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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anand Patwardhan is an award-winning filmmaker.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FSSAI did not respond to Scroll’s queries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the process works

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The products flagged

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Claims about juices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next hearing in the case is on July 13.

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

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

Britannia flagged, not only for biscuits

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

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

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

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

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

Concerns over gummies

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

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

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

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

The vegan question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Products that claimed health benefits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sugar-free’ claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other companies

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

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

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

Read the full series here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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

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

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

The letter was initially sent to the speaker on Wednesday.

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

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

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

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

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

— ANI (@ANI) June 14, 2026

Abhishek Banerjee’s letter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Sneha.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The case came days after Khan claimed that “eight to ten rounds of gunfire” were fired outside his coaching institute, Khan Global Studies, after a group allegedly vandalised the premises in Patna’s Musallahpur area. Read on.

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A first information report has been registered against two nurses at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal for allegedly administering an injection containing a hazardous chemical to a three-year-old cancer patient, The Hindu quoted the police as saying on Saturday.

Sarthak Yadav, a resident of Korja village in Sagar district’s Bina tehsil, died in December, soon after he was injected with formalin, a hazardous chemical used for preserving biopsy samples, according to The Indian Express.

He had been admitted to the hospital on December 15 for the treatment of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a form of blood cancer.

The FIR against Madhubala Sharma and Anuka Gujarati was filed after an internal inquiry found evidence of gross negligence on their part.

According to the FIR, a syringe containing formalin had been prepared for a scheduled bone marrow biopsy, reported The Indian Express. However, the procedure was subsequently postponed.

Despite this, the syringe was neither discarded nor secured and was left on a locker near the child’s bed, according to the newspaper.

On December 17, Sharma used the syringe to flush the child’s intravenous line without checking its contents or label, the newspaper quoted the FIR as saying.

“During this time, the child’s father Siddharth Yadav cautioned and warned Nursing Officer Madhubala three times that the syringe did not contain IV flushing fluid and that it should not be administered to the child without consulting a doctor,” the FIR added.

Police alleged that the warnings were ignored and the child lost consciousness immediately after the injection. He was transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, where doctors attempted emergency treatment, but he was pronounced dead later the same morning.

The hospital’s internal inquiry had held Gujarati responsible for leaving the syringe containing the chemical unattended beside the patient’s bed.

The nurses face charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to causing death by negligence and negligent handling of hazardous substances, The Hindu reported.

The hospital has suspended them.

An unidentified senior police officer told The Indian Express that efforts were underway to locate them.

Edited by Sneha.

Fourteen crew members were rescued on Sunday after the Indian-flagged vessel they were aboard suffered an engine failure off the coast of Oman, said the Indian Embassy.

It added that the crew on board the vessel Virat 1, who were all Indian, evacuated to another ship heading to Mumbai.

The vessel had begun sinking about 80 nautical miles east of Ras Al Hadd in Oman, reported ANI. The embassy did not provide further details about the incident or the vessel’s condition.

This came in the wake of a series of incidents in the region involving vessels with Indian crew members, as tensions continue in West Asia.

It has emerged that the vessel experienced an engine failure, and the crew eventually transferred safely to a liferaft. Rescue operation is presently underway through ships in vicinity, under coordination of Omani authorities.

— India in Oman (Embassy of India, Muscat) (@Indemb_Muscat) June 14, 2026

Three Indian sailors were killed after the United States’ military on Wednesday attacked the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello off the coast of Oman.

On Thursday, the US said that its military had “disabled” another tanker off the coast of Oman as it was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen tanker MT Jalveer, which was located off the port of Shinas in northern Oman. Twenty Indian seafarers on board the vessel were evacuated.

An Indian seafarer serving aboard the merchant vessel MT Celestial died of illness on Thursday at Duqm Port in Oman, said the Indian embassy on Saturday.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India alleged that the seafarer died due to a lack of timely medical support.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “silent” and listening to orders from the United States “like an obedient servant” after American strikes killed three Indian seafarers earlier this week off the coast of Oman.

In a social media post, Gandhi added that the US had neither expressed remorse nor issued an apology. Instead, “America has continued issuing orders”, said the Congress leader.

His remarks came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and registered India’s protest against the American strikes on commercial vessels in the Gulf.

“Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified,” Jaishankar had said on social media.

During their conversation, Rubio “stressed that all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from US forces as they seek to uphold peace and security in the strait”, the US Department of State’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott stated on Saturday.

Rubio “underscored that violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated”, Pigott added.

The US has imposed a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz since April 13, preventing transit to and from Iranian ports as part of efforts to restrict Iran’s oil trade amid the conflict in West Asia.

On Sunday, Gandhi said that “a free country would never tolerate” the language used by Rubio after the killing of the three Indians.

“But our compromised PM? Silent,” wrote Gandhi, adding that such a leader “would not defend the nation’s honour” because he was being controlled by “those who insult the country”.

अमेरिकी हमलों में तीन भारतीय नाविकों की हत्या के चंद दिन बाद - न अफ़सोस, न माफ़ी। उल्टा, अमेरिका ने आदेश देना जारी रखा है।

उनके शब्द पढ़िए: “अमेरिकी सेना के आदेश तुरंत मानें।” कोई उल्लंघन “बर्दाश्त नहीं किया जाएगा।”

एक आज़ाद देश इस तरह की भाषा कभी नहीं सहेगा। लेकिन हमारे…

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 14, 2026

Jaishankar’s conversation with Rubio had come hours after the Ministry of External Affairs summoned the US Chargé d’Affaires, Jason Meeks, for the second consecutive day to convey India’s protest against the continued US strikes on ships carrying Indian crew members in West Asia.

Meeks had also been summoned on Thursday to register a protest against Wednesday’s strike on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman in which three Indians were killed.

Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued from the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello.

The US Central Command had acknowledged striking the Settebello, claiming that the vessel had violated the American blockade restricting maritime traffic linked to Iran. The ship was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Edited by Sneha.

My maternal great grandmothers were named for precious things – diamonds and gold. I met Hirabai, named for diamonds, several times as a child, and never met Sonabai, named for gold. But thanks to things Sonabai left behind, I have a better sense of who she was than who Hirabai was.

Hirabai Ajinkya, my mother’s maternal grandmother, was frail, almost wraith-like. I saw her a few times a year when I’d tag along with my grandmother to visit. I don’t recall having a conversation with her . After a greeting upon arrival, I usually wandered around the house on Hughes Road and returned only when I was told it was time to leave.

Even though Sonabai Kothare, my mother’s paternal grandmother, died well before I was born, she always seemed present. I heard lots of stories about her. But more importantly, in the house in which she’d lived in Girgaon, I was surrounded by things she’d touched and changed during her life.

A beautifully embroidered tiger head. Exquisitely painted glass panes on three-paneled units that could be used as stylish room dividers. I remember spending hours wondering how on earth the eyes of the people painted on those panels followed me no matter where I stood in the room.

These and other objects provided a sensory portrait of Sonabai.

So you can imagine my joy when in 2012, my aunt, Tej, gifted me a bound collection of Sonabai’s watercolour paintings. It had been bequeathed to my aunt, and I was lucky that she thought I would be a good steward of it.

Holding the collection that I was seeing for the first time felt like I was directly communing with this not-too-distant ancestor, fragments of whose DNA I carried and have passed on to my children.

The 75-year-old album has yellowed with time and become fragile. The numerous holes in the book made it clear that it had been a feast for some sort of arthropod, so before its condition worsened I decided to photograph every page myself. I made bound copies of the photograph for my mother and each of my aunts.

There are more than 30 watercolor paintings in the book – some incomplete or abandoned, others extremely detailed, completed and signed. Of the little I know about art, I have learnt that a human form is challenging to depict in almost every medium, so it is particularly interesting that almost two-thirds of the paintings have one or more humans in them.

I wonder if all those human figures say something about the woman I’ve heard described as strong and determined.

Sonabai Kothare was part of the Pathare Prabhu community that purportedly settled in Bombay in the mid-to-late thirteenth century. It is a shrinking community that historically engaged in education, the arts, and business. Perhaps as a consequence of being close to the sea, the community is also known for its deep love for seafood .

I’ve been leaning on my mum and my aunts to share stories about Sonabai. So far, a common thread in their stories has been this woman’s fiery temper, her culinary expertise, her support for the arts and her overall elan. While I did not have the good fortune to experience her culinary expertise nor witness her panache, I’ve seen hints of that fiery temper in her descendants.

As far as I know, Sonabai was not a formally trained painter but to my lay eye, she seems to have brought some of the rigor of a professional artist to her paintings, all of which were signed “SBK” – Sonabai Balaji Kothare.

Several pages in the book have made me stop, stare and wonder.

One in particular brings together Sonabai’s talent and also her support for the arts about which my mother has spoken. It’s a scene where musicians are on stage, performing for the observer, as it were.

Who were these musicians? What was the woman singing? Where were they performing? The woman, and the musician to her left are both looking into the audience, but to their right; the other musician is almost looking straight up ahead. What caught their attention? The woman’s hands, especially her knuckles, are extremely detailed  –  was Sonabai trying to convey something through this detail?

All but two of the paintings in the book are untitled  –  “Sunrise” and “Sunset”. Curiously, she painted Sunset before Sunrise (note the numbers at the top left of each painting). I am willing to bet that her gustatory inclination towards fish prompted both these paintings. Sunrise is reminiscent of fisherfolk getting ready to go off on their home-to-home sale of early morning catches, while Sunset depicts fishermen returning from a day at sea.

Painting number 15 appears to be a more detailed depiction of sorting the catch of the day, probably before heading out to sell it. Based on the un-erased pencil lines in this painting, it’s entirely possible that her original intent was another scene altogether.

Sonabai didn’t limit herself to painting scenes favoring her palate. On page 24 of the book, we see a young woman dressed to the nines  – note her footwear  –  playing with a dog. What I think is impressive is that in this painting she has created a layered effect where one can see the woman’s arms and legs through the diaphanous material of her outfit.

Sonabai’s paintings strike me as deeply private – made for herself, with no audience beyond perhaps her family. I’m not sure she even intended Tej to be the keeper of this book until the moment she gave it to her. But in that gift, she preserved a version of herself for her descendants.

A recent exhibition about the Pathare Prabhus at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai makes an effort to document the community before its stories fade. But community histories, however carefully assembled, rarely capture the interior lives of women. Sonabai left no public record – no exhibitions, no reviews, no archive beyond what her family preserved and passed on. Her paintings are a reminder that the most intimate histories live not in museums but in families, and can be easily lost to time and arthropods.

It’s a shame I waited so long to embark on the project of learning more about this woman. Sonabai suffered from a stroke from which she never fully recovered and died in the early 1950s, a couple of years after she gave this book to her granddaughter, my aunt.

My grandfather who likely knew her better than his children did, and with whom I shared this planet until I was 31 is long gone. But thanks to my mother’s and aunts’ stories and general family lore, I do know that in addition to Sonabai’s prowess with the paintbrush and embroidery threads, she also played the dilruba.

It is the bowed stringed instrument that you can hear very clearly in the opening bars (and later too) of the Beatles Within You Without You. George Harrison’s lyrics to this song capture my sentiment “..it’s far too late/When they pass away.”

Thanks to these paintings, Sonabai Kothare has finally introduced herself to me.

Deepti Pradhan is a cancer patient and survivor advocate at Yale University.

An Indian seafarer serving aboard the merchant vessel MT Celestial died due to a “medical condition” at Duqm Port in Oman, the Indian Embassy in Muscat said on Saturday.

The embassy said that arrangements are being made to repatriate his remains to India.

“The Embassy has been in continuous contact with the ship management company and is coordinating closely with all concerned stakeholders,” the statement added.

An Indian national Mr. Nishanth Uirthanathan passed away due to medical complications. His mortal remains are currently onboard MT Celestial at Duqm Port.

The Embassy has been in continuous contact with the ship management company and is coordinating closely with all concerned…

— India in Oman (Embassy of India, Muscat) (@Indemb_Muscat) June 13, 2026

The seafarer who died has been identified as Nishanth Uirthanathan, a 35-year-old second officer from Tamil Nadu, The Indian Express reported.

He died on Thursday evening due to medical complications while the vessel was at Duqm Port.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India alleged that Uirthanathan died “due to lack of timely medical support”.

In a separate post, the union on Saturday said his “body has remained onboard for over two days with no proper refrigeration”.

“Crew is using cold water bottles in a desperate attempt to slow decomposition – a horrifying and health-risking situation,” the crew said in a video posted by the Union. “Despite repeated distress calls, timely medical evacuation was reportedly delayed amid regional tensions.”

They sought urgent repatriation of Uirthanathan’s remains.

According to a statement signed by 15 crew members and shared by the union, Uirthanathan first became seriously ill on June 8 and suffered repeated vomiting, Mathrubhumi News reported.

They said the company was informed immediately and that requests for assistance were also made through maritime communication channels.

However, the crew alleged that despite repeated requests, no immediate medical assistance arrived as his condition worsened. They said they sought an urgent medical evacuation through Duqm Port authorities on Thursday and were directed to coordinate with a local agent.

According to the crew’s account, Uirthanathan became unconscious later that day and subsequently died.

The union has called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the medical response, the handling of the emergency and support provided to the crew.

It has also raised broader concerns about the welfare and safety of merchant seafarers operating in the region amid escalating tensions in West Asia.

The vessel’s management company, Romana Ship Management, rejected suggestions of wrongdoing and instead mentioned an earlier disagreement with the crew regarding the vessel’s route, Mathrubhumi News reported.

“It is further placed on record that three (03) days prior to this incident, you were advised to proceed to Shinas, which you refused without valid justification,” the news outlet quoted the company as saying.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai sent medical student Sejal Pawar on compulsory leave for 15 days while a formal inquiry is conducted into remarks that she made during a stand-up comedy show hosted by comedian Pranit More, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Pawar had made allegedly objectionable comments about the reproductive organs of a male cadaver.

Her parents have also been called for counselling, the newspaper reported.

The action follows controversy surrounding comments made by Gurgaon resident Himanshu Jangra during a separate live recording of the show. Jangra expressed entitlement to physical intimacy in return for spending Rs 370 for a biryani on a date with a woman. He had also claimed to have pressured the woman to accompany him to a “dark” park despite her repeated reluctance.

After his remarks drew criticism, social media users shared clips from another episode featuring Pawar in the audience, in which she also made comments that were widely criticised.

The action by KEM hospital follows a preliminary inquiry into the videos featuring Pawar, The Indian Express reported.

Harish M Pathak, the dean of the teaching hospital said Pawar had been “handed over to the care of her parents and concerns regarding her safety and mental well-being are also being considered”, the newspaper reported.

He added the hospital had advised her parents to arrange counselling and that any further action would be taken in accordance with applicable rules and guidelines “given that she is still pursuing her medical education”.

On Friday, Pawar submitted a written apology acknowledging that some of her statements were inappropriate and may have caused distress.

A five-member committee has been proposed to carry out an investigation into the matter and submit a report within seven working days, The Times of India reported.

The panel is expected to include a retired faculty member, three senior faculty members and a journalist.

“While certain facts emerged during the preliminary assessment, a broader and impartial investigation was considered necessary before arriving at any conclusions,” The Indian Express quoted the dean as saying.

The Maharashtra Police on Thursday registered a case against More, Jangra and Pawar, among other persons under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to making sexually coloured remarks, distributing obscene materials and circulating false information intended to promote enmity between groups.

They were also booked under a section of the Information Technology Act for publishing obscene material.

The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors said that Pawar’s comments were inappropriate and not in line with the dignity of the profession.

However, they also acknowledged that the online campaign against her had crossed into “targeted harassment” and “person vilification”, Hindustan Times reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Two Democratic senators in the United States have alleged that a reported proposal by Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani to invest $10 billion in the US economy if fraud charges against him are dropped appeared to be an “egregious quid pro quo offer”.

In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal questioned the “transactional nature” of the US Department of Justice’s actions, referring to its request to a court to drop the criminal charges against Adani.

The department of justice on May 18 told a New York judge that it had decided, “in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges”. The judge has not yet approved the request.

Four days earlier, The New York Times reported that the department of justice was planning to drop the charges against Gautam Adani after he hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

Warren and Blumenthal, in the letter to the acting attorney general on June 11, said that the department of justice’s decision gave the appearance “that Mr. Adani – with the help of one of the President’s personal lawyers – bought his way to criminal immunity, trading the promise of an investment in the United States for immunity from an alleged multi-billion dollar bribery scheme”.

Reports of Adani’s offer to invest in the US economy if the charges against him were dropped appeared to be a “blatant attempt by a wealthy individual to buy his way to leniency,” the senators said.

Warren and Blumenthal said that the department of justice’s decision to drop all charges against him weeks later “gives the appearance that the DOJ is an equal partner in corrupt behaviour”.

The senators sought to know if the White House communicated with the department about the case against Adani, including his alleged offer to invest money in the American economy and help create jobs.

The case

The US authorities had in November 2024 indicted Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani for allegedly orchestrating a $265 million fraud scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, and then misrepresenting the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the US.

The details of the alleged bribes were concealed to secure financing, the US justice department had claimed.

The Adani Group has denied the allegations. In a stock exchange filing in November 2024, the conglomerate said that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had been charged in the US for securities fraud, not bribery.

Even if the criminal charges are dropped, Gautam Adani is still expected to pay financial penalties, the New York Times quoted persons aware of the case as saying last month.

On the afternoon of June 8, as K Pydiraju was handling a reservoir to collect molten steel in the Steel Melt Shop-1 of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited steel plant in Visakhapatnam, there was a massive explosion in a ladle overhead.

The ladle was filled with molten steel that had a dangerously high temperature of 1,600 degrees Celsius. It spilled on the shop floor, causing an inferno within seconds.

Eight workers died instantaneously. Videos showed blackened bodies on fire on the shop floor. When bodies were eventually carried away on stretchers, they were charred beyond recognition.

Pydiraju, a contract worker who did casting work at the plant that is owned by the Union government, was slightly farther away. He and five others suffered burn injuries.

“He was conscious but critical,” said KM Srinivas, who works in the same continuous casting department and helped rush Pydiraju out. “He had suffered over 90% burns.”

A video of Pydiraju, in an ambulance, asking both his children to study well went viral. He was first taken to the steel plant’s general hospital. “There is no burn unit there despite this being an industrial sector,” Srinivas said. “He was referred to a hospital in the city an hour away.”

On June 10, Pydiraju succumbed to his injuries, bringing the death toll to nine.

Since 2025, there have been six major industrial fire incidents in India, including in the Vizag plant. They have claimed at least 70 lives.

Pydiraju worked under Shaikh Zakeer, a chargeman responsible for shop floor production. Zakeer said that a year ago, a similar accident claimed the life of another worker at the plant.

“Back then, the management stressed on standard operating procedures to prevent mishaps,” Zakeer said.

This year again on June 10, within hours of Pydiraju’s death, the plant’s general manager issued a circular. Scroll has seen a copy. It asked workers to “strictly adhere to safety norms and standard operating procedures in the line of production process”.

But workers blame the management for creating conditions that are leading to safety lapses. They blame a manpower shortage, non-adherence to the standard operating procedures and high production pressure for the accident.

Taking cognisance of the matter, the National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to Andhra Pradesh’s chief secretary for a detailed report.

Staff shortages and safety hazards

The blast occurred in a continuous casting department, which transforms molten metal into solid, semi-finished shapes such as billets or slabs.

Srinivas said that in this process raw materials such as ferro manganese, ferrosilicon and aluminium are added to molten steel.

“The quality of raw material is important,” Srinivas said. “It is equally important that no moisture is left behind. The entire procedure requires a certain amount of time.”

He added: “Often there is production pressure and the processing time is cut short. That is a safety hazard.”

These procedures also require working under high temperatures. Foreman Zakeer said that production demand is so high that “workers hardly take a break from the heat to rest outdoors”.

He alleged: “One employee is doing a job meant for two, sometimes three.”

Pampana Bhanumurthy, a general foreman, said that over the years, a large number of employees have been asked to take voluntary retirement but new recruitment has not been undertaken

The total manpower at the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited steel plant is approximately 18,000. Of these workers, 8,000 are permanent and 10,000 are contractual employees, Bhanumurthy said. “This is half of the required strength,” he said.

About three years ago, Zakeer said, the management changed the salary structure of the workers. “Instead of a fixed salary, they said we would get a salary based on our production output,” he said. “If production is 70%, my salary is 70% of the Rs 50,000 that I used to get earlier.”

This has added to the pressure on workers to produce more, even at the cost of physical exhaustion and their own safety. The union approached the labour court challenging the management’s decision to link salary with production output, but the case has been dragging on, workers say.

Workers said that since 2014, the Union government has been pushing for the plant to be privatised, a move that the union has resisted.

“They say that the plant is making losses and the production is poor,” Zakeer said. “But nobody is talking about increasing the manpower.”

Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan said that a three-member committee will look into the allegations and announced that kin of the permanent employees who died will receive Rs 1.7 crore compensation.

“It is a lie,” Srinivas alleged. “The ex gratia is just Rs 25 lakh, as far as we know. The rest is PF [provident fund] and insurance amount. That is not compensation.”

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

Free and fair polls? The Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan challenging the rejection of her candidature for the Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh. The bench declined to exercise its writ jurisdiction citing Article 329 of the Constitution that bars courts from interfering in electoral matters.

However, it allowed Natarajan to file an election petition challenging the poll result before the High Court.

Natarajan was the Congress’ sole candidate for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh. Her nomination was rejected on Tuesday after the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that she had withheld information in her affidavit about a criminal case against her in Telangana.

The Congress leader contended that only criminal cases where charges have been framed need to be disclosed but she had only received a notice from a magistrate.

While the BJP has sufficient MLAs in the state to get only two of its candidates to win, a third was also declared elected unopposed after Natarajan’s nomination was rejected.

Indian crew under attack. New Delhi twice summoned the United States’ chargé d’affaires after strikes by the US military on commercial ships in West Asia for allegedly violating sanctions and the blockade.

The US military’s actions were “unacceptable” and undermine the safety of maritime commerce, the Ministry of External Affairs said. It added that the diplomat had been asked to convey New Delhi’s concerns to Washington and ensure that the US military units operating in the region take measures to prevent the loss of civilian life.

This came after three Indian seafarers were killed on Wednesday when the US military struck a Palau-flagged commercial tanker off the coast of Oman. Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued.

On Thursday, 20 Indian seafarers on board another ship were evacuated after it was struck off the Omani coast. On Monday, 24 Indian seafarers were rescued from a tanker Marivex after it was targeted by the US.

Trinamool implodes. Three Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MPs have resigned since Monday, and two of them quit the party amid internal divisions after it lost the West Bengal Assembly elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party in May.

In the Lok Sabha, at least 20 of the TMC’s 28 MPs, led by party leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, wrote to Speaker Om Birla on Monday, declaring their support for the ruling National Democratic Alliance.

Last week, at the state level, expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that a group of 58 of TMC’s 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly.

Anant Gupta explains why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards.

Also on Scroll last week

• A tourist rush is swamping Himachal Pradesh – and the environmental cost is heavy
• ‘We want accountability’: Voices from the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest in Pune
• Watch: How heat affects you depends on your pincode
• A Sangh organisation is leading the demand that Christian tribals be delisted
• Bihar to Bengal, the great Indian disenfranchisement now has the Supreme Court’s approval
• India must realise that resilience isn’t an economic strategy – it needs a clear economic philosophy
• The chipped cup, the service lift and other things I had forgotten about India
• Bimal Roy’s ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ and the never-ending race against poverty
• Review: In ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’, to love is to remember and to remember is to love
• ‘Raakh’ review: A sordid tale of depravity with a few grace notes

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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday spoke to United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio and registered India’s protest against the US strikes on commercial vessels in the Gulf that killed three Indian seafarers off the coast of Oman.

“I reiterated India’s strong protest at the attacks by the US Navy in the Gulf that killed three Indian mariners,” Jaishankar said on social media. “Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified.”

During their conversation, Rubio “stressed that all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from US forces as they seek to uphold peace and security in the strait”, the US Department of State’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement on Saturday.

Rubio “underscored that violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated”, Pigott added.

The conversation came hours after the Ministry of External Affairs said it had summoned the US Chargé d’Affaires, Jason Meeks, for the second consecutive day to convey India’s protest against the continued US strikes on ships carrying Indian crew members in West Asia.

Meeks had also been summoned on Thursday to register a protest against Wednesday’s strike on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman in which three Indians were killed.

Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued from the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello.

On Thursday, Randhir Jaiswal, the external affairs ministry spokesperson, said that New Delhi had informed Meeks of “our deepest concerns on the ongoing incidents of attacks” and had “registered a strong protest” in the matter.

“These attacks came from the US Navy stationed there,” Jaiswal had said at the government’s press briefing about the war in West Asia.

The US Central Command had acknowledged striking the Settebello, claiming that the vessel had violated the American blockade restricting maritime traffic linked to Iran. The ship was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Hours after Meeks was summoned by the ministry on Thursday, the US said that its military had “disabled” another tanker off the coast of Oman as it was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen tanker MT Jalveer, which was located off the port of Shinas in northern Oman. Twenty Indian seafarers on board the vessel were evacuated.

On Monday, another tanker, Marivex, carrying 24 Indian seafarers, was targeted by the US military for allegedly violating the blockade. All crew members were rescued.

New Delhi stated on Thursday that all three ships struck by the US military between Monday and Thursday were foreign-flagged. Two of the ships are sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and one is “also in the category of non-compliant ships”, Jaiswal had said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Five Indian Air Force personnel were killed as an AN-32 transport aircraft crashed in Assam’s Jorhat district on Saturday.

The personnel were Squadron Leader Prashant Singh, Flight Lieutenant Shubham Kumar, Sergeant Jitendra Sharma, Agniveervayu Khemaram Kumawat and Agniveervayu Danish Alam.

The Air Force expressed its condolences to the families of the personnel who had been killed in the crash.

The aircraft, used by the Air Force to transport personnel and supplies, crashed at 10 am while landing at the airbase in the Rowriah area. It was on a routine sortie, the Air Force said.

It said that crash site management and initial enquiries were underway, and requested the public to “refrain from speculation till preliminary results are not in”.

It also said that a court of inquiry had been ordered to ascertain the cause of the crash.

An AN-32 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force crashes at the Jorhat Air Force station in Assam.

Indian Air Force officials said that the firefighting operations are underway at the accident site. More details are awaited. @IAF_MCC pic.twitter.com/tLZnyLJkOD

— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) June 13, 2026

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Nachiket Deuskar.

The Assam Cabinet on Saturday decided to stop issuing new Aadhaar cards to adults to curb allegedly fraudulent enrolment by undocumented immigrants.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that while Assam had “already saturated so far as Aadhaar is concerned”, the enrolment for the document had “crossed 100% of the targets” in some districts.

“Some districts [the issuance] has gone up to 114%, 115%,” Sarma said at a press conference. “So, there is every apprehension that even after 100% saturation, who are taking these Aadhaar cards. We want to fully prove that no illegal immigrants are taking advantage of Aadhaar.”

Aadhaar is a unique 12-digit identity number issued to residents of India by a statutory body, the Unique Identification Authority of India.

The chief minister said that the Cabinet has decided to stop issuing Aadhaar to persons older than 18 years. Minor will continue to be issued the document.

The decision will not be immediately applicable to the Scheduled Tribes and the tea garden community, whose members would need to enrol by March 31, the Cabinet said.

In case of a “genuine person” wanting an Aadhaar card, the deputy commissioner would have to send a proposal that would be approved by the state government, Sarma said.

The Assam government had in August announced plans to stop issuing Aadhaar to adults. The Cabinet had at the time approved the implementation of a revised Standard Operating Procedure for Aadhaar enrolments in the state.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Can the Assam chief minister make NRC a condition for Aadhaar?

In 2009, Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh lost all its tigers to poaching. They were reintroduced a few years later and have since re-established populations.

While carnivore reintroduction has been considered as an important strategy to restore ecological balance, a recent study highlights that prey abundance and habitat quality also play an essential role.

“Focusing exclusively on the apex predator (for ecosystem recovery) tells only a fraction of the story. The answer lies in the broader mammalian community that supports them,” says Supratim Dutta, research scholar at the Wildlife Institute of India and one of the authors of the study. “The real question is not whether tigers came back, but what made that recovery possible.”

A landscape built on extremes

Panna Tiger Reserve spans 1,574 square kilometres across Madhya Pradesh, with 542 sq km of core and a larger buffer zone. The terrain is rugged, cut through by the Ken River, the only perennial water source. Summers can touch 45 degrees celsius, and winters drop to around 5 degrees celsius. Vegetation is largely a tropical dry deciduous forest.

The reserve supports a dense mammal community. Tigers and leopards are apex predators. Below them in the chain are wolves, jackals and hyenas. Prey includes chital, sambar, nilgai and wild pig. Around 30,000 people live in settlements in the buffer zone.

To understand how the various animals use this landscape, researchers conducted large-scale camera trap surveys in 2019. Each camera ran continuously for over a month, capturing animals moving along trails, riverbeds and forest roads. In total, the cameras captured 475 sites in winter and 338 in summer.

About 40,308 images detecting animals were generated. About 10 key species were identified in the images. Cattle appeared most often, followed by chital and sambar. Among carnivores, hyenas were recorded the most, followed by jackals and leopards.

At each location, the team also recorded variables such as distance to water, villages, forest cover and slope. “A tiger and chital appearing at the same location could mean two very different things. The tiger could be following prey. Or the prey could be avoiding the tiger,” Dutta says.

To unpack this, the researchers used a modelling approach that can test multiple relationships at once. They built three versions. One assumed predators drive the system. Another assumed prey availability drives it. A third combined both, along with environmental factors. “We needed a framework that could model both directions and separate their contributions,” Dutta says.

The combined model performed best, suggesting the system cannot be explained by a single force.

No single driver

Predators appear closely tied to prey distribution, rather than acting alone as ecosystem regulators. Tiger presence was strongly linked to chital and sambar. Leopard presence was associated with nilgai, hare and wild pig.

What was missing mattered just as much. The expected pattern of predators reducing prey numbers was not strongly captured in the final model. “The tigers did not suppress their prey into equilibrium. They tracked an already abundant and spatially organised prey community,” says Dutta.

At the same time, the study finds that both shape the system, with neither acting alone.

The reintroduction, in the case of Panna, likely worked, in part, because the prey base and habitat were already intact.

“Prey is as important as predators in determining how a community functions. Predator recovery depends on prey density, just as prey populations are shaped by predators. In Panna, tigers were lost to poaching, not because prey had collapsed. That’s not the case in many other landscapes,” says Anish Andheria, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Trust. He was not associated with the study.

When predators help other predators

In most systems, larger predators are expected to suppress smaller carnivores. In Panna, the study instead found strong positive associations. Hyenas were more likely to occur in areas with tigers and leopards. “Far from being suppressed, hyenas showed a strong positive association with tigers and leopards,” Dutta says.

The likely reason is scavenging. Large predators leave behind carcasses, which become food for hyenas.

The study describes this as trophic facilitation, in which predators indirectly support other species while potentially competing with them. “This was a genuinely unexpected result. Apex predators were functionally subsidising the scavenger guild through carrion provisioning,” says Dutta.

Water shapes everything

Among environmental factors influencing species distribution, proximity to water stood out. Across species, the probability of detecting animals dropped as the distance from a water source increased.

In a dry landscape like Panna, that is expected. “The Ken River functions as the ecological backbone of the entire mammalian community,” Dutta says.

Forest cover also shaped the distribution. Leopards and sambar preferred denser vegetation. Jackals tended to avoid it.

Human presence had mixed effects. Most wildlife avoided villages, while cattle and wild pigs were more common near human-dominated areas.

A recovery built on what already existed

The study’s results overall suggest that Panna’s recovery cannot be explained by a single trigger, such as the tiger reintroduction. It likely held because multiple pieces were already in place. This finding shifts how conservation is framed. “Predator recovery is catalysed by a healthy prey base and intact habitat. Without that, recovery is slow,” says Andheria.

Rewilding cannot focus only on predators. It has to account for prey, habitat and basic resources like water. Without these, predator recovery is unlikely to hold. “A reintroduced predator population does not restore an ecosystem; it reveals whether [a stable] one already exists,” says Dutta.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth was on Saturday appointed as the next chief of the Indian Army by the Union government.

Seth, who is serving as the vice chief of the Army, will assume office on June 30 when General Upendra Dwivedi completes his tenure.

He studied at the National Defence Academy in Pune and was commissioned into the Armoured Corps in 1986.

Seth commanded an armoured brigade in the western theatre, counter-insurgency force in Jammu and Kashmir and the Sudarshan Chakra Corps, one of the Army’s key strike formations, the Ministry of Defence said.

He also served as the general officer commanding-in-chief of the Army’s South Western Command and the Southern Command.

Seth is a recipient of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, the highest peacetime award in the Indian armed forces. In January, he was also awarded the Uttam Yudh Seva Medal for distinguished service during wartime or a conflict.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have filed fresh bail pleas before a Delhi court in the 2020 riots conspiracy case, Bar and Bench reported on Saturday.

The application filed by Imam contends that despite six months since the Supreme Court denied him bail, there had been no meaningful progress in the trial, Bar and Bench reported.

The arguments on the charge are incomplete, Imam argued, adding that he has been in jail for nearly six years.

The bench asked the Delhi Police to respond to the pleas and listed the matter to be heard on July 4, Live Law reported.

Khalid, Imam and the other activists had been arrested between January 2020 and September 2020 in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

The persons accused in the matter have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

The police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

Khalid and Imam’s fresh applications came nearly a month after a Supreme Court bench on May 18 criticised a January order by another bench that had denied them relief in the matter, observing that “bail is the rule and jail is an exception” even in prosecutions under the anti-terror law.

The observations criticising the January verdict had been made while hearing an unrelated bail plea of a person booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

On May 22, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale referred the matter relating to bail in anti-terror law cases involving prolonged incarcerations to a larger bench.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Standing in front of pillars being constructed for Mumbai’s Coastal Road in Mora Gaon, Juhu beach, Manav Mangela showed off the haul from the two-hour fishing trip he had taken with his cousin and uncle that morning. Their catch has earned them around Rs 1,500, barely enough to support a family in one of India’s most expensive cities.

Until three decades ago, their village was on the edge of an estuary and they had easy access to the water. But now, the mudflats have been filled over and the shore is contaminated by industrial waste and plastic.

The Mangela family are Kolis, members of the indigenous fishing community that have lived in Mumbai centuries before it became India’s financial capital. An estimated 500,000 Kolis still live in the city, though only 20% still depend on artisanal fishing for a living.

Their habitations and way of life have long been under threat from landsharks and toxic levels of oceanic pollution off the city shore. But this new infrastructure project may now finally put an end to it all.

The Coastal Road – one of Mumbai’s largest infrastructure projects, costing Rs 14,977 crore ($1.8 billion) – promises faster travel for car owners between South Mumbai and the city’s western suburbs.

A 10.58-km section between Marine Drive and Worli is already operational. A further coastal corridor extending north, including the stretch past Juhu, is under construction. It is expected to be completed in stages between 2026 and 2028.

The project has become a flashpoint in a wider debate about who Mumbai is being built for.

The city is home to roughly 90% of India’s billionaires, while more than six million people live in informal settlements – around 55% of the population of central Mumbai. Some 64% of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region’s 22.5 million residents depend on public transport for their daily commutes.

Urban designer Ketaki Bhadgaonkar sees the Coastal Road as more than a transport project. “It represents a vision of Mumbai centred on private mobility,” she said. “While presented as a project for the city, it prioritises infrastructure for cars over investments that would benefit a much larger share of residents. The communities that bear the environmental and social costs – particularly the Kolis – have limited influence over how such projects are planned and implemented.”

Municipal officials reportedly argued that no separate public hearings were required because the road alignment did not pass directly through fishing villages.

In 2019, the Bombay High Court set aside initial environmental clearance after fishing communities challenged the approval, ruling that a more robust assessment was required. The project later resumed under revised clearances.

“Sometimes you have to give up something for a greater good,” said Pranav Krishan, a Mumbai entrepreneur. “Traffic congestion had become a huge problem. Yes, marine life will be affected, but overall the population of Mumbai will benefit. Once the full network is completed and connected across the city, it will be a game changer.”

Built on a narrow peninsula and expanded through centuries of land reclamation, every square metre of Mumbai carries enormous economic value. Before modern development, the city was an archipelago of fishing hamlets. Now, only around 30 survive.

Many have been classified as slums – a legal designation that makes their land eligible for clearance and redevelopment, opening it to demolition and private construction.

For fishing communities, the dispute goes beyond a road. It is about territory. As Mumbai’s population grows, Koli settlements, fishing grounds and mangroves compete for space with infrastructure projects, redevelopment and real-estate expansion.

Koli organisations have long argued that reclamation, construction activity and altered tidal flows have damaged near-shore habitats where many fish species breed. Mangroves serve as nurseries for many of those same species – and as a natural flood barrier in a city regularly inundated during the monsoon.

Since 1991, Mumbai has lost approximately 40% of its mangrove cover. On March 20, the Supreme Court allowed the felling of approximately 45,000 mangrove trees along the Coastal Road’s northern extension.

“The problem is not only what is removed today,” said Vidushi Kala, an environmental lawyer. “It is what becomes impossible tomorrow. Once ecological systems are fragmented, their functions are often lost long before people realise it. By the time the consequences become visible, the ecological relationships that sustained both nature and livelihoods may already be gone.”

For 41-year-old Shilpa Mangela, Manav’s mother, fishing is not just work but a family tradition that stretches back generations. Living in a settlement the authorities classify as a slum, she says life in the community has become harder.

“We had plenty of fish,” she said. “Today there are far fewer. The community is struggling much more than before, and it is becoming harder to earn a profit. Nobody sees our work. Everyone is busy in their own world. They don’t see how hard we work.”

Asked what has changed most during her lifetime, she talks about the sea.

“The coast was peaceful,” she said. “Only fishermen were here. We had so many fish that we would go out four times a day. Today everything has changed. I don’t want my son to be a fisherman.”

At 18, Manav is weighing whether to continue fishing or find work elsewhere in the city. “Profits are too low, and my parents know how hard it is,” he said. “If our generation leaves fishing, Mumbai will continue as it is.”

He added: Mumbai doesn’t care who you are. If you work, you stay. If you stop working, Mumbai moves on without you.”

His mother thinks Koli culture may survive another generation, but not the fishing that sustains it.

“In 20 years, only a few people will still fish,” she said. “In 30 years, there may be none left in this area. The city is developing. The government will move us into apartments and build towers and hotels near the coast.”

Added Manav: “By leaving the sea, we lose our identity, our culture and the memories we made fishing with our family and friends. We are Mangela, we are Koli, we are known as the kings of the sea.”

Nicolò Brugnara is a documentary photographer born in Italy with a background in environmental science. Based in Mumbai, his work documents environmental and social stories across India. See more of his work here.

The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday conducted searches at premises linked to Trinamool Congress MLA Madan Mitra as part of a money-laundering investigation into an alleged municipal recruitment scam, PTI reported.

The agency carried out raids at seven locations linked to Mitra, a former minister in the government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He represents the Kamarhati Assembly constituency in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district.

PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying that Mitra allegedly received bribes in cash and gold through middlemen in exchange for facilitating appointments to various municipal posts, including in the Kamarhati municipality.

Officials also alleged that Mitra was “linked” to 125 such illegal appointments.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Six ghazals by six poets about the hankering heart. Urdu couplets with “dil” as their thematic lynchpin tightly fitted in vertical columns drawn on a page. The calligraphic text stacked in silos look like shards shaped like crescent moons, or mourning bodies.

The rendered ghazals include “kab tak dil ki khair manae” by Faiz and “ranjish hi sahi, dil dukhane ke liye aa” by Faraz. At the base of each ghazal-filled column is a drawing of a disembodied, perambulatory heart.

This work, titled Dil… Meer, Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Faraz-o-Jaun ki Zubani (2020) by Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai is part of her series Nafas or Isolation Diaries. The artworks emerged from the letters she wrote to her absent husband, while in confinement during the pandemic at her parents’ house in Najibabad, Uttar Pradesh. It was the first time Ahmadzai used copious Urdu text in her artistic practice.

Tapping into the expressive potential of the language, Nafas gives shape to the fictions of Ahmadzai’s private loneliness, and the pleasure and displeasure of waiting, through references to Urdu poets, fables and events. This lends a literary framework to the artist’s interior world by placing it within a constellation of poetic allusions. The letters are also filled with painted figures and leitmotifs of Ahmadzai’s visual repertoire, including female figures with featureless faces and pieces of furniture, but it is the Urdu language that is foregrounded to assert the self and the clamour within.

“These meaningless poems and stories without head or tail are all mine, and at times referencing someone or the other,” says Ahmadzai about the series. “The Urdu language is an undercurrent of my bloodstream, like quiet streaks. It discreetly made its way into my work, and if I complain, it laughs a silent, solemn laugh.” *

The Perso-Arabic script and Urdu has been part of works by several contemporary artists, such as Baaraan Ijlal, Faiza Hasan, Saba Hasan, and Saubiya Chasmawala. Deployed through various visual techniques, Urdu texts are repurposed in their attempts to explore identity and highlight the historical erasure of the language. Sometimes the script is used only for its materiality and visuality, with the words themselves functioning like empty kernels devoid of implicit meaning in absence of the artistic context (seed).

While most of the letters in Ahmadzai’s Nafas are accessible to readers of Urdu, in her other works, the text leaks, appearing as blotches, as if blurred by tear drops. The connecting tissues of sentences are disrupted; pages are blackened and made wet as meaning gets shrouded by grief.

In series like Bagh-e-Babur (2023), Qissa-e-Qabul (2022) and Bagh-e-Zenana (2024), the Urdu words are unreadable. “I often rob the words of their identity,” says Ahmadzai. “It is a grave crime to rob anyone, let alone words, of their identity. Is it fair then, to let words fend for themselves for all eternity? But in contrast, the titles of my works are very narrative, and end up revealing the secrets of words to some extent.”*

In some of her works in the Nafas series, the arrangement of Urdu text invoked architectural features like shutters and partitions, but in her latest show Azal se Abad Tak: A Journey between Two Eternities (2026) at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, the letters coalesce to suggest sky, clouds, fields, sea. Ahmadzai has eliminated the dots (or nuqta), making the text illegible. “It’s like putting out their eyes,” writes poet Sampurna Chattarji in the exhibition’s wall text.

Sometimes when words are not understood, they can still be used for incantations. Chasmawala grew up reciting Quranic verses without understanding them. Through her practice, she addresses this chink between form and meaning. Her graphic patterns made of Arabic letters are visual chants, a culmination of a series of performative gestures; she uses the calligraphic tool and makes a mark on paper with ink and then walks over the page, sits on it, and enacts a series of actions like spilling ink and layering the page. “Writing in Arabic, especially in calligraphic gestures or repetition, can feel ritualistic, almost prayer-like,” says Chasmawala. “There is a grid inherent to the script which makes it easier to move around the surface. Here the mark-making is cathartic… a way to purge emotions.”

The Arabic alphabets are evacuated of their meaning to become a secret language of glyphs. Chasmawala strings together sentences of random words, unmoored from the need to make sense. Like Ahmadzai’s works, here also there is leakage of feelings, an affective spillage on the page. “Perso-Arabic script is a big part of my identity… the script and letters symbolise something sacred to me,” she says. “For instance, the letter ‘meem’ feels like a body in the act of submission.” Chasmawala has also started using meaningless Arabic script on old photographs in her recent works.

In Hyderabad-based artist Faiza Hasan’s work, Urdu is used both as annotations in her figurative drawings, and also as what she claims is the “lover’s eye.” Drawing from a form of jewelry used to contain images of a lover or loved ones, Faiza employs the outline of an Urdu word as a container to contour images.

For example, in one work, the word “gulshan” frames the eye of her maternal grandmother, while “lekin kahan” outlines the image of the terrazzo floor of her grandmother’s house. This usage of her mother tongue Dakhni is enmeshed in the archival register of her artistic practice that involves mining family albums and re-drawing scenes, objects, and figures of personal history to create a catalogue of absences.

These works make a larger point of the erosion of Urdu language in India because of neglect and linguistic politics. Though most of these artists use Urdu words and the Perso-Arabic script as an affirmation of their identity, their works cannot be detached from the politics of marginalisation of the Urdu language after the 1947 Partition event.

Urdu, a hybrid language born out of the intermingling of the Hindavi language with Turkish and Persian influences, and once a symbol of pluralism, started to be perceived as a language used only by Muslims in the subcontinent because of its script. Over time, Urdu literacy has fallen, aided by policies of overt erasure.

Ahmadzai says that she does not want her works to be entangled in politics but it can’t be avoided. “These amorphous words are like daggers that tease the stark, controlled politics of today,” she says. “They claim their place on this soil. Today, Urdu carries the burden of its imposed ‘purity,’ and its stigma as the language of second-class citizens on its fragile shoulders, like a strong and silent river.”

It was Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020), known professionally as Zarina, who first used Urdu text prolifically in her works. Ahmadzai acknowledges Zarina’s influence on Nafas; in fact, one of the letters in the series is titled Zarina ke Naam, in which she pays homage to the artist.

The wounds of Partition had left a profound, pit-deep sense of homelessness in Zarina. Her works are replete with whimsical borders, skeletal houses, pitch-black margins that drag you in their vortex of darkness. They refer to the deracination wrought by Partition that separated her from her parents and siblings who moved to Pakistan. In an interview, Zarina had noted that words preceded images in her practice.

Some of Zarina’s works that foreground Urdu language are part of the show Urdu Worlds (2026) at the Ishara Art Foundation in UAE. Curator Hammad Nasar writes in the curatorial note that Zarina thought she was “too Muslim for the US and India, and too Indian for Pakistan.” Instead, she considered herself an “Urdu artist.” In her series Home is a Foreign Place, she pairs idea-images with certain Urdu words, such as ghar (home), sarhad (border), deewar (wall), aasman (sky), baarish (rain), chaukhat (threshold), khamoshi (silence), to define and craft a personal lexicon of loss, of being robbed of a place to belong to even as her art practice led her to find home in Urdu.

The language straddles multiple realms and registers in her work – from the architectural to the psychological, atmospherical to the celestial and political. In Letters From Home, consisting of eight monochromatic woodblock and metalcut prints, Zarina overlays lines from original letters written in Urdu by her sister Rani with maps and blueprints of old homes. Some texts are crossed out and smudged to signify that what they mean is irrelevant compared to how they occupy and anchor space in her works. They seem to convey that only abstruseness makes sense in the face of impossible loss, much like the garbled words in Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story Toba Tek Singh.

Baaraan Ijlal’s application of Urdu is an insistence against historical amnesia towards such narratives of loss. “I am not interested in turning Urdu into a decorative motif; it stands as a metaphor for its own existence,” says Ijlal. “After Partition, the entire linguistic and literary worlds were split. To use Urdu today is also to acknowledge that rupture, and to insist on continuity.” Ijlal’s use of Urdu couplets is most effective in her paintings from Hostile Witness (2014-ongoing). The research-based series has her partnering with her brother Moonis, who creates the frames for her paintings. The works record traces of violence, displacement and marginalisation left on historical sites and architectural spaces that are treated as sentient beings capable of recollection and reflection.

Swarming with a slew of characters and packed with dense activity – featuring both real and fantastical characters (like the crow woman Zaagh O Zaman and the tyrant Jabril with pistol heads, dressed in corporate suits) – the Pre-Partition style ancestral houses are reminders of what was lost in the historical, ecological, and moral battles fought over borders, nationhood, and belonging. Wispy Urdu verses by literary figures like Manto and Rajinder Manchanda Bedi are imprinted on fraying walls like testimonies.

The series was inspired by these verses by Ijlal Majeed (Baaraan Ijlal’s father), “Achanak khulega kisi aik din / Wahan kya hua tha kisi aik din / Wahi phir se hoga kisi aik din / Kabhi jo hua tha kisi aik din” (Suddenly it will be revealed one day / What had happened there one day / It will happen again one day / What had already happened one day). According to Ijlal, these words are “like an excavation, and also a warning that history will repeat itself.”

While these artists use Urdu for a variety of purposes, from asserting plural identities to invoking Urdu’s rich legacy and issues of historical marginalisation, such works can appear incomprehensible to those who are not familiar with the language. But as Ahmadzai puts it, the viewers have a certain responsibility toward such artworks. According to her, language is alive, has breath (nafas) once expressed or written, whether with or without meaning. For Ijlal, the contact between the language and the viewer is sufficient in itself because it may trigger a memory or reaction, and with it, an acknowledgement of the language’s legacy. “Even when the words are unread, they still hold their gravity. Their very presence becomes a way of remembering,” says Ijlal. “Even if it is not comprehended by someone, it can be encountered.”

In artist Saba Hasan’s abstract works, the Urdu text is harnessed both for its calligraphic element, as a cultural signifier to address the politics of belonging, and as a moment of interiority and pause. Hasan integrates Urdu translations of feminist authors, such as Ismat Chugtai and Rashin Jahan, in her book sculptures, and often employs techniques to obscure these texts, such as burning and tearing. She does not think it is necessary for people to understand or read the words. “Sometimes you have to reduce the noise to get to the depth of feeling, to provide a moment of repose, silence and introspection. The use of Urdu provides that moment of stillness in my works,” says Hasan, who recently had a show of her book sculptures titled jo gayab hai, aur hazir bhi at KNMA, New Delhi. “In my art, though language is present, the words are abstract, and sometimes, not even clear. They are like a sign and a material along with other materials I use, like wire, silk, nails and leaves.”

For Faiza, the problem of comprehension is solved by using Urdu letters to insert “gaps” in her works. An insufficient archive and unreliable memory can often lead to an incomplete picture, and Faiza adeptly puts to paper this idea of what has been lost over time in her imagery.

“A lot of gaps existed in the torn and faded old photographs that I was trying to restore,” says Faiza. “But, gradually, these gaps became a part of my process and a conceptual tool.” The idea of the gap, of narrative nonlinearity, is reiterated in her use of the Perso-Arabic script. “Urdu literacy has diminished, yet the letters are recognisable in their form,” says Faiza. “I suppose the Urdu words in my works are like visual gaps for the viewers,” she adds, remarking that that onlookers “fill” these gaps by ascribing imagined meanings to the shapes of the letters.

In her work and of others, we repeatedly encounter the Urdu script as a familiar presence but obscured, like a friend or lover distanced by time and forgetfulness. But still beloved.

*Translation of Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai’s Urdu quotes by Kadamboor Neeraj.

Shweta Upadhyay is an arts journalist and co-author of the photobook ‘I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you’. Formerly, she has worked as the Assistant Editor of Art India magazine, and her writing has appeared in various publications including Mint Lounge, Object, and Fountain Ink.

This article was originally published by Impart, an online platform encouraging greater engagement with South Asia’s art and cultural histories.

The Border Security Force and the Border Guard Bangladesh discussed “illegal and forced border crossings”, “border deaths” and other matters related to the India-Bangladesh border during the three-day director-general-level talks that concluded on Thursday, The Hindu reported.

The discussions came against the backdrop of recent allegations by Dhaka that it had thwarted attempts by the Border Security Force to force persons into its territory. India has not yet responded to the allegations.

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

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

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

After the talks concluded on Thursday, the Border Security Force and the Border Guard Bangladesh released separate statements instead of holding a joint press conference, as had been the practice in previous years, the Hindustan Times reported.

The Border Security Force said that both sides reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining peace, tranquility and stability along the India-Bangladesh border.

“Emphasis was also laid on sensitising border population about the sanctity of the international boundary and promoting greater public awareness to prevent illegal activities in border areas,” The Hindu quoted the statement as saying.

The Border Guard Bangladesh expressed concern about the “recent incidents of push-ins of individuals” into the country by the Border Security Force, the newspaper reported.

It added that such actions were in violation of “the Joint India-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities, the Coordinated Border Management Plan, decisions mutually agreed upon during previous [director-general-level talks], as well as established bilateral norms and procedures”.

The Bangladeshi force added that many of those forced across the border were in distress, facing hunger and illness, and included elderly persons requiring urgent medical attention.

It reiterated Dhaka’s position that anyone identified as a Bangladeshi should be returned through formal legal and diplomatic channels.

The Border Guard Bangladesh also raised concerns about the deaths of unarmed Bangladeshi citizenss along the border and urged the Border Security Force to take effective measures to bring border killings down to zero, the Hindustan Times reported.

The statement added that India raised concerns about the “illegal migration” of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas into India. “Both sides have agreed to take preventive measures against illegal trans border movement,” the newspaper quoted the Bangladeshi force’s statement as saying.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Polycarp Joseph has been making annual visits to the Shaktikulangara and Vaddy fishing harbours in Kerala’s Kollam district, since 2019, to track birds. On his visits, Joseph, who is a district head for the Kerala State Annual Heronry Survey, an annual citizen-science monitoring project by the Kerala Bird Monitoring Network, counts active nests of the little egret (Egretta garzetta). As part of this monitoring effort, he has visited both harbours after dark to study the effects of nighttime light pollution on these birds.

It was on one such visit that he came across a few brahminy kites (Haliastur indus), a “strictly” diurnal (active during the day) raptor with a distinctive bright white head and rump, scavenging late at night at the Vaddy fishing harbour in Kollam.

If it were late evening hours, he might have assumed that the kites were returning home or making one last foraging attempt, said Joseph. “The harbour [at night] is like a floodlit stadium, with LED lights in the auction yard and on boats, which allows these kites to perceive prey availability,” he added.

On February 5, 2024, from 11pm until 12.30 am, Joseph recorded three brahminy kites flying in short circles above the harbour, diving to scoop fish from boats, and snatching discards from fishers. On subsequent nights, too, he observed one or two kites scavenging between 9 pm and 11pm.

This observation was recorded in a recent paper by a research team, including Joseph.

According to the authors, this is the first documentation of the typically diurnal brahminy kites, feeding at night in India. Although it is only a single observation, it adds to growing evidence that artificial light at night can change the activity patterns of birds of prey that are normally active during the day.

The nighttime hunters of Vaddy

Located in the heart of the densely populated Kollam city, the Vaddy fishing harbour is where local artisanal fishermen who operate gillnet and hook-and-line fisheries from small fishing vessels land their catch every day.

According to Joseph, there are 500-600 brahminy kites in the area, who compete with hundreds of black kites, house crows, little egrets, and feral dogs for discards and freshly caught fish landed during the day. So far he has seen two-three brahminy kites scavenging under artificial light at night (ALAN) at the harbour .

Billions of organisms are responding to artificial light at night every day, says Nishant Kumar, head of Thinkpaws, a New Delhi-based think tank whose research focuses on interactions between people, animals and waste systems. “ALAN [artificial light at night] affects cue-outcome mapping (whereby animals learn that a specific signal predicts a certain result) that foregrounds animal decision-making,” Kumar said. “In this case [of brahminy kites], ALAN is prompting certain individuals to take the decision to feed under artificial light.”

Old-world kites have good low-light vision, notes Kumar, who has extensively studied black kites in the capital city. “Black kites in Europe and Delhi have been observed flying to/away from roosts around 9 pm. If you stay at landfills, you can see kites arriving to forage as early as 5 am, before the break of dawn,” he said.

In their research paper published in the Journal of Ornithology, Joseph and fellow authors cite prior studies that have identified typically risk-averse individuals using artificial light at night as an opportunity to forage during hours of reduced competition. “We think ALAN [artificial light at night] allows this small subset of the [brahminy kite] population to minimise competition and maximise access to food,” Joseph said.

Kumar agrees that bold or malnourished animals can engage in such unusual resource exploitation. It may also spread in the region as other kites and opportunistic birds socially learn this behaviour from them, according to the Delhi-based researcher.

Joseph’s conversations with local fishermen revealed that nocturnal foraging behaviour in brahminy kites has been a regular phenomenon at the Vaddy harbour for some time now. However, it seemed to be restricted to the area, as fishers at Shaktikulangara, roughly 8km up the coast, had never noticed it before.

The size of fish landed at each harbour could be a factor, according to Joseph. “Brahminy kites require prey that they can pick up and fly away with, like mackerels and sardines. Though both harbours have nighttime fish landings, Shaktikulangara is mainly occupied by large trawlers that land massive fish like tuna,” Joseph said.

“The excessive noise pollution from the large engines of these heavy barrages could also be a factor,” he added.

How artificial light affects birds

In a new research paper published in Ecology Letters, scientists analysed 36 light pollution studies across 30 bird species to test if ALAN [artificial light at night] alters their physiology, behaviour and life-history traits (such as lifespan and body size). The results showed consistent avian physiological and behavioural shifts under ALAN [artificial light at night], but these adjustments appeared to minimise the impacts on their life-history traits.

According to the paper’s findings, the major behavioural shifts in birds due to ALAN were the extension of their daily activity beyond daylight hours and a marked increase in nocturnal foraging. Sleep disruption was one of the clearest physiological impacts, which the authors suggest has broader impacts on metabolic rate, melatonin production, and immune function.

“Our results showed that ALAN commonly extends avian activity into the night, which may affect circadian rhythms, sleep, physiology, and energetic balance,” said Sayuri Díaz-Palma, a PhD candidate at the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University and one of the paper’s authors.

Increased nocturnal activity was one of the primary behavioural disruptions under ALAN, which was amplified in brighter light. Aligning their analytical study with the case of nighttime foraging in brahminy kites, Díaz-Palma said: “We found that stronger light intensities were generally associated with activity shifts, accelerated ageing, and sleep disruption. Therefore, powerful LED lighting could plausibly facilitate nighttime foraging behaviour.”

Inter-individual variation could be why only certain individuals forage at night, according to Díaz-Palma. “[It] may reflect inter-individual variation in behaviour, habituation, or ecological opportunity,” she said. “However, species-specific interpretations would require observations from a larger number of individuals and a more targeted study of the system,” she added.

The study concludes that avian responses to artificial light at night remain poorly studied, presenting valuable opportunities for future research. Kumar shares this inference that research on the effects of anthropogenic environmental impacts on biodiversity is understudied. “ALAN is a vital component in this, given the high correlation of urban [spaces] with night light. Except for its impacts on migratory birds and insects, the research is limited,” he said.

Kumar hopes that this documentation of nocturnal foraging in brahminy kites from Kerala encourages more people to observe and record such natural history, which can aid understanding of artificial light at night and its impacts on birds.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to order the reopening of the Central Board of Secondary Education’s verification and re-evaluation portal for Class 12 answer sheets, saying that doing so would delay the announcement of final results, reported Live Law.

A vacation bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain added that it did not want to interfere with the ongoing process.

The portal was open from June 2 to June 7.

The court was hearing a petition by the National Students’ Union of India, the Congress’ student wing, alleging irregularities in the newly-introduced On-Screen Marking system.

The petition was filed against the backdrop of several discrepancies being flagged in the CBSE’s On-Screen Marking evaluation process.

Many students have alleged that the scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the CBSE did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about possible answer sheet mismatches. Students seeking re-evaluation also alleged that they faced portal failures, delays in payment confirmation and, in some cases, were asked to pay excess fees because of technical glitches.

Separately, a cybersecurity researcher, Nisarga Adhikary, has claimed on social media that he had discovered that the OnMark portal link was publicly accessible and that an analysis of its code showed vulnerabilities that could potentially allow accounts of examiners to be taken over.

In its petition, the NSUI has sought an independent inquiry into alleged irregularities in the OSM system, along with directions for manual rechecking and physical verification of disputed answer sheets, The Hindu reported.

It also asked the court to direct the verification and re-evaluation portal to remain open for an additional month to allow affected students to seek remedies, according to Bar and Bench.

However, the bench said on Friday that aggrieved students are free to approach the court individually, Bar and Bench reported.

“For you it is one week,” the court said. “But the whole process gets delayed by a month. You are saying let me take the step. Then of course 10 steps further are to be taken.”

Appearing for the CBSE, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that any extension of the process would affect nearly 17.8 lakh students who appeared for the examinations and could delay admissions to undergraduate courses.

He further said that 1.67 lakh students had already applied for evaluation and that around 3.8 lakh answer sheets were under review.

Edited by Sneha.

The Maharashtra Police on Thursday registered a case against comedian Pranit More and others for posting allegedly objectionable content online, The Hindu reported.

More, Himanshu Jangra and Dr Sejal Pawar, among other persons, were booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to making sexually coloured remarks, distributing obscene materials and circulating false information intended to promote enmity between groups.

They were also booked under a section of the Information Technology Act for publishing obscene material.

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

Pawar, an MBBS student at a hospital in Mumbai, had made allegedly objectionable comments about the reproductive organs of a male cadaver.

Both persons were part of the audience in separate episodes of a comedy show hosted by More. Video clips of the episodes had been widely shared on social media.

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

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

The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors said that Pawar’s comments were inappropriate and not in line with the dignity of the profession.

On Thursday, Pawar apologised for the comments. “Looking back, I can see how my words could be interpreted differently from what I meant,” The Times of India quoted Pawar as saying.

She said that she did not intend to disrespect anyone.

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

The episode involving Jangra had been recorded in Haryana, according to the commission.

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

After a season of intense heatwaves, India will not have a lot of respite this monsoon, with the India Meteorological Department forecasting a “below normal” monsoon season.

On May 29, the India Meteorological Department further downgraded its monsoon forecast to 90% of the long-period average as against the earlier 92%, and forecast a warmer June.

One reason will be an El Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean that can lead to a weak monsoon. There are 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, 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.

But, each El Niño event is unique in terms of its evolution, spatial pattern and impacts. It typically occurs every two to seven years and lasts around nine to twelve months.

“After a period of neutral conditions at the start of the year, climate models are now strongly aligned, and there is high confidence in the onset of El Niño, followed by further intensification in the months that follow,” said Wilfran Moufouma Okia, Chief of Climate Prediction at the World Meteorological Organization. The organisation does not use the term “super El Niño” because it is not part of its classifications.

With the war in West Asia still impacting global energy supplies, the El Niño (super or not) will further add to woes. India’s economy has also been impacted by these global events and a weak monsoon will have a cascading impact on sowing, yields, food security, water security, energy demand, food inflation and possibly even strong heatwaves next summer.

What does the science say so far about this year’s El Niño and what steps could India take to better prepare for its impacts? We spoke to Raghu Murtugudde, an earth systems scientist, Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland, and visiting faculty at the Kotak School for Sustainability at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Edited excerpts:

There is a lot of discussion about the El Niño developing later this year, and there is some concern about it being a “super” El Niño. It is even being compared to the El Niño event of 1877 which is linked to the Great Famine that year in British-ruled India. What do we know so far and in your experience, is it going to be a super El Niño?

“Super El Niño” is just a made-up word, but nonetheless indicates a very strong El Niño. Will this one grow strong? Models are saying that, and there seems to be a consensus about it. But a consensus answer is not always the right answer, because all the models are kind of latching on to similar things.

There is a supply of warm water below the surface on the equator, which tends to come up in a couple of months. But how strong it will get will depend on whether that will create this kind of positive feedback or vicious cycle with sea surface temperatures, pressure gradients, winds… they all begin to talk to each other and give feedback, then you can get a strong El Niño. But models are notoriously bad at predicting the amplitudes very well.

When do you think the picture will be clear?

Right now, it’s already clear that this year we’ll have an El Niño, because when there is so much warm water in the tropical Pacific, we will get something like an El Niño.

But what matters is what that will do to the monsoon. It also depends on whether the models can say something about the onset, the distribution of rainfall in regions and time. These things are complicated and models are not terribly good at it. So, we have to watch.

Hopefully in the next couple of months, everything will begin to become more obvious because already, the monsoon onset (which was earlier forecast for May 26 by the IMD) is delayed. It might happen in the first week of June, which will still be normal. But if it gets delayed further by another week or two, then there might be speculation or suspicion of a super El Niño again.

Southwest Monsoon Update !

Southwest monsoon has further advance into some more parts of Karnataka, Tamilnadu and some parts of Goa on today, the 5th June 2026.#SouthwestMonsoon #MonsoonUpdate #KarnatakaWeather #TamilNaduRain #GoaWeather #RainySeason2026 #WeatherForecast… pic.twitter.com/ijTCrcDvnw

— India Meteorological Department (@Indiametdept) June 5, 2026

A 2006 paper that analysed 132 years’ data found that not every El Niño event has led to a severe drought but severe droughts in India have always been accompanied by El Nino events.

You had mentioned that there is about 60% incidence of an El Niño year impacting the Indian monsoon. In the other years, rainfall has been somewhat normal. Is there a possibility that some of this fear could be unfounded?

IMD has forecast a monsoon only about 6% to 8% below normal [revised to -10% later] but that also misses the point about the distribution, right? Some things like water resources may be affected by total rainfall. But distribution is what matters for agriculture and food production. There is a risk and it is now a question of how we prepare for it.

For example, the government has already restricted sugar exports and they ramped up the export tax on edible oil. But these are also related to the war. Pre-monsoon heat waves and rainfall has already affected mustard, wheat. El Niño is just one thing and it is an important thing to consider.

Haven’t El Niño events come in quick succession, that is, between 2024 and 2026?

It typically happens from two to seven years. In that sense, it’s not really out of the ordinary. A “super” El Niño last happened in 1877, so it is not like one did not happen during the non-global warming period. It’s just that El Niño adds to global warming because El Niño itself is a mini version of global warming. It spews out the heat stored in the oceans.

That means the conditions now are very different than the 1877 super El Niño. Also, back then, we didn’t know much about El Niño. We are retrofitting today’s knowledge to history. Yes, famines happened back then, but famines could have been influenced by human decision-making, policy making as well. What happens now will be different in that sense and we have to be prepared.

▪️Union Minister @ChouhanShivraj conducted a detailed and comprehensive review in Delhi regarding the Southwest Monsoon, the possible impact of El Niño, water availability, seed arrangements, crop strategy and the level of preparedness of various states

▪️Union Minister directed… pic.twitter.com/CGJWmu48Av

— PIB India (@PIB_India) June 3, 2026

What are the chances of the Indian Ocean Dipole, which suppresses El Niño as well as the “spring predictability barrier” – which prevents accurate forecast in the first half of the year – working in our favour and leaving the South Asian monsoon unscathed from the effects of El Niño?

An IOD [Indian Ocean Dipole] event happens in September-November. In general, it tends to mitigate El Niño. The question is, will we duck under?

The best way to think about it is that the monsoon itself is a heat source. It has its own mind. We are always obsessed about what El Niño does to the monsoon but monsoon happens six months before the El Niño peaks.

What we don’t know very well is what monsoon does to the El Niño. That’s why we say only 60% incidences of weak rainfall are explained by El Niño. But what if the other 40% are where the monsoon is changing the El Niño itself?

Since the monsoon is running late, what advice will you give to the farmers who are waiting to sow in the Kharif cycle?

For farmers, local onset will be important. Farmers need more accurate information on those. We ourselves at IIT Bombay were doing those for irrigation etc. Farmers require hyper-local early warnings.

IMD provides forecasts at the block scale or district scales but farmers need more [granular information]. IMD also has to move towards hyper-local early warnings. There are a lot of private players now who are trying to do that.

A below-normal monsoon could also mean that certain regions, say like Marathwada, Vidarbha, will get much less rain. Marathwada had a severe deficit after the 2015 El Niño.

Exactly. So, all-India “mean” rainfall is kind of a meaningless thing. At some point, it used to be an indicator of total grain production when Kharif was the big producer. But now Rabi is also producing as much as Kharif.

The problem is, Rabi is also getting hit by heatwaves and pre-monsoon rains. Wheat crop, onions are concerns. With grain storage, you can manage a little bit or reduce export and so on. In 2023, they reduced rice export. This time they have banned sugar but onions are not stored that much, so it’s always a gamble.

Farmers gamble all the time, but they don’t get enough attention. The government gambles and claims success when they are correct. If they are not correct, they will keep quiet.

Ultimately this can impact food prices and it will have a cascading effect on inflation, right? Everything is interlinked in that sense?

Absolutely. The war is not over yet. So, what else is going to happen? Already petrol prices are up. Even if onion production is good, transportation costs go up, then prices will go up. Transportation costs are going to be hit hard as well. Oil prices don’t seem to be showing any sign of coming down.

Your 2015 paper explained how “westerly wind bursts” strongly affect El Niño. Has there been any more research on this front since then?

It’s just the same thing that we know, it is a part of El Niño and they are not always easy to predict. The El Niño models are climate models. Westerly wind bursts are weather events. Climate models are not good at predicting weather events. But once they start, they push the warm water eastward [from the west of the Dateline] and become what is called multiplicative noise.

As they push eastward, they grow larger in strength and area. At that time, models capture them because they are slowly becoming climate-scale. So, the question is when and how will they appear? That still remains a challenge because right now, westerly wind bursts can suddenly accelerate the growth rate of El Niño. If they don’t occur, then maybe El Niño will grow slower and won’t be as hysteric.

If there is a super El Niño brewing in the coming year, how well can India prepare itself in terms of energy needs, water, food security, inflation?

Some unprecedented measures will have to be taken. Early warnings are a crisis management thing. You don’t want to be stuck in crisis management. You want to have room in the budget for resilience building. That should be a longer-term plan.

Coal is convenient to burn now because war affects fuel prices and heatwaves are here. If heat demand goes up, then power plants run on coal. But in the longer term, you want to have solar. Solar should have also gone up but [there are challenges with respect to] distribution network, grid and so on. There are background adaptation responses that have to be continually getting better.

The government has to track what is going to be hit worse, say, wheat, rice, beans, pulses or cotton. Sugarcane and cotton can be managed because they are cash crops and don’t affect daily life… If their export is stopped, then that's okay but farmers have to be protected.

Preparing is a two-part problem. One is the early warnings and response. This is rapid response, rapid recovery. The lower part is the adaptation part, you will need risk maps for quite literally every taluka. It should have a risk map for heatwaves, damage to agriculture, infrastructure, energy supply. India needs to build those.

Our water resources are already under strain. India’s groundwater levels are worrying. That’s part of the resilience we have to build… how to exploit groundwater, but recharge it. One thing we forget is the amount of rain we get is still very high. Concentrated rain makes groundwater recharge difficult, but that’s if we don’t do something about it. Rainwater harvesting and proper planning can still give us lots of groundwater recharge.

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

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan challenging the rejection of her candidature for the Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh. Stating that it was not commenting on the merits of the case, the bench allowed her to file an election petition, which must be moved in the High Court.

Natarajan was the Congress’ sole candidate for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh. Her nomination was rejected after the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that she had withheld information in her affidavit about a criminal case against her in Telangana.

Her lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the court that she had only received a notice from a magistrate and the court in Telangana had not yet taken cognisance of the matter. This means that she was not required to disclose the matter in her nomination papers, he added. Read on.

The Ministry of External Affairs said that it had summoned the United States’ chargé d’affaires Jason Meeks for the second consecutive day to register its protest against the continued US strikes on ships with Indian crew members in West Asia. New Delhi said that it had “once again conveyed its deep concern over the use of lethal and deadly force against civilian shipping”.

Meeks had also been summoned on Thursday by the ministry to register a protest against Wednesday’s strike on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman in which three Indians were killed. Read on.

A first information report was registered against West Bengal’s former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly hurting religious sentiments with remarks that she made during a speech ahead of the Assembly elections. The complaint, filed on May 20, alleged that the Trinamool Congress had said in March that if “a particular community united, it could have dire consequences for others”.

She has been booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to acts that promote enmity, hatred or disharmony between groups on the basis of religion, race, language or caste, as well as provisions dealing with criminal intimidation and intentional insults. Read on.

The Bombay High Court sought the National Investigation Agency’s response to a petition by activist-poet Varavara Rao seeking permission to permanently relocate from Mumbai to Hyderabad. Rao is out on bail in the Bhima Koregaon case.

In his petition, he said that living in Mumbai had become difficult because of his age, health complications and increasing living expenses. The 85-year-old told the court that he and his 76-year-old wife require the support of family members in Hyderabad, where he owns a house and has relatives. Read on.

Bail for Bhima Koregaon accused highlights extraordinary delay in trial, writes Vineet Bhalla

Jaspal Rana, one of India’s most accomplished pistol shooters and a coach, died on Friday. He was 49.

Rana was India’s most successful Commonwealth Games athlete, having won 15 medals in four editions of the event. This includes nine gold medals, four silver and two bronze.

Rana passed away after suffering complications related to a heart condition. He had fallen ill during the Indian contingent’s return flight from the shooting World Cup in Munich, Germany, which took place at the end of May. Read on.

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The Kolkata Police on Friday registered a first information report against West Bengal’s former chief minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee for allegedly hurting religious sentiments with remarks that she made during a speech ahead of the Assembly elections, India Today reported.

A complaint against her was filed on May 20 by a Kolkata resident, who alleged that Banerjee had in March said that if “a particular community united, it could have dire consequences for others”.

The TMC chief has been booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to acts that promote enmity, hatred or disharmony between groups on the basis of religion, race, language or caste, as well as provisions dealing with criminal intimidation and intentional insults.

Police have begun an investigation and are examining video recordings of the speech, according to India Today.

A zero FIR was first registered at Netaji Nagar Police Station on the basis of the same complaint, which has since been transferred to Hare Street Police Station, reported The Times of India.

Zero FIRs are registered by a police station for crimes that are committed outside their territorial jurisdictions.

On May 20, a separate complaint was filed against Banerjee at the Siliguri Cyber Crime Police Station, alleging that remarks she made during a religious event in 2025 and at a protest rally ahead of the Assembly elections had hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus, The Hindu reported.

The complainant, a lawyer, claimed that Banerjee “had stated that a particular community could ‘finish off’ others within five minutes if it wished”.

Based on the complaint, police registered a case under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to outraging religious feelings, criminal intimidation, intentional insult and defamation.

This matter is also being investigated.

Rebel TMC camp claims support from 64 MLAs

Meanwhile, expelled TMC leader Sandipan Saha claimed on Friday that the number of rebel MLAs backing the appointment of Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly had increased from 58 to 64, ANI reported.

Saha said the group had not expected for so many legislators to join them.

Referring to the FIR against Banerjee, he said the statement allegedly made by her “was not correct”.

The internal dispute within the TMC is currently before the Calcutta High Court.

On Thursday, the court questioned the decision of Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose to recognise Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition without the consent of the political party.

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

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

The TMC has challenged the speaker’s decision, arguing that it violates constitutional provisions governing the relationship between political parties and their legislators.

The rebel faction has alleged that signatures supporting the appointment of Chattopadhyay as leader of the Opposition were forged.

A police investigation is underway in connection with the allegations.

Edited by Sneha.

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

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition by Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan challenging the rejection of her candidature for the Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and AS Chandurkar declined to exercise its writ jurisdiction, citing Article 329 of the Constitution. The provision bars courts from interfering in electoral matters, and says that any polls to either House of Parliament can only be challenged through an election petition.

However, the bench allowed the Congress leader to file an election petition. The bench also clarified that it was not commenting on the merits of the case.

Election petitions can be filed for inquiring into the validity of a poll. These pleas must be filed in the High Court of the particular state in which the poll was conducted

The court did not accept Natarajan’s argument that writ jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution could be invoked to deal with “glaring and manifest” errors in the rejection of the nomination, Live Law reported. The court said that if it were to do so, it would lead to the reading of a principle that does not exist in Article 329.

Article 32 guarantees citizens the right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce their fundamental rights.

Natarajan was the Congress’ sole candidate for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh. Her nomination was rejected on Tuesday after the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that she had withheld information in her affidavit about a criminal case against her in Telangana.

However, her lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi contended that only criminal cases where charges have been framed need to be disclosed. The Congress leader had only received a notice from a magistrate under Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, Live Law quoted Singhvi as saying.

The lawyer said that the court in Telangana had not taken cognisance of the complaint based on which the notice was issued.

Rajya Sabha polls

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly was scheduled to elect three members to the Rajya Sabha on June 18. With the Assembly’s effective strength at 229, a candidate requires 58 first-preference votes to win.

Of these seats, the BJP has 164 MLAs excluding the speaker. While the Congress has 63 MLAs, its ally Bharat Adivasi Party has one.

The BJP had the numbers to win two of the three seats as it needed 116 votes to do so. However, it will be left with 48 votes that are not sufficient to clinch the third seat.

Despite this, the BJP fielded three candidates, raising concerns in the Congress about cross-voting and defections.

On Tuesday, before Natarajan’s candidature was rejected, the Congress flew most of its MLAs from Bhopal to Bengaluru, where the party is in power, while keeping a few senior legislators back in Madhya Pradesh, where it is in the Opposition.

On Thursday, all three candidates of the BJP were declared as elected unopposed by the returning officer.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said that it had summoned the United States’ Chargé d’Affaires Jason Meeks for the second consecutive day to register its protest against the continued US strikes on ships with Indian crew members in West Asia.

New Delhi said that it had “once again conveyed its deep concern over the use of lethal and deadly force against civilian shipping”.

A chargé d’affaires represents a country’s diplomatic mission in the absence of an ambassador. Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India, is in Kazakhstan.

The actions by the US military “are unacceptable and undermine the safety, security and stability of the international maritime commerce in a sensitive region at a difficult time”, the ministry stated.

It added that Meeks was asked to convey New Delhi’s concerns to Washington and to ensure that the US military units operating in the region “take all necessary measures to prevent the loss of civilian life”.

Meeks had also been summoned on Thursday by the ministry to register a protest against Wednesday’s strike on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman in which three Indians were killed.

Twenty-one members of the crew had been rescued from the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello.

On Thursday, Randhir Jaiswal, the external affairs ministry spokesperson, said that New Delhi had informed Meeks of “our deepest concerns on the ongoing incidents of attacks” and had “registered a strong protest” in the matter.

“These attacks came from the US Navy stationed there,” Jaiswal had said at the government’s press briefing about the war in West Asia.

The US Central Command had acknowledged striking the Settebello, claiming that the vessel had violated the American blockade restricting maritime traffic linked to Iran. The ship was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Hours after Meeks was summoned by the ministry on Thursday, the US said that its military had “disabled” another tanker off the coast of Oman as it was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen tanker MT Jalveer, which was located off the port of Shinas in northern Oman. Twenty Indian seafarers on board the vessel were evacuated.

On Monday, another tanker, Marivex, carrying 24 Indian seafarers, was targeted by the US military for allegedly violating the blockade. All crew members were rescued.

New Delhi stated on Thursday that all three ships struck by the US military between Monday and Thursday were foreign-flagged. Two of the ships are sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and one is “also in the category of non-compliant ships”, Jaiswal had said.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

The Bombay High Court on Friday sought the National Investigation Agency’s response to a petition by activist-poet Varavara Rao, who is out on bail in the Bhima Koregaon case, seeking permission to permanently relocate from Mumbai to Hyderabad, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Kamal Khata directed the probe agency to file its reply within two weeks, when it will hear the matter.

Rao had approached the High Court after a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai on March 16 dismissed his application to move to Hyderabad, Bar and Bench reported.

In his petition, he said that living in Mumbai had become difficult because of his age, health complications and increasing living expenses, according to the legal news outlet.

The 85-year-old told the court that he and his 76-year-old wife require the support of family members in Hyderabad, where he owns a house and has relatives.

Rao further said that his monthly expenses in Mumbai exceed Rs 77,000 while his pension is approximately Rs 50,000.

He was arrested in August 2018 from his Hyderabad residence and is out on medical bail granted to him by the Supreme Court in August 2022.

The bail conditions mandate the trial court’s permission to travel outside its jurisdiction.

In September, the Supreme Court declined to modify this bail condition.

On May 15, the NIA sought that the bail granted to Rao and activist Sudha Bharadwaj be cancelled, alleging that they violated the conditions of their release by attending a gathering at the Mumbai Press Club earlier this year.

The agency had submitted that the bail conditions for the activists barred them from contacting or communicating with other accused persons.

It claimed that the gathering was convened with the intention of “propagating the ideology of the proscribed organisation Communist Party of India (Maoist) and to deliberate upon the future course of action for spreading the ‘Urban Naxal’ movement…”

The case

The Bhima Koregaon case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.

The NIA has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rao is among 16 activists, academicians and lawyers who have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in instigating the violence.

Of the 16 accused persons, 14 have been released on bail. Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who was also accused in the case, died in prison in 2021.

Another accused man, Surendra Gadling, got bail from the Bombay High Court on May 4. However, he remains in jail as his bail application in a 2016 arson case is pending before the Supreme Court.

The trial in the case is yet to begin.

When the Supreme Court last year granted bail to two persons accused in the case, it noted that the primary evidence cited by the National Investigation Agency – a batch of letters – was of “weak probative value or quality”. In addition, a digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, has concluded that false evidence had been planted on the laptops and devices of the accused.

Edited by Sneha.

The Archaeological Survey of India has urged the district administration in Gujarat’s Bharuch to prevent any gathering that could damage the historic Jami Masjid after social media posts emerged calling for a gathering at the protected monument on June 15, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The gathering is allegedly planned by the Hindutva group Rashtriya Dharohar Sanrakshan Samiti, according to the newspaper.

The group has been organising events in the district since mid-May under its “campaign to reclaim” the mosque as a Jain religious site, The Indian Express reported.

The 14th-century monument is located near the Bharuch Fort and the Malbari Darwaza.

The Archaeological Survey described it as a monument of national importance, which is listed in a gazette issued in May 1909.

In a letter on Wednesday, the superintending archaeologist of the organisation’s Vadodara circle requested the district collector and magistrate to take measures to protect the mosque.

The letter followed information the ASI received from the president of the Jami Masjid that videos and messages widely shared online were calling on people to gather at the site.

“As the monument is sensitive in nature, there is a likelihood of an untoward incident,” The Indian Express quoted the letter as having stated. “Such gatherings may also pose a risk to the communal harmony and physical damage to the monument.”

The Archaeological Survey cited Article 49 of the Constitution, which requires the state to protect monuments or places of artistic or historic interest declared to be of national importance.

The 1958 Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act requires the collector to take measures to protect a monument from being damaged.

The trustees of the mosque have also made representations to the police and the district administration.

They alleged that a campaign disputing the religious character of the monument “has been gaining traction on social media over the past several months”, The Indian Express reported. The trustees also alleged that there had been an attempt on March 3 to perform non-Muslim religious rituals within the premises of the monument.

District Collector NK Gavhane told the newspaper that the situation was under control and that the administration was coordinating with the agencies.

“...We have appealed to people to refrain from making any generalised comments about the monument or believing in rumours and misunderstandings,” he was quoted as saying. “ASI is a competent authority to decide about the monument.”

Edited by Sneha.

Jaspal Rana, one of India’s most accomplished pistol shooters and a coach, died on Friday. He was 49.

Rana passed away after suffering complications related to a heart condition, ANI quoted Dr Balbir Singh, chief of interventional cardiology at Delhi’s Max Super Speciality Hospital as saying.

He had recently fallen ill during the Indian contingent’s return flight from the shooting world cup in Munich, Germany, The Indian Express reported.

He was the high-performance coach for India’s pistol shooters.

Rana is India’s most successful Commonwealth Games athlete, having won 15 medals in four editions of the event. This includes nine gold medals, four silver and two bronze.

After retiring from competition, Rana became a coach and had been mentoring several leading shooters, including Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary, Anish Bhanwala and Chinki Yadav, Sportstar reported.

Under his mentorship, Bhaker became the first Indian to win two medals at a single Olympic Games, claiming bronze in the women’s and mixed team 10 metre air pistol events at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Rana received the Arjuna Award, India’s second-highest sporting honour, in 1994. He was awarded the Padma Shri, the country’s fourth-highest civilian honour, in 1997, and the Dronacharya Award, the highest recognition for sports coaches, in 2020.

President Droupadi Murmu said that Rana’s “dedication, discipline and commitment to excellence will continue to inspire generations of sportspersons”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Rana’s death as a “profound loss” to Indian sports and said he had brought “immense glory” to the nation through his achievements as a shooter and a mentor.

Union Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya noted that Rana’s “incredible contributions to our nation, as a champion athlete and an exceptional mentor, leave behind an inspiring legacy”.

Olympic gold medallist and shooter Abhinav Bindra said that he was heartbroken by the news of Rana’s death.

“Jaspal was my teammate, and in many ways, part of a generation that helped shape Indian shooting,” Bindra said. “He was intense, gifted and carried the pride of the country every time he stepped onto the range.”

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government on Thursday barred industrial and commercial consumers from purchasing petrol and diesel from retail outlets amid supply disruptions caused by the war in West Asia.

The industrial and commercial consumers would have to procure the fuels only from dedicated supply channels, which they cannot resell.

The order issued by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas will be in force for 90 days, unless it is withdrawn before that.

The ministry stated that the order was issued after “abnormal increases” were observed in the sale of petrol and diesel at retail outlets in parts of the country.

This was attributed to industrial and commercial consumers shifting their sourcing to retail outlets because of the difference in price as compared to bulk purchases, the government said.

The shift had resulted in fuel supplies meant for retail consumers getting diverted and had created the “potential for localised shortages and disruption of essential services”, the order said.

The government said that the war in West Asia had been hurting global fuel supply chains, shipping and the availability of petroleum products.

This necessitated “prudent management and conservation of available supplies and raises the need to deal with such unpredictable situations in a formal manner”, the order added.

The prices of petrol and diesel have been increased by Rs 7.5 per litre since mid-May.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively blocked because of the war.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Three members of a family were killed and two others were injured after a fire broke out in a five-storey residential building in southeast Delhi’s Govindpuri area on Friday morning, PTI reported.

The fire was reported at 2.31 am from a residential building in Tughlakabad Extension, police said.

“Eight occupants were rescued from the structure and shifted to Safdarjung Hospital and AIIMS [All India Institute for Medical Sciences] Trauma Centre for treatment,” PTI quoted Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Hemant Tiwari as saying.

The three dead were identified as Guddi (50), her son Pankaj (28) and daughter Soni (20). All of them lived on the third floor of the building.

Another daughter of Guddi, Moni (18), and the woman’s 70-year-old mother sustained critical injuries and are undergoing treatment, PTI reported.

Preliminary inquiry suggests that the fire may have been caused by an electrical short circuit on the ground floor of the building. Three scooters, two motorcycles and a bicycle parked in the ground-floor parking area also caught fire, ANI quoted Delhi Fire Service as saying.

The blaze took place more than a week after 22 persons were killed in a fire at a building in south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar on June 3.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Around 4,000 electronic voting machines were destroyed in a fire at a government building in Kolkata, PTI quoted West Bengal minister Kaushik Chowdhury as saying on Thursday. The EVMs had been used in 10 constituencies during this year’s Assembly elections in the state, the minister said.

Chowdhury, the minister of state for fire and emergency services, said that it did not appear to be a “normal fire” and that the authorities were examining the possibility of sabotage.

The fire broke out on Wednesday at the nine-storey building in south Kolkata’s Alipore area. The building also housed the South 24 Parganas Zilla Parishad office, among other departments, according to the Hindustan Times.

The zilla parishad is run by the Trinamool Congress, and the South 24 Parganas district is considered to be a bastion of the party’s National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

Chowdhury claimed that the fire started on the third floor, and questioned how it reached the seventh and eighth floors without affecting the fourth, fifth and sixth ones.

“An FIR was registered and an investigation has been initiated,” the minister was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times. “Forensic officials had come to collect samples. As the building was still hot, they faced difficulty in entering the floors that were gutted.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday questioned the West Bengal speaker’s decision to recognise expelled Trinamool Congress MLA Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly without the consent of the political party, The Hindu reported.

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

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

While hearing a petition filed by the Trinamool Congress challenging Bose’s decision, the bench observed that the person appointed as the Leader of the Opposition did not belong to any political party.

“He was expelled,” The Hindu quoted the bench as saying. “Can the speaker recognise a rebel leader as the leader of the Opposition without the consent of a political party?”

In response, the state, represented by Additional Advocate General Bilwadal Bhattacharya, sought time to file an affidavit along with all relevant records, including the order under challenge.

Advocate and TMC MP Kalyan Bandopadhyay, appearing for the petitioners, had submitted before the court that the Bose’s decision violated the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which governs the relationship between a political party and its MLAs.

The next hearing is slated for June 16.

TMC rift

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

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

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

On Thursday, the High Court granted interim protection from arrest to the TMC national general secretary in the case.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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

All state universities and higher educational institutions in Bharatiya Janata Party ruled Uttar Pradesh have been directed to set up “Dharmantaran Roktham cells” or anti-conversion cells, the Hindustan Times reported on Friday.

A letter from Governor Anandiben Patel’s secretariat dated May 28 instructed vice chancellors, directors of all state universities and institutes, and higher educational institutions, including medical institutes, to strengthen counselling services, monitoring systems, student welfare mechanisms, reporting protocols and establish safeguards, the newspaper reported.

The directions came after allegations that students are being influenced through inducement, psychological pressure or other unethical means into religious conversion, the letter added.

The governor’s directive follows a series of investigations linked to Lucknow’s King George Medical University in the last two years in connection with claims of a “love jihad” network being run from its campus.

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

While the BJP has supported the directive, calling it necessary to protect students from coercion, the Opposition Samajwadi Party has accused the government of trying to polarise society.

“If the governor is so concerned, she should first start forming an anti-BJP cell as charity begins at home,” Samajwadi Party spokesperson Abbas Haider was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times. “Both the BJP and RSS are creating communal divisions.”

Haider urged the government to improve medical education infrastructure in the state instead.

Uttar Pradesh has one of the strictest anti-conversion laws in the country. In July 2024, the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly passed the 2024 Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Amendment Bill. An update to the 2021 anti-conversion law, the new Act allows anyone to file a complaint, makes punishments for offences more stringent and imposes stricter conditions for securing bail.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Every economy needs optimism. Investors respond to confidence, consumers spend when they feel secure and markets dislike panic. But optimism becomes counterproductive when it begins to substitute for introspection.

Contemporary public discourse on the Indian economy is increasingly characterised by a reassuring narrative: oil prices remain manageable, foreign exchange reserves comfortably finance imports, automobile sales indicate resilient consumption, agricultural output is stable despite climatic uncertainties, and India continues to be among the fastest-growing major economies in the world.

The depreciation of the rupee, we are told, is largely a consequence of global capital flows and a strengthening US dollar rather than domestic weakness.

None of these observations is inherently incorrect. India has indeed demonstrated remarkable macroeconomic resilience in the face of repeated global shocks. Foreign exchange reserves remain among the largest in the world, private consumption contributes more than half of GDP and growth continues to outpace most major economies.

Yet resilience is a description of an economy’s ability to absorb shocks. It is not, by itself, a development strategy. The more fundamental question is whether India possesses a coherent economic philosophy that can translate resilience into broad-based prosperity.

That question becomes particularly relevant when policymakers repeatedly describe India as a demand-driven economy. If household consumption accounts for nearly 56%-57% of GDP, then strengthening domestic demand should be the organising principle of economic policy. Demand-driven growth cannot be sustained merely through aggregate GDP expansion – it requires rising household incomes, productive employment, growing entrepreneurship and a confident middle class willing to consume and invest.

Instead, the current policy architecture appears caught between two competing impulses. On one side lies an expansive welfare state that reaches more than 81 crore beneficiaries through programmes such as PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, providing an essential social safety net by providing 5 kg of free food grain to beneficiaries in vulnerable households. On the other lies an industrial strategy centred on production-linked incentives and the creation of globally competitive national champions expected to drive investment and exports.

Both approaches are defensible and, indeed, necessary in a developing economy. Yet neither directly addresses the central challenge of a demand-driven growth model: expanding the productive employment, disposable incomes and purchasing power of ordinary households.

A resilient consumer economy cannot be built indefinitely on welfare transfers at one end and corporate incentives at the other. It requires a confident and expanding middle class capable of sustaining demand through rising real incomes. The “missing middle” in India’s policy imagination is not the poor or large corporations, but the ordinary household whose consumption ultimately determines the trajectory of a demand-driven economy.

Redistribution is a legitimate function of the state, particularly in a country where poverty and vulnerability remain significant. Yet welfare cannot become a substitute for productive employment. Equally, industrial policy cannot be reduced to identifying a few corporate winners.

Economist Dani Rodrik has consistently argued that successful industrial policy creates productive capabilities across an economy rather than merely subsidizing selected firms. South Korea did not become prosperous simply because it created Samsung – it simultaneously invested in education, technical skills, supplier ecosystems and institutions that allowed thousands of firms to participate in growth.

India’s growth story reveals an uncomfortable paradox. It is the world’s fifth-largest economy and among the fastest growing, yet its nominal per capita income remains close to US$3,000, placing it far below many middle-income economies.

Aggregate GDP and individual prosperity are not interchangeable concepts. A demand-driven economy ultimately depends on millions of households possessing the confidence and capacity to participate in markets as consumers, entrepreneurs and investors. Rising inequality and stagnant purchasing power weaken precisely the foundation on which such an economy rests.

More than infrastructure

This brings us to an issue that receives far less attention than growth rates or exchange rates: the legitimacy of markets.

Economist Kaushik Basu has argued that markets function efficiently only when citizens perceive them to be legitimate. Legitimacy is not created by legislation alone. It emerges when people believe that opportunities are broadly accessible, contracts are fairly enforced, taxation is predictable and economic success results from innovation rather than proximity to power.

Nobel laureate Douglass North similarly demonstrated that institutions reduce uncertainty and thereby encourage investment, entrepreneurship and long-run growth.

Development, therefore, cannot be measured solely by kilometers of highways or numbers of airports. Infrastructure is indispensable, but markets also require trustworthy institutions, regulatory stability, judicial efficiency and social cohesion.

Governments perform two distinct functions in a market economy: they are market-makers, creating the physical and regulatory architecture for exchange, and they are market-legitimisers, ensuring that citizens continue to believe that participation in markets is worthwhile and fair.

This distinction matters because market confidence ultimately shapes investment decisions. Policymakers frequently explain weak net foreign investment, rupee depreciation or capital outflows by pointing to global interest rates, oil prices or temporary shifts in investor sentiment, including the current enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence in the United States. These factors undoubtedly influence capital movements. But they do not tell the entire story.

American economist Albert Hirschman’s classic framework of “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” offers a richer perspective. When confidence in institutions weakens, economic actors have three choices. They may remain loyal despite dissatisfaction. They may exercise their voice and demand reform. Or they may quietly choose to exit by relocating capital, businesses or talent elsewhere.

Weak net foreign direct investment, increasing outward investment by Indian firms and the growing migration of highly skilled professionals should therefore not be viewed merely as isolated statistics; they are signals about institutional confidence. It has been argued that such exits are a natural consequence of India’s emergence as a “mature economy”, where early investors monetise their gains and redeploy capital elsewhere.

While this may explain part of the story, maturity alone cannot become a convenient explanation for persistent investor exits. A genuinely mature economy is characterised not merely by capital mobility, but by strong institutions, predictable regulation and the simultaneous ability to attract new long-term investment. The more relevant question, therefore, is not why capital leaves, but whether enough confidence exists for fresh capital to replace it.

The same logic applies to the rupee. Exchange rates are not simply numbers. They aggregate millions of decentralised judgments about an economy’s future. They reflect expectations about productivity, institutional quality, policy credibility and long-term growth prospects. Dismissing currency movements entirely as externally driven risks overlooking the domestic factors that shape investor confidence.

Economic philosophy

Perhaps the greatest concern today is not any individual policy but the absence of a clearly articulated economic philosophy. Every adverse development is attributed to geopolitics, oil prices or global uncertainty, while every favorable indicator is presented as evidence that the existing model requires no fundamental reassessment. Such narratives may reassure markets temporarily, but they risk postponing deeper conversations about the institutional foundations of prosperity.

John Maynard Keynes reminded us that sustained growth ultimately depends on aggregate demand. Douglas North showed that institutions reduce uncertainty. Kaushik Basu emphasized that markets require legitimacy to function effectively. Dani Rodrik argued that governments must build productive capabilities across society rather than simply identify champions. Hirschman taught us that exit is often the silent verdict on institutional performance.

Taken together, these insights point towards a simple but powerful proposition. India’s long-term success will depend not merely on maintaining respectable growth rates or accumulating foreign exchange reserves, but on building institutions that inspire confidence, generate productive employment, broaden entrepreneurial opportunity and strengthen the purchasing power of ordinary households.

India possesses extraordinary strengths: a young population, entrepreneurial energy, technological capability and one of the world’s largest domestic markets. These advantages provide an enviable foundation for sustained prosperity. But they cannot be realised through optimism alone. They require a government willing to combine macroeconomic stability with institutional credibility, social trust and policy consistency.

The debate India needs is therefore larger than whether oil prices remain benign or whether the rupee is temporarily undervalued. It is whether the country is creating the institutional conditions necessary for a genuinely demand-driven economy.

Resilience enables nations to survive shocks. Institutional legitimacy enables them to prosper. India does not suffer from a shortage of optimism. It suffers from a shortage of institutional imagination, and that is a conversation that deserves far greater attention than the reassuring language of macroeconomic resilience.

Freddy Thomas teaches law and economics at Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru.

A guest teacher at a government school in Haryana’s Rohtak was suspended two days after she participated in the June 6 protest organised by the Cockroach Janta Party at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, The Hindu reported on Thursday.

Sulekha Dalal, a teacher at the Government Middle School in Rainkpura, was “placed under suspension with effect from June 8” by the district elementary education officer in a June 10 order.

The document mentioned no reason for the action. However, the District Elementary Education Officer Bijender Hooda told The Hindu that Dalal had “violated the conduct rules for government employees by leaving her station and taking part in the protest without prior approval”.

The protests by the CJP had come in the wake of the cancellation of the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical college admissions following allegations of a paper leak.

Students and job seekers have also alleged irregularities in the Class 12 exam conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Staff Selection Commission test for government posts.

The action against Dala came after a video was widely shared online showing her addressing protesters.

In the clip, she could be heard describing the protest as a “do or die” fight and said she was participating as a mother supporting children, The Indian Express reported.

“Now the mother of the cockroach has stepped into the field,” she reportedly said. “We are with our children. One mother is the mother of the entire nation.”

Dalal later said her family had “no political background for generations”, The Hindu reported.

According to the order by the district elementary education officer, she will receive a subsistence allowance during the suspension period, The Tribune reported. Her headquarters during this time will be the office of the block education officer in Rohtak.

Dalal told The Hindu that her 21-year-old son did not make it to the final list for the Delhi Head Constable recruitment despite working hard, and she alleged that the examination paper had been leaked.

She said that while the undergraduate medical entrance examination received media attention, there had been little discussion about the Head Constable exam.

The Cockroach Janta Party describes itself as a “political front of the youth, by the youth, for the youth”.

It was launched on May 16 in response to reports of remarks by Chief Justice Surya Kant on the previous day comparing some unemployed youngsters to “cockroaches”. Since then, the campaign has garnered more than 22 million followers on Instagram.

The chief justice claimed on May 16 that he had been misquoted by sections of the media and that it was baseless to say that he criticised young people in general. Kant claimed he had specifically criticised “those who have entered professions like the Bar [legal profession] with the aid of fake and bogus degrees”.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• ‘They have sold themselves’: At ‘cockroach’ gathering in Delhi, protestors rage against the system

• Does Abhijeet Dipke’s popularity signal a new age of Dalit leaders

United States President Donald Trump said that American forces will strike Tehran “very hard tonight”. He also threatened that his country’s military would seize key Iranian oil export terminal of Kharg Island as well as Tehran’s oil and gas infrastructure and markets.

The island is an eight-km stretch of land off the Iranian coast that handles about 90% of the country’s crude exports. Trump’s statements escalates tensions in West Asia and threaten a fragile ceasefire that took effect on April 8.

Trump claimed on social media the action would be “​much like we ​have ⁠with Venezuela”. However, shortly after his post, he said that he was not certain that “America has the stomach” for a larger conflict despite it being his “preference”. Read on.

New Delhi has registered a “strong protest” to the United States’ chargé d’affaires after three Indian seafarers were killed when the US military struck a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman. Randhir Jaiswal, the external affairs ministry spokesperson, added that the American diplomat was also informed of “our deepest concerns on the ongoing incidents of attacks” amid the war in West Asia.

The Indians who were killed on the Palau-flagged M/T Settebello were identified as chief engineer Patnala Suresh, deck cadet Aditya Sharma and engine fitter Shivanand Chaurasiya. “These attacks came from the US Navy stationed there,” Jaiswal said. Read on.

Twenty Indian seafarers were on board another ship involved in a “maritime security incident” off the coast of Oman, said the Union government. The crew members are safe and were being evacuated.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen tanker MT Jalveer. It was unclear what had caused the fire on the ship off the port of Shinas in northern Oman.

The Indian diplomatic mission said that it was monitoring the situation and coordinating with the local authorities. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court granted interim protection from arrest for three weeks to Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee. However, he was directed to appear before the Crime Investigation Department by 6 pm in the case, which pertains to allegedly forged signatures in a letter submitted to support the appointment of Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.

Abhishek Banerjee had earlier skipped summons issued by the department. Subsequently, the CID searched the Kolkata home of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday. Abhishek Banerjee is Mamata Banerjee’s nephew. Read on.

Meanwhile, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee said that he will not appear as a lawyer for party leader Abhishek Banerjee in cases before the court because of his “arrogant attitude”. He told reporters that party chief Mamata Banerjee should choose between him and Abhishek Banerjee.

Kalyan Banerjee claimed that he was not consulted before a separate writ petition was filed in a case relating to searches conducted at Mamata Banerjee’s home.

He further said that he was senior to Abhishek Banerjee in politics and that he cannot be disrespected or humiliated. “[Abhishek Banerjee] also needs to understand that the party is facing this crisis because of him,” said Kalyan Banerjee. Read on.

Why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards, explains Anant Gupta

Two members of the Kuki community were killed and several homes were burned down when the Kultuh Kuki village in Manipur’s Kamjong district was attacked by militants. The attack came hours after arson was reported in Senapati district and other places.

In the Liangmai Taphou village of Senapati district, the state headquarters of the Naga People’s Front was vandalised. Earlier in the day, unidentified miscreants ransacked the premises. The NPF is the ruling party in neighbouring Nagaland. Read on.

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When the Supreme Court in March reiterated that the exclusion of Dalit converts from Scheduled Caste status is “absolute and admits no exception”, it does more than settle a doctrinal question.

It revives a foundational constitutional dilemma: can the law deny protection against caste-based discrimination simply because an individual has changed religion? More critically, does caste itself disappear upon conversion, or does the law merely choose not to see it? This tension between constitutional text and social reality lies at the heart of the debate on SC status for converts to Islam and Christianity.

The legal position rests on Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950. Originally limited to Hindus, and later extended to Sikhs and Buddhists, the Order continues to exclude Muslims and Christians. The Supreme Court has consistently read this provision strictly: SC status is a matter of legal recognition, not lived identity.

A Dalit who converts to Christianity or Islam immediately loses access to reservations, scholarships, and protections under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The Court has clarified that this bar is categorical – possessing an SC certificate is irrelevant if the individual no longer professes a qualifying religion.

This formal clarity sits uneasily with empirical reality. NCRB data shows that tens of thousands of atrocities against Scheduled Castes are registered each year, with pendency rates exceeding 85 percent. Caste-based violence remains a structural feature of Indian society.

Sociological studies further demonstrate that caste does not vanish upon conversion. Millions of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims continue to face social segregation, occupational immobility, and endogamy mirroring caste hierarchies within Hindu society. Yet they remain largely invisible in state policy. The result is a paradox: the law recognises caste within certain religions but denies its existence when it crosses religious boundaries.

Persistent discrimination

The constitutional validity of Clause 3 has been pending before the Supreme Court since 2004. Meanwhile, multiple institutional exercises have pointed toward the need for reconsideration. The Ranganath Mishra Commission recommended making SC status religion-neutral, finding no empirical basis for exclusion. The Sachar Committee and subsequent studies reinforced this conclusion, documenting persistent discrimination among converts.

In 2022, the Union government constituted a Commission of Inquiry under former Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan to examine whether SC status should be extended to Dalit converts. However, the Commission has not submitted its report. Its deadline has been extended to April 2026, prolonging uncertainty for millions.

What is striking is not just policy delay but judicial silence. The Supreme Court’s reaffirmation of the “absolute bar” does not engage with the pending constitutional challenge, the Balakrishnan Commission, or the Mishra Commission’s findings. Nor does it revisit Soosai vs Union of India (1985), where the Court acknowledged that resolving this issue requires contemporary socio-economic evidence.

Instead, in C Selvarani (2024), the Court characterised claims to SC status after conversion as a “fraud on the Constitution.” Together, these developments suggest not just doctrinal continuity but a narrowing of legal space at a time when evidence points toward reconsideration.

The constitutional difficulty is clear. Articles 14, 15, and 16 permit affirmative action to remedy historical disadvantage. But if caste-based disadvantage persists irrespective of religion, excluding Dalit converts risks making the classification under-inclusive.

The question is not whether affirmative action can differentiate, but whether it can do so while ignoring social reality. A religion-based exclusion begins to resemble constitutional evasion rather than reasonable classification.

There is also a quieter constitutional cost. Article 25 guarantees the freedom to profess, practise, and propagate religion. Yet when conversion leads to the loss of legal protections and socio-economic safeguards, that freedom becomes conditional.

Law penalises conversion

The law does not prohibit conversion, but it penalises it. The price of changing religion is the forfeiture of constitutional benefits, even if the underlying disadvantage remains unchanged.

The Supreme Court’s position has been consistent, if cautious. In Soosai vs Union of India (1985), it upheld the exclusion of Christian converts due to insufficient evidence of continued backwardness. In S Anbalagan vs B Devarajan (1984), it acknowledged that caste may persist after conversion but stopped short of extending benefits. In CM Arumugam vs S Rajgopal (1976), it recognised that caste identity can revive upon reconversion, implicitly admitting that caste is not erased by religious change.

In State of Kerala vs Chandramohanan (2004), it reaffirmed that SC status is governed strictly by the Presidential Order under Article 341. Even in KP Manu vs Chairman, Scrutiny Committee (2015), while allowing restoration of caste status after reconversion, the Court maintained the rigid framework linking SC recognition to specified religions.

These decisions reveal a consistent judicial pattern: acknowledgment that caste may endure beyond religion, combined with reluctance to extend constitutional protection accordingly. The recent reaffirmation of the “absolute bar” reflects fidelity to statutory text but also institutional hesitation to engage with evolving social evidence.

The consequences are tangible. Dalit converts are excluded from protections under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. In EV Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra Pradesh (2005), the Court emphasised the rigidity of SC classification under Article 341.

In Chandramohanan (2004), it reiterated that statutory protections cannot extend beyond those recognised under the 1950 Order. This creates a legal paradox: caste-based violence may persist, but victims are denied protection because the law no longer recognises their caste identity.

International human rights law offers a different approach. Instruments such as the ICCPR and CERD emphasise equality and prohibit discrimination based on descent, interpreted to include caste. These frameworks prioritise lived disadvantage rather than formal religious identity.

In the United States, affirmative action is anchored in race and historical disadvantage, not religion. South Africa’s jurisprudence similarly prioritises substantive equality. India’s religion-linked approach to caste recognition thus stands out as an exception.

The persistence of caste across religions presents a challenge that the current legal framework struggles to address. Delinking SC status from religion, as recommended by the Mishra Commission, would be one path forward. Alternatively, a parallel framework for Dalit converts could be devised. What is clear is that the status quo is increasingly difficult to justify – constitutionally, empirically, and morally.

The Supreme Court may be correct in its interpretation of the law as it stands. But the law itself appears increasingly misaligned with the realities it governs. An “absolute bar” offers doctrinal clarity, but at the cost of substantive justice.

If caste does not disappear upon conversion, the Constitution cannot afford to pretend that it does. The real question, then, is not whether the Court has interpreted the law correctly, but whether the law, in its present form, remains defensible.

Shashank Shekhar is Assistant Professor of Law at Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

Divya Sridhar is Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The Supreme Court on Thursday quantified the value of domestic labour by homemakers at Rs 30,000 per month while hearing a man’s appeal demanding additional compensation for the death of his wife in a 2001 motor accident in Haryana, Live Law reported.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had awarded a compensation of Rs 8 lakh to the family in 2024, Bar and Bench reported.

On Thursday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Sanjoy Karol and NK Singh said it had arrived at the value of Rs 30,000 by quantifying the minimum “loss of domestic care” in the absence of a homemaker.

“This determination shall be revised by 10%, cumulatively, every three years,” the court added.

The bench noted that caregiving work, mostly by women in the country, is estimated to contribute to about 15% to 17% of the gross domestic product.

“We are also of the view that the housewife contributes to the growth of the human being and the nation,” the court said. “The homemaker builds the nation.”

The court expressed hope that the word “homemaker” would “acquire the acronym of nation builder”, Live Law quoted Karol as saying.

“It is ironic to describe a homemaker as dependent on earning members, when, in reality, the household’s functioning depends substantially on the homemaker,” the bench said.

The bench further clarified that the amount is to be taken into account in cases “where the homemaker does not have an input into the house, in strictly conventional, monetary terms”.

However, it said that in cases where the homemaker is part of the workforce, “the component of loss of domestic care shall be in addition to the monthly income as may be proved before the tribunal/courts”.

Karol added that the “loss of domestic care” in the present case would be in addition to damages recognised by the Supreme Court in a 2017 judgement about compensation in motor accident claims.

In the Pranay Sethi judgement, a Constitution bench of the court had issued guidelines for calculating future income of those killed in motor accidents based on the age and occupation of the deceased.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Three Indian seafarers were killed after the United States forces struck a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman, amid the war in West Asia, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said on Thursday.

This came a day after New Delhi summoned a senior American diplomat to register its protest against the strike in the Gulf of Oman, ANI reported.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India General Secretary Manoj Yadav identified the three dead as chief engineer Patnala Suresh, deck cadet Aditya Sharma and engine fitter Shivanand Chaurasiya, The Hindu reported.

The three are from Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Yadav told ANI.

Two casualties including cadet, fitter and ch engineer are reported missing...@FSUIINDIA @IMOHQ @ITFglobalunion pic.twitter.com/z8qZPYRWx1

— FSUI (@FSUIINDIA) June 10, 2026

On Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs said that three Indian crew members were missing and 21 others had been rescued from the Palau-flagged tanker Settebello.

The ministry summoned Jason Meeks, the US Chargé d’Affaires in New Delhi, over the attack.

On Thursday, Randhir Jaiswal, the external affairs ministry spokesperson, said that New Delhi had informed the US diplomat of “our deepest concerns on the ongoing incidents of attacks” and had “registered a strong protest” in the matter.

“These attacks came from the US Navy stationed there,” Jaiswal said.

New Delhi said that three ships that had been involved in the incidents between Monday and Thursday are foreign-flagged. Two of the ships are sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and one is “also in the category of non-compliant ships”, Jaiswal added.

On Tuesday, the US Central Command said that it had struck Settebello, claiming that it had violated the American blockade restricting maritime traffic linked to Iran. The ship was allegedly attempting to transport oil from Iran.

“A US aircraft fired precision munitions into the ship’s engine room after the crew repeatedly failed to comply with directions from American forces,” the military agency said.

The strike came after another tanker, Marivex, carrying 24 Indian seafarers, was also targeted by the US forces on Monday for allegedly violating the blockade. All crew members on board the Marivex were rescued.

On Wednesday, the external affairs ministry condemned the attack on Settebello and reiterated its call for “immediate de-escalation of tensions and the conclusion of ongoing negotiations for a diplomatic solution so that peace and stability can return to the region”.

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

India raises attacks on commercial ships at UNSC

India on Wednesday told the United Nations Security Council as well that several of its nationals had been killed or are missing in attacks linked to the West Asia conflict, The Hindu reported.

Speaking at a UNSC meeting, India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Harish Parvathaneni, said that New Delhi is firmly opposed to attacks on merchant shipping.

“Our trade and energy supply chains are dependent on stability in the region and any major disruption has serious consequences for the Indian economy,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

“The mounting destruction and deaths and cessation of normal life and economic activities have deeply impacted India, a proximate neighbour with critical stakes in the security and stability of the region,” he said.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.