for the work he did as a gopniya sainik, Sukhchand said he did what the police asked of him: “Naxaliyon ko pakadwao ya marwao” – get the Naxals arrested or killed. He said he and his cousin were posted in Chhote Pharasgaon, a village close to Chinnari, and they helped the police track down a couple of Naxal cadres and were rewarded for it.

Sukhchand did not put a number to the arrests. But, back in Chinnari, his nephew, Sanjay alleged that his uncles were instrumental in getting nearly 40 people arrested from the Bayanar area.

“Although only one person from Chhinari is currently lodged in Bilaspur jail, between 2010 and 2026, around 20 persons, both Adivasi and non-Adivasi, from the village were arrested and jailed,” Sanjay said.

He added that those arrested spent anywhere between six months and five years behind bars. Some were released on bail, but their trials dragged on for years. Meanwhile, the threat of rearrest continued to hang over them, with police repeatedly warning families that they could be taken back into custody.

For some, the harassment proved unbearable. Dholu Gawde, from Dobinpara of Chinnari village, died by suicide in 2020, unable to withstand what his family described as repeated beatings and harassment by the police, including demands that he provide information about Maoists and threats of being arrested again.

The financial burden on families with members in prison was equally heavy. They had to sell their cattle to raise money for lawyers, send weekly provisions to relatives in jail, and pay for repeated journeys from the village to the prison, a village resident said. Expenses could range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh. Families who borrowed money to meet these costs were still struggling to repay their debts.

Cycle of violence

The villagers said the area also witnessed many killings from 2011 onwards – by both the police and the Maoists.

Between 2011 and 2026, the police killed 17 people from four villages of Chhinari gram panchayat, said Jagaram Salaam, in the group conversation that took place on the sidelines of the weekly meeting in June.

While some of those killed were Maoist cadres who perished in gunfights with security forces, others were unarmed villagers killed in cold blood by the police and subsequently labelled “khunkhar Naxali” or dangerous Maoists, he said.

One such victim, Salaam recalled, was a 14-year-old boy named Rajnu Salaam, who was killed in 2011. Others in the group then began listing down more names of those killed. While they had difficulty remembering the exact dates of the killings, they vividly recalled the years, the seasons, and the circumstances of each of the killings.

Jeetru, who was part of the group, interjected to say that retaliation by Maoist cadres was no less painful. Five people were killed by the insurgents after they were accused of being mukhbir or police informers, he said.

One of them was Sukhlal Gawde. His 35-year-old son Saithram Gawde, whom I later met in Chhinari, told me that the Maoists killed his father in 2020. The irony, he pointed out, was that his father had worked with the Maoists for a while, and had even spent a year in jail in a Maoist-related case.

But after he returned from jail, the party began suspecting him of being a police informer. He was hauled up in a jan adalat twice – the first time, he was allowed to go, but after the second one, he was taken away and killed. The Maoists left a parcha or note beside his body detailing the charges against him.

Saithram Gawde defended his father: “I don’t think he was a mukhbir”. He filed a police case against unnamed Maoists and received Rs 5 lakh in compensation from the state government. The police, warning him against Maoist retaliation, advised him to leave Chhinari and move to Narayanpur, but he refused.

“If there was any mistake, it was my father’s, not mine. Why should I leave my village and my land?” he said. He continues to live in Chhinari.

Another exit

Birsa Pottai, however, chose to leave Chinnari.

Pottai had spent five years with the Maoists before returning to the village to lead a farmer’s life. “I wanted to live a normal life,” he said.

But the two gopniya sainiks recruited from the Yadav family identified him during a security patrol in the area. Pottai said he somehow managed to evade the police – but it proved harder to escape the suspicions of the Maoists, who saw his purchase of a tractor as a sign that he was on the payroll of the police.

In 2015, the Maoists called him in for questioning, along with two other men from the village. A jan adalat was held where the villagers vouched for Pottai’s innocence and secured his release. The other two men, Manter Salaam from Bailapur and Ramlal Sori from Etpal, however, were killed by the Maoists.

Caught between the suspicions of both sides, Pottai eventually left the village in 2015, leaving his family behind. He surrendered to the police but did not join them, he was quick to add, when I met him at his temporary home in Gudri Para, Narayanpur, a government settlement of more than 1,000 families identified by the state as “naxal peedit” or victims of Naxals. Joining the police force, he was well aware, would effectively shut the door to his village.

In 2016, Pottai’s teenage brother, Rassu, died under mysterious circumstances. While villagers claimed Rassu had died of a snakebite when he went out looking for his cattle late in the evening, Pottai’s wife alleged that suspicious men had entered their house late in the evening and killed him.

Rassu had already been buried by the time Pottai reached the village. Pottai, however, obtained a magisterial order to exhume the body for a post-mortem, bringing along a large security contingent to the village.

“Who does this? Who exhumes a body after it has been buried with all the customary rituals and that too by bringing the police force?” Laluram Gawde, the village pujari or priest, had said in a conversation back in the village. “If he has lost even this much faith in the villagers, what is left?”

Although Pottai did not show me the post-mortem report, he insisted that it confirmed that Rassu’s death occurred because his neck had been twisted and not because of a snakebite as claimed by the villagers.

Feeling unsafe in the village, Pottai’s wife and children subsequently moved out and joined him in Narayanpur.

Conditional return

In Narayanpur, although the Yadav families and Birsa Pottai’s family have built a new life, they still yearn to return to Chinnari.

“How can we live here all our lives?” said Pottai, turning around to point to the uneven knot of concrete houses in Gudripara, none of which had the open courtyard typical of village homes.

Mahesh Kumar Yadav, Sukkchand’s brother, echoed the same sentiment. “Our forefathers had identified that village. Our gods and goddesses reside there. We have to return.”

The end of Maoist presence in Bayanar area initially raised hopes that a return was possible – but then complex negotiations began.

Four meetings were held this year between village representatives from Chinnari and those who had left the village, said sarpanch Manita Salaam. At the first meeting, which was held in the police station in Benur, the village representatives said they needed to convene a gram sabha meeting to discuss the matter.

The gram sabha meeting, which involved village elders and traditional functionaries like the wadde (traditional healer), pujari (priest), gaita (guardian) and others, did not result in a favourable decision – most people were unwilling to allow those who had left to return, the sarpanch said.

Subsequently, on June 18, another meeting was held, which was attended by political representatives from Narayanpur block and local officials including the tehsildar and the sub-divisional police officer.

The Narayanpur police superintendent told me that such meetings, called maitreyi chaupal, are part of a larger initiative by the local administration and the police to broker peace and resettlement in strife-torn villages. “Where there is more tension [in a village], higher officials also join the chaupal to settle matters,” Sandeep Patel, the superintendent, said.

The June 18 meeting culminated in a written agreement or panchnama, which laid down certain conditions for the return of those who had left Chinnari: that they withdraw cases filed against other villagers, promise not to abandon the village in times of trouble, give up their homes in Narayanpur and return to Chhinari permanently.

Although the written panchnama makes no mention of it, Mahesh Kumar Yadav claimed the villagers had demanded Rs 50 lakh as compensation from them. The compensation was partly for the legal expenses that the villagers had incurred on fighting police cases that had resulted from the Yadavs’ snitching on them, and partly to make up for their failure to contribute to village festivals over the past 15 years.

“How can we pay such a huge amount?” the Yadav women sitting around us exclaimed. “We work as daily-wage labourers here to make two ends meet.”

But money was not the only obstacle in their return. Although they would like to go back to their life as farmers – the Yadav families own registered agricultural land in Chhinari – their younger generation is now enrolled in schools and colleges in Narayanpur. Abandoning their homes in Narayanpur to abide by the stipulated conditions was not possible, they said.

Experts say the end of an insurgency, however laudable, cannot by itself ensure lasting peace, particularly when it has been brought to a close through violence. It requires a carefully laid-out peace plan to enable long-term peaceful coexistence in areas scarred by conflict.

“Years of violence and collateral hurt leaves people in insurgency regions traumatised, displaced, immiserated and alienated,” Anuradha Chenoy, adjunct professor at Jindal School of International Affairs, wrote in a response to Scroll on email.

As an academic who has extensively written on conflict resolution, and even served on a United Nations special group for South Asia on peace and security, Chenoy underscored the importance of providing support to people to return to “dignified daily existence” once a conflict is over. This could take the form of peace and development committees, involving the local panchayat with women representation.

While eventually it was for the local people to find the way, she said it was the government’s responsibility to ensure the necessary resources and infrastructure support for that.

Asked about Chinnari village, the Narayanpur police superintendent said: “It is quite normal for people to take time to adjust to new situations, but perhaps after two or three or even six months, things will settle down”.

Back in Chhinari, Sanjay Yadav rued: “If only the police had arrested my father and not killed him, our families would not have been scattered. After all, those who left the village are our own uncles.”

All photos by Malini Subramaniam

Fifty-six persons died and 46 were injured in Uttar Pradesh between Friday and Sunday as heavy rains battered the state, causing flooding and crop loss, reported The Indian Express.

Waterlogging caused by heavy rainfall had also led to more than one lakh persons being moved to relief camps in Odisha. Severe flooding was also reported in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region.

The toll in Uttar Pradesh from rain-related incidents is expected to rise as officials were compiling the data, state Relief Commissioner Hrishikesh Bhaskar Yashod was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.

The state received 66.5 mm of rainfall between Friday and Sunday, against the normal 7.6 mm for the period. Excessive rainfall was recorded in 56 of Uttar Pradesh’s 75 districts.

This led to more than 1,020 houses being damaged and 107 animals dying.

Among the districts, Farrukhabad recorded the highest above-normal rainfall at 7,385%, followed by Kannauj at 5,664%, Shahjahanpur at 4,408%, Hamirpur at 4,240% and Mahoba at 4,100%.

The Central Water Commission has stated that the water level in the Ghagra and Rapti rivers had risen at several monitoring stations, posing a risk of flooding in low-lying areas, reported The Indian Express.

Officials have been directed to assess the extent of crop damage.

Heavy rainfall in Odisha

In Odisha, more than one lakh persons have been moved from low-lying areas to over 500 relief centres after heavy rainfall caused flooding and waterlogging in 13 districts, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying on Sunday.

In Balasore district alone more than 67,260 residents have been moved. Over 3.5 lakh residents of the district have been affected by the floods.

The news agency quoted Water Resources Department Chief Engineer Dilip Kumar Rout as saying that with 28 gates of the Hirakud Dam being opened, at least 10 tributaries of the Mahanadi river will swell.

This may cause waterlogging in Cuttack, Puri, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur and parts of Kendrapara districts.

Flooding in Bastar

Heavy rainfall because of cyclonic storm Arnab and with the gates of the Khatiguda and Muran dams being opened in neighbouring Odisha, severe flooding has been reported in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, The Indian Express reported on Monday.

The state received heavy rainfall between Wednesday and Saturday. At least one person died after drowning, an unidentified official was quoted as saying.

“Several villages in the Bastar region across the seven districts have got cut off due to the rains,” a government official from Jagdalpur was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Across the state, nearly 5,000 persons were rescued, including 16 airlifted, between Friday and Saturday, reported PTI.

Amid the heavy rains in Dhamtari district, two persons were reported missing after being swept away in separate incidents. Two boys, aged 12 and 16, were swept away while bathing in the swollen Arpa river in Bilaspur district. The body of one of them was recovered late on Saturday.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

For over two decades, an extraordinary cultural and political experiment has unfolded along the mist-shrouded slopes of the Himalayas. The state government of Uttarakhand set out to construct a network of saṃskṛta-grāms – dedicated “Sanskrit-speaking” villages designed to transform the region into a living, breathing Sanskrit wonderland. Crores of rupees were poured into local administrations with a bold vision: resurrecting the “Language of the Gods” from its classical and liturgical repose and embedding it into the soil of everyday rural Indian life.

Yet, year after year, this ambitious policy narrative undergoes a curious ritual of its own.It is repeatedly re-released, temporarily mobilising ideological enthusiasts, only to stall amid bureaucratic quietude and persistent allegations of corruption. Initially promised for every administrative block and district, the actual mapping of operational Sanskrit villages has been drastically reduced to a sparse handful of locations.

As illustrated in Image 1, the state’s sprawling ambitions have contracted to just 13 specific geographic pockets – including Kotgaon in the north, Kimothā and Bhantola in Chamoli, and Nagla Tarai in the far south.

This gap between state-sponsored imagination and institutional reality raises a profound question: Is Sanskrit truly a living, spoken vernacular capable of anchoring modern life, or does its power reside entirely in its function as a mythic symbol?

The idea that Sanskrit can serve as a contemporary spoken mother tongue is one of South Asia’s most enduring linguistic imaginaries. Countless videos, blogs, and websites attest to this. Proponents of linguistic revivalism frequently point to celebrated enclaves claiming that these communities host populations where up to 100% of residents conduct their daily activities exclusively in Sanskrit – at a native-speaker level. However, on the ground realities provide fewer opportunities for the rumors of such villages to be verified. For the most part, it is the idea that these villages exist and that their residents speak Sanskrit that is far more important than whether or not is empirically true.

This is how such a project relates to civilising project of imagining Sanskritland. Nonetheless, as this footage attests, there are some people in some villages who do speak some Sanskrit.

In this view, the language functions as an antidote to the perceived fragmentation of modern life – a pathway toward civilisational continuity, ethical refinement, and development without cultural rupture. Sanskrit is framed as a vehicle for simultaneous moral and material transformation, a concept that underpins the very metaphysics of these rural revivalist policies.

However, a cold look at India’s long-term demographic data reveals a sharp divergence from this romanticised, self-contained rural ideal. When census data from 1872 through 2011 is subjected to rigorous sociolinguistic analysis, the spatial reality of Sanskrit shifts entirely. Claims of Sanskrit as a first language (L1) or primary mother tongue overwhelmingly cluster in dense urban environments, not in isolated agrarian villages.

Historically, this artificial volatility and regional concentration of tokens are clearly visible when looking at regional data over time.

As mapped out in Image 2, during the early 20th century, the Madras Presidency returned the country’s highest concentration of Sanskrit tokens, heavily anchored in districts like Mysore and Tennivelly. However, a massive geopolitical shift between the 1941 and 1951 censuses saw these tokens migrate abruptly northward to the Hindi heartland.

Following that historic northward migration, modern census mapping shows that Sanskrit has overwhelmingly remained a northern phenomenon. As shown in the 2011 state-level map (Image 3), major concentrations of Sanskrit tokens do not emerge from southern states, but rather cluster tightly in northern territories like Bihar (3,388 tokens), Uttar Pradesh (3,062 tokens), and Rajasthan (2,375 tokens).

More telling is the relationship that Sanskrit has with Hindi and English. No matter what state, administrative level, or sequence of first-, second-, or third-languages, these three overwhelmingly cluster with each other.

When breaking the data down by individual districts where total persons exceed 100 (Image 4), the numbers continue to cluster around urban and suburban administrative hubs like Mumbai Suburban (556 tokens), Pune (1,091 tokens), and Kanpur Nagar (932 tokens), rather than spreading evenly across the rural landscape.

The most jarring statistical anomaly lies in a direct geographic mismatch exposed when evaluating the top rural sub-districts against the myth of the “Sanskrit village”.

As explicitly demonstrated in Image 5, not a single one of the internet’s famously cited “Sanskrit-speaking villages” – such as Mattur and Hosahalli in Karnataka or Jhiri and Mohad in Madhya Pradesh – is actually situated within any of India’s top 20 rural sub-districts that returned the highest numbers of Sanskrit mother-tongue tokens.

Highly populated rural sub-districts returning hundreds of tokens – such as Dighalbank (558 tokens) in Bihar, Lahul (247 tokens) in Himachal Pradesh, or Pachpahar (531 tokens) in Rajasthan – feature absolutely no trace of these legendary revivalist villages.

This statistical volatility points to a deeper institutional flaw in how linguistic data is gathered and weaponised. Under Indian census enumeration rules, individuals are permitted to nominate any three languages they wish as their mother tongue or secondary codes. Crucially, no verification of linguistic competency occurs or is legally allowed. Consequently, right-wing advocacy groups and cultural nationalist organisations, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, routinely run public campaigns urging citizens to declare Sanskrit as their mother tongue on census forms.

While intended to artificially bolster the language’s sociopolitical status, this ideological tampering introduces an unnatural volatility into the data that ultimately harms the revival project. Checking the Sanskrit box functions as a performative gesture of cultural affiliation rather than an index of communicative reality.

This detachability from everyday speech is mirrored on the global stage. In the transnational wellness economy and the worldwide proliferation of yoga lifestyle entrepreneurship, Sanskrit has achieved immense symbolic capital. Mantras, chants, and specialised terminology circulate widely as credentials of spiritual legitimacy and pure, holistic living. Yet, in these international networks, just as in India’s domestic policies, Sanskrit operates primarily as a marker of authenticity and a tool of soft power. Its presence legitimises products, identities, and state-backed cultural diplomacy, even as it remains disconnected from casual, vernacular interaction.

Acknowledging this gap does not mean dismissing the profound social force that Sanskrit commands. The myth of the Sanskrit-speaking village persists because it fulfills a powerful collective desire for civilisational coherence and moral order. It serves as a dynamic imaginary through which contemporary Indian society negotiates its anxieties about modernity and progress.

Ultimately, if Sanskrit is to anchor modern life, its advocates must decouple myth from empirical pattern. Relying on inflated census declarations and intermittent policy announcements creates a fragile linguistic utopia that cannot withstand sociolinguistic scrutiny. To truly revitalise a language, it must belong to the messy, everyday realities of its speakers, rather than remaining trapped as a symbol of governance or an object of distant devotion.

This exposes the fecundity of Shreesh Deopujari’s claim that “Sanskrit can become the language of the rural masses.”

Patrick SD McCartney is an Australian anthropologist based in Japan. His research explores the intersections of language politics and cultural imagination of the global wellness economy’s transnational networks. This article is adapted from his monograph, “Sanskrit-speaking” Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development: Imagining Sanskritland, which offers a critique of India’s contemporary attempt to revive Sanskrit. His broader research and publications can be accessed via his academic profile at Academia.edu.

Lovely Professional University in Punjab’s Phagwara has suspended classes for 10 days starting Monday and postponed its mid-term examinations until further notice after students held a protest alleging that a girl had been raped on campus, reported Hindustan Times.

The protests turned violent on Sunday, with students damaging university property, setting some objects on fire and blocking the Jalandhar-Phagwara highway. In videos shared online, some protesters could be heard shouting “we want justice”.

The agitation had begun on Saturday when the students alleged that an “outsider working as a plumber” had entered the hostel room of a female student and raped her three days ago, reported The Indian Express. The protesting students claimed that the university administration had not taken action after the alleged sexual assault.

#WATCH | Phagwara, Punjab | Students leave for home as Lovely Professional University (LPU) suspends regular classes for 10 days from 28th September and postpones Mid-Term Examinations, following a protest by students that turned violent

Early morning visuals from outside the… pic.twitter.com/sTsT6qe739

— ANI (@ANI) September 28, 2026

The institute’s Registrar Monica Gulati, on the other hand, claimed that the allegation of rape on campus “appears to be a deliberate and concerted attempt to malign the reputation of the university and tarnish its image”, reported The Indian Express.

“Certain anti-social elements are spreading completely false, baseless and fabricated rumours through social media and other channels, thereby creating unnecessary confusion among students and attempting to disturb the peaceful academic environment of the university,” said Gulati.

Meanwhile, the police have registered a first information report against an unknown person on charges of rape based on statements recorded from students. A Special Investigation Team has been formed to probe the matter.

Jalandhar Range Deputy Inspector General of Police Naveen Singla said that forensic data, security camera footage and phone records will be examined. “We have asked students’ representatives to be part of our investigation,” he said.

University Vice Chancellor Jaspal Singh Sandhu said that the institute was cooperating with the investigation.

“So far, no such incident has come to my notice,” Sandhu was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

In a social media post on Sunday evening, the university shared a video of three students who are purportedly staying in room number 504 of girls’ hostel 3, where the alleged assault was reported to have taken place.

The three students could be heard saying that no such incident had taken place in their room. They appealed to the police and fellow students not to repeatedly disturb them in the name of an investigation. They said that they would inform their parents if they were troubled further.

However, soon after, a separate video emerged on social media in which the same three students said they had been instructed on what to say and that their statements had been used without their knowledge or consent.

In its notice informing the students that classes had been suspended, the university said that if any of them wished to stay on the campus during this period, they “are advised to remain inside their hostels/places of residence and avoid unnecessary movement or involvement in any unrest activities in the interest of their own safety”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Delhi minister Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma on Sunday slapped a man, who is reported to be an Aam Aadmi Party worker, during an altercation about the allegedly poor quality of a road in the national capital’s Tilak Nagar area.

In a video shared by the Opposition party, Verma can be seen grabbing the man’s mobile phone before appearing to slap him.

बीजेपी सरकार का मंत्री है या कोई गुंडा‼️

दिल्ली सरकार में मंत्री प्रवेश वर्मा की सड़क का भ्रष्टाचार क्या उजागर हुआ, वो युवाओं को सरेआम थप्पड़ मारकर गुंडागर्दी पर उतर आए। pic.twitter.com/ZiXvjq3oNm

— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) September 27, 2026

The man, identified as Saheb, handles social media for Tilak Nagar MLA Jarnail Singh and had gone to the site after the Public Works Department called them to inspect the road, ANI reported.

Saheb said that he pointed out sections of the road where the surface was breaking apart, after which the Bharatiya Janata Party leader slapped him. The video shows police personnel were present and tried to break the altercation.

Jarnail Singh claimed that instead of addressing concerns about the road, Verma slapped his colleague.

Former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the man was slapped simply for “exposing corruption in road construction”.

The AAP has called for Verma’s arrest.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that “this is the face of a power that no longer fears the voters”.

On the other hand, Verma claimed that the AAP worker had allegedly abused his family.

“When one of his [Jarnail Singh’s] workers started shouting abuses at my family, I reacted just as anyone would in the heat of the moment,” Verma said on social media.

आज की घटना के पीछे की पूरी सच्चाई सुनिए…लेकिन जो हुआ वो नहीं होना चाहिए था । pic.twitter.com/qWnMkPQtnJ

— Parvesh Sahib Singh (@p_sahibsingh) September 27, 2026

He also alleged that Jarnail Singh arrived at the site with “history-sheeter goons”, and used abusive and indecent language.

Verma further claimed that the AAP MLA had been pressuring public works engineers to introduce him to the contractor and arrange a commission for him.

He also accused the MLA of visiting the site at night after the roadwork was completed to damage the newly laid road and record videos alleging corruption because he had not received a commission.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

At least six students at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata were injured on Sunday after being attacked for objecting to an event organised by members of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated organisation on the campus, Maktoob Media reported.

The RSS, a Hindutva organisation, is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat, a consumer group, had rented the institute’s main theatre for an event scheduled for this afternoon, PTI reported.

The students' union said that the institute had not informed it before permitting the event.

Poorvi Bondre, a member of the union, told Deutsche Welle that students confronted participants of the event after learning that the organisers were affiliated with the RSS and using the event to “promote its agenda” on campus.

“They called us anti-nationals and Naxals and attacked us with knives,” Bondre said.

Some students were also chased while others had their clothes torn and phones forcibly taken, the union said in a statement.

The union added that a large group had gathered outside the campus and was attempting to attack students inside.

Stones were thrown at students from outside the gate even while police were present, a student told Scroll.

Several persons were injured, including one who was hit on the head and another who was allegedly attacked with a knife, he added.

The Satyajit Ray Film Institute has been attacked by the barbarians of the traitorous Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The students have resisted.

We all stand beside the struggle of the SRFTI students. ✊ pic.twitter.com/pzNrR0XdaP

— Mayukh Biswas (@MayukhDuke) September 27, 2026

The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat has disputed the union’s account, alleging that some of its members were attacked, which led to the violence. It also claimed that students tore its posters and disrupted the programme, The Quint reported.

A member of the organisation told TV9 Bangla that they had paid to rent the hall. The member also claimed that four persons from the group were admitted to hospital.

Police have since been deployed at the campus to maintain law and order, IANS reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign on Sunday said that its convenor Ashutosh Ranka and nearly 30 volunteers were detained by the Assam Police ahead of a meeting in Dispur.

On social media earlier in the day, Ranka shared a video showing a volunteer of the campaign on his way to the meeting – which was to be held at a private property – being detained in a police vehicle.

“The entire road leading to the meet-up site has been barricaded from both sides,” said Ranka. “Assam Police in ready with tear gas.”

He also alleged that no one was being allowed to reach the site of the meeting and asked Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma why he was “so scared” of the Cockroach Janta Party.

🚨URGENT🚨

The entire road leading to the meet-up site has been barricaded from both sides. Assam police is ready with tear gas.

Our volunteers are being detained. No one is being allowed to reach the meet-up site.

Why is Assam govt so scared of @Cockroachisback? pic.twitter.com/DuR0tvBB56

— Ashutosh Ranka (@AshutoshRanka) September 27, 2026

In another video an hour later, Ranka could be seen in a police vehicle being taken to an undisclosed location. He claimed that he was detained because the political campaign wanted to “reveal to the residents of Assam the reality of the state’s schools” and a hotel project at Ingle Pathar, a village adjoining the Kaziranga National Park.

Later in the evening, the detained members of the Cockroach Janta Party started a hunger strike while in police custody, the campaign said on social media.

जब जब हिमंता डरता है, पुलिस को आगे करता है। pic.twitter.com/eYYOV1lG0N

— Ashutosh Ranka (@AshutoshRanka) September 27, 2026

The Cockroach Janta Party has launched a nationwide drive to improve the condition of government schools. The campaign has been sharing videos of schools on social media recorded by its volunteers in several states.

In Kaziranga, the proposed hotel is to come up in an area near the national park where about 45 farming families depend on a 19-acre plot. Of this, 9.9 acres have been earmarked for the project. Although the land has been classified as government land, the families have been paying land revenue on it for more than a decade, Mongabay reported.

This has led to protests by the families. Assam activist Pranab Doley, who has been opposing the proposed luxury hotel, was arrested in July in connection with the protests.

On Sunday, the Cockroach Janta Party shared a video of its volunteers being detained in Assam and said: “This is what you get in response to asking for a better education system.”

Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the campaign said that he will travel to Assam on Monday morning as Ranka had not been released by the police as of 7.15 pm.

“We are not going to cave in to threats of arrest or jail,” Dipke said on social media. “Feel free to arrest me at the airport itself tomorrow.”

Ranka had said on Saturday that during his visit to Assam, he would also meet with families affected by the special revision of electoral rolls, reported NDTV.

Edited by Sneha.

A first information report has been filed against an unknown person on charges of rape after students of Lovely Professional University in Punjab’s Phagwara staged protests against the alleged incident of sexual assault on campus, PTI reported on Sunday.

The protests that began late Saturday night turned violent early Sunday morning, with students damaging university property, setting some objects on fire and blocking the Jalandhar-Phagwara National Highway, the news agency reported.

Protests have erupted at Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar following an allegation that a female student was raped inside Girls Hostel 3, reportedly by an electrician working on campus.

Students claim the student was sent home after reporting the incident and later… pic.twitter.com/GbZQXSsWUS

— Deccan Herald (@DeccanHerald) September 27, 2026

The FIR was registered based on statements recorded from students, Jalandhar Range Deputy Inspector General of Police Naveen Singla said.

A female student who stayed in the university hostel was raped three days ago, The Indian Express quoted the protesting students as saying. They claimed that the university administration had not taken action after the alleged sexual assault.
“We are verifying the facts,” the deputy inspector general of police said.

He later said that a Special Investigation Team had been formed to probe the matter, ANI reported.

“We will conduct the investigation, including a scientific one, alongside their representatives, and if a culprit is identified, we will certainly apprehend,” Singla added.

After the protests, the university said that “there is no truth in the rumours presently being circulated”, The Indian Express reported.

“Certain anti-social elements are spreading completely false, baseless and fabricated rumours through social media and other channels, thereby creating unnecessary confusion among students and attempting to disturb the peaceful academic environment of the University,” Hindustan Times quoted university Registrar Monica Gulati as saying.

In a social media post on Sunday evening, the university shared a video of three students who are purportedly staying in Room number 504 of girls hostel 3, where the alleged assault was reported to have taken place.

In the video, the three students said that no such incident had taken place in their room. They appealed to the police and fellow students not to repeatedly disturb them in the name of an investigation. They said they would inform their parents if they were troubled further.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Friday criticised the organisation of music and DJ events at the Badrinath Dham in Uttarakhand, saying such programmes violate cultural decorum and called it a “direct assault on the sanctity of the shrine”.

A two-day Devbhoomi Cultural Festival was held on September 19 and September 20 in Badrinath town in the state’s Chamoli district, The Indian Express reported.

The festival was organised under the Army’s Operation Sadbhavana in collaboration with the Chamoli district administration and the Uttarakhand Tourism Department. It aimed to showcase the state’s “folk culture, local products, handicrafts, traditional food and the traditions of villages along the border”, the newspaper reported.

However, a controversy was sparked by videos shared on social media showing a “bhajan jamming” session, where devotional music is presented in a concert-style setting.

There's a REASON why evn Shankh is forbidden in Badrinath Dham. That place has its own sanctity. And nw? DJs are blasting there. Club style music has a time & place. A sacred Teerth is NOT it. This govt's obsession to make every Dham a picnic spot is ruining the soul of Devbhumi. pic.twitter.com/IwTVViWfIn

— Himalayan Hindu (@himalayanhindu) September 22, 2026

On Friday, Joshi said the shrine at Badrinath was established in the Himalayan environment for “peaceful devotion through divine hymns”.

“It is remarkable that even blowing a conch shell is prohibited at this site, yet we disregard this and organize noisy music events, thereby gravely neglecting India's spiritual, cultural, and environmental values,” he said.

He alleged that the event symbolised the transformation of Devbhoomi into a hub of “commercial culture”.

Joshi appealed to the “followers of Indian culture” to call out this “erosion of culture”. He also urged the Union and state government to ban such events and preserve the dignity of the religious significant region.

Joshi’s remarks came on the same day that Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a “bhajan clubbing” event in Delhi, where he joined young persons in singing and clapping along to devotional music.

Modi described the bhajan clubbing experience as “spectacular”.

Bhajan Clubbing in Delhi.

Spectacular! pic.twitter.com/BujBa4lzk7

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 25, 2026

In a clarification issued amid the controversy, the Chamoli district administration said its role was largely limited to facilitating stalls and other arrangements, while the cultural programme was organised by the Army, The Indian Express reported.

The administration said the Army selected the cultural performances and decided their format.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Gujarat Police has registered cases against three Gujarat-based registered unrecognised political parties and persons linked to them, reported The Indian Express on Sunday.

The crime branch registered the first information reports on Friday based on complaints by the Income Tax Department, which alleged that the government had suffered losses of Rs 560 crore due to bogus donations of nearly Rs 1,870 crore received by the three parties.

Registered Unrecognised Political Parties are political groups registered with the Election Commission that have not met the vote-share or seat criteria required to be recognised as state or national parties.

Earlier this month, BBC News Hindi reported that donations made to six such parties were more than those made to national parties, except the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the financial year 2023-’24.

The parties were the Aam Janmat Party, Bharatiya National Janata Dal, Garib Kalyan Party, New India United Party, Satyawadi Rakshak Party and the Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party.

The FIR on Friday has named Bharatiya National Janata Dal, Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party and Garib Kalyan Party, reported The Indian Express. Additionally, four persons linked to the Bharatiya National Janata Dal, three persons associated with the Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party and eight persons linked to the Garib Kalyan Party have also been booked.

The police have alleged that the three parties received large donations without engaging in any political activity and routed the money back to the donors after deducting a commission, reported Deccan Herald.

The donors claimed tax deductions on the basis of making the donations, thereby defrauding the government, the FIR alleged.

The Bharatiya National Janata Dal is alleged to have committed the biggest fraud. It allegedly received Rs 1,143 crore from 56,238 donors, sent it back to them after keeping a 2% to 10% commission, thereby causing an alleged tax loss of nearly Rs 343 crore, reported The Indian Express.

The Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party allegedly received Rs 519 crore and causing a loss of Rs 155 crore to the government, while the Garib Kalyan Party allegedly received Rs 206.7 crore, leading to an alleged loss of around Rs 62 crore.

In addition to the party itself, the FIR against the Bharatiya National Janata Dal names its president Surendrakumar Vishnubhai Gajera, describing him as the “main accussed and lynchpin” who “determined commission rates”. Others who have been named are general secretary Vipul Solanki, treasurer Ronaksinh Chavda and auditor Adil Saiyed.

The FIR against Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party names the office-bearers of the party Mehul Kumar Kumar Maheshkumar Khatri, Surendrasinh Parshottamdas Tiwari and Mukundbhai Chandansinh Rathod.

In the Garib Kalyan Party case, party president Neeraj Kumar Kshatriya, secretary Dhananjay Singh Rajput, treasurer Dhiraj Kumar Kshatriya, office-bearers Avinash Chandrakant Tiwari and Pradip Singh Parihar, and chartered accountants Kuldeepchandan Parvatsinh Tapariya, Ashokkumar Radheshyam Shah and Pankaj Agarwal have been named, reported The Indian Express.

Edited by Sneha.

On September 18, 2026, Sahil Wakode, a BTech student from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay died by suicide. Wakode’s parents have alleged that their son faced casteist harassment from a professor on campus.

Students mounted protests after the suicide and submitted an 18-point memorandum to the institution, demanding a fair investigation and better support systems for students.

After three days of protests, media outlets reported that the institute’s director signed the memorandum, indicating that the demands would be considered. On September 24, the institute announced that a ten-member committee would investigate the incident.

The previous month, IIT Delhi had also seen protests after the death by suicide of a student, named Rishikesh Kumar. The institution’s students demanded that an external inquiry committee be formed, and that the student’s family be compensated, and also called for broader policy changes.

The students paused their protests after six days, after the institution formed the committee – Kumar’s parents declined compensation.

Many students told Scroll that the protesting IIT students had been inspired by the protest launched by the Cockroach Janata Party in July. “There are student protests happening all over the country so, even we felt emboldened to raise our issues,” said one student from IIT Bombay. “For the first time, we are seeing that protests can actually be impactful and I think students also feel like they can make demands for a better life.” All those who spoke to Scroll requested anonymity because they feared retribution from their institutions.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the protests was striking, given that the IITs have not typically been known as sites of student politics.

A key reason for this is institutional opposition to such activities. In 2023, IIT Bombay explicitly stated in its rules and regulations that all protests, including marches, and gathering on campuses “require prior permission from the institute and the local police”.

The institution also warned students against speaking to “the press, media persons, or any external agencies on any matters related to the Institute without prior approval from authorized Institute officials”. The rules also state that students cannot “post, share, or disseminate any false information related to the Institute on social media platforms” and that “unauthorized sharing of confidential or sensitive Institute matters on social media is strictly prohibited”.

The institution enforced these rules in 2025, and suspended a student for allegedly making “unauthorised comments” to the media. He was reinstated after approaching a court, which ruled in his favour. The professor who headed the disciplinary committee that decided on the suspension is the same one named in the recent incident.

IITs have also restricted political activities in specific circumstances. Earlier this year, during the Cockroach Janata Party protests, for instance, IIT Rourkee asked students and faculty to refrain from political activity without seeking the institution’s permission.

Similarly, in 2020, as protests against the Constitutional Amendment Act played out, the IIT Bombay director told students to keep politics off campus. In 2018, IIT Kharagpur issued a circular banning students from “political/apolitical gathering/meeting” ahead of a planned march in support of students from Aligarh Muslim University who had been assaulted by police.

In another, earlier instance, from 2015, IIT Madras derecognised the student group Ambedkar Periyar Reading Circle – it withdrew its decision a week later, after strong protests from students across the country.

Unsurprisingly, then, student political groups like the left-leaning Student Federation of India or the right-leaning Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad have not established a presence in the IITs. In fact, IIT Madras’s rules explicitly state that students are allowed “to form associations and student organizations as long as they are not affiliated to external political parties”, or groups that “promote hatred”.

But faculty and students noted that in the absence of forums in which to speak up, frustrations over several problems have been building up in recent years. These include inadequate infrastructure, social isolation and uncertain job prospects.

One faculty member observed that securing a seat at an IIT is an immensely difficult task, and that most students spend several years and several lakhs of rupees at coaching centres to be able to crack the entrance exams. “After all that, they come to the institutions to find out that there are even more struggles here,” they said. “The institutions don’t match up to the students’ expectations.”

Causes of unrest

The IIT Madras student noted that student suicides become “flashpoints” for unrest, and that in such situations, administrations “really cannot stop the student from protesting”.

According to data compiled by Dheeraj Singh, founder of the Global IIT Alumni Support group and an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, in the last 10 years, 120 students have died of suicides or unnatural causes, while the the previous decade saw 51 such deaths. The data also showed that Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students died by suicide at roughly two times higher rates than general category students.

Since 2023, a total of eight students have died by suicide in IIT Delhi, and this year alone, three have died by suicide at IIT Bombay.

One alumnus of an IIT observed that students were frustrated with the absence of measures to tackle this problem. “Every time such a suicide happens, the administration will form such committees, show some interest in the matter and then ten days later everything goes back to normal,” they said. “We see the same thing happen every single time there is a suicide, nobody seems to be taking any concrete steps.”

The first faculty member noted that the deeper infrastructural problems that students have been frustrated about include a lack of space. In IIT Delhi, for instance, they noted, there were simply not enough classrooms to accommodate students, and hostel rooms were inadequate as well. “Students are crammed into hostel rooms, there have been issues regarding drinking water and hygiene too,” they said.

A key reason for this is that while student numbers have increased dramatically over recent years, the institutions have not been allocated sufficient additional resources. “Infrastructure has not evolved with time,” one student from IIT Delhi said. Further, the first faculty member noted that they were struggling to teach the expanded classes.

Faculty and students’ impression of IITs diminishing reputation is also reflected in their concerns over placements. While once IITs would boast of students bagging huge salary packages, the alumnus said, “That doesn’t happen any more. Students still get, but they are few.”

The first faculty member also said that students were finding it difficult to land “high salaried jobs”. According to data submitted by the Centre to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports in 2025, in 22 out of 23 IITs, placements had fallen significantly in the three years between 2021-’22 and 2023-’24. While some attribute this fall to a normalisation after a spike in hiring after the Covid-19 pandemic, recent media reports indicate that securing jobs did, indeed, remain a challenge.

“The image of IITs being this prestigious institute that guarantees a secure future is being shattered,” the alumnus said. “In the last few years, the institution is not releasing placement data.”

At the same time, the fees at the institutions have also seen significant hikes in recent years. In 2022, students of IIT Bombay held a month-long protest against a fee hike of 39% for MTech students and 45% for PhD students. The institution partially rolled back the fees after the protests.

“Students are forced to take loans to pay their fees and after that if they are graduating with loans and not a good job, then that causes a lot of stress,” the first faculty member said. “Both to the student and the parents.”

Campus environment

Students also decried what they said was an increasingly restrictive environment on IIT campuses. “There is such high security everywhere. There’s a running joke that entering our campus is like going to the airport,” another IIT Bombay student said. “We see people in uniforms all over campus.”

She added, “There are also several places on campus that are now forbidden, there are so many rules regarding every single thing. It has become suffocating. All of these reasons combined is what is causing so much frustration among students.”

The IIT Madras student explained that though their campus had a wide range of clubs, students could not have free conversations within them. “The administration assigns a professor to each of these clubs, and I think this is because they want to keep an eye on what we are up to,” he said. “So, students feel like they are being watched and there is no space to discuss issues.”

The IIT Bombay student also argued that the attitude of many faculty members was outdated. They see the teacher-student relationship as “purely transactional”, she said, an approach that had “reached its limit and is now crashing and burning”.

The first faculty member noted that the challenges students face are particularly acute for those from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Class communities – these students often have to take loans to enroll in the institutions, and once they arrive on campuses, find themselves isolated from other students. “Even general category students find it hard to feel a sense of belonging, so obviously it is worse for students from marginalised backgrounds,” they said. “It is very difficult for them to navigate these spaces.”

That marginalised students find themselves in an oppressive environment was apparent from the tenor of some public conversations that followed Wokade’s death – for instance, rather than consider the allegation of casteist harassment that his family had raised, some social media users scrutinised CCTV footage of the exam to determine whether or not he had cheated in the exam.

The second faculty member also noted that the professor in question received a groundswell of support from faculty from IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras and other IITs after the family raised the matter of caste. “After the family invoked the SC/ST atrocity act, immediately everyone came to the defence of the professor,” the faculty member pointed out. “Until then everyone was protesting.”

Further, some argued that support systems on the campuses for distressed students were inadequate. “Students don’t find the counselors to be good and prefer to get a reference from the campus hospital to go see therapists outside the campus,” the second IIT Bombay student said.

This difficulty is compounded by the intense competition within the institutions, and a view that prevails among many students who perform poorly or do not graduate simply could not cope with the pressure. “By design, life in an IIT is isolating, even spaces within the campus are designed in a way to prevent proper socialisation among students,” the student said. “Everybody on the outside thinks that life in IIT is perfect but it really isn’t.”

Increased politicisation?

Are the recent agitations then an indication of a shift on IIT campuses, and of an increasing politicisation of the institutions’ students?

Conversations with students and faculty members from four IITs suggest that this is not the case. The first student from IIT Bombay said that she had observed that the initiative to start a protest was taken by students with “some political leanings” but that as the protests grew, so did demands to ensure they remained apolitical. “There have been protests and marches in the past as well,” she said. “Students will come together for some issues, but even in this one, they said they don’t want it to get political. Even though all things are political.”

A student of IIT Madras said he felt that “‘politics’ is kind of a bad word” in the institutions. “But I feel that there is a kind of awareness that is also emerging among the students,” he said. “Probably because the peer groups are also changing, thanks to diverse students from different backgrounds and socio-economic background students who are coming into the campuses.”

Many protesting students, however, worried that unrest would damage the institution’s name, the IIT Bombay student observed. “They may voice out issues but they don’t want the issues to get out and for the institution’s reputation to be affected,” she said. “They don’t see themselves as separate from the institution and so don’t want the institution to be criticised.”

In fact, one professor from an IIT said that in the protests in Mumbai, they had observed some students raising slogans against party-affiliated student groups like the Students Federation of India. “They want their protests to be ‘pure’, they seem to view student politics that happen in other campuses as ‘dirty’,” the professor said. “And they seem to not want these protests to be tainted by that kind of politics.”

The Press Club of India on Saturday condemned the West Bengal Police’s action to register a first information report in connection with a Maktoob Media report that Muslim administrative and police officers were allegedly being excluded from meetings during Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visits to the state.

The press body urged the police to withdraw the FIR and immediately and “ensure that journalists are able to do their job without fear”.

The FIR was registered on September 19 and mentioned social media posts by Maktoob Media that were based on allegations raised by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra that Muslim Indian Police Service and Indian Administrative Service officers were being discriminated against.

Tweet does not exist

No Maktoob Media reporters or editors were named in the FIR. It listed the accused person as “Unknown1”.

The complainant, identified as Saurav Banerjee, had alleged that the social media posts contained “objectionable graphical content” and remarks capable of promoting enmity and disturbing public tranquillity.

Maktoob Media said on Thursday that the police had not informed the outlet about the FIR. It learnt of the case after social media platform X communicated to it that the police had sought details about the account creation, login and device details for the handle @MaktoobMedia.

On Saturday, the Press Club of India stated that the West Bengal Police action cannot be justified.

“This FIR is an attack on press freedom and part of the pattern to attempt to stop any independent journalism in the country,” said the press body.

Edited by Sneha.

The Maharashtra government on Saturday declared drought conditions in 74% of the state’s subdistricts amid a deficit in rainfall during the southwest monsoon season.

The government order facilitates the assessment of crop damage and enables 12 relief measures including a waiver of land revenue, restructuring of crop loans, a stay on the recovery of farm loans, concession on electricity bills of agricultural pumps, and making available tankers to supply drinking water.

The order covers 265 of the state’s 358 talukas where a “trigger-1” criterion has been met. The 2026 Drought Management Code defines trigger-1 as a dry spell of at least 21 consecutive days during the monsoon.

The affected talukas are spread across 32 of the state’s 34 districts including Ahilyanagar, Amravati, Beed, Bhandara, Gadchiroli, Jalgaon, Latur, Nagpur, Nanded, Nandurbar, Parbhani, Pune, Ratnagiri, Sangli, Sindhudurg, Solapur, Wardha and Yavatmal.

The southwest monsoon is expected to begin its withdrawal from Maharashtra by October 5 with a 17% rainfall deficit, The Indian Express reported. The average deficit at the national level is 15%.

Between June 1 and September 22, Maharashtra recorded an average 787.2 mm of rainfall against the usual average of 953.2 mm during the period. In Solapur district, the rainfall was 57% below normal, The Indian Express reported. In Ahilyanagar, the deficit was 42%, followed by 34% in Nadurbar and 24% in Sangli.

The India Meteorological Department has said that strong El Niño conditions are prevailing over the equatorial Pacific Ocean, with sea surface temperature remaining above-normal in central and eastern equatorial Pacific.

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

The conditions are expected to strengthen further in the coming months, the weather department had said on August 31.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• How a ‘super El Niño’ could make India’s monsoon drier – yet more dangerous
• Has El Niño’s monsoon effect hit India’s kharif crops?

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday alleged that before Gyanesh Kumar took charge as the chief election commissioner, he had been used to “recruit for” the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He made the allegation soon after former Keralam Chief Secretary Jiji Thomson claimed in an interview to Onmanorama that in 2016, Kumar had asked him to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election as a BJP candidate.

Kumar is yet to respond to the claims. In 2016, he was serving as the resident commissioner for the Kerala government at Kerala House in Delhi. He was transferred from the post in May 2016 and appointed as the joint secretary in the Kashmir division of the Union home ministry, which was then headed by Rajnath Singh.

In May 2024, Kumar was appointed as an election commissioner.

Thomson’s claims come against the backdrop of Kumar facing criticism after an investigation by The Indian Express published on Wednesday revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions related to the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were reportedly related to the registration of new voters and changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The two election commissioners had also raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

On Saturday, Thomson, who served as the chief secretary of Keralam from February 2015 to February 2016, claimed that Kumar had asked him to contest as a BJP candidate during a flight in 2016.

“He was waxing eloquent about Prime Minister Modi and openly asked me if I was interested in contesting as a BJP candidate from Pathanamthitta in the 2019 general elections,” Thomson was quoted as saying by Onmanorama. “He was very persuasive, I declined it prompty.”

Thomson told The Hindu that it was a “friendly suggestion” by Kumar, and not an offer.

Opposition criticism

Sharing a news report about Thomson’s claims, the Congress’ Kerala unit asked on Saturday why Kumar had been “allegedly involved in political recruitment for BJP back in 2016”.

“Who was Gyanesh Kumar to make such an offer?” the party wrote on social media. “On whose authority was he speaking?”

Gandhi, the leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, alleged that Kumar had first been “used to recruit for the BJP” and then “put in charge of match-fixing India’s elections”.

First, Gyanesh Kumar - then a serving IAS officer - was used to recruit for the BJP.

Then Modi and Shah made him the umpire and put him in charge of match-fixing India's elections. https://t.co/hvdhEfoVgg

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 26, 2026

Gandhi has repeatedly claimed that the voter roll revision exercise was conducted at the behest of the BJP and being used by the Hindutva party to “steal elections”.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Thomas Isaac said on Saturday that Thomson’s claims about Kumar were “disturbing”.

Edited by Sneha.

On Monday, a 17-year-old was allegedly gang raped in a public park in Delhi by three men claiming to be from the police. Her 17-year-old male friend was beaten. The three men are reported to have told the friends that they faced potential legal trouble, separated them and then sexually assaulted the girl.

As the attack sparked concerns about safety in public parks in the national capital, the Delhi Development Authority said it would restrict entry to these spaces after sunset, install security cameras at the gates and increase surveillance by the police and security guards.

It added that it would conduct a safety audit of the 600 parks that it manages.

To some, this sounds reasonable. If the safety audit finds that a particular park cannot be kept secure after dark, restricting access could be an acceptable temporary solution.

But if a public space is deemed to be unsafe, is the way to make it safer actually to keep the public out?

Cities such as Delhi already suffer from a paucity of accessible open spaces, where young people can meet their friends, couples can spend time together and residents can walk, exercise, play a sport – or simply just sit and stare.

Such “third spaces” are especially necessary in India, where many homes do not allow for personal space and privacy.

Restricting entry arbitrarily without making basic infrastructural upgrades such as adequate lighting would leave residents with fewer public spaces without necessarily making them more secure. A poorly lit park that is empty after sunset would become even more secluded – much like an abandoned construction site.

The commitment to increase surveillance is not without its pitfalls. India, after all, is a country where young women and men are constantly being lectured about what is “appropriate”. Moral policing under the guise of ensuring the security of young women is already rampant.

It is easy to see how the proposed safety measures for Delhi’s parks could subject young couples – especially those in inter-faith, inter-caste or same-sex relationships – to unwarranted scrutiny.

Security cameras offer the same challenges. Footage of private moments from cameras in public places frequently finds its way on to social media, to the embarrassment of the individuals concerned.

Experts say that the answer to making public spaces safer is fairly low cost.

One part involves designing parks to deter criminal activities by providing better lighting, for instance. The other is to encourage community use, which keeps the space naturally secure.

Regular users are often the ones who can tell the authorities where the problems are and what needs to be fixed. But that information is useful only if there is a system through which it can reach the authorities responsible for the park and the concerns are taken seriously.

The Hindustan Times reported on Thursday that one of the men accused in the Delhi park rape had previously been seen carrying a knife and harassing couples in the area. Several people had told the park staff about this, but nothing was done. The authorities said that no “formal” complaints had been filed.

The key to enhancing safety in India’s public parks, it is clear, requires public participation. Rather than rushing in with stopgap fixes, the authorities must nurture a sense of ownership and respond to the concerns, needs and desires of communities.

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

Mounting pressure on the poll chief. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar should resign from his post and “turn approver”. The Congress leader also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah “will be investigated” for “stealing the votes” of ordinary Indians.

He was speaking at a press conference after an investigation published by The Indian Express’ on Wednesday revealed that two election commissioners had objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions about the panel’s special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

Gandhi claimed that anti-incumbency had “disappeared” from several states in the country because the votes had been stolen. He added that if “votes are destroyed”, then “our Constitution has been destroyed”.

The Cockroach Janta Party said that it will launch a nationwide protest on October 2 if Kumar does not resign by Saturday.

Court amends order. The Supreme Court revised its ruling from a day earlier, which had stayed an Allahabad High Court order quashing the National Security Act detention of a 25-year-old Delhi University graduate after the workers’ protest in Noida. The High Court’s direction for District Magistrate Medha Roopam to pay Rs 5 lakh as compensation to Akriti Chaudhary remains set aside.

The paragraphs that the Supreme Court stayed stated that Roopam’s conduct in detaining Chaudhary was “worthy of derision” and that she was “guilty of violating her oath of allegiance”.

The High Court had also warned that soon, the “errant in the bureaucracy [will] reduce the state of Uttar Pradesh to an Orwellian dystopia”.

Appointment of the poll chiefs. The Supreme Court referred the petitions challenging the constitutionality of a 2023 law that governs the appointment of members of the Election Commission to a larger bench. Although Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma initially disagreed on the Union government’s demand to refer the matter, they eventually ordered that it be placed before Chief Justice Surya Kant so that he could form a constitutional bench.

During the hearing, Datta said that the law “does not appear to ensure an independent selection process”. A “nominee of the prime minister in the selection committee cannot be expected to defy the prime minister”, he added.

Sharma disagreed with the observations and said that a “substantial question of law was involved in the matter”, which must be decided by a larger bench.

The national song debate. A person who does not sing all six stanzas of Vande Mataram for religious reasons should not face criminal prosecution, the Supreme Court said. The court made the observation while hearing a petition filed by Carnatic singer TM Krishna challenging the 2026 Prevention of Insults to National Honour Amendment Act.

The law criminalises insults to Vande Mataram, giving it the same statutory protection as the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. Earlier, only the first two stanzas of the national song were played at official functions. The remaining stanzas, which invoke Hindu goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, had been omitted.

In his petition, Krishna argued that mandating the singing of all six stanzas under penal sanction “transforms what is unquestionably a contested historical symbol into a compelled orthodoxy”. The court gave the Union government two weeks to respond to the plea.

Also on Scroll last week

• ‘Illegal, arbitrary’: Why experts say detention regime in Bengal has fewer safeguards than Assam
• Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR
• Bengal again: Muslim man and three sons picked up from home. Police say they have been ‘deported’
• ‘Srishti’s crime is empathy’: Who is the young artist jailed for supporting Noida workers’ protest?
• Why Indian zoos are unsafe for staff
• Why Mumbai’s ‘sponge city’ plan will amount to pouring Rs 13,000 crore down the drain
• Another court grants ‘rights’ to an Indian river but that doesn’t address our disconnect from nature
• Review: ‘Hunkkaar’ comes off as heavy-handed while trying to be hard-hitting
• ‘Shaque’ review: There’s a suspicion of a smart thriller here
• ‘The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest’ review: Lookkiing ffor a miiraclle

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In the hinterland of Bengal, mostly hidden from the attention of the mainstream media, Hindutva outfits are mounting a sustained assault against small Christian communities.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party assumed power in West Bengal in May, these minority communities have faced rising hostility. Hindutva outfits and fringe groups have attacked community members, disrupted church services and vandalised churches, frequently alleging forced conversion or proselytisation as justification for the harassment and violence.

The police have registered FIRs in several of these incidents, but no action has been taken against the perpetrators. Instead, victims are being taken to police stations, said Herod Mullick, founder of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba or Bengal Christian Council.

“Over the past two-and-a-half to three months, such incidents have increased across districts, following a similar pattern,” Mullick told Alt News. “We have repeatedly sought a meeting with the chief minister, demanding an impartial investigation. But the government is not paying heed. So many people are being beaten, crosses are being broken, and someone or the other is being subjected to harassment every other day. The chief minister has not said a single word. We are all frightened and anxious.”

Asked about the allegations of forced conversion, he said, “Conversion does not happen by simply gathering people and sprinkling water on them. False narratives are being deliberately created. The Christian church is totally opposed to converting people forcefully or through fear. If any group is engaging in anything unlawful, we dissociate ourselves from it.”

Mullick explained that an established church is a long-standing congregation with its own church building, while a free or house church comprises smaller congregations, often of first-generation Christians, who are not affiliated with an established church. In most of the cases, these house churches are facing the attacks.

Alt News has documented around 35 such incidents from July to September 20.

September 20: Khejuri, East Midnapore

A group of around 50 people affiliated with Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal raided a Church in Dekhali Jalpai village of Khejuri Block II, East Midnapore, during Sunday prayer service on September 20, demanding that the church be immediately shut down.

Video shows one of the members of the mob saying, “Christianity is not an Indian culture” and that the Bible was not written in India or in an Indian language. The discussion soon escalated into a confrontation, with worshippers allegedly being assaulted, heckled and manhandled.

“Around 12 noon, around 70-80 unknown men entered the church chanting ‘Jai Sri Ram’,” Lucky Jana, who led the prayer, told Alt New. “They told us to stop the proceedings and warned us to close the church.”

There were around 20 worshippers that day, Jana said. “The group refused to listen to our attempts to reason with them, and suddenly, the situation became violent,” he said.

In addition, Jana said, “They physically heckled us. They pulled my collar and intimidated me. Multiple attendees got hurt. They even hit a juvenile – the grandson of the pastor.” Jana added that the church has existed for 28-30 years and that this was the first time they had faced such intimidation, apart from isolated incidents during Christmas.

Jana said the church had anticipated possible disruption and had requested police protection for its Sunday prayers. Two civic police personnel were present during the altercation. An FIR was filed at Khejuri police station.

The attackers locked the church and wrote “Ram” all over its walls and doors.

September 16: Amta, Howrah

Putul Manna and her husband Kanchan Manna, residents of Ghoraberia Dakshin Bhatora village in Amta, told The Times of India that a group of men barged into their house while they were hosting a prayer meeting on September 16. The couple alleged that the group threatened them with eviction and told them to renounce Christianity.

“They told us to renounce Christianity and convert to Hinduism, warning that we would otherwise be forcefully evicted from our property,” Putul Manna said. “We initially thought of leaving our house… but I have two sons, one of them is 10 years old. Why should they be evicted from their ancestral home? I have lodged a police complaint.”

Digital news outlet Inscript.me interviewed the distressed couple, who recounted their ordeal. “When we said we can’t renounce our faith, we were told we had to leave that night itself,” said Kanchan Manna.

However, Sanjay Paul, an officer from Joypur police station, told Alt News that no complaint had been lodged. He also informed us that the couple had not been evicted from their home.

September 13: Dantan, West Midnapore

A group of saffron-clad men disrupted a Sunday prayer service at a house church in Sirni village in Talda, Dantan, in West Midnapore, on September 13. The group chanted “Jai Sri Ram.”

In a video uploaded by one of the disruptors, Indrajit Das, the men appear to intimidate those attending the prayer. One of them can be heard saying, “Christianity is not an Indian religion. The Indian government doesn’t provide a national holiday or celebrate any Christian auspicious occasion”. He further claimed that India doesn’t allow the practice of Christianity.

The confrontation escalated into a heated altercation. The Hindutva team allegedly threatened to tie the worshippers to tree trunks if they did not comply.

Ashalata Murmu, who was leading the service, recounted the incident to The Times of India. One of the men told them, “Don’t you know that the government has declared churches and mosques are closed? None of this can be done anymore.” When Nayak said he was unaware of any such order and refused to comply, he was allegedly assaulted.

September 12: Joypur, Bankura

A group of more than 20 men, identifying themselves as members of Hindutva outfits such as the Hindu Jagran Manch and Bajrang Dal, allegedly confronted a woman, Tulsi Das, at her home in Shalpudanga village, Shyamnagar, Joypur, Bankura, accusing her of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity.

Das rejected the allegations. She said she was a Hindu but chooses to pray to Jesus, which she said is not illegal. Three or four other women worshippers present at her home said Das neither solicited nor offered money to them. They said she had told them that praying to God could help with healing.

The Hindutva members allegedly threatened that Das would be suspended from school, where she taught and socially boycotted unless she wrote a letter admitting to the “treacherous crime” of converting Hindus.

Videos of the confrontation and intimidation were uploaded by Facebook user Sudip Roy. The entire exchange can be heard in the videos shared by him.

September 10: Kulpi, South 24 Parganas

A Facebook video uploaded by Raja Pramanik, who claims to be the head of the Bajrang Dal Kulpi unit, shows members of Bajrang Dal and VHP Kulpi together confronting “Christian Jihadis” in Patkelberia village of Ishwarpur, Kulpi, on September 10, announcing that they had stopped Hindus from being converted to Christianity.

In the video, the group is seen misbehaving with elderly people, shouting and aggravating the situation. They tore up a Bible being carried by an elderly woman and threatened the worshippers with consequences if they did not stop praying to Jesus.

When the worshippers attempted to explain their position, one woman was threatened, “Jib tene chirey debo.” I’ll tear your tongue out.

The women in the house repeatedly said they had neither forced anyone to visit their homes nor pressured anyone to adopt Christianity, and that they were worshipping Jesus of their own choice.

September 10: Panskura, East Midnapore

Several videos uploaded by a VHP member named Malay Saha on Facebook show members of Bajrang Dal Panskura confronting worshippers and claiming to have stopped a “conversion trap” in Ward No. 6 of Baldingra, Panskura, on September 10.

The video shows self-proclaimed saviours of Hindutva intimidating, heckling, and halting a prayer. They said, “One cannot practice Christianity in a Hindu village.”

The group barged into the house and alleged that in Christianity, men married their own daughters. They also asked them not to accept government benefits, saying Jesus would provide for them.

The worshippers were made to bow in front of a Tulsi plant, chant “Hare Krishna “, and state their names. One of the worshippers was mute; she couldn’t speak, but was continuously heckled by the miscreants. The police eventually intervened.

Alt News contacted Malay Saha, who identified himself as a VHP member. He said police had warned the worshippers but had not detained anyone. When we wanted to speak further, he refused.

September 6: Kulpi, South 24 Parganas

Members of Bajrang Dal, Durga Bahini and other Hindutva outfits allegedly raided a house where local Christians were praying. The group reportedly tore the religious books, physically heckled, mistreated, intimidated, and publicly humiliated people for worshipping Jesus and practising Christianity. Accusations of religious conversion followed, and eventually police were called to take action against the worshippers.

Several videos uploaded by a user, Proloy Purkait, show women being heckled, religious books being torn, and attendees being told to remove sindur (vermillion) and other symbols allegedly associated with Hinduism. “Jai Sri Ram” slogans can also be heard.

In another video shared by Amit Halder, a Bajrang Dal Kulpi member, a worshipper named Partha Purkait says he identifies as Hindu and reads both the Gita and the Bible, having studied at Ramakrishna Mission. The men questioned why a Hindu would read the Bible and asked whether he had also performed namaz.

The video above shows a woman member from the Hindutva group attempting to slap a young girl after she said, “Hail Jesus.”

Police warned Purkait not to visit the village again and said no such incidents should recur. They also told the Hindutva members that there was no legal basis to take action against the worshippers.

September 6: Dantan, West Midnapore

A Christian man was allegedly held captive by a group of 20 Hindutva men and villagers over accusations of Christian proselytisation.

In a video, the man said he had gone to the house of a man named Nitai, who had accepted Jesus, to conduct Sunday prayers. While he was singing hymns and leading the service, the group allegedly detained him.

They accused him of insulting Hindus and provoking people to slaughter cows in a Hindu village. They told him that Christian religious practices should be conducted in a church and not in a Hindu village or at a Hindu man’s home.

One of the hecklers said, “This is Hindustan. And you are practising Christianity and also converting people to Christianity. You should be thrown out of the country”. They asked, “Which terrorist from Pakistan sends funds to you, or is it coming from Bangladesh?”

The video also shows a man being threatened with a public beating. One of the men says, quite inexplicably, “These are jihadi terrorists. Muslims agents.”

September 5: Kulpi, South 24 Parganas

Members of Bajrang Dal Kulpi and VHP stormed into a house during a prayer gathering in a village in Ramnagar, Ishawarpur, Kulpi assembly constituency.

Alt News identified a few of the hecklers. The man wearing a saffron kurta in the video above is Bikash Sardar, who tore the religious books that the attendees were carrying. The group kept accusing the owner of the house and the host of the prayer meeting of converting Hindus and preaching Christianity, which the victims continuously deny.

One in the group says, “Today BJP is in power, and so you are safe, or else you would have been raped and dumped”. They asked the booth secretary to refuse to give government aid to the Christian worshippers. “If one has to stay in India, has to stay with Ram and Krishna. If you want to pray to Jesus, then go to London.”

Raja Pramanik heckled an elderly widowed woman and told her, “You have engulfed your husband; now you want to engulf your sons as well? That you are preaching Christianity. Have you ever preached the Gita?”

When Alt News spoke to Pramanik, head of Bajrang Dal Kulpi unit, he said, “For the past 22 days, we, the Bajrang Dal, have been conducting daily raids at places where conversions are taking place.”

He alleged, “Christians are receiving foreign funds and offering financial incentives to poor Hindu villagers to convert them. Most of the people have told us that they were suffering from an illness, and praying to Jesus has helped them heal. How is that even possible? Everything is a scam.”

“If one is a Christian from birth, we have no issues. But why always, Hindus are converted to Christianity? Not in a single congregation did we find a single Muslim,” he added.

Alt News also spoke to Dipan Ghosh, a Bajrang Dal member who had uploaded several videos of such incidents but later removed them. Asked why, he said, “Our seniors have asked us to take the videos down, as a few ‘Hindu-virodhi’ and ‘anti-national’ elements are portraying our work in a negative light.”

They threatened, “If in future we get to know something like this is happening again, the entire Bajrang Dal team will come and destroy the entire house. Beware.”

September 5: Sonamukhi, Bankura

A video uploaded by a user named Akshay Baru, who identifies himself as a “BJP lover, ABVP lover, and Kattar Hindu” in his Facebook bio, shows a group of men entering a congregation organised by Friends Fellowship Haldia, in Sonamukhi, Bankura. The caption says that the raid was carried out by Bajrang Dal. The group accused the gathering of being a mass conversion programme.

The video shows men assaulting the pastor, twisting his hands and snatching the Bible from him, attempting to tear it apart when women attendees intervened.

September 3: Panskura, East Midnapore

Malay Saha, who told Alt News that he was a Bajrang Dal member, uploaded a video on Facebook alleging that Hindu children, women and elderly people were invited to a Christian meeting held at a rented guest house for Christian preaching and religious conversion on September 3. The gathering, at Panskura station road in East Midnapore district, was allegedly raided and stopped by groups of Hindutva outfits.

The video shows attendees being verbally harassed and warned that religious conversion will not be permitted in the “new Bengal”.

August 30: Hingalganj, North 24 Parganas

Members of Bangiya Hindu Jagaran Manch raided a Christian prayer meeting at Hingalganj in North 24 Parganas. They harassed the attendees, including a person from Argentina who was involved in and leading the Christian prayers, along with local Christian attendees. The members accused them of facilitating religious conversions, questioned why they were reading the Bible instead of the Gita, and challenged their right to conduct private prayer meetings in their homes without permission in a Hindu locality.

According to the Dainik Bhaskar, police detained three people, including two foreign nationals. Locals alleged that people from Australia, Germany, and Argentina often visited the house and offered money to locals in lieu of conversion to Christianity.

Several calls to Hingalganj police station went unanswered.

August 26: Tamluk, Purba Midnapore

A group that gathered for a prayer meeting at a house in Check Milepost village in East Midnapore was attacked by members of Hindutva outfits, Bangiya Christiya Pariseba founder Herod Mullick told Alt News.

Pastor Joy Sutradhar told The Indian Express, “They were chanting slogans and said we were forcefully converting people… Our community members called up our lawyers, who came to the police station and had us released. Out of fear, we did not file a complaint.” Both the pastor and his wife were beaten up.

Mullick said they later filed a complaint via email.

August 25: Ghusuri, Howrah

The Indian Express reported that a prayer meeting at a house church in Ghusuri, Howrah, was attacked by some vigilantes. Father Suraj Saroj told the newspaper, “Community members were beaten up, and some people were injured. I tried to reason with the mob, but they refused to understand.”

Saroj alleged that police made them wait for hours at the station, and then “enquired about the church, funds and credentials”. “We did not file a complaint. We have decided to suspend all house prayers and visits.”

August 25: Howrah

According to a post by Anti-Christian Tracker Watch, a social media account documenting anti-Christian hate crimes in India, on August 25, a Christian man and woman were brutally assaulted, paraded, humiliated with religious slogans, and the man was forced shirtless by Hindutva extremists. “Later, police arrested both victims; the attackers walked free,” the X post said.

🚨 HOWRAH, WB | 25 AUG'26

Christian man & woman were brutally assaulted, paraded, humiliated with religious slogans, & the man was forced shirtless by Hindutva extremists. Later, police arrested both victims, the attackers walked free.@HRW @IJM @StateIRF @StateDRL @thewire_in pic.twitter.com/MbHpCDuoea

— Anti Christian Tracker Watch - ACT India ✝️ (@ACTWatchIndia) September 4, 2026

August 24: Magrahat, South 24 Parganas

A video was uploaded on Facebook, accompanied by a caption alleging that members of Bajrang Dal and Durga Bahini disrupted a Christian prayer meeting in the Multi Baniberia area of Magrahat, accusing them of converting Hindus by tempting them with money and other inducements.

The video shows the attendees being heckled, harassed, mistreated and humiliated. A Durga Bahini member physically assaulted a woman attendee by twisting her hand, slapping her and strangling her.

Another video shows the same woman beating and showering slaps on other attendees.

Alt News spoke to Bikash Sardar, who uploaded the video. He identified himself as a Bajrang Dal member and said that he was part of the group that raided the house on suspicion of forceful conversion, or conversion under temptation.

“They are wearing shakha [angles worn by married Hindu women] and sindur, and also carrying a Bible and books of Jesus,” he said. “Why? Either they should completely change to Christianity, or be a pious Hindu.”

August 23: Uluberia, Howrah

An called Hindu Sanghati Shyampur branch uploaded a video showing its members raiding a congregation, vandalising property, and harassing attendees. They alleged that Hindus were being forcefully converted at the event.

Alt News spoke to Debasis Pakhira, an official at Brother Sister Relationship Church, which hosted the Sunday Church prayers at a rented house that was ransacked. Pakhira said, “Pastor Mithun Hazra, who led the prayers on that day, was hit on his head by the assailants, and he went unconscious. Later, when the police arrived at the site, Pastor Hazra was admitted to a hospital.”

Pastor Mithun Hazra told the Indian Express, “After treatment, we went to the police station and filed a complaint. Since that day, we have not held house prayers in the area.”

August 23: Hijla, Purulia

According to a post by Hindutva Watch, VHP-Bajrang Dal members, accompanied by police, intervened at a Christian prayer meeting, alleging that it was being used for religious conversions. They accused the owner of the residence of being complicit, said such activities would not be tolerated in a Hindu locality, and described Christianity as a Western practice.

They later held a rally against religious conversions, “love jihad” and cow slaughter.

Watch the video here.

August 16: Durgapur, West Bardhaman

Anti-Christian Tracker Watch reported that on August 16, Hindutva extremists disrupted a Christian worship service at a Nepali para in Durgapur. The elderly and women were intimidated, phones were snatched, and a car was vandalised. The Christians were accused of converting Hindus and gaining a fortune.

DURGAPUR, WB | 16 AUG'26

Hindutva extremists attacked a peaceful Christian worship. Elderly & women intimidated, phones snatched, and a car vandalised.

Peaceful citizens have the right to gather & worship without fear.

Authorities Must ACT!@HRW @USCIRF @Cpadpc @thewire_in pic.twitter.com/p11idM9W21

— Anti Christian Tracker Watch - ACT India ✝️ (@ACTWatchIndia) August 17, 2026

August 14: Sahanagar, East Bardhaman

St Claret Church in Sahanagar, East Bardhaman, was attacked during a gathering, and a funeral was disrupted with where mourners allegedly assaulted, reported the Indian Express. The parish priest Father Samuel Hembrom told the newspaper that the mob demanded to see the papers of the burial ground.

“We said give us some time to get them from the church… we protested,” said Hembrom. “But they did not allow the burial. The body had already been lowered into the grave; the mob took it out. The body had to be taken to another cemetery in Bardhaman town.”

Purba Bardhaman SP Pushpa stated that locals opposed an outsider’s burial on allegedly private property rather than a cemetery. The officer said: “I don’t think there was an assault. However, I will check with the local police station. There was a law and order problem and police priority was to control that.”

August 9: Arambagh, Hooghly

A Facebook page ‘Proud to be a Christian’ uploaded a video on August 9, accompanied by a caption that alleges a Hindutva extremist mob sporting saffron scarves raided a Sunday Christian worship service in Arambagh Church and assaulted Bishop Anil Bhowmick and other believers.

Watch the video here.

August 9: Behala, Kolkata

According to a post by Hindutva Watch, members of Hindu Jagaran Manch raided a church and harassed the pastor and the attendees. They accused the pastor of luring Hindus into conversion by offering money, and warned that religious conversion would not be tolerated in a Hindu-majority locality. The members later staged a protest outside Haridevpur Police Station, demanding action against those involved.

Alt News spoke to Siddharth Mondol, nephew of Anil Kumar Dolui, an evangelist who led the Sunday service of Sodepur church. Mondol told us that this was the first time that they had faced something like this.

“Around 7 pm, a Hindutva mob interrupted the prayer service, heckled, and misbehaved with my uncle,” he said, adding that for the past several years, the Sodepur Church branch held its Sunday prayer service at the rented space, but now “the owner doesn’t want to continue any more”.

After the incident, Dolui had to be hospitalised for 14 days. “Now we have halted our congregations. We have restricted the prayers to just house prayers. Attendees are scared of assaults,” Mondol said, adding, “What we are receiving is violence in return for love and care.”

August 9: Golgram, West Midnapore

According to a post by Hindutva Watch, members of the Bangiya Hindu Jagaran Manch raided a Christian prayer meeting over alleged religious conversions, accusing those present of trying to turn India into a Christian country. They detained individuals they identified as “outside missionaries” and threatened to hand them over to the police.

Watch the video here.

July 31: Nazat, South 24 Parganas

Members of VHP allegedly entered into a Christian mission premises, Claret Premaloy, in Nazat in South 24 Parganas district, confronting Father Anuj Hembrom and issuing a seven-day ultimatum to close the mission and threatening the priests to leave the district.

Father Anuj Hembrom told UCA News that eight to ten men, including one who identified himself as a “local Hindu councillor”, questioned the missionaries and threatened to lock the mission if they did not leave within seven days. They accused them of converting tribal and Hindu families and receiving foreign funds. Three men returned the next morning, prompting the missionaries to file an FIR. Police later visited the institute and assured them of safety.

July 31: Sandeskhali, North 24 Parganas

A group of self-proclaimed monks associated with a Hindu organisation reportedly stormed into the Grace Community Church in Sandeshkhali around 3 pm, pressuring Pastor Santosh Tudu to renounce Christianity and embrace Hinduism, and further alleged that the Church was receiving foreign funds to plot subversive activities.

Speaking to Alt News, pastor Tudu recounted, “Around eight-nine poeple entered the church trying to intimidate me. They accused me of multiple things including converting Hindus with inducements. They tried to create a hostile environment, but I spoke to them with gentleness. They told me I must leave the area by August 5 if I refuse to convert. They promised me a luxurious lifestyle if I gave up my faith. But when I resisted, they branded us Christians as ‘anti-nationals,’ ‘traitors,’ and even ‘terrorists’.”

“I had complained to the police station, but I am not aware whether an FIR was registered or not,” pastor Tudu added.

July 29: Bakrahat, South 24 Parganas

A Facebook user, Dipshikha Mondal, posted a video boasting that members of the Bajrang Dal and Durga Bahini had stormed into a private residence and halted a Christian prayer service. The video shows the group heckling, intimidating, mistreating, and threatening the worshippers. They tore religious books and chanted ‘Jai Sri Ram’. Moreover, the group chanted Hindu mantras, calling it a cleansing ritual.

Alt News could not independently verify the date of the incident. The video was first uploaded by Mondal on July 29.

July 26: Raipur, Bankura

According to a Hindutva Watch post, members of the VHP intervened in a Christian gathering following allegations of attempts to convert Hindus to Christianity. The video shows the group verbally harassing the women leading the prayer meeting, demanding their husbands’ contact details, and asserting that such gatherings would not be permitted in a Hindu-majority neighbourhood.

July 21: Raniganj, West Bardhaman

According to a post uploaded by Hindutva Watch, VHP members, led by Shubham Raut, raided a Christian Sunday prayer meeting, assaulted and harassed the attendees, accusing them of engaging in religious conversion. They handed over 20-25 attendees to the police, who launched an investigation into the gathering.

July 21: Haldia, East Midnapore

A Facebook page called Sanatani Aikkya or Sanatani Unity posted a video boasting that their members, along with Hindu Jagran Manch, had barged into a private residence where Sunday Christian prayers were being held in Chakdwipa, Haldia.

The video shows that the attendees were heckled, verbally abused, mistreated and accused of brainwashing and converting Hindus.

The group questioned whether the gathering had official permission. They asked attendees about their “actual religious identity”, derided Christians and Christianity, and dismissed the faith as fraudulent.

July 18: Baruipur, South 24 Parganas

Hindutva supporters surrounded, followed, and heckled a group of Christian women, accusing them of indulging in religious conversion. They questioned why the women were carrying Bibles while wearing shakha, pola, (bangles worn by some married Hindu women) and sindoor, calling them “sold-out Hindus” who had abandoned their religion for money.

The group continued to harass the women despite their repeated objections, repeatedly referring to them as “bejaat Hindus” and telling them to leave the country, reported Hindutva Watch.

July 12: Barasat, North 24 Parganas

A group of around 60 people reportedly entered the premises of the Auxilium Salesian Sisters in Barasat on July 12 and threatened the nuns with violence unless they immediately demolished a memorial chapel and cemetery currently under construction, according to the FMA Salesian Sisters and the All India Catholic Union.

The FMA Sisters said the project has faced objections following the change in government and has since become the focus of protests, according to the Catholic Connect.

July 5: Subhashgram, South 24 Parganas

Hindutva activists demolished an under-construction church in the Buri Bottala area of Subhashgram in Sonarpur police station area of South 24 parganas district. Geeta Haldar, an evangelist at the church, told Alt News about the harrowing incident.

“Around 15 men attacked the church around 2.30 pm-3 pm, declaring that the church could not be constructed here,” she said/ “They then smashed the window panes and doors. Two men scaled the walls and broke the crosses installed on the roof of the church.”

“I had informed the police. By the time they reached the location, the attackers had fled the area,” Haldar added. Asked whether the attackers were known faces from the locality, Haldar said, “No, they were not immediate locals. The people who live around the church are all Christians.”

Recalling the police action, Haldar said, “Police detained three individuals, but they were not the ones we had seen attacking our church.” She added, “Police and municipality officials have asked us to halt the construction of the church and produce all legitimate documents.”

Haldar alleged that the police were uncooperative when they sought to file an FIR against the attackers. She claimed, “A police officer in civil clothes made racist remarks against our Father Kash Mullick, who hails from Mizoram. He also told us that the FIR could not be registered that day, after keeping us waiting until 8 pm.”

Haldar said, “We have resumed prayer services at a residence in the colony for the time being. But we were deeply hurt to witness such hatred in people’s hearts.”

July 5: Katwa, East Bardhaman

Members of seven Hindutva outfits disrupted a Sunday prayer service at Grace Church in Faridpur, Katwa, East Bardhaman, where Pastor Surajit Ghosh was assaulted along with several other attendees.

“One of the victims of the assault was an 11-year-old boy, Ghosh’s nephew,” Suvashish Gayen, the director of Grace Mission, told Alt News. “Grace Church functions under Grace Mission, a government-registered charitable trust. We are a Christian mission serving the community for 20 years. We also run a children’s school. We do social welfare activities and have a good reputation in the community,”

Pastor Surajit Das narrated the incident to Alt News, “On July 5 at 11 am, while we were conducting regular worship at Grace Church, a mob led by Narattom Saha, Srikanta Chatterjee, Somnath Chowdhury, Susil Das, Pulokesh Biswas, Kanai Debnath and others forcibly entered the premises. They vandalised the church hall, broke doors, assaulted me, my daughter, my nephew and other members, threatened to kill me, and stole cash Rs 25,000, two mobile phones and personal documents.”

Das added, “We had submitted a protection application to Katwa PS on the previous day. An FIR was also lodged with the help of BCP.” This was done following several online threats and defamatory allegations that were circulated by the earlier mentioned individuals on social media platforms, Das explained.

Moreover, on the same day, they had a meeting with the Inspector in change, Katwa police station, and the sub-divisional police officer, Katwa. As per their instructions, said Das, “The church service cannot be held until further orders. The school/educational activity under the name Grace Mission cannot be run until proper legal documents are submitted. And we have been given 30 days to submit all required legal documents for verification.”

When asked about the recent update, Das said, “I have submitted all the documents related to the established Mission. Officers have visited and inspected the school. We are still waiting for a proper declaration.” “In the meantime, we are currently conducting classes at another location, in collaboration with another school,” Das mentioned.

“The FIR has not yet led to any arrests”, Gayen added.

July 4: Palbari, Paschim Medinipur

In a press statement, the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba said that on July 4, members of Bangiya Hindu Jagran Mancha disrupted a wedding reception and thanksgiving prayer service, physically assaulting attendees (including women), forcibly removing traditional marital symbols (sindoor and bangles), throwing religious books on the road and stamping on them.

Later, police detained the pastor, Rev Anup Ghosh, following conversion accusations, as per the statement reported by Catholic Connect.

The hecklers have also accused the attendees of physically assaulting them in a video uploaded by the Bangiya Hindu Jagran Mancha.

July 1: Haldia, East Midnapore

A video uploaded by a Facebook user on July 1 shows men adorning saffron scarves, identifying themselves as members of the Shree Ram Janmotsav committee, Chaitanyapur branch, heckling and humiliating two women for allegedly preaching Christianity by distributing pamphlets. The men from the group said, “Now, there is a nationalistic government in West Bengal, which will not tolerate preaching Christianity or ‘love jihad’ to safeguard Sanatanis”.

Recurring patterns

Across the incidents tracked by Alt News, several recurring patterns emerged: shouting of the sloban “Jai Sri Ram”, the claims by the attackers that there is a “new Bengal” under BJP rule where Christianity would not be tolerated, that Christianity was not in Indian culture, that every small private church was indulging in forced conversions, and that it was unacceptable for women to wear bangles and vermillion like some Hindu married women did, and then practise Christianity.

In some cases, the attackers also claimed that at several prayer meets, attendees said they had turned to Christianity or prayed to Jesus after experiencing relief from health issues.

When Alt News asked pastors, evangelists and Bangiya Christiya Pariseba founder Herold Mullick about the miraculous healing claims, they attributed such experiences to faith, saying that collective prayer and a person’s belief in recovery could contribute to the recovery of an unwell person.

“We, on behalf of the church,” said Mullick, “believe in a healing ministry. But it is not that a person is healed simply because of prayer. The person who comes to us develops a sense of faith.”

“Having said that, we do not support inviting people for practices such as jolpora or telpora,” he said, referring to traditional water-based and oil-based remedies/ritual treatments, often associated with folk healing or spiritual practices in Bengal.

“If I invite people solely by promising healing, that too becomes a form of inducement, and we condemn it,” Mullick clarified. “It is acceptable to say, ‘Come and pray to the Lord, have faith and you may get better.’ But saying, ‘Come to me and I will cure you’ is not right.”

About women wearing markers of Hinduism like vermillion, evangelist Geeta Haldar said, “Christianity does not restrict a person from expressing themselves or practising cultural traditions. A Christian couple may choose to apply sindoor during their wedding.”

Mullick attributed misconceptions about Christianity to its portrayal in popular media, particularly films. “What we see in movies and similar fictional representations is a Westernised idea of Christianity. We are Bengalis, and because of our culture and traditions, Bengali Christians wear bangles (sakha-pawla) and apply sindoor. It is quite common. The claim that Christians cannot wear these is false. These are part of our culture and tradition. There may be one or two sects that do not permit this, but their numbers are few and they do not represent Christianity as a whole.”

This article first appeared on Alt News.

The Bihar Police on Friday registered a first information report against a staffer at the chief minister’s office for posting the photos of a minor girl who was molested by a group of men in Jamui district last week, on Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary’s official account, The Hindu reported.

The girl and her family had met Choudhary at his official residence in Patna on Thursday. A post about the meeting had been put up on Chaudhary’s account on social media platform X, along with an unblurred photo of the girl and her family members.

The photo had been deleted within 15 minutes of being posted.

The police alleged that Sagar Prasad, a stenographer in the chief minister’s office had uploaded the photo on the social media platform, The Hindu reported.

“The viral nature of the post has compromised the privacy and dignity of the minor victim and her family, creating a situation where the victim’s identity is at risk of exposure,” the police was quoted as having stated.

The police also named other persons and social media accounts in the case for allegedly forwarding or sharing the post. The police have also filed a case against a social media user for uploading videos purportedly generated by artificial intelligence of the girl.

Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav had accused Choudhary of revealing the identity of the teen, saying that it violated the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

An FIR has been registered at the Secretariat Police Station against an employee of the Chief Minister's Office regarding the posting of a photograph of the Jamui victim's family on Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary's social media handle ('X') yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PZ9VW6tt0U

— ANI (@ANI) September 25, 2026

The harassment case

A minor girl was sexually harassed and her male friend was assaulted by a group of men in Jamui district on September 19. Videos of the incident were widely shared on social media.

One video shows the boy riding a two-wheeler with the girl seated behind him. A group of men can be seen surrounding them on a dimly lit road and asking whether they were classmates and whether their families knew about their relationship.

The boy says they were classmates, while the girl pleads with the men to let them go. One of the men slaps the boy and asks the two to call their families. “If they know, then call them,” the man can be heard saying.

In other videos, several men are seen chasing the two minors. One man appears to grab and lift the girl, while the boy tries to pull her away. Another man is seen pulling the boy by his collar.

The police registered a case on Monday under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. A special investigation team was formed to investigate the incident.

Six persons have been arrested in the case so far.

On Tuesday, an additional case was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act against those involved in sharing videos of the two minors.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Election Commission on Saturday said that the old version of Form 6, used to register new voters, will be used in periods when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is not underway.

The poll panel also said that persons who have been served a notice as part of the SIR for being “unmapped” or in connection with “logical discrepancies” do not need to mandatorily attend a hearing before the electoral registration officer. The booth-level officers will collect documents from their homes, it added.

In a statement, the Election Commission said that the declaration attached to Form 6 for the voter roll revision exercise had been upheld by the Supreme Court. “For non-SIR period, the forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used,” it added.

The decision was made at a meeting of the three election commissioners on Saturday, the first after The Indian Express reported on Wednesday that two of them, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were related to the registration of new voters and changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The Opposition and civil society groups have been demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over revelations in the newspaper report.

One of the objections raised by Sandhu and Joshi pertained to the changes to Form 6.

The new form asked applicants to state whether they or their parents or grandparents were part of the last special intensive revision of electoral rolls. Although the new declaration is not marked as mandatory, applicants cannot submit the online form without filling it.

Joshi and Sandhu had objected to the change, saying that it could not be made without amending the rules. Section 28 of the 1950 Representation of the People Act says that only the Union government can amend the rules governing electoral forms, including Form 6.

Poll panel to review IT system

The Election Commission also said on Saturday that field officers have “role-based access” to the ECINET system.

A committee headed by a senior deputy election commissioner and including an independent expert from an Indian Institute of Technology or International Institute of Information Technology “will review the ECINET to double-check that it complies with the provisions of the Acts and rules”, the poll panel said.

“…In case, any further flexibility is required by the field officers, that will be made operational,” it said.

All new processes relating to information technology modules and portals will be discussed in the committee of officers before they are approved by the Election Commission, the statement added.

This came after the two election commissioners also reportedly raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

Each constituency’s electoral roll is maintained by its electoral registration officer, a statutory authority. But Joshi and Sandhu questioned whether these officers were being given access to the database, The Indian Express had reported.

In May, Joshi flagged that there was a “gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database” and proposed an audit to certify that “no one, except the concerned statutory authorities, has credentials to make any change in the database”.

The newspaper also reported that Joshi and Sandhu had written separately to the Cabinet secretary objecting to changes in the allocation of work that reduced supervision of the digital systems used for electoral rolls.

In its statement on Saturday, the Election Commission claimed that the letter to the Cabinet secretary “was not related to any policy matter of the Commission or IT division but related to working of an officer on deputation” to the poll panel.

“The work redistribution orders issued by the concerned officer were not actually implemented after the orders of the two commissioners and the oversight over the IT division by the DEC [deputy election commissioner] was never actually withdrawn,” the statement added.

A meeting of the Election Commission of India was held today, 26 September 2026, at 3:00 PM at Nirvachan Sadan, New Delhi.

Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr. Vivek Joshi were present in today’s meeting.… pic.twitter.com/WZoqEIXVJq

— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) September 26, 2026

New SIR decisions

The poll panel also said that booth-level officers will visit homes and collect documents of persons who have been issued a notice as part of the SIR, for being “unmapped” or in connection with “logical discrepancies”.

“Unmapped” refers to persons who have been unable to show that they or their parents are present on the 2002 voter lists, when the exercise was last held.

Logical discrepancies refer to what the panel considers inconsistencies such as a mismatch with the spellings of names of the voters’ parents, an unreasonably low gap between the ages of parents and children or if parents have more than six children.

The booth-level officer will upload the documents on the ECINET platform for a decision by the electoral registration officer, the poll panel said.

Persons who have been served a notice “need not be called for hearing” by the electoral registration officer, it stated.

“Only in exceptional circumstances, as decided by the ERO, the hearing will be held preferably online,” it said, adding that any adult member of the family can be authorised by the elector to attend the hearing on their behalf.

The Election Commission also extended the period for filing claims and objections against deletions in Delhi till October 30. The period of disposal of notices and the claims and objections was extended till November 30.

In Maharashtra, the period for filing claims and objections was extended till October 12. The period of disposal of notices and the claims and objections was extended till November 10.

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

On Thursday, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said that Kumar should resign from his post and “turn approver”. The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign said that it will launch a nationwide protest on October 2 if Kumar does not resign by Saturday.

Kumar has not yet commented on The Indian Express’ investigation. However, after the report was published, the Election Commission had said on Wednesday that “operational queries or inputs raised by commission members during draft stages are part of standard administrative practice” to safeguard voter rights.

“Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution,” the poll panel stated. “They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken.”

The commission added that highlighting specific internal notes made over 10 months “while overlooking the much larger body of approvals, decisions, instructions and initiatives give only one part of the picture”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

A group of former bureaucrats on Saturday called on the Election Commission to scrap the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

In an open letter, the Constitutional Conduct Group said that the nationwide voter roll revision exercise “needs to be scrapped lest it undermine our commitment to universal adult suffrage, seriously damage the reputation” of the poll panel and “make a mockery of our democracy”.

The letter came amid demands by the Opposition and civil society groups for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the conduct of polls after The Indian Express on Wednesday reported that two election commissioners had objected to the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The newspaper’s investigation revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were reportedly related to the registration of new voters and changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and the handling of voter data in Goa, among other matters. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

In one written objection, Sandhu was quoted as having stated that the poll panel had acted against the advice of both commissioners and described the action as “unauthorised and illegal”.

The two election commissioners had also raised concerns over access to the digital electoral roll database.

Process ‘transgressive’, say former bureaucrats

On Saturday, the group of former bureaucrats said that several instances of “bulk deletions, absurd additions, sloppy documentation, partisan instructions and unreasonable harassment to citizens” had come to light.

The exercise has placed the burden of proof of citizenship on the voters, and is “transgressive and without any constitutional justification”, they said.

The retired bureaucrats also said that the Election Commission was yet to inform the public “whether the decision to undertake the SIR was taken by it on its own, or at the behest of the government”.

The group said that in order to discharge its constitutional mandate and “protect its historic dignity and reputation for impartiality”, the poll panel should scrap the exercise and revert to the “long-established procedures for registration of electors provided by the rules”.

The 100 signatories to the letter include former West Bengal Election Commissioner Mira Pande, Punjab’s former Director General of Police Julio Ribeiro, Delhi’s former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, former Indian ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya and former Indian Administrative Service officer and activist Harsh Mander.

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

On Thursday, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said that Kumar should resign from his post and “turn approver”.

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign said that it will launch a nationwide protest on October 2 if Kumar does not resign by Saturday.

Kumar has not yet commented on The Indian Express’ investigation. However, after the report was published, the Election Commission said on Wednesday that “operational queries or inputs raised by commission members during draft stages are part of standard administrative practice” to safeguard voter rights.

“Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution,” the poll panel stated. “They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken.”

The commission added that highlighting specific internal notes made over 10 months “while overlooking the much larger body of approvals, decisions, instructions and initiatives give only one part of the picture”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Bihar Police has filed a case against a social media user for uploading videos purportedly generated by artificial intelligence of a girl who was molested by a group of men in Jamui district last week, PTI reported on Saturday.

The videos were “misleading and fake”, the news agency quoted a police statement as saying. Sharing the videos resulted in “revealing the identity of the girl and could affect social harmony”, it added.

The case was registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the Information Technology Act, the police said.

The harassment case

A minor girl was sexually harassed and her male friend was assaulted by a group of men in Jamui district on September 19. Videos of the incident were widely shared on social media.

One video shows the boy riding a two-wheeler with the girl seated behind him. A group of men can be seen surrounding them on a dimly lit road and asking whether they were classmates and whether their families knew about their relationship.

The boy says they were classmates, while the girl pleads with the men to let them go. One of the men slaps the boy and asks the two to call their families. “If they know, then call them,” the man can be heard saying.

In other videos, several men are seen chasing the two minors. One man appears to grab and lift the girl, while the boy tries to pull her away. Another man is seen pulling the boy by his collar.

The police registered a case on Monday under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. A special investigation team was formed to investigate the incident.

Six persons have been arrested in the case so far.

On Tuesday, an additional case was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act against those involved in sharing videos of the two minors.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.