The tariff dispute between India and the United States, and outrage based on specific incidents such as an accident by a Sikh truck driver that left three dead in Florida, coincided with a spike in racist social media posts against Indians, according to a study by Washington-based think tank Center for the Study of Organized Hate.

The study, released on Tuesday, analysed 5,124 posts targeting Indians on the social media platform X between July 1 and September 7. Of these, 680 high-engagement racist posts had 281 million views. One hundred and twenty-one of these posts had used anti-Indian slurs and drawn 74 million views.

Narratives framing Indians as “invaders” and “job thieves”, alongside calls to deport Indians, accounted for 474 posts and 111 million views during the period in which the study was conducted.

This makes immigration and deportation-themed rhetoric the primary driver of engagement, according to the study.

The increase in online hate during this period indicates that news and policy tensions act as “predictable accelerants of racist content”, the study found.

The diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Washington have been strained in recent months.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he mediated the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad in May, and imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs and punitive levies on India for purchasing Russian oil amid the Ukraine war.

New Delhi has rejected the claims, maintaining that the ceasefire was reached bilaterally. It has also said that Trump’s punitive levies “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest” were “extremely unfortunate”.

The study observed that, considering political compulsions and “the leanings of their respective domestic support base”, neither Trump nor Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “appeared inclined to back down from their positions”.

The consequent bilateral tensions “led to a ramping up of nationalistic rhetoric on both legacy media and social media in India, while also providing fuel for anti-Indian sentiment on social media in the US”.

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate noted that online hate had serious consequences for minorities. The narratives were emboldening far-right groups, “exponentially increasing the threat of violence” and leading to physical harm against minorities.

Amplification of racism against Indians on social media had manifested itself in attacks against the community in Ireland, said the think tank. There was a series of attacks on Indians in the country in July and August.

Specific incidents are also exploited by bad-faith actors to amplify racism against communities, the study said, citing the death of three persons in Florida on August 12 after a Sikh trucker made an allegedly illegal U-turn on a road.

The event triggered a spike in the harassment and online abuse of the Sikh and the Indian communities in the US, the study found.

“The allegation that [the driver] had entered the US illegally likely bolstered the already strong currents of anti-migrant and anti-Indian discourse on social media,” it added.

The 680 posts on X that got 281 million views mainly revolved around themes such as deportations, “invasion” and “job theft”. The other themes were slurs, mockery and casual abuse, incident-driven narratives of hate and racism, as well as “general anti-India hate”.

Online hate was also destroying civil discourse among communities, the centre noted.

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate said that the increase in anti-Indian racism on X since January could be viewed in the context of global backlash against migrants and domestic trends.

Anti-Indian hate could also be situated within the broader landscape of anti-South Asian and anti-Asian racism in the United States. “Although it targets a range of Indian and South Asian groups, it makes no distinction between Indians and other South Asians, between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other Indian communities, or between Indian citizens and non-citizens,” the study found.

Indians were being targeted online and offline not only for being Indians but also Muslims, Sikhs, migrants, or more broadly, as people of colour, the study added.

Anger in some American groups against the H-1B visa programme is another source of anti-Indian racism in the US.

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

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

In early January, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate had said that racism and xenophobia against Indians had surged on X after Sriram Krishnan, a technology expert of Indian origin was named Trump’s advisor on artificial intelligence. Trump was the US president-elect at the time.

The study in January also said the posts that were analysed violated X’s content policies on hateful conduct. Despite this, the social media platform had not adequately acted against such posts, it noted.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India on Thursday cleared the Adani Group in connection with an allegation raised by United States-based Hindenburg Research that the conglomerate routed funds through three entities to hide related-party transactions.

In two separate orders, the markets regulator said that allegations against the industrialist Gautam Adani-owned conglomerate could not be established. It said that “there was no question” of devolvement of any liability on the Adani Group, adding that no penalty had been imposed.

The orders cleared Gautam Adani, his brother Rajesh Adani and key Adani Group firms – Adani Ports and SEZ, Adani Power and Adicorp Enterprises, The Indian Express reported.

The investigation pertained to allegations that Adicorp Enterprises, Milestone Tradelinks and Rehvar Infrastructure were used as a conduit to route funds from several Adani Group companies to fund Adani Power and Adani Enterprises.

In its order, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said that the transactions did not qualify as related-party dealings, the definition of which was expanded only after a 2021 amendment.

Loans were repaid with interest, no funds were siphoned off, and hence there was no fraud or unfair trade practice, it added.

The Adani Group had been facing an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India since Hindenburg Research alleged in January 2023 that the conglomerate was pulling off the “largest con in corporate history”.

In a report, the short-seller claimed that the Adani Group was involved in stock manipulation, accounting fraud and money laundering.

The Adani Group has rejected the allegations and denied any wrongdoing. But the report had triggered a rout in stocks of the conglomerate’s seven listed companies, which collectively lost more than $100 billion in market valuation.

The Supreme Court had ordered the Securities and Exchange Board of India to inquire into the matter in March 2023.

In January, Nate Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg Research, said that he was disbanding the firm, citing no specific reason for the move.

Adani hails SEBI order

Following the publication of the orders, Gautam Adani said that the Securities and Exchange Board of India has reaffirmed what the conglomerate had always maintained, “that the Hindenburg claims were baseless”.

The industrialist said transparency and integrity had always defined the Adani Group.

“We deeply feel the pain of the investors who lost money because of this fraudulent and motivated report,” he said on social media. “Those who spread false narratives owe the nation an apology. Our commitment to India’s institutions, to India's people and to nation building remains unwavering.”

After an exhaustive investigation, SEBI has reaffirmed what we have always maintained, that the Hindenburg claims were baseless. Transparency and integrity have always defined the Adani Group.

We deeply feel the pain of the investors who lost money because of this fraudulent… pic.twitter.com/8YKeEYmmp5

— Gautam Adani (@gautam_adani) September 18, 2025

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has claimed that a centralised software programme was being used to systematically delete names from voter lists in Karnataka. He also alleged that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was protecting those committing “vote theft”.

Gandhi has alleged that the Congress’ analysis of the Aland Assembly constituency in Karnataka showed that voter IDs were deleted with the help of fake login IDs and phone numbers from outside the state. While it was unclear how many voters were removed from the electoral rolls, 6,018 applications had been filed by entities impersonating other voters, the Opposition leader claimed.

In response, the Election Commission said that the allegations made by Gandhi were “incorrect and baseless”. The commission said that “no deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by [Gandhi]”. Read more.

FIRs filed against psephologist Sanjay Kumar but claims about voter roll errors remain unaddressed

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has given Adani Group a clean chit in relation to the allegation by United States-based Hindenburg Research that the conglomerate had routed funds through three entities to hide related-party transactions. The markets regulator said that allegations against the Gautam Adani-owned conglomerate could not be established.

The Adani Group had been facing an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India since Hindenburg Research alleged in January 2023 that the conglomerate was pulling off the “largest con in corporate history”. Read on.

A Delhi court has quashed a lower court’s order restraining four journalists from publishing allegedly defamatory material about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises. The bench observed the civil judge should have heard the journalists before directing them to take down the content.

On September 6, Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had temporarily restrained journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi, and the websites paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au from publishing allegedly defamatory reports about the flagship company of the Adani Group.

The order was passed on Thursday on an appeal filed by Nair, Dasgupta, Das and Joshi. Earlier in the day, another judge of the court reserved its judgement on a plea filed by Thakurta against the gag order. Read on.

The Delhi Police has arrested nearly 30 African refugees in the past week and sent them to a detention centre in the city. Ankit Chauhan, the deputy commissioner of police in South Delhi, said that the refugees were “illegally overstaying their visas and passports” and were arrested under “routine exercise”.

However, human rights activists have alleged that the police seem to be “going after” African refugees, as has been the case with the detention of Rohingya refugees in recent months. Read on.

As India cracks down on refugees, it is betraying its long commitment to international solidarity

Several politicians in Jammu and Kashmir have claimed that they were placed under house arrest on Thursday. Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti claimed this was done to prevent them from visiting Sopore in North Kashmir to offer condolences to the family of separatist leader and former Hurriyat chairperson Abdul Gani Bhat, who died on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Kashmir’s chief cleric and Hurriyat Conference chairperson Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that he too had been put under house arrest after Bhat’s death. Mufti said the action laid bare the “harsh and undemocratic reality” in the Union Territory. Read on.

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The Delhi Police has arrested nearly 30 African refugees in the past week and sent them to a detention centre in the city.

Ankit Chauhan, the deputy commissioner of police in South Delhi, told Scroll that the refugees were “illegally overstaying their visas and passports” and were arrested under “routine exercise”.

However, human rights activists have alleged that the police seem to be “going after” African refugees, as has been the case with the detention of Rohingya refugees in recent months.

Nandita Haksar, a human rights lawyer and author, said that African refugees were being targeted “as the police went to Malviya Nagar [in South Delhi], not other places”.

The Malviya Nagar area is home to several refugee groups.

On the other hand, Chauhan alleged that the visas of the African refugees had expired and that “UNHCR cards are not accepted by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office”.

“Whatever documents they have are not accepted,” he claimed.

He was referring to the identity documents issued to asylum-seekers and refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. While it protects against refugees from being sent back to their home countries, the card does not grant holders the right to remain in the host nation.

India does not have a law covering the protection of refugees and is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Refugees. The 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Act, which came into effect from September 1, criminalises undocumented refugees and grants authorities the power to deny them entry or exit.

The police did not provide the number of refugees who had been arrested, but those in the Lampur detention centre told Scroll that about 30 African citizens had been held.

One of the refugees arrested by the police is Ahmed Gaber of Sudan. The 46-year-old was held on September 13 and sent to the Lampur detention centre in northwestern Delhi.

Gaber had come to India in 2022 with his 29-year-old wife on a medical visa for her treatment.

The visa expired in 2023, but he did not return to Sudan because of the civil war there.

In June 2024, Gaber and his wife were issued UNHCR cards. Their one-year-old daughter also has a UNHCR card. Scroll has seen the identity cards.

“I was arrested along with my wife and daughter, but my wife and daughter were released and they were asked to return to Sudan,” Gaber told Scroll.

He added: “But my wife said that she would not go alone. She told the police that she will suffer and cannot live alone as who will feed them. The police beat her up as she refused to leave the police station unless I was released. She was then forced to [leave the police station].”

Gaber expressed concern about the security of his family. It is unclear to him how long he will be held in the detention camp.

“My diabetic wife lives on the fourth floor because the rent is cheap, and she has an infant,” he said. “I do not know how she will manage to bring the basic necessities while carrying her baby, how she will handle her life, and whether the UNHCR will at least help her with food and basic necessities.”

Saleh, a 34-year-old Sudanese citizen, was arrested on September 11. He had come to India in 2010 to study and pursued a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy in Chennai.

“I have been living in Delhi since 2018 when I applied for the refugee card with the UNHCR as I could not go back home in Sudan because of the conflict,” Saleh told Scroll. “I had thought that after getting the UNHCR card, it would be safe to move around. But I find things are different.”

Saleh said that the police had been visiting Malviya Nagar since last week and trying to arrest African refugees living there.

“A team of seven policemen came to our home at midnight and took us to the Malviya Nagar police station,” Saleh said. “They did not give me time to pack up my things. From there, we were taken to RK Puram detention centre and later they sent us to [Lampur] detention centre.”

The police “did not listen to us” despite us showing them the refugee cards and documents, Saleh alleged.

“They told us that the UNHCR card is not recognised in India,” Saleh claimed. “They did not listen or cooperate with us. I told them that I am ready to face the law as I have done nothing wrong. But they did not listen.”

Abdalmalek Mohamed, a 42-year-old Sudanese citizen, who was arrested in November, told Scroll that the detention centre in Lampur had more than 300 inmates from several countries, including African refugees like him.

“Some of them are staying for more than three years…” he said.

“The barracks are full. In one barrack, there are more than 20 inmates,” he added. “It is very crowded and the food is very bad. I have been eating only dal, potato and plain rice for the last 10 months. I do not have money.”

According to data from the Global Detention Project, a Geneva-based human rights organisation, the facility in Lampur is an immigration detention centre under the custodial authority of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office, Delhi Police Special Branch. It is managed by the Delhi government’s Department of Social Welfare.

It houses asylum seekers, recognised refugees and undocumented migrants.

Mohamed, who is also lodged at the centre, told Scroll that he had applied for the refugee and humanitarian visa in Australia in March 2024.

“My application status is still pending,” he said. “My fear is that they may send me to [his] country or they may detain us indefinitely. I cannot go back because of the conflict and the diseases like dengue raging in my country.”

Mohamed had come to India in 2022. He had previously studied in Bengaluru in 2014-’15. He received the UNHCR card in January 2024.

Citing the arrests of African and Rohingya refugees, lawyer Nandita Haksar said that only Muslim refugees were being picked up by the police.

“After the Rohingyas, they are going after the African Muslim refugees,” she alleged.

Haksar added: “These are Africans who have come out of a civil war as everyone knows Sudan and Somalia are the worst affected. These are the most vulnerable because of two reasons: they are black and they are subject to racial discrimination [in India]. Secondly, they are Muslims and they are subjected to religious discrimination.”

In a video accessed by Scroll, an African refugee was seen being forced into a civilian car with a group of uniformed police personnel and men in plain clothes. The refugee was seen being manhandled and hit as he was resisting the police action.

Haksar said that “these people or non-citizens have the right to life in India and the right to protection against arbitrary action”.

“This is a violation of Article 14 and Article 21 as on stands today,” she added.

Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and Article 21 protects the fundamental right to life and personal liberty.

Haksar said while India recognises the UNHCR because the Ministry of External Affairs is on the executive committee of the United Nations body, the “[Union] home ministry says that these refugees are all illegal migrants”.

Also read: As India cracks down on refugees, it is betraying its long commitment to international solidarity

At least 14 persons were missing and 20 injured after landslides and floods triggered by heavy rainfall buried more than 30 homes under debris in Nandanagar of Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on Thursday, PTI reported.

This came two days after 23 persons were killed in cloudburst-related floods and landslides in Dehradun and the neighbouring districts of Uttarakhand.

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami told reporters on Thursday that 33 houses, several shops and cowsheds in the Kuntari Lagaphali, Kuntari Lagasarpani, Sera and Dhurma villages in Nandanagar had been destroyed by debris.

He added that more than 200 persons had been affected due to rain-related incidents.

National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force teams had reached the affected areas and rescue operations were underway, said Dhami.

Earlier in the day, Chamoli District Magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said that eight persons, including four members of a family, were missing in Kuntari village, where about half a dozen houses were swept away, PTI reported.

Tiwari said that 10 to 12 houses had been completely damaged and the number of missing persons could rise, The Indian Express reported.

Two more persons were reported missing in Dhurma village after the Moksha River damaged several buildings, PTI reported.

Those missing from the Kuntari village are Kunwar Singh, his wife Kanta Devi, sons Vikas and Vishal, Narendra Singh, Jagdamba Prasad, Bhaga Devi and Deveshwari Devi. The two persons missing from Dhurma are Guman Singh and Mamta Devi.

A Delhi court on Thursday quashed a lower court’s order restraining four journalists from publishing allegedly defamatory material about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises, Live Law reported.

On September 6, Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had temporarily restrained journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi, and the websites paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au from publishing allegedly defamatory reports about the flagship company of the Adani Group.

District Judge Ashish Aggarwal of the Rohini Courts passed the order on Thursday on an appeal filed by Nair, Dasgupta, Das and Joshi.

Earlier in the day, another judge of the court reserved its judgement on a plea filed by Thakurta against the gag order, Bar and Bench reported.

Aggarwal observed that the articles had been in the public domain for a long time and therefore, the civil judge should have heard the journalists before directing them to take down the content.

It may not be feasible to restore articles that have been removed if the court finds them not to be defamatory after hearing the journalists, Live Law quoted the judge as saying.

“Therefore in my opinion the trial court should have decided the prayers made by the plaintiff after giving hearing opportunity to the defendants,” the bench said. “The impugned order is not sustainable.”

Advocate Vrinda Grover, representing the journalists, asked why no notice was issued before the court passed the retraining order.

“Why no notice even of two days or three days?” Bar and Bench quoted Grover as having asked the bench. “The court would have had the benefit of hearing us...The company which runs one of the largest media houses in the country says it ran into these articles just now?”

The court had on September 6 passed the injunction in favour of Adani Enterprises, directing the defendants to expunge the material from their articles and social media posts. If expunging the content was not feasible, they must remove it within five days, the order had said.

However, the court had clarified that it was not issuing a blanket order restraining the defendants from “fair, verified and substantiated” reporting and from hosting, storing or circulating such articles, posts or webpage links.

The matter pertained to a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars.

Centre’s take down order

Citing the September 6 order, the Union government had on Tuesday directed 12 news outlets and independent journalists to take down allegedly defamatory content about Adani Enterprises.

Among those who got notices to remove such content were news portals Newslaundry, The Wire and HW News, journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ajit Anjum and Ravish Kumar, satirist Akash Banerjee and content creator Dhruv Rathee.

The ministry ordered 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts to be removed. These included not just investigative reports, but also satirical videos and incidental mentions of the Adani Group.

The Editors Guild of India on Wednesday said it was deeply concerned about the court’s September 6 order and the Union government’s directive to remove YouTube links and social media posts about the firm.

The guild said that such developments were a step towards censorship and undermined freedom of speech.

A day after the death of separatist leader and former Hurriyat chairperson Abdul Gani Bhat, several politicians in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday claimed that they had been placed under house arrest.

Bhat, 90, died on Wednesday evening at his residence in Botengo village in northern Kashmir’s Sopore, The Hindu reported.

On Thursday, Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti claimed that she and other Kashmiri leaders had been placed under house arrest to stop them from visiting Sopore to offer their condolences to Bhat’s family.

The action laid bare the “harsh and undemocratic reality” in the Union Territory, Mufti added.

“What unfolded at Hazratbal dargah, the eruption of spontaneous, raw public anger, was not just an isolated incident,” she said on social media. “It was a loud, unmistakable message from a people pushed to the edge.”

Mufti added that the Bharatiya Janata Party has remained “wilfully blind to this truth refusing to learn anything from the deep anguish and suppressed emotions that have been building for years now”.

The Peoples Democratic Party chief was referring to an inauguration plaque bearing the Ashoka emblem placed inside the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar that was damaged on September 5.

The Islamic shrine houses a holy relic of the Prophet Muhammad. The structure had recently undergone a renovation and was inaugurated by Darakshan Andrabi, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board and a BJP leader.

A plaque featuring the national emblem was also installed at the site, which sparked criticism. Protesters had allegedly damaged the inauguration plaque with stones and chanted slogans, saying that the emblem went against Islamic principles.

At least 25 persons were detained for questioning in connection with the vandalism at the shrine.

Mufti said on Thursday that it had become “increasingly clear” that the BJP had “no interest in peace or healing” in Kashmir. “Instead, they seem determined to keep the region in a constant state of turmoil weaponising pain and unrest for political mileage across the rest of the country,” she said.

“This cynical approach is not just irresponsible; it is dangerous and utterly reprehensible,” the former chief minister added.

People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone also claimed that he had been put under house arrest to stop him from visiting Sopore.

“I fail to understand what is the need for this,” Lone said on social media. “Professor sahib [Bhat] was a pacifist and literally long retired. A final good bye is something which we all deserved.”

On Wednesday, Kashmir’s chief cleric and Hurriyat Conference chairperson Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that he too had been put under house arrest after Bhat’s death.

“It pains me beyond words that the authorities compelled the family of Prof. Sb to conclude his janazah [Islamic funeral prayer] hurriedly,” Farooq said on social media. “I have been locked inside my home, and being denied the right to walk with him in his final journey.”

Unidentified officials told The Hindu that the administration had suggested that the Bhat family should conclude the final rites by Wednesday night.

In his post, Farooq said that his association with Bhat “spanned 35 years of friendship and guidance”.

“So many others, too, longed to pay their last respects” Farooq said. “To be deprived of even the solace of participating in his janazah and bid him a final goodbye is an unbearable cruelty.”

National Conference leader Aga Ruhullah Mehdi described Bhat as an “intellectual voice who contributed to public life and academic thought” in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Acts that obstruct the conduct of last rites according to one’s faith are condemnable and against our shared values of respect and humanity,” the Srinagar MP said on social media.

Who is Abdul Gani Bhat?

Born in Sopore in 1935, Bhat taught Persian language for 22 years before joining politics.

He co-founded the Muslim United Front in 1986 and went on to become the chairperson of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella body formed in 1993 by groups, aimed at providing a political platform for Kashmiri separatism.

The separatist leader was an advocate for dialogue on Kashmir between the Indian and Pakistani government. He was among the few separatist leaders who publicly met former Deputy Prime Minister and BJP leader LK Advani in 2004, The Hindu reported.

“The peace process should proceed step by step,” Bhat had said after the first Delhi-Srinagar dialogue. “Guns should be replaced by political talks.”

In 2017, Bhat was removed as the chief of the Muslim Conference after he met the Union government’s Special Representative Dineshwar Sharma and expressed his willingness to talk to New Delhi.

In 2024, the Union home ministry declared the Muslim Conference an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The Union government has asked schools under the Central Board of Secondary Education, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and the Navodaya Vidyalayas Samiti to screen Chalo Jeete Hain, a film inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s childhood, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

In a letter issued on September 11, the Union Ministry of Education told the three educational bodies to direct the schools to screen the film, which was released in 2018, between September 16 and October 2.

The direction had been issued a week ahead of the prime minister’s birthday on September 17.

“It [film] will help young learners to reflect on themes of character, service, and responsibility,” The Hindu quoted the letter as saying. “The film can also serve as a case study for moral reasoning, and support the goals of social-emotional learning, developing empathy, self-reflection, critical thinking, and inspiration.”

The letter said that the ministry was also implementing an experiential learning programme called “Prerana”, The Indian Express reported.

“Prerana program is being conducted from the historic Vernacular School of Vadnagar, Gujarat, established in 1888, the very institution where Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi began his educational journey,” the newspaper quoted the letter as saying.

It added that the programme involved storytelling, value-based sessions, indigenous games and audio-visual learning.

According to the communication, film screenings were used as a tool as part of the programme to “help bring abstract values, life stories, historical contexts, ethical dilemmas, and human emotions to life”.

It added that Chalo Jeete Hain was being regularly screened as part of the Prerana programme. “…the film has already left a deep impression on participants, who have internalised its message and reflected in their attitudes and actions,” The Hindu quoted the letter as saying.

Re-release of film

On Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting also announced that Chalo Jeete Hain, inspired by “a childhood incident” from Modi’s life, would be re-released in theatres across the country from September 17 to October 2.

The ministry stated that the film was a “moving cinematic tribute to Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy ‘Bas wahi jeete hain, jo doosro ke liye jeete hain’ (Only those are truly successful who live for others)”.

It added that the film “tells the story of young Naru, who, deeply influenced by Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy, seeks to understand its meaning and strives to make a difference in his small world”.

With the re-release, the “timeless message of selflessness and service will reach a new generation in an impactful manner”, it said.

Meanwhile, PVR INOX Limited has also announced that it will host week-long screenings of Chalo Jeete Hain from September 18 to 24.

Also read: How BJP governments, companies celebrated PM Modi’s 75th birthday

When it was launched in 2015, the Smart Cities Mission aimed to select 100 urban areas that would be retrofitted with infrastructure, offer residents a sustainable environment and use information technology to increase efficiency in governance.

This, the urban development ministry estimated, will cost Rs 7 lakh crore (approximately $105 billion) over the next 20 years.

The 100 cities selected for the mission ranged from New Delhi to Bhagalpur, Imphal to Salem, Satna to Ahmedabad.

The Central government initially allocated Rs 48,000 crore for the mission. This amount was to be matched by the states in which projects were to be carried out.

The mission recommended that public services such as water supply, sanitation, sewage and transport be delivered by private partners through the Public-Private-Partnerships – contractual agreements that allow private sector participation in the delivery of public services and infrastructure projects.

India’s urban development model since the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s has involved a push to involve private companies in delivering public services and then making citizens pay user charges. As part of this strategy, Public-Private Partnerships have been favoured as a vehicle to provide opportunities for the private sector and boost the flow of funds to implement these projects.

Many opportunities

There are hundreds of project opportunities listed on the government’s India Investment Grid website that are proposed to be implemented in this mode under the Smart Cities Mission.

Over five years starting from the 2015-’16 financial year, about Rs 96,000 crore were made available by both the central and state governments for projects proposed by cities under the Smart Cities Mission.

The municipal corporations of the selected cities play a central role in bridging the costs that are in excess of the contributions of the Central and state governments. Among the avenues by which they are expected to raise funds for projects is by increasing taxes on property, entertainment, advertisements and entry to the city.

In addition, the 14th Central Finance Commission recommended raising funds by imposing a tax on vacant land and public transport and increasing user charges for water, electricity, telecom, gas, parking fees and on changes in land and building use.

The other sources for generating funds that have been suggested are municipal bonds, green bonds, energy conservation bonds and pooled finance mechanisms from financial institutions and bilateral and multilateral agencies.

When investors buy bonds, they are lending money to the issuer, which could be a government, municipality or a corporation. A pooled finance mechanism combines finances from several sources to fund projects, such as for municipalities that may lack the capacity to secure funding individually. This might reduce costs and help access to capital for infrastructure and development projects.

VIDEO | Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) and Meghalaya CM Conrad Sangma (@SangmaConrad) inaugurated the Polo Shopping Complex, Shillong's first modern commercial mall built under the Smart Cities Mission, on Thursday.

(Full video available on PTI Videos -… pic.twitter.com/JkcR44nmcS

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 10, 2025

Around the world, cities have used digital technologies to improve citizens’ access to public services Helsinki, Singapore and Amsterdam are among the cities that deliver services using use digitalisation and Internet of Things technology – a network of devices with sensors that exchange information with other systems in order to improve data-based decision making in real time.

The major advocates for smart city projects have been the transnational corporations and international financial institutions.

Among the corporations that have been developing and implementing tech solutions to improve service delivery in urban areas are CISCO, IBM, General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba.

Keenly supporting such “smart solutions” for cities around the world are international financial institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation.

India’s Smart Cities Mission has received support from the World Bank along with the International Finance Corporation. The International Finance Corporation is the World Bank Group’s private-sector arm and aims to advance economic development by investing in for-profit and commercial projects.

It is a strong proponent of involving the private sector in financing and developing new models for public service delivery and investing in infrastructure for climate smart cities.

The Asian Development Bank, meanwhile, has been leveraging funds for its urban programmes under the Urban Financing Partnership Facility and Water Financing Partnership Facility.

Its Cities Development Initiative for Asia supports cities in building their capacities and enhancing their readiness for faster project preparation and implementation.

Its Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund supports cities in building their capacities for incorporating climate change resilience principles in their planning and operation

The Asian Development Bank has provided financial and technical assistance to smart cities such as Bengaluru, Aizawl, Agartala and Tripura. It has also initiated a programme called Strengthening Climate Change Resilience in Urban India, which intersects with the Smart Cities Mission.

Bilateral agencies backed by the governments of countries such as the US, the UK, Germany, Singapore and France have signed MoUs with Indian municipalities along with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. Among the cities that have reached agreements with bilateral agencies to develop, implement and finance smart city projects are Bhubaneshwar, Kochi, Coimbatore and Ajmer.

🇮🇳 India’s Smart Cities Mission (launched in 2015) set out to transform 100 cities with modern infrastructure & tech-driven solutions.

🔹 100 cities selected through a challenge process
🔹 94% projects completed as of 2025, though only a few cities fully done
🔹 Aim: make Indian… pic.twitter.com/NWo2v4tiT5

— Rafeeq Ahamad 🇮🇳 (@Rafeeqsmission) September 7, 2025

However, India’s experience over the past two decades with private operators implementing projects and delivering public services have not lived up to the high expectations.

A World Bank study of five Private-Public Partnerships in the water-supply sector warned that “investments alone will not be effective in the context of complex and fragmented institutions with little accountability; lack of capacity to run utilities efficiently and meet performance standards; weak commercial orientation; interference in utility operations by external entities; and the absence of a regulatory framework focused on customer service and financial sustainability”.

A report by the European Network on Debt and Development, meanwhile, concluded that the Private-Public Partnership model has “failed on many different levels”, leaving impacts that are both fiscal and human.

“The high fiscal cost of PPPs is due to the high cost of capital; the expectation of profit from the private partner; the high transaction costs associated with the negotiation of complex PPP contracts; and the high likelihood of renegotiation,” it said. “These higher costs are rarely justified by proven efficiency gains in delivering public services. Of serious concern, particularly in the context of a growing debt crisis and a forecast of a global recession, is that they can create a ‘hidden debt’ for the government, which adds to their overall indebtedness.”

It went on to say that the human cost of Private-Public Partnership is especially visible in public services delivery. This is “due to the fact that private companies, unlike the state, are accountable to their shareholders, and not to citizens,” the report said. “Access to services like health, education and water is increasingly dependent on citizens’ capacity to pay, which transforms rightsholders into consumers”.

However, despite the debatable experience, Public-Private Partnerships continue to be favoured as a model to implement public service projects.

Gaurav Dwivedi is associated with the Centre for Financial Accountability and works on privatisation, public private partnerships, and reforms in public services, especially water and sanitation.

This article is the third in a series on ten years of the Smart Cities Mission, co-curated by the Centre for Financial Accountability and Scroll. Read all the pieces here.

On May 15, the Supreme Court allowed the Uttar Pradesh government to acquire five acres of land around Vrindavan’s Banke Bihari temple for “corridor development”. The court said this project was necessary to compensate for the “lack of infrastructure” that had resulted in two deaths at the shrine during a stampede in 2022.

It was yet another example of an infrastructure project designed for Hindu pilgrims that offers a blend of traditional spirituality and modernity.

Like the Kashi-Vishwanath corridor in Varanasi on which it is modelled, the Banke Bihari corridor has elicited protests from some Vrindavan residents. They say that it ignores the needs of Vrindavan’s residents.

The Banke Bihari corridor project, proposed in 2017 during Adityanath’s first term as Uttar Pradesh chief minister, reflects a push by the state to create a religio-industrial complex shaped by caste Hindu modernity and aesthetics, erasing and re-writing histories and memories of ancient cities.

The project is situated within the Krishna Circuit that connects Mathura, Vrindavan, Govardhan, and Barsana – sites associated with the Hindu god of compassion.

It is part of the Central government’s Rs 3,295.76-crore PRASHAD scheme or Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive, to “integrate pilgrimage destinations in a prioritised, planned and sustainable manner to provide a complete religious tourism experience”.

The Banke Bihari Corridor will not be just a corridor; it will be a spiritual lifeline. This corridor will serve as a gateway where ancient devotion intersects modern care. #TransformingUP pic.twitter.com/2r0s8xe1U8

— Transforming UP (@transforming_up) June 23, 2025

To serve this new genre of state-led religious tourism, the institutions of urban planning and development are being harnessed.

New government entities are being formed, such as the Uttar Pradesh Braj Vikas Teerth Parishad. The organisation will prepare “a plan for preserving, developing and maintaining the aesthetic quality” of the heritage of the Braj region in which these sites associated with Krishna are located.

They are assisted at the central, state and city level by a host of existing governmental bodies.

Involved with the Krishna Circuit, for instance, are a slew of governmental entities ranging from the Public Works Department, the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority, the Smart Cities Mission and the departments of tourism, culture, revenue, forest, irrigation.

This demonstrates how policies and offices intended for urban development have been co-opted by state-run religious tourism projects.

The promises made by the Banke Bihari Corridor project are far-reaching. The plan proposes to widen Vrindavan’s historic “kunj galiyan” – the narrow lanes around the Banke Bihari Temple that the faithful believe were once walked by Krishna.

It plans to link the Yamuna riverfront to the temple through new access routes, commercial corridors and expansive parking hubs.

The Uttar Pradesh government has allocated Rs 500 crores for the development of the Banke Bihari corridor,

The Supreme Court in May had permitted the fixed deposits of the Banke Bihari Temple Trust to be used to acquire 5 acres of land around the shrine. But early in August, a bench of the court had criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for acting in a “clandestine manner” to secure permission to use temple funds for a corridor project through an application in a civil dispute.

The project is set to displace over 300 buildings, impacting long-standing residents and shopkeepers.

The plan for the region envisages massive networks of highways and apartment complexes such as Raya Heritage City led by the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority on fertile farmland.

This is likely to drive up land prices around Vrindavan and attract buyers from larger cities and NRIs seeking a second home closer to the deity – changing the pattern of land ownership in the city.

The Banke Bihari Corridor plan has not been without controversy. In June, hundreds of members of the Goswami community locked their homes and shops to protest plans for the corridor around the temple.

Women of the community wrote letters in blood to Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, angered that the ownership and governance of the temple will be transferred from their hereditary lineage to another trust.

In UP Mathura, the Goswami community is up in arms against the govt's plan of re-development through banke Bihari Temple corridor and formation of trust. The community claims re-development will tamper with the original form of the temple and the surrounding. pic.twitter.com/5exeCaD75z

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) June 7, 2025

Some of that discontent was evident in 2022, when we visited Vrindavan.

Several shopkeepers were anxious about potentially being dislocated by the Banke Bihari corridor, just like the counterparts had been for the project in Varanasi: the Kashi Vishwanath corridor resulted in the demolition of more than 300 houses.

A significant concern related to the uncertainty around ownership documents.

Some shopkeepers feared for their livelihoods because they rented their spaces. While the owners of the structures would receive compensation, it was not clear what the shopkeepers would receive – if anything at all.

Others pointed out that many of the occupants had been there for generations but lacked formal documents, as is the case in many places in India.

The area is now characterised by narrow pathways, homes, shops and traditional, informal economies driven by vendors, shopkeepers, traders, artisans, widows and beggars.

This will be replaced by wider lanes, broader roads for motorised vehicles, parking facilities, greenfield expressways and riverfront promenades on the floodplains.

This will transform Vrindavan’s ancient, messy cityscape into a sanitised, consumable site.

It will lead to a complete spatial reconfiguration of the region driven by the Smart City mission – the government’s “urban renewal and retrofitting programme” that aims to make cities “citizen-friendly and sustainable”.

However, as critics have noted, this initiative involves top-down decisions, large infrastructure projects and using digital technologies in governance. But the authorities have not considered whether long-time residents need this infrastructure, who will be displaced and who will benefit.

Nishita Banerjee is a qualitative researcher at a media platform based in Noida, with academic training in sociology from Ambedkar University Delhi.

Krishanu is an independent researcher based in Delhi, working on issues of urban governance, mobility and culture.

Pavithra Chandrasekar is an independent researcher and writer based in Bengaluru, focusing on land, climate and energy.

This article is the second in a series on ten years of the Smart Cities Mission, co-curated by the Centre for Financial Accountability and Scroll. Read all the pieces here.

When the Smart Cities Mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, it promised to transform urban India into a network of high-tech, citizen-friendly spaces.

It came riding on the language of innovation, sustainability and modern governance, powered by the Internet of Things – a network of devices that share data.

On paper, it seemed like a visionary leap into the future. But a decade later, the glimmer has dimmed. Beneath the surface of command centres, digital kiosks and sensor-laden poles lies a deeper story of displacement, ecological degradation and the steady erosion of the urban commons.

Infrastructure trumps inclusion

The “smart city” became synonymous not with inclusive planning but an obsession for capital-intensive infrastructure, often designed without regard for the lived experiences of people.

It was driven by a narrow technocratic impulse, not ecological wisdom or community consultation. In city after city, footpaths, parks, lakes, and playgrounds – spaces that once formed the fabric of urban life – were appropriated, neglected or destroyed in the name of smart redevelopment.

Vanishing footpaths

Take Bengaluru, one of the pilot cities of the mission. Under the Smart City plan, the city saw the rapid construction of flyovers and signal-free corridors. While these projects boasted that they had eased vehicular movement, they quietly gobbled up footpaths or made them inaccessible. In Miller’s Road, newly laid pedestrian paths were soon buried under construction debris. Citizens reported trench digging in the middle of the night that rendered entire stretches unusable for weeks.

Even Cubbon Park, the city’s historic green lung, was not spared. A Smart City-funded proposal to build a sensory park within it sparked widespread outrage as it threatened to intrude into ecologically sensitive zones.

This was not an isolated story. In Bhopal, another smart city, pedestrian walkways were either broken, blocked by vendors or simply non-existent. The same story played out in Ranchi, where motorbikes and cars routinely parked on sidewalks, pushing pedestrians onto busy roads.

Instead of creating walkable cities, the ground reality remained dangerously hostile to walkers. Footpaths were treated not as integral civic assets but as flexible territories to be reconfigured for other priorities.

Ecological neglect

Lakes, wetlands, and urban parks – long-standing ecological and social assets – also became collateral damage in the high-stakes redevelopment game.

In Coimbatore, seven historic lakes were revitalised under the Smart City budget with promenades, fountains, and viewing decks. Yet, within a year, many turned into garbage-strewn, mosquito-infested stretches. Locals complained about poor maintenance, broken benches, and unhygienic public toilets.

The lakes, once community spaces, became fenced-off, semi-privatised zones catering more to aesthetics than function.

In Kolkata, the development of Rajarhat or New Town, framed as a smart satellite city, systematically erased wetlands and ponds that once defined the peri-urban ecology of the area. Water bodies were filled and paved to make way for luxury housing and tech parks.

What was marketed as a climate-resilient township turned out to be a textbook example of ecological amnesia.

Similarly, in Guwahati, marginal wetlands such as Sola Beel were encroached upon, displacing not just water systems but also the poorer communities dependent on them for livelihood.

Grey zones, lost potential

Meanwhile, the grey zones of infrastructure – spaces under flyovers and overpasses – were left degraded or converted into commercial enclaves. In Ahmedabad, these under-flyover areas were initially envisioned as vibrant commons, featuring libraries, markets, and shaded seating. But implementation lagged and many turned into dumping grounds or informal parking lots.

Bengaluru, again, witnessed a similar situation until civil society groups like The Ugly Indian stepped in to reclaim these dead zones with colour, cleanliness and community participation.

Slum redevelopment, another pillar under smart city projects, became a convenient excuse for the dispossession of the poor. In Ahmedabad, slum clusters such as Ramo Tekri were marked for Smart City redevelopment without proper surveys or community involvement.

Displaced residents lamented the loss of their community spaces, informal parks, and water access points.

In Pune and Bhubaneswar, affordable housing under Smart City plans replaced informal settlements with rigid high-rises, severing social and ecological networks that had organically evolved over decades.

Ecology ignored

What emerges across these examples is a pattern of systemic disregard for ecological planning. The Smart Cities Mission privileged hard infrastructure – concrete roads, command centers, surveillance cameras – over environmental resilience.

Urban lakes were beautified, not restored. Parks were branded with Wi-Fi and LED signage while lacking shade and sanitation. The technological sheen concealed the hollowness beneath. Smart streets emerged without drainage planning. Footpaths were laid without ensuring connectivity or accessibility. Riverfronts were built while upstream wetlands were choked. The ecological web was consistently broken by linear, capital-intensive interventions.

Citizen pushback

In several cities, protests erupted over the misuse of the commons. In Bengaluru, residents campaigned against the privatisation of Hebbal Lake. In Jaipur, the Supreme Court criticisied the authorities for polluting the Jal Mahal Lake even as they sought smart city accolades.

Environmental groups in Navi Mumbai raised alarms when DPS Lake, a birding haven, faced water blockades due to surrounding construction.

In each case, the Smart City apparatus appeared more eager to chase metrics than uphold sustainability.

Technology without context

Even more worrying was the blind faith in technology. Cities poured crores into Integrated Command and Control Centres, traffic sensors and surveillance grids. Yet, basic issues like clean air, functional drainage, and safe pedestrian mobility remained unresolved.

“You can have an app that tells you when the next bus will arrive,” one citizen observed. “But what use is that if there’s no bus stop, or worse, no sidewalk to get to it?”

Furthermore, there is a lack of integration within these control centres. Most of the centres are controlled either by the police or district authorities, the city governance structure being a mere spectator.

Call to reclaim the city

The Smart City Mission, in its present avatar, reflects a deeper malaise in Indian urbanism: a desire to appear modern without truly engaging with the social and ecological complexities of cities.

The commons – those messy, vibrant, shared spaces that resist commodification –were always inconvenient to the smart city imagination. They could not be easily surveilled, monetised or standardised. So, they were erased, fenced, or rebranded until their original character disappeared.

Yet, the future need not be a continuation of this erasure. As cities reckon with climate change, social inequity and declining public trust, there is a growing realisation that smartness must be redefined – not by the number of sensors or square footage of smart roads, but by how inclusive, walkable, breathable and democratic a city truly is.

It’s time to move beyond the spectacle of smart cities and reclaim the city itself – not as a grid of sensors but as a living commons. Only then can urban India become not just smart, but wise.

Tikender Singh Panwar is an urban policy expert and former Deputy Mayor of Shimla, known for his work on inclusive and sustainable city governance. Author of three books-”Cities in Transition’, “The Radical City”, and “Challenges of Urban Governance”

This article is the first in a series on 10 years of the Smart Cities Mission, curated for Scroll by the Centre for Financial Accountability. Read all the pieces here.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday claimed that a centralised software programme was being used to systematically delete names from voter lists in Karnataka, and alleged that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was protecting those committing “vote theft”.

The deletion process specifically targeted polling booths where the Congress was dominant, Gandhi alleged.

The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said that the Congress’ analyses of the Aland Assembly constituency in Karnataka showed that an unknown entity had used software to delete voters in a centralised manner.

He alleged that these voter IDs were deleted with the help of fake login IDs and phone numbers from outside Karnataka.

While it was unclear how many voters were removed from the electoral rolls through the process in Aland, 6,018 applications had been filed impersonating other voters, the Opposition leader claimed.

The persons had never filed the applications, he added.

Gandhi showed a video of a woman stating that she had not applied to delete anybody’s name from the voter list, although applications were found to have been sent in her name.

Another person, whose name was allegedly used to submit 12 deletion applications in 14 minutes, attended Gandhi’s press conference on Thursday. The man told reporters that he had not filed the applications and was not aware of how his name had been used.

Gandhi also said that the alleged attempt to delete the votes was uncovered due to a coincidence. He claimed that a booth-level officer realised her uncle’s name was missing from the rolls and discovered that her neighbour had applied to delete his name.

“When she asked him [neighbour], he said he had no idea,” Gandhi said. “Neither the person who deleted the vote knew, nor the person whose vote was deleted knew. And as luck would have it, it got caught.”

The Congress leader claimed that the top 10 booths in Aland with maximum deletions were Congress strongholds.

The names used to submit the deletion applications were first in the booth’s voter list, which meant that a software was being used to automate the process, Gandhi claimed.

This is another evidence of “vote chori”, or vote theft, Gandhi said.

Gandhi further alleged that the Chief Election Commissioner Kumar had not responded to 18 reminder letters sent by the Karnataka Crime Investigation Department and the state’s poll panel chief seeking Internet Protocol address, destinations and One Time Password trails to establish who made the voter deletion requests.

Let's come to why I'm making such a direct accusation against the CEC, Gyanesh Kumar. There is an ongoing investigation on this matter in Karnataka. The CID of Karnataka has sent 18 letters in 18 months to the Election Commission. And they have asked the election commission for… pic.twitter.com/V8aWBkfszj

— Congress (@INCIndia) September 18, 2025

The crime investigation department is part of the Karnataka Police, which reports to the Congress-led state government.

Gandhi alleged this meant that Kumar was “protecting” persons involved in vote theft. “We have cent percent proof that CEC is protecting voter thieves,” he added.

The Election Commission must release the phone numbers used to initiate the deletion processes within a week, he demanded.

‘Baseless allegations’: EC

In response, the Election Commission said that the allegations made by Gandhi were “incorrect and baseless”.

The commission said that “no deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by [Gandhi]”.

In 2023, “certain unsuccessful attempts were made for deletion of electors” in Aland and a first information report was filed by the Election Commission itself to investigate the matter, the poll panel said.

The Aland constituency was won by a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in 2018 and by a Congress nominee in 2023, the poll panel added.

❌Allegations made by Shri Rahul Gandhi are incorrect and baseless.#ECIFactCheck

✅Read in detail in the image attached 👇 https://t.co/mhuUtciMTF pic.twitter.com/n30Jn6AeCr

— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) September 18, 2025

Gandhi said that his claims on Thursday were not the “hydrogen bombs” of evidence on alleged voter fraud he had talked about earlier. Those allegations will be made public later, he said.

On September 1, the Congress leader had said that his party will soon release a “hydrogen bomb” of evidence, claiming that after the disclosure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would “not be able to show his face to the country”.

Allegations on Mahadevapura

On August 7, Gandhi said that his party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency and found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.

The Congress leader claimed that the electoral rolls included 11,965 duplicate entries, 40,009 voters with fake or invalid addresses, 10,454 “bulk voters” registered in a single address, 4,132 voters with invalid photographs and 33,692 voters in whose cases there had allegedly been misuse of Form 6.

The Election Commission’s Form 6 is an application document for registering new voters.

He alleged that this was evidence of the poll panel having colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Election Commission had dismissed Gandhi’s allegations as “false and misleading”.

Election rigging claims

Gandhi and the Congress have also repeatedly alleged that there was “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions” in the Maharashtra polls held in November.

The BJP-led alliance had defeated the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition, which includes the Congress, in the polls.

The Election Commission, however, has rejected these allegations. On August 14, it described Gandhi’s claims regarding Mahadevapura as “false and misleading”. Earlier, in February, it had called attempts to malign the Commission by parties disappointed with poll results “completely absurd”.

Anyone who has followed news coverage of the monsoon this year would likely assume that several cloudbursts have lashed the Himalayan region. According to media reports, for instance, on just July 1, ten different cloudbursts took place in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district, which killed 13 people.

Early this week, too, Dehradun woke up to submerged homes and destroyed roads – the damage had been caused by cloudbursts the night before, news outlets reported. Even the devastating flash flood in Uttarakhand’s Dharali in August that left over 40 missing was initially reported as being a result of a cloudburst.

But officially there is no consensus on whether these events were indeed cloudbursts.

This year, for instance, reports issued by Himachal Pradesh’s state disaster management authorities note that the state experienced 17 cloudbursts between June and September 17.

But when Scroll spoke with officials from regional centres of the India Meteorological Department in Shimla and Dehradun, they said that the centres had not recorded a single cloudburst event this monsoon.

What explains this discrepancy?

Interviews with meteorological department and disaster management authority officials revealed that it is a result of the fact that the two use different approaches to classify a heavy-rain event as a cloudburst.

While the meteorological department declares a cloudburst to have occurred when a particular weather station records rainfall of more than 100 mm in one hour, disaster management authorities record events as cloudbursts at the discretion of their field staff.

Experts argue that the problem is not merely a technical one. Rather, they say, when such a widely used term has a lax definition, it could leave room for authorities to deflect responsibility away from themselves when it came to tackling the problem – such as, in the case of excess rainfall, regulating large-scale projects and other such human interventions in the Himalayan region to prevent widespread damage.

“Whenever the term cloudburst pops up, we see a likely shift where the tendency is to just blame it on nature, and that Himalaya is fragile, the phenomenon is inevitable, and we have nothing to do with it,” said Shubhra Sharma, a scientist with the Physics Research Laboratory at the Department of Space in Ahmedabad, who has worked extensively in the Himalayas.

“This needs to change,” she added.

Scroll emailed the India Meteorological Department, its regional offices in Shimla and Dehradun, and the state disaster management authorities of Himachal and Uttarakhand, seeking responses to criticisms about the confusion over the term. This story will be updated if they respond.

The IMD’s lack of monitoring capacity

Officials explained that the fact that the meteorological department did not record any cloudbursts this year did not mean that none occurred – rather, it may have failed to do so because it lacked an adequate number of monitoring devices and weather stations.

Anand Sharma, former deputy director general of the regional meteorology centre at Dehradun, explained that a cloudburst can be recorded only if a particular site is equipped with a self-recording rain gauge. Such a gauge records rainfall over the hours it occurs and generates a graph that maps details such as start and finish times of rainfall, and times when it peaked. This chart can clearly indicate instances when the rainfall in an hour exceeded 100 mm.

Currently, however, the departments’ observatories record rainfall over three-hour spells in most places, or over 24-hour periods in smaller stations. “If we were to record for every hour, that would mean we would have to manually ask someone to record it for that hour, which is not possible to do,” said the official from the meteorological department centre in Dehradun, who asked not to be identified by name.

The official at Himachal Pradesh noted, “Such events can happen at any point even in the night, and we cannot put someone at every weather station to record it in case it happens.”

The use of automated weather stations can also help in recording instances of cloudbursts – these devices collect rainfall data every 15 minutes, which can be compiled to arrive at hourly data. As of 2022, Himachal had 22 such stations, while Uttarakhand had 25. But officials from both the states noted that these stations are spread across multiple districts and are separated by large distances, which made it likely that specific occurrences of cloudburst would go undocumented.

“Since cloudbursts are a very localised event, it’s possible that we do not have the AWS where it has rained that much,” said the Dehradun-based official.

Concern with the disaster management authorities’ approach

While meteorological centres may lack adequate capacity to record cloudbursts, experts have even greater concerns about the approach of disaster management authorities.

An official at the Himachal Pradesh disaster management authority explained that they largely relied on inputs from their field staff – these could range from tehsildaars in the revenue department to panchayat officials.

He noted that the authority essentially left it to this field staff to observe situations on the ground and categorise rainfall events. For instance, if staff on the ground observed particularly heavy rainfall during which rainwater entered people’s homes – an unusual occurrence in mountainous regions – they typically term an incident cloudburst. “Whether the event is a cloudburst or not is at the discretion of the field official,” the official said.

Experts reject this method entirely.

Anand Sharma noted that if the staff was not using any equipment, their method of recording cloudburst was “absolutely wrong”.

Others agreed. “Field inputs can’t provide the quantum of rain that objectively identifies cloudburst events,” said Piyoosh Rautela, a freelance disaster-risk reduction consultant, who was also the former managing director at Uttarakhand’s Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre.

He noted that a state disaster management authority could gather comprehensive data on destruction caused during heavy rainfall. But without accompanying rainfall measurements, he added, their conclusions about cloudbursts could be imprecise since significant losses could also occur “in a non-cloud burst event”.

Changes needed

Anand Sharma argued that as a first step towards better monitoring, the government needed to conduct a preliminary study to determine the kind of capacity that is needed. “We need to have an optimum network study to know how many weather stations and recording devices should be there,” he said. “Do we need it every kilometre? Every two kilometres?”

Shubhra Sharma noted that apart from improving monitoring capacity, authorities also needed to arrive at one comprehensive definition of cloudbursts. She explained that the definition should take into account specific natural and human-made factors in the Himalayas, such as specifics of topography or large-scale development projects, which could exacerbate the effects of rain.

Anand Sharma recounted, for instance, that in the devastating June 2013 Kedarnath floods, over the period of two days, the region recorded rainfall of 325 mm. “That time, there was no record of 100 mm rain happening in an hour,” he said. “Even in places where we had the rain gauge, there was no such recording.”

Nevertheless, the damage was unprecedented, he noted. “This shows that even lesser rainfall over several hours can create flash floods in the Himalayas,” he said.

In effect, experts suggested, the present definition may not suffice to capture the range of phenomenon in the Himalaya that can lead to the kinds of devastation associated with heavy rain. “A redefinition will translate into better disaster preparedness,” Shubhra Sharma said.

Authorities in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore district on Monday bulldozed allegedly illegal portions of a house belonging to a man identified as Jabbar Khan after he was accused of forcible religious conversion and conducting Christian prayer meetings, Zee News reported.

On August 18, Hindutva groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal had entered Khan’s home in the Chandakpuri area of Sehore city, allegedly after receiving information about alleged forced conversions taking place there, according to Aaj Tak.

Both outfits are part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

A prayer meeting was allegedly being conducted inside the house at the time. A heated argument broke out between the attendees of the meeting and the two Hindutva groups.

A video of the incident was also circulated widely on social media.

Alt News reported that the video was uploaded by an Instagram user in collaboration with an account named “Bajrang Dal Sehore”. The caption of the video claimed that the police acted on “information of a religious conversion racket” in Sehore and raided the house.

It added that information was given to the police by Bajrang Dal workers. The caption also said that “those present at the spot, during questioning, expressed support for Christianity”, Alt News reported.

The video showed the Bible and other Christian books in the home. It also showed a man who identified himself as Khan, who could be heard saying that the house belonged to him. He added that those gathered were praying to god and had been meeting for two years.

In the video, Khan could also be heard saying that everyone present at the meeting belonged to different faiths.

Bajrang Dal members were seen threatening the attendees inside the house, Alt News reported. The fact-checking website said that another video on Facebook showed police officers at the house.

An unidentified police officer from the Sehore Police Station rejected claims of religious conversion in the house, Alt News reported.

“All those who were present in that room still hold their birth names; they have not converted to any other religion,” the officer was quoted as saying. “They organise a prayer meet there every Sunday, and no one has complained about any forceful conversion.”

The officer added: “…We have registered the application from the complainants, and further investigation is being carried out. No one has been detained or arrested so far.”

However, Aaj Tak reported that a case had been filed against Khan and his wife, Tahira Khan, under the 2021 Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act.

Jabbar Khan was also arrested, according to the news channel.

A police officer who was also present during the prayer meeting was suspended.

Following the incident, the municipality issued a notice to Jabbar Khan seeking the construction permit for his home within 15 days, Zee News reported. However, the permit was reportedly not produced.

Reports alleged that Jabbar Khan had constructed an upper floor without permission and was carrying out conversion activities, according to Zee News.

There are no provisions in Indian law that allow for the demolition of property as a punitive measure. However, the practice has become commonplace in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.

In November, the Supreme Court held as illegal the practice of demolishing properties of persons accused of crimes as a punitive measure. It said that processes must be followed before removing allegedly illegal encroachments.

The Editors Guild of India on Wednesday said it was deeply concerned about a Delhi court temporarily restraining journalists from publishing allegedly defamatory content about Adani Enterprises, and the Centre ordering the removal of YouTube links and Instagram posts about the firm.

The guild said such developments are a step towards censorship, and undermine freedom of speech.

On September 6, a Delhi court temporarily restrained journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi, and the websites are paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au from publishing allegedly defamatory material about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises.

Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had passed an ex parte injunction in favour of the company. An ex parte order is one that is passed without hearing the other side in a legal dispute.

The court had clarified that it was not issuing a blanket order restraining the defendants from “fair, verified and substantiated” reporting and from hosting, storing or circulating such articles, posts or webpage links.

However, on September 16, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting cited the court order to direct 12 news outlets and independent journalists to remove allegedly defamatory content about the Adani Group. The Centre’s order pertained to 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts.

Among those who got notices to remove such content were news outlets Newslaundry, The Wire and HW News, journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ajit Anjum and Ravish Kumar, satirist Akash Banerjee, and content creator Dhruv Rathee.

Barring Guha Thakurta, none of the others who got the ministry’s notice on September 16 were party to the proceedings before the Delhi court.

Commenting on these developments, the Editors Guild said it was concerned “that such blanket powers granted to a corporate entity, coupled with ministerial action in issuing takedown directions, are a step towards censorship”.

“They risk chilling legitimate reporting, commentary and satire, and undermine the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression,” the organisation said.

It said it was “equally troubling” that the Centre ordered the removal of the YouTube links and Instagram posts.

The Editors Guild added that the “extension of executive power” had effectively given a private corporation the authority to determine what constitutes defamatory content regarding its affairs, including the ability to order takedowns.

It urged the judiciary to ensure that defamation claims are addressed through due process, and not through “one-sided injunctions that amount to prior restraint”.

Statement on Delhi Court’s Adani Takedown Order pic.twitter.com/3oXFiEnOxv

— Editors Guild of India (@IndEditorsGuild) September 17, 2025

Court order

The order issued on September 6 came on a hearing of a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars. Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the Adani Group.

The court directed the defendants to expunge the material from their articles and social media posts. If expunging the content was not feasible, they must remove it within five days, the order said.

On the basis of the court order, the Union government ordered 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts to be removed. These included not just investigative reports, but also satirical videos and incidental mentions of the Adani Group.

Copies of the notice were also sent to Meta and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube.

The Congress on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam of “spreading venom” in society through a social media video, and urged the Election Commission to take note of it.

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate objected to a 36-second artificial intelligence-generated video shared by the Assam BJP on X. The video, titled “Assam without BJP”, showed a series of visuals of Muslims in public places in Assam, and appeared to suggest that the state would be overrun by the minority community if the Hindutva party were to lose power.

The video showed AI-generated images of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi standing before a Pakistan flag, and a butcher in a skullcap under the label “beef legalisation”. It ended with the lines “90% Muslim population” and “choose your vote carefully”.

Shrinate asked whether the Election Commission had no objection to such a video.

“The BJP is spreading venom in this manner,” she said. “Gyanesh ji [Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar], will you, as usual, consider this as acceptable and remain a mute spectator?”

Assam Congress leader Bedabrata Bora said the party would file a police complaint against the BJP at the Bhangagarh police station in Guwahati on Thursday, The Indian Express reported.

चुनाव आयोग @ECISVEEP क्या आपको इस तरह के पोस्ट पर कोई आपत्ति नहीं है?

BJP इस तरह से ज़हर फैला रही है - ज्ञानेश जी, क्या आप हमेशा की तरह इसको सगी ठहरा कर मूक दर्शक बने रहेंगे? https://t.co/P8tQsCqK6g

— Supriya Shrinate (@SupriyaShrinate) September 17, 2025

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi accused the BJP of fear-mongering, and said it was not doing so just for votes.

“…This is the repulsive Hindutva ideology in true form,” Owaisi said. “The very existence of Muslims in India is a problem for them, their dream is a Muslim-mukt Bharat. Besides this constant whining, they’ve no vision for India.”

BJP Assam has posted a disgusting AI video that shows a Muslim-majority Assam if there was no BJP. They are not fear-mongering just for votes, this is the repulsive Hindutva ideology in true form. The very existence of Muslims in India is a problem for them, their dream is a…

— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) September 17, 2025

However, Assam BJP spokesperson Rupam Goswami defended the video.

“If you see the demographic change in Assam, in 14 districts, there is an alarming situation,” The Indian Express quoted Goswami as saying. "The threat is not from Muslims, but from illegal immigrant Muslims. We have to be conscious of it. They have become economically strong, they are damaging us socially, and they will take away our political rights.”

The BJP Assam Pradesh account, which has over 2 lakh followers, has previously shared several similar AI-generated videos, including ones showing Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi wearing a skullcap and speaking on the phone with Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir.

Also read: Opinion: In Assam, vicious communal rhetoric is putting democracy at risk

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The Patna High Court has ordered the Congress to take down a video following a complaint alleging that it tarnished the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his late mother, Heeraben Modi. The 36-second artificial intelligence-generated video posted on September 10 depicted the prime minister dreaming about his late mother criticising him for his politics in Bihar.

The state is expected to hold Assembly elections in October or November. After a first information report was registered in connection with the video, the Congress had claimed that it had not disrespected the prime minister or his mother. Read more.

The Gauhati High Court has dismissed a petition seeking an investigation into the alleged custodial deaths of three men from the Hmar community in Assam’s Cachar district. They were killed in an alleged gunfight with the police on July 17, 2024, a day after they were arrested on suspicion of being militants.

Their families had moved the High Court in August 2024, seeking an investigation by police officers from outside Assam or those independent of the state police and government. In its order on Monday, the court said that the probe had been referred to the National Human Rights Commission and an additional superintendent of police in neighbouring Hailakandi district. It “cannot be pre-empted” that the investigation will be conducted in a partisan manner, the court said.

However, the National Human Rights Commission had disposed of the matter in March based on a magisterial inquiry conducted by an Assam Civil Service officer. This was contrary to the panel’s guidelines, which mandate a judicial inquiry into suspected custodial deaths. Read on.

Pro-Khalistan organisation Sikhs For Justice has called for a 12-hour “siege” of the Indian consulate in Canada’s Vancouver on Thursday. The outfit urged Indian-Canadians to defer their visit to the diplomatic mission for their safety.

Thursday marks two years since Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister at the time, told the country’s Parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” linking agents of the Indian government to the assassination of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Read more.

Why are Sikhs abroad more pro-Khalistan than community members living in India?

The Supreme Court has asked the Commission for Air Quality Management to consider alternatives to a blanket ban on construction work during the winter season in Delhi and the adjoining National Capital Region to tackle air pollution. Such action adversely affects the livelihood of daily wage workers, it said.

The bench directed the air quality panel to hold deliberations with the states about concrete plans to prevent pollution. It also directed Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to fill up vacancies in their pollution control boards within three months.

It further said that strict punishment, including arrests, may have to be imposed to deter farmers from stubble burning. Read on.

Not stubble burning, cars are the main villain in Delhi's apocalyptic air pollution

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Commission for Air Quality Management to consider alternative options instead of imposing a blanket ban on construction work during the winter season in Delhi and the adjoining National Capital Region to tackle air pollution, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran said that such a ban adversely affected the livelihood of daily wage workers.

“Workers moving from different parts of the country are without any work during those periods,” Live Law quoted the court as saying.

It added: “As far as the compensation that is paid to the said workers, they have also written that various applications have been filed before this court, alleging that the compensation is not properly paid.”

The bench directed the air quality panel to hold deliberations with the states about concrete plans to prevent pollution rather than imposing prohibitory orders. “The same shall be done within a period of three weeks from today,” it added.

The court made the remarks while hearing a suo motu case on vacancies in state pollution control boards and committees.

During the winter over the past few years, the Commission for Air Quality Management has banned construction activities as part of its Graded Response Action Plan to curb air pollution in Delhi and the NCR region.

In February, the court had directed Delhi and the states in the National Capital Region to compensate workers affected by the construction bans imposed under GRAP.

During the hearing on Wednesday, the bench directed Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to fill up vacancies in their pollution control boards within three months, Live Law reported.

Taking into account that winter will begin soon, the bench said that the vacancies could be filled by the state governments either on a deputational or a contractual basis for the next three months specifically.

The court added that the process for filling up promotional posts should be completed within six months.

The matter has been listed for further hearing on October 8, PTI reported.

In May, the court issued contempt notices to the chief secretaries of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan for breaching its order to fill vacancies in their pollution control boards and pollution control committees by April 30, Live Law reported.

Stubble burning

The court on Wednesday also suggested that strict punishment, including arrests, may have to be imposed to deter farmers from stubble burning, Bar and Bench reported.

Farmers are important for the country, Gavai said. However, this does not justify allowing stubble burning to continue unchecked, he added.

“Why don’t you think of some penalty provisions? If some people are behind bars, it will send the correct message,” Bar and Bench quoted the chief justice as telling the counsel for the Punjab government. “Why don’t you think of some penalty provisions for the agriculturists?”

Many farmers resort to the mass burning of unwanted crop debris (known as stubble) to clear their fields after the harvest to prepare for the next sowing season. The burning of stubble in the vast fields in these states, along with the falling temperatures and decreased wind speeds, contributes to air pollution in North India.

In October, the court had summoned the chief secretaries of Punjab and Haryana after expressing disapproval about the lack of proper legal action against stubble burning.

It said that the provisions to curb air pollution, including imposing penalties on violators, under the 2021 Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas Act had been made “toothless” by the Union government.

Also read:

• Not stubble burning, cars are the main villain in Delhi's apocalyptic air pollution

• Why Delhi’s air crisis needs year-round action – not ad-hoc emergency responses

The Gauhati High Court on Monday dismissed a petition seeking an investigation into the alleged custodial deaths of three men from the Hmar community in Assam’s Cachar district.

Lallungawi Hmar, Lalbeikkung Hmar and Joshua were killed in an alleged gunfight with the police on July 17, 2024, a day after they were arrested on the suspicion of being militants.

The killings had triggered outrage in Assam and neighbouring Manipur.

Hmar groups had sought an investigation into the incident.

The families of the men had in August 2024 filed a petition in the High Court seeking an independent investigation into the alleged custodial deaths.

They had sought an independent director general of police from outside Assam or a senior police officer, independent of the Assam Police and the state government, to be appointed as the investigating officer.

In its order on Monday, a bench of Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Susmita Phukan Khaund said that the investigation into the incident had been referred to the National Human Rights Commission and an additional superintendent of police in Hailakandi district.

“At this juncture, this court is of the opinion that it cannot be pre-empted that the investigating agency will conduct the investigation in a partisan manner and screen the police officials involved in extrajudicial killings,” the court added.

The bench also said that the petitioners were at liberty to file an appropriate application if they were still “aggrieved on the culmination of the investigation”.

“It is not clear at this juncture, if charge sheet has been laid against erring officials, or if investigation is still under progress,” the court observed.

The bench added that it will not comment on the digital evidence as the investigation was “presumably still under progress”.

In March, the National Human Rights Commission had disposed of the matter based on a magisterial inquiry conducted by an Assam Civil Service officer. This was contrary to the rights panel’s guidelines, which mandate a judicial inquiry into suspected custodial deaths.

A lawyer observing the case, who did not want to be identified, told Scroll that the family of the three men had moved the court because they did not trust the Assam government to conduct a fair investigation into the alleged custodial killings.

The court “accepts that the post-mortem does reveal torture, and shots fired from point-blank range, thus, establishing the possibility of cold-blooded murder by the police”, the lawyer said.

“But it finds it unfathomable as to why the state would kill random people and asks the family of the deceased to trust the investigation, and wait for the NHRC to complete the inquiry,” the lawyer added.

The lawyer said that the order displayed the “unconstrained trust” that the judiciary had in the executive to investigate itself.

“However, there is nothing on record to suggest that government has done anything to hold that trust,” the lawyer told Scroll. “On the contrary, the government’s story is entirely different, which makes them an interested party to the act.”

The lawyer added that the case had been filed in July 2024 and that the court had reserved its judgement for three months.

“[The court] could have at least called for the progress of the investigation,” the lawyer said.

The National Human Rights Commission closing the matter based on a magisterial inquiry conducted by an executive officer violated a Supreme Court direction and the panel’s own rules that allegations on custodial deaths should be looked into by a judicial officer, the lawyer said.

The case

During the proceedings in the court, the petitioners told the bench that the three men had been arrested from the Ganga Nagar area in Cachar’s Krishnapur Road.

“At least six police personnel present, tied their hands behind their backs and took them to the police station and detained them,” the court order on Monday quoted the petitioners as having claimed.

They added that the men were intercepted from an auto rickshaw. “It is alleged that the three arrested men were taken out of the police station sometime in the night or early in the morning of [July 17, 2024] and killed by the Assam Police in cold blood,” the petitioners had alleged.

Hours after the deaths, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said on social media that the three men were suspected militants who were killed in a gunfight with the Cachar Police. He added that the police recovered three rifles and a pistol from them.

The police had later claimed that they had first arrested the three men before taking them to the Bhuban Hills area, where another group of suspected militants were reportedly hiding with a huge cache of arms.

According to the police’s statement, as their personnel and the three suspected militants reached the hills, the second group of suspected militants opened fire at them.

“The apprehended militants wearing bulletproof jackets and helmets sustained on their persons,” read the statements.

They were taken to a hospital, where the police said they were soon declared dead.

However, the Hmar Students’ Association and the Hmar Inpui, the apex body of the Hmar tribe in the North East, alleged that the three men were “arbitrarily detained, taken to an undisclosed location and then brutally shot dead under circumstances that defy all principles of justice and human rights”.

The Hmar Students’ Association had said that the persons who died were not militants but “village volunteers who valiantly defended the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar villages against Meitei militants”.

The term “village volunteers” has been used for armed civilians guarding villages since the ethnic clashes broke out between the Kuki-Zo-Hmars and Meiteis communities in neighbouring Manipur in May 2023.

“The Assam Police’s claim of an encounter is riddled with inconsistencies and contradicted by compelling video evidence, which exposes the fabricated nature of their account,” the student body had alleged.

Pro-Khalistan organisation Sikhs For Justice has called for a 12-hour “siege” on the Indian consulate in Canada’s Vancouver on Thursday, reported The Indian Express.

In a statement on Wednesday, the outfit urged Indian-Canadians to defer their visit to the diplomatic mission on September 18 for their safety.

Sikhs for Justice accused the Indian consulate of operating a spy network in Canada to target supporters of Khalistan, a proposed independent state for Sikhs sought by some groups.

The United States-based organisation was banned in India in 2019 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Thursday marks two years since Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister at the time, told the country’s Parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” linking agents of the Indian government to the assassination of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

“Two years on, Indian consulates continue to run a spy network and surveillance targeting Khalistan referendum campaigners,” Sikhs For Justice was quoted as having stated.

Nijjar was shot dead near Vancouver by two masked men in June 2023. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, designated as a “terrorist outfit” in India.

New Delhi rejected Canada’s allegations as “absurd and motivated”. The Indian government also described the claims as Ottawa’s attempt to shift focus from “Khalistani terrorists and extremists who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

On Wednesday, Sikhs For Justice also released a poster showing Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Patnaik with a target symbol on his photo, calling him the “new face of India’s Hindutva terror in Canada”, The Indian Express reported.

Also read: Why are Sikhs abroad more pro-Khalistan than community members living in India?

The Allahabad High Court has refused to entertain a public interest litigation seeking a judicial inquiry into alleged police brutality on students at Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki.

A division bench of Justices Rajan Roy and Manjeev Shukla, however, said that its refusal to entertain the petition should not be understood as condoning any illegal act by government authorities or university officials.

On September 1, police personnel were deployed to force the protesters to disperse, which led to a lathi-charge that left several students injured, according to The Times of India.

Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad had staged a protest outside the private university, alleging irregularities in courses, fee structures and administrative decisions, The Times of India reported.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The students claimed that the university was running its law programme without proper approval from the Bar Council of India.

Cases were filed against some protesters and several students were detained.

A Special Investigation Team led by the inspector general of the Faizabad Range later confirmed that there are irregularities in the university’s law courses, the newspaper reported.

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court issued the order on the petition which sought a judicial probe under a retired High Court judge and action against police personnel found guilty of injuring students.

The court, however, noted that none of the students who were allegedly injured had themselves approached the bench.

It also pointed out that the issue of recognition for the university’s law courses was already under consideration in another public interest litigation.

Citing these reasons, the bench said it saw no reason to entertain the public interest litigation.

The Enforcement Directorate has alleged in a chargesheet that Chaitanya Baghel, son of former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, was the “controller and ultimate authority” of an “organised liquor syndicate” in the state, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The agency claimed it had established that Chaitanya Baghel personally handled about Rs 1,000 crore generated from the alleged scam.

The ED filed the chargesheet before the court of District and Additional Sessions Judge (VI) Damarudhar Chouhan on Monday.

On July 18, Chaitanya Baghel was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act following searches by the central agency at his home in Durg district’s Bhilai. An unidentified official had told PTI at the time that the arrest was based on the receipt of fresh evidence in the case.

In its chargesheet, the agency alleged that the syndicate was set up in 2019, when Bhupesh Baghel was the chief minister.

Indian Administrative Services officer Anil Tuteja and Anward Dhebar – both co-accused in the alleged scam who have been named in previous chargesheets – were chosen as the face of the syndicate to handle the day-to-day operations, the ED alleged.

On Chaitanya Baghel’s role in money laundering, the ED alleged that he stood at “the apex of this syndicate” and had a “commanding and decisive” role in handling funds, The Hindu reported.

“He was responsible for maintaining the [accounts] of all illicit funds collected by the syndicate,” The Hindu quoted the chargesheet as having alleged. “All major decisions relating to collection, channelisation, and distribution of funds were taken under his instructions. His position as the chief minister’s son made him the controller and ultimate authority of the syndicate.”

The chargesheet alleged that Chaitanya Baghel “knowingly assisted in the concealment, possession, acquisition and use of proceeds of crime, acting in conspiracy with other members of the syndicate”, according to The Indian Express.

In July, the ED had said that Chaitanya Baghel was named in the case on the basis of a statement by Laxmi Narayan Bansal who had told the agency about handling more than Rs 1,000 crore that was made from the scam.

Denying the allegations, his lawyer Faisal Rizvi argued that the arrest was made on the basis of “fabricated statements”.

Rizvi told The Indian Express that the ED was relying on the statement of Bansal, against whom a permanent warrant had been issued by the Economic Offences Wing in May.

“In the first week of June, the ED recorded his statement and, based on it, arrested Chaitanya,” Rizvi told The Indian Express. “Such a person [Bansal] can say anything to save himself. He is neither a witness nor has the ED named him as an accused.”

Bhupesh Baghel had earlier claimed that his son’s arrest was “politically motivated” because he opposed the Adani coal mining project in Raigarh, the newspaper reported.

He also said that while a court had issued a non-bailable warrant against Bansal, he continues to move freely and give statements. “It is understandable how these agencies, the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party respect the court,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

The liquor scam

The Chhattisgarh Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a first information report in the alleged liquor scam in January 2024 based on the Enforcement Directorate’s complaints.

The FIR accused 70 persons of involvement in the alleged scam, including former state Excise Minister Kawasi Lakhma, Special Secretary Arun Pati Tripathi and Tuteja.

They have been charged with corruption, cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Lakhma, a six-time MLA from Konta in Sukma district, was arrested in the case by the central agency in January.

Although the Enforcement Directorate had filed a prosecution complaint last year, Lakhma and others were linked to the case in the latest FIR.

In March, searches were conducted in 14 locations in Durg district linked to Chaitanya Baghel.

India has “categorically” said that any dialogue with Pakistan has to be held at a bilateral level, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told Al Jazeera in an interview aired on Monday.

Asked whether Islamabad wanted the involvement of a third-party mediator, Dar said: “Well, we do not mind, but India has been categorically saying that it is bilateral, so we do not mind bilateral.”

Talking about the ceasefire negotiations with India in May following Operation Sindoor, the Pakistani foreign minister said: “When the ceasefire offer came through Secretary Rubio [US Secretary of State Marco Rubio] to me on 10th of May, around 8.17 am, I was told that there would very soon be a dialogue between you [Pakistan] and India at an independent place.”

He added that when he met Rubio on July 25 for a bilateral meeting in Washington, Dar asked the US secretary of state about the proposed dialogue between India and Pakistan.

“He [Rubio] said India says it is a bilateral issue,” Dar said. “So we are not begging for anything…any country…So unless India wishes to have dialogue, we do not wish to force them.”

On Wednesday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rejected United States President Donald Trump’s claims of having intervened to stop the India-Pakistan conflict, saying that the action against terrorists was not suspended due to any third-party mediation, The Hindu reported.

“Some claim to have stopped the Indo-Pak conflict,” Singh said. “Nobody did it. Pakistan’s Deputy PM made it clear that India rejected any third-party role in it.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear that it is a bilateral matter and that no third party can interfere, he added.

Tensions between India and Pakistan had escalated after the Indian military on May 7 carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.

The Pakistan Army had retaliated by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Several civilians were killed in the firing.

On May 10, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced that the Pakistani director general of military operations had called his Indian counterpart to propose an end to the hostilities.

The announcement by the Indian foreign secretary had come minutes after US President Donald Trump claimed on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to the ceasefire. Trump had claimed that the ceasefire talks were mediated by Washington.

Rubio had also claimed on social media that New Delhi and Islamabad had agreed to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”.

The US president has repeatedly claimed credit for brokering the ceasefire between the two countries.

New Delhi has rejected the claims and maintained that the ceasefire was not the result of mediation.

Several Indian newspapers on Wednesday were full of advertisements with laudatory messages to mark the 75th birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Three of the first six pages of The Times of India’s Delhi edition carried advertisements by the Delhi government and two private companies celebrating Modi’s birthday. The next three pages had at least one advertisement per page.

This was followed by 11 advertisements in the remaining pages, of which five were full-page.

The advertisements by the Delhi government and the Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena were repeated in several newspapers across editions.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is in power in the Delhi Assembly. The Shinde Sena is a key ally of the BJP at the central level and in Maharashtra.

The Indian Express had at least seven advertisements. This included three full-pages ones in the initial pages.

On Tuesday, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta launched a song titled Namo Pragati Delhi – From Children’s Voices to the Nation’s Voice, The Indian Express reported. She described it as a “significant and priceless gift for the prime minister”.

Gupta said that the song, sung by students of government schools, highlights the vision of “One India, Best India”.

More than 50 government schools in Delhi are contributing to the prime minister’s birthday celebrations. More than 300 have submitted handmade cards to Gupta to deliver them to Modi, the newspaper reported.

The Delhi government also organised a Seva Sankalp Walk event at the Kartavya Path to celebrate Modi's birthday. A blood donation camp was also part of the event.

कर्तव्य पथ पर आदरणीय प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी के जन्मदिन का उत्सव…#HappyBdayPMModiJi #SevaParv #SevaSankalpWalk pic.twitter.com/ufIeTZpuF2

— Rekha Gupta (@gupta_rekha) September 17, 2025

In Odisha, the BJP government will be planting 75 lakh saplings to mark Modi’s 75th birthday.

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri organised a collective prayer and langar at a gurudwara in Mumbai Modi’s “long life and good health”, ANI reported.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla participated in a cleanliness drive in Kota, Rajasthan organised to mark Modi's birthday. Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan planted a sapling on the occasion in Delhi.

News agency ANI posted videos of preacher Dhirendra Shashtri, cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, chess grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, businesspersons Mukesh Ambani and Sanjiv Goenka, and actors Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Alia Bhatt, wishing Modi on his birthday.

#WATCH | "It is my deepest wish that Modi ji should continue to serve India when independent India turns 100...", says Chairman & Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited, Mukesh Ambani, on PM Modi's 75th birthday

He says, "Today is a festive day for 1.45 billion… pic.twitter.com/u2NJSTMV3R

— ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2025

Music label T-series released a song titled Vandaniya Hai Desh Mera to celebrate the “vision, dedication, and leadership” of the prime minister. The song has been sung and composed by Shankar Mahadevan and written by Prasoon Joshi.

Celebrating the vision, dedication, and leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Ji on his 75th birthday with the soul-stirring anthem "Vandaniya Hai Desh Mera". Jai Hind! 🇮🇳https://t.co/PB8GOVs4E4#HappyBirthdayModiji@narendramodi@Shankar_Live @prasoonjoshi_… pic.twitter.com/jQUUPLuPLr

— T-Series (@TSeries) September 17, 2025

The Patna High Court has ordered the Congress to take down a 36-second artificial intelligence-generated video from all social media platforms, following a complaint alleging that it tarnished the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his late mother, Heeraben Modi, NDTV reported.

The video, posted by the Congress’ Bihar unit on September 10 had garnered 7.1 million views by Wednesday morning. It depicted the prime minister dreaming about his late mother criticising him about his politics in Bihar, ahead of the state’s expected Assembly elections in October or November.

On September 13, the Delhi Police registered a first information report in connection with the video for allegedly tarnishing the image of PM Modi and his late mother.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had accused the Congress of disrespecting Heeraben Modi.

Union minister Giriraj Singh, who is an MP from the state’s Begusarai constituency, had said that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had stooped to a new low.

“Rahul Gandhi himself does not respect his own mother, then how come he will respect another’s mother?” PTI quoted Singh as having told reporters.

The Congress had claimed that it had not disrespected the prime minister or his mother.

“What is their objection?” the Hindustan Times had quoted Pawan Khera, the party’s publicity chief, as having asked. “Just because a mother is trying to educate her son to do something right, where is the disrespect? This is neither disrespectful to the mother, whom we respect dearly, nor to the son.”

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday ordered 12 news outlets and independent journalists to take down allegedly defamatory content about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises, citing a Delhi court order from September 6, The News Minute reported.

Among those who got notices to remove such content were news portals Newslaundry, The Wire and HW News, journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ajit Anjum and Ravish Kumar, satirist Akash Banerjee, and content creator Dhruv Rathee.

The ministry ordered 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts to be removed. These included not just investigative reports, but also satirical videos and incidental mentions of the Adani Group.

Copies of the notice were also sent to Meta and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube.

The notice issued by the ministry cites the Delhi court order that temporarily restrained five journalists and three websites from publishing allegedly defamatory material about Adani Enterprises.

The journalists named in the order were Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi. The websites included in the order were paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au.

Barring Guha Thakurta, none of the others who got the ministry’s notice on Tuesday were party to the proceedings before the Delhi court, The Telegraph reported.

Court order

The matter pertained to a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars. Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the Adani Group.

Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had on September 6 passed an ex parte injunction in favour of the company, directing the defendants to expunge the material from their articles and social media posts. If expunging the content was not feasible, they must remove it within five days, the order said.

An ex parte order is one that is passed without hearing the other side in a legal dispute.

The court had clarified that it was not issuing a blanket order restraining the defendants from “fair, verified and substantiated” reporting and from hosting, storing or circulating such articles, posts or webpage links.

The Indian media has seen the refugee issue only as a source of occasional human interest stories, describing the plight of refugees and their struggles for survival. It is only recently that refugees have featured in the headlines in India when they became a political issue in the violence in Manipur. Then came the horrific story of a group of Rohingyas taken by the Indian authorities and thrown into the sea. This time the story made the front pages.

However, the arrests and detentions of the Rohingyas cannot be seen in isolation from the issue of refugee protection in India. It has to be seen in the context of national and international political developments – namely the rise of religious right political movement that has weaponised immigration and refugee issues for furthering their political agenda.

It is in this context we must see the latest arrests of the African refugees living in Malviya Nagar in Delhi. For the past week or more the police, often in plain clothes, have been picking up refugees from Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and, after taking their biometrics, sending them to infamous detention facility in Haryana called Lampur Seva Sadan.

The police have been picking up the men, leaving the women and children on their own, refugees say. Most of the women do not work, which leaves them very vulnerable.

Yousif Haroun, a refugee from Sudan who has an identity card from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, has sent several desperate emails to the UNHCR informing them of the recent arrests from Malviya Nagar. But they have offered no other advice than to tell him to lie low and change his mobile number.

Haroun has taken the advice and has been staying in different hospitals. But the police has barged into his home, where his wife with two very small children are living. These raids have left them traumatised. One child is barely two years old and the other is a baby of six months.

A young Yemeni refugee man said he was taken and beaten by the police. He asked them why he was beaten, they said he had come illegally to India. The police do not respect the identity cards issued by the UNHCR. The Yemeni man told the police that they should think of the Indians who are living in Africa because if news of these arrests goes to Africa there would be a reaction against Indians there.

The refugees from Africa say they face racialism on daily basis, One woman from Somalia said when they buy vegetables, they sell for higher prices and they find it difficult to rent accommodation. Many refugees had found ways of getting false Aadhaar cards, which allowed them to send their children to school, to access banking services, receive money from their relatives abroad through Western Union and get licences for two- wheelers.

However, refugees are now unable to get Aadhar cards. Under the new Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, hospitals and schools are obliged to report if anyone foreigner without a valid visa comes to their institution.

The police have also been visiting Vikaspuri and settlements around the area in Delhi where there is a concentration of refugees from Myanmar. They have barged into churches and threatened the refugees but so far not arrested any.

Some refugees in Delhi , such as Cynthia, a single mother with three children, had got sponsorships to the US. But their hopes of a a stable future were dashed when the US President Donald Trump stopped all refugee sponsorship programmes.

Yousif Haroun has applied to Australia for a humanitarian visa and has a receipt. But now he wonders what will happen if the police arrest him and detain him. What will happen to his young family?

What struck me about Haroun is his calm dignity and the way he spoke without anger and hatred. It reminded me of another Sudanese family who were sitting outside the UNHCR office protesting. I was there also protesting on World Refugee Day in June. As I handed over a memo to the UNHCR, I shouted at the police, saying I was ashamed of the way Indians were treating refugees. I heard a calm voice behind me say, “But we do not hate India. That is why we came here for protection.”

Yes, the African refugees came to India because of our reputation built over the years through the Non-Aligned Movement and in the days when international solidarity and friendship were the cornerstones of our foreign policy.

The National Human Rights Commission, which has been entrusted with the task of drafting a law to protect refugees in India, has not done its job. The UNHCR offers no succour to the refugees, not even offering basic financial assistance or food for children as it used to. Indian civil society is not concerned.

Haroun and other refugees who came to India in the hope of receiving a warm welcome will leave either with bitter memories of the racial and communal prejudice they faced as African Muslims. They live with unbearable stress and anxiety levels.

There is an alternative to these arrests and pushbacks of refugees: a law that protects refugees and at the same time has a way of documenting them. Giving them an opportunity to access education, health services and to find ways so they can contribute to our country. These refugees can become bridges of friendship and solidarity.

If we continue these arrests, detentions and deportations we will definitely create a situation when there will be a build-up of anti-India feelings and resentment and the Indian diaspora will and is already facing the consequences.

Nandita Haksar is a lawyer and author. Her most recent book, co-authored with Soe Myint, is Military Rule in Burma (1988-2024): Story of Mizzima Media: Born in Exile, Banned in Myanmar.

In August, Jwala, one of eight cheetahs translocated from Namibia to Kuno forest in Madhya Pradesh, went on a long stroll.

Crossing the forests of Kuno, she ventured north-west and entered the state’s villages. There, she paused to prey on cattle and goats. She then moved further, crossed the Seep river and entered Rajasthan. In all, she covered approximately 100 km, and entered tiger territory – the Ranthambore National Park.

Officials who were tracking her movements closely were not surprised by the long distance she travelled – after all, by June, just three months after being released into the wild from the enclosures in which they were initially kept, the mother and her four cubs had already become Kuno’s “most travelled cheetahs”.

But they worried about the risk to Jwala in tiger territory. So, they decided to intervene – they tranquilised her and brought her back to Kuno by road.

Since September 2022 when the cheetah project was launched, this was among several such instances reported in the media in which cheetahs wandered beyond Kuno, across the Rajasthan border or into human settlements, and were tranquilised and returned.

For the project, 20 cheetahs were flown from Namibia and South Africa to Kuno. Of those, 11 adults have survived, along with 16 cubs born in India. (One of Jwala’s cubs, which grew into a sub-adult, died on September 15 – this was the first such death that officials suggested could have occurred due to a fight with a leopard.)

As the project enters its fourth year, of the original adults, five are in soft bomas, or enclosures, while six, along with 11 cubs born in India, are currently free-ranging.

Experts say that this movement of the free-ranging cheetahs outside of Kuno is natural given the extent of home ranges that cheetahs are known to require. The action plan points out that Kuno has an area of 750 sq km to house 21 cheetahs – that is, it can hold three cheetahs for every 100 sq km. This, experts say, is severely inadequate.

In fact, a month after the cheetahs were released in Kuno in 2022, Arjun M Gopalaswamy, founder and chief scientist at Carnassials Global, a conservation consultancy, published a paper with seven other scientists, which suggested that the plan had “substantially overestimated cheetah carrying capacity” in Kuno.

“Nowhere in free-ranging conditions in Africa do cheetahs have small home ranges,” Gopalaswamy told Scroll. “Even in very high-prey areas, such as the Masai Mara study I was involved with, males ranged roughly 488 sq km-966 sq km and females about 461 sq km-720 sq km, with ranges shifting as prey migrated.”

Officials involved with the cheetah project had defended calculations of Kuno’s carrying capacity and critiqued independent experts. They suggested that such experts erred in extrapolating assumptions of cheetah home ranges and the animals’ use of space from African habitats to the Indian context. This comparison, they said, “lacked scientific rigour”.

But the most recent report of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the project’s implementing agency, confirms that indeed, in the last three years, several cheetahs have been using vast home ranges, extending far outside Kuno’s limits.

The report, prepared in 2024, provides specific details on the movements of two of the animals, Veera and Pawan. Using two different methodologies, it estimates that Pawan had used either around 800 sq km or around 1,800 sq km, while Veera had used either around 5,200 sq km or 7,400 sq km.

Gus Mills, a wildlife biologist who has worked on large carnivores, including cheetahs, in South Africa and Botswana for over 50 years, was a co-author of the 2022 study. “As we predicted, it’s being borne out now that Kuno could never contain a viable population of the cheetahs,” he told Scroll over phone.

Scroll emailed the National Tiger Conservation Authority, which is the project’s implementing agency, as well as the ministry of environment and forests and the head of Project Cheetah’s steering committee, seeking responses to criticisms about estimations of the space that the cheetahs would need.

This story will be updated if they respond.

Evidence of cheetah movement beyond Kuno

The National Tiger Conservation Authority’s 2024 progress report was not the first in which it noted that cheetahs were likely using ranges that extended beyond Kuno.

A 2023 progress report had calculated home ranges for all the project’s free-ranging cheetahs. It found that while the cheetahs travelled distances between 2 km and 9 km each day, the total area that they treated as their home ranges was between 3 sq km and 5,500 sq km.

The 2024 report also contains details about the extent to which and the directions in which the animals had wandered.

It notes that between December 2023 and June 2024, forest officials brought back cheetahs to Kuno four times. Twice, the animals walked up to Karoli and Baran in Rajasthan, about 50 km and 70 km from Kuno respectively. The other two times, they remained in Madhya Pradesh, but went beyond the forests of Kuno to Mohana and Joura in Madhya Pradesh, about 30 km and 60 km, respectively, from Kuno.

The report stated that retrieving cheetahs to Kuno was necessary to mitigate against the possibility of harm to both cheetahs and humans, since both could be at risk if an animal moved to a human settlement. It noted that in such situations, a veterinary team was quickly notified and would “intervene to safely capture and release the cheetah” within the boundaries of Kuno National Park.

Further, the report argued that apart from protecting both humans and cheetahs, this strategy “reinforces the cheetah’s natural homing instinct”.

Experts disagree. “Normally, when animals move out of an area, it’s a good sign that the area has reached whatever capacity is for that species,” Mills said. “Catching them and bringing them back is a futile exercise. And we can already see this in India, officials move them back and the cheetahs do not stay in Kuno’s area.”

Mills added that this movement of cheetahs after being brought back is not unique to Kuno – it has occurred even in habitats that are generally considered more suitable for the animals than Kuno.

For instance, even in Namibia, cheetahs translocated from one site to another did “extensive exploration movements” of several thousands of square kilometres during the first six months”, a 2023 letter by Namibian cheetah experts on the introduction of cheetahs to Kuno noted. The letter referred to various studies on cheetahs across the world and predicted that Kuno’s cheetahs would exhibit similar behaviour, and as a result would likely come into some conflict with livestock farmers.

Slow development of cheetah corridor

The problem of cheetahs wandering outside Kuno acquires particular urgency in light of the fact that authorities have not made significant progress yet with plans to establish other populations of the animal and link them to Kuno through corridors.

Such a system would allow the animals to develop a healthy metapopulation – a term that refers to a population of cheetahs in which individuals move between various sites naturally. Creating such a metapopulation is vital since it can ensure that even if individual local populations go extinct, the overall metapopulation persists.

Having such healthy interconnected forests could also allow cheetahs to move swiftly through the region with minimal interactions with humans, the tiger authority has noted.

Towards this end, in 2024, the tiger authority prepared a detailed “atlas” of the region’s “cheetah landscape”. Through maps, it identified all the nearby tiger reserves and national parks with details of land use, human density and livestock density.

But progress towards the creation of corridors seems slow so far.

The atlas identified three landscapes between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that could be suitable for cheetahs – Kuno and Gandhisagar, with their surrounding forests, and one larger landscape that connected the two. Together, these landscapes include 12 protected areas apart from Kuno: among them are Ranthambore and Mukundra Tiger Hills in Rajasthan, and Madhav in Madhya Pradesh. The total cheetah landscape envisaged in the atlas can span across an area of 17,000 sq km if the corridors between them are connected well with dense forests.

Among many “actions required” to develop this landscape, the atlas noted, was the clear identification of corridors that cheetahs could use to move between different forests within the landscape.

In a meeting of the National Tiger Conservation Authority this April, a standing committee member suggested that to follow through on this approach to the cheetah project, “a joint collaboration” would be needed between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In April this year, two adult cheetahs were moved from Kuno about 250 km away to another sanctuary in the state, Gandhi Sagar, to establish a second home there.

But in August, the Madhya Pradesh government refused to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Rajasthan government to develop corridors in the broader cheetah landscape. The state did not provide any reason for this refusal, only noted that it intended to sign the memorandum at a later date.

But some experts argue that in any case, having a broader cheetah landscape interconnected with corridors would be “inadequate”, because in this instance, the sizes of the individual forests are too small for cheetahs to establish themselves as source populations.

Gopalaswamy explained that in free-ranging conditions, cheetahs have a distinct spatial ecology from other big cats: males hold widely spaced territories, while females and non-territorial “floater” males use the intervening areas, altogether at very low densities across very large landscapes. “That’s the pattern these cheetahs will be trying to establish,” he said, “But as expected, they’re repeatedly running up against human settlements and livestock.”

He added, “Cheetahs need more than corridors. They require large, prey-rich landscapes, whether national parks or other wilderness areas, of that scale to begin with.”

A court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar district has issued notices to journalists Abhisar Sharma and Raju Parulekar to appear before it in connection with criminal defamation complaints filed against them by the Adani Group, PTI reported on Tuesday.

According to a press release by the industrialist Gautam Adani-owned conglomerate, the Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class in Adalaj directed Sharma and Parulekar to appear before it on September 20.

“The complaints point to a YouTube video uploaded on August 18, 2025, by Sharma alleging that thousands of bighas of land in Assam had been allotted to Adani and tying the company to a pattern of supposed political favours,” the news agency quoted the release as saying.

It added that the complaints filed against Parulekar pertained to his social media posts “since January 2025 making similar claims of land grabs, scams and undue benefits”.

Describing the allegations as “baseless and misleading”, the Adani Group claimed that an order issued by the Gauhati High Court on August 12, which was cited by the two journalists, made no reference to the conglomerate.

“The company also clarified that Mahabal Cement Pvt Ltd, the firm at the centre of the High Court case, has no connection with Adani in any manner,” PTI quoted the release as saying.

The case in the High Court pertained to the allocation of a plot of land measuring 2,000 bighas in Assam’s Dima Hasao district to Mahabal Cement Private Limited in October 2024. In November, the private company was allotted an additional adjacent plot measuring 1,000 bighas.

The Gauhati High Court had questioned the allotment of the 3,000 bighas, or about 4 sq km, of land to the private company to set up a cement factory, directing the state government to furnish the policy under which “such a huge chunk of land” could be given away.

Reports had claimed that Mahabal Cement Private Limited was linked to the Adani Group.

Mahabal Cement is a subsidiary of JK Lakshmi Cement.

In its press release, the conglomerate stated that the evidence placed before the Gandhinagar court included Sharma’s video and transcript, along with Parulekar’s social media posts. It also comprises the Gauhati High Court order from August 12 and other supporting records, the news agency reported.

If admitted, the cases may proceed to trial, where the two journalists can face imprisonment up to two years, fines, or both, it added.

The development comes days after a Delhi court on September 6 temporarily restrained five journalists and three websites from publishing allegedly defamatory material about Adani Enterprises.

The journalists are Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi, and the websites are paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au.

The matter pertained to a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises, alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars, Bar and Bench reported.

Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the Adani Group.

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Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, according to the United Nations. A commission of inquiry set up by the global intergovernmental organisation stated that Israel’s intent was “to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention”.

The acts were killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births. The commission recommended that member nations of the UN must stop the export of weapons and other equipment to Israel.

Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the report, describing it as “distored and false”. This came on the same day that the Israeli military launched a new ground offensive in Gaza City. In August, the UN formally declared a famine in northern Gaza, warning that it could spread. Read more.

The chilling parallels between famine in Palestine and colonial Bengal

The Supreme Court has directed the Maharashtra State Election Commission to hold local body elections in the state by January 31, 2026. The bench also criticised the state poll panel for its failure to adhere to an earlier timeline set by the court, stating that it was extending the deadline as a “one-time concession”.

On May 6, the court ordered local body elections in the state to be notified within one month and completed in four months.

The elections in 27 municipal corporations, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, 243 nagar parishads and 289 panchayats, have been stalled since 2022 amid a case in the Supreme Court pertaining to reservations for the Other Backward Classes. The terms for most urban and rural bodies in the state ended between 2020 and 2022. Read on.

Why three years without municipal elections has been punishment for Mumbai

Five persons were swept away in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun district on Tuesday after heavy overnight rainfall triggered widespread flooding and landslides. Schools in the district were closed for the day and red alert has been issued in parts of the state.

In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, three persons of a family were killed in Mandi district after a landslide. Heavy rainfall also led to flooding in the Son and Bharand drains in the district’s Dharampur area. In Shimla, a landslide near Himland buried several vehicles and blocked the main circular road. Read more.

The rain catastrophes in western Himalayas this year are not isolated events. Here’s why

The Karnataka High Court has set aside the election of Congress MLA KY Nanjegowda and ordered a recount of votes cast in his Malur constituency in the 2023 Assembly polls. However, the bench stayed its own order for a month to allow Nanjegowda to appeal in the Supreme Court.

The judgement came on an election petition filed by KS Manjunath Gowda, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate who had lost to Nanjegowda. The Congress leader had won the election by a margin of 248 votes. Read on.

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At least five persons were swept away in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun district on Tuesday after heavy overnight rainfall triggered widespread flooding and landslides, The Indian Express reported.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath said that several residents of his state were swept away in the Tons river in Dehradun. The Bharatiya Janata Party leader did not mention the number of lives lost in the incident.

“Instructions have been given to the officials to provide financial assistance of Rs 2-2 lakh to the families of the residents of Uttar Pradesh who lost their lives in this incident and to ensure that each mortal remains is respectfully transported back home,” Adityanath said on social media.

The India Meteorological Department issued a red alert early on Tuesday for Dehradun, warning of extremely heavy rainfall, flash floods and landslides in parts of the state.

#WATCH | Uttarakhand: NDRF and SDRF have started the rescue operations in Dehradun's Sahastradhara as cloudbursts in the area have led to heavy flooding, resulting in severe damage to houses and properties. pic.twitter.com/m1chlpkM2J

— ANI (@ANI) September 16, 2025

Rescue operations were being carried out in Dehradun by teams from the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and Public Works Department.

The State Disaster Response Force stated that it had rescued more than 200 persons, including students from the Shri Dev Bhoomi Institute.

In the Karligad area of Sahastradhara, several shops were washed away, and a portion of the Maldevta bridge collapsed, disrupting traffic on the Mussorie-Dehradun road, The Indian Express reported.

A section of a bridge in Premnagar on the Dehradun-Paonta National Highway also collapsed.

भारी बारिश से देहरादून- हरिद्वार राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग पर लालतप्पड़ क्षेत्र में सीमा डेंटल कॉलेज के पास पुल का हिस्सा क्षतिग्रस्त होने से यातायात बाधित हो गया है।

देहरादून ↔ हरिद्वार जाने वाले वाहनों को भानियावाला एवं नेपाली फार्म से डायवर्ट किया जा रहा है।

#UttarakhandPolice pic.twitter.com/QVg6OldIAn

— Uttarakhand Police (@uttarakhandcops) September 16, 2025

Dehradun District Magistrate Savin Bansal issued a circular, warning residents and tourists of the increased risk of landslides and flash floods and advising against travel to Mussoorie until roads are cleared, The Indian Express reported.

Schools in Dehradun were closed for the day in view of the prevailing conditions.

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the affected areas of Dehradun district.

देहरादून के केसरवाला, मालदेवता क्षेत्र में आपदा प्रभावित क्षेत्रों का स्थलीय निरीक्षण कर पीड़ित परिवारों से भेंट की। इस कठिन घड़ी में उन्हे हर संभव सहायता हेतु आश्वस्त किया है। pic.twitter.com/6wRlrHQq3b

— Pushkar Singh Dhami (@pushkardhami) September 16, 2025

“In this dire situation of disaster, relief and rescue operations are being conducted at a war footing,” he said in a social media post. “We are committed to the safety of every affected family.”

📍डीडीहाट में लोहार गांव के पास आज एक दुखद घटना में पहाड़ी खिसकने से एक मकान ढह गया, जिसमें दो महिला रह रही थी। एक महिला मकान से बाहर गई थी तथा दूसरी महिला व कुछ जानवर मलबे में दब गए है। थाना डीडीहाट पुलिस,SDRF, SSB, ITBP एवं फायर रेस्क्यू टीमें राहत एवं बचाव कार्य मे लगी थी pic.twitter.com/dANVfRQ3g9

— Pithoragarh Police Uttarakhand (@PithoragarhPol) September 16, 2025

Three killed in Himachal Pradesh

Three persons of a family were killed in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district after heavy overnight rainfall triggered a landslide on Monday, PTI reported.

The incident took place in the Nehri area of the Sundernagar subdivision in the district. Deputy Commissioner Apoorv Devgan told the news agency that two persons were rescued from the site.

Heavy rainfall also led to flooding in the Son and Bharand drains in the district’s Dharampur area.

In a post on social media, Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri said that “two dozen HRTC [Himachal Road Transport Corporation] buses and the bus stand complex” had been severely damaged due to the weather.

मंडी ज़िला के धर्मपुर में आई आपदा से एचआरटीसी की दो दर्जन बसों और बस अड्डा परिसर को भयंकर नुक़सान पहुँचा है।

धर्मपुर डिपो पूरी तरह बर्बादी के आलम में है, निगम का पम्प हाउस व वर्कशॉप शेड, दूकानें भी क्षतिग्रस्त हुए हैं। निगम के सभी कर्मचारी सुरक्षित हैं।

अधिकारी घटना स्थल पर… pic.twitter.com/FvAZKE9j6w

— Mukesh Agnihotri (@Agnihotriinc) September 16, 2025

“The Dharmpur depot is completely in a state of ruin, with the corporation's pump house, workshop shed, and shops also damaged,” Agnihotri said. “All corporation employees are safe. Officials are reaching the incident site to assess the situation, and the extent of the damage is being evaluated.”

In Shimla, a landslide near Himland buried several vehicles and blocked the main circular road, PTI reported.

The State Emergency Operation Centre said that 650 roads, including three national highways, remain blocked, while over 1,200 power transformers and 160 water supply schemes have been hit, the Hindustan Times reported.

Himachal Pradesh has witnessed heavy rains over the past few weeks.

More than 400 persons have died in the state since June this year, NDTV reported. The State Disaster Management Authority has said that 229 of these deaths occurred in rain-related incidents and 175 in road accidents.

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition filed by Bharatiya Janata Party Spokesperson Sanju Verma, who sought the rejection of a defamation suit against her by Congress leader Shama Mohamed, Live Law reported on Tuesday.

In an order on August 6, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav said that there were no grounds to reject the defamation suit. The issues raised by Verma pertained to matters that are to be examined during the trial and cannot form the basis for its rejection, Kaurav said.

The civil suit for defamation filed by Mohamed pertained to allegedly defamatory statements made by Verma about her during a television news show on August 20, 2024, Live Law reported.

In her application, Verma argued that no cause of action had arisen for Mohamed to institute the defamation suit.

The Congress spokesperson was a resident of Kerala, the BJP leader said. However, the memo of parties filed in the suit showed Mohamed as a resident of Delhi while the affidavit executed indicated that she is a resident of Kerala, Verma added.

The inconsistencies in the pleadings were unacceptable and rendered Mohamed’s case untenable, she argued.

In its August 6 order, the court noted that the defamation suit mentions that the debate containing the alleged defamatory statements against Mohamed was shared by several third parties on social media platforms.

The court said that the defamation complaint “on the face of it fulfils the necessary ingredients of the pleading” as required under Order VI and Order VII Rule 1(e) of the Code of Civil Procedure, Live Law reported.

While Order VI governs pleadings in general, Order VII Rule 1(e) requires that a complaint must state the facts constituting the cause of action and when it arose.

The court said that the communications that had been placed on record would prima facie indicate that “third parties had [begun sharing] the said defamatory statement against the plaintiff”, according to Live Law.

A cause of action had arisen for Mohamed to institute the civil suit for defamation, the judge observed, adding that the Congress leader was also a resident of Delhi.

“On the purported inconsistency with respect to the contents of the plaint and the affidavit of the plaintiff, the same seems to be that the plaintiff has residences both in Delhi and in Kerala and that the affidavit mentioned both,” Live Law quoted the order as saying.

It added: “But when the affidavit is considered in the right perspective, the same also mentions that the plaintiff also resides at Delhi. Additionally, the plaintiff has also brought on record various documents including the lease deed etc. to indicate that the plaintiff is residing in Delhi.”

The judge said that the ingredients for invoking the territorial jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court were prima facie met. Mohamed was entitled to institute the suit in Delhi, the court added.

The order said that Verma can establish facts, including that “maximum damage occurred elsewhere, that the plaintiff is in fact resident outside Delhi, or that the cause of action arose where any of the primary defendants reside”, during the course of the trial.

The Karnataka High Court has set aside the election of Congress MLA KY Nanjegowda and ordered a recount of votes polled in his Malur constituency in the 2023 Assembly polls, PTI reported on Tuesday.

However, the bench led by Justice R Devadas stayed its own order for a month to allow Nanjegowda to appeal in the Supreme Court.

The judgement came on an election petition filed by KS Manjunath Gowda, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate who had lost to Nanjegowda. The seat is in the Kolar district.

The petitioner had alleged irregularities in the counting process.

The constituency will become vacant if the Supreme Court does not intervene in the matter, according to PTI.

Nanjegowda had won the election by a margin of 248 votes. In the 2018 state polls, he had defeated KS Manjunath Gowda by a margin of 17,915 votes.

The Congress had won 135 seats in the 224-member Assembly in 2023. The BJP had won 66, followed by 19 of the Janata Dal (Secular).

The Supreme Court on Tuesday criticised the Maharashtra State Election Commission for its failure to adhere to an earlier timeline set by the court to conduct local body elections, Live Law reported. The court set January 31, 2026, as the final deadline.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi extended the deadline for conducting the polls as a “one-time concession”, the Hindustan Times reported. No further extension would be granted, it said.

The elections are for all local bodies in the state, including the zilla parishads, panchayats and municipal corporations.

If any other logistic assistance was required from the court, an application must be filed before October 31, Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The court also said that the delimitation exercise must be concluded by October 31, adding that it cannot be cited as a grounds to defer the polls.

The elections in 27 municipal corporations, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, 243 nagar parishads and 289 panchayats, have been stalled since 2022 amid a case in the Supreme Court pertaining to reservations for the Other Backward Classes.

This has meant that most urban and rural bodies in the state have been operated without elected representatives. The terms of these representatives for various bodies ended between 2020 and 2022.

On May 6, the court in an interim order directed local body elections in the state to be notified within one month and completed in four months. However, the court allowed the poll panel to approach it in case further time was required.

During the hearing on Tuesday, the counsel for the State Election Commission told the court that the delimitation exercise had been completed for the zilla parishads and panchayats but was going on for municipalities, Live Law reported.

The poll panel also cited the non-availability of sufficient number of Electronic Voting Machines, school premises because of board examinations and a delay in requisitioning staff as reasons for seeking more time.

However, the bench said that it was “constrained to observe that SEC has failed to take prompt action for compliance of this court’s directions in prescribed time schedule”. It added that board examinations were scheduled for March 2026 and cannot be grounds to defer the elections.

The court further directed the State Election Commission to submit within two weeks the details of personnel required to the state’s chief secretary, the Hindustan Times reported. The chief secretary must coordinate with other departments and ensure their availability within four weeks, it added.

The poll panel was also ordered to make arrangements and file a compliance affidavit regarding the availability of EVMs by November 30.

In its order, the bench said that the constitutional mandate of grassroots democracy through periodical elections to local bodies must be respected and ensured.

“Since the elected bodies have a prescribed term, no irreversible loss will be caused to those who want the appropriate amendment to the existing laws for inclusion or exclusion of certain OBC communities,” Live Law quoted the order as saying.

It added: “All those issues can be considered in due course of time, but meanwhile we see no reason as to why the elections of local bodies be not held” in Maharashtra.

The OBC communities account for more than 38% of Maharashtra’s population, a significant vote bank.

The Maharashtra government had announced 27% reservation for OBCs in local bodies. But in 2021, the decision was struck down by the Supreme Court because it breached the 50% limit it had set on quotas.

In 2022, the state government again announced 27% reservation in certain rural and smaller urban bodies based on the recommendations of the Jayant Kumar Banthia Commission, which was formed in March that year.

In August 2022, the Supreme Court ordered that status quo be maintained in the matter. The Banthia Commission report was also challenged through petitions filed before the court.

Since then, the matter has been under judicial review.

On May 6, the court directed that elections be held based on the quota matrix that existed before the report was submitted.

Also read: Why three years without municipal elections has been punishment for Mumbai

A 20-month-old female cheetah born in India to Namibian cheetah Jwala was found dead in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on Monday evening, the Deccan Chronicle reported.

Forest officials believe the sub-adult cheetah died following a fight with a leopard, in what could be the first recorded case of its kind since the launch of Project Cheetah, The Indian Express reported.

The young cheetah had been released into the wild with her mother and three siblings on February 21. She had separated from her mother more than a month ago and from her siblings just days before her death, Project Cheetah Field Director Uttam Sharma said in a statement.

Forest staff found the carcass at about 6.30 pm on Monday, Sharma said.

The exact cause of death will be confirmed by a post-mortem, he added.

Officials said that the remaining cheetahs at the national park, including the dead animal’s siblings, are healthy and being closely monitored.

Experts had warned that leopard encounters posed a significant threat to the success of Project Cheetah, which brought 20 African cheetahs to India from Namibia and South Africa, The Wire reported.

The late Vincent van der Merwe, an African wildlife expert, had in 2023 highlighted Kuno’s high leopard density. “The worst mortalities are still to come,” he had warned.

Madhya Pradesh has the highest leopard population in India, with 3,907 in the wild, according to the Union environment ministry’s estimate in 2024.

Following the death on Monday, Kuno’s cheetah population stands at 25. While the nine adults were imported from Africa, the 16 cubs were born in India.

Since 2023, at least 15 cheetahs have died.

In September 2022, cheetahs were reintroduced to India seven decades after the species was declared extinct in the country.

The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Before that, the wild cats were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot in the Sal forests in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.

Also read: The dark clouds over India’s cheetah project

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was on Monday stopped by the police and National Disaster Response Force personnel from visiting flood-hit villages along the India-Pakistan border in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, citing security risks.

Gandhi, who is on a tour of areas in the state affected by floods, was told it was unsafe to cross the swollen Ravi river by boat to reach the “zero line” villages, The Indian Express reported. Zero line villages are settlements that are situated along the border.

Punjab is reeling from its worst floods in nearly four decades, with 46 deaths reported in the past month. The state government has estimated losses from the floods to be Rs 14,000 crore.

The police halted his convoy at Makora Pattan village, from where Gandhi planned to take a boat to Toor village near the border, leading to an argument, the newspaper reported.

A video of the incident posted by Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring shows Gandhi questioning the restriction.

श्री @RahulGandhi जी पंजाब आए थे बाढ़ पीड़ित परिवारों का दुख-सुख बाँटने।

लेकिन डरी हुई @AAPPunjab सरकार ने भारी पुलिस बल लगा दिया और उन्हें रोक दिया।
यहाँ तक कि उन्हें नदी के टापू तक भी नहीं जाने दिया गया जहाँ लोग फंसे हुए हैं।

👉 जनता की मदद करने की बजाय@AAPPunjab उन लोगों को… pic.twitter.com/XRSDVKHGZI

— Amarinder Singh Raja Warring (@RajaBrar_INC) September 15, 2025

Pointing across the river, he asked a police officer: “You are telling me you cannot keep me safe on Indian territory? Is it not India?”

The officer replied, “We are always ready to protect you”.

To this, Gandhi said: “Are you saying the leader of Opposition cannot visit because Punjab Police cannot provide protection?”

Warring criticised Punjab’s Aam Aadmi Party government on social media, claiming that it had deployed a heavy police force to stop the group of Congress leaders.

Speaking to reporters, he added: “If Rahul Gandhi faces a threat from Pakistan while in India, and we’re not safe even on Indian soil, then where are we safe?”

Warring also alleged that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had urged Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge to stop Gandhi “on security grounds”, The Indian Express reported.

Bharatiya Janata Party publicity chief Amit Malviya accused Gandhi of throwing a “tantrum”.

“Rahul Gandhi landed in Punjab, a state Congress lost to AAP, to stage yet another drama,” he said on social media. “A responsible leader would have consoled victims, supported rescue efforts and strengthened administration.”

A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district has rejected the closure report filed by the police in a case against Rashtriya Janata Dal Spokesperson Priyanka Bharti for allegedly tearing pages of the Manusmriti during a television show in December, Live Law reported on Monday.

The Manusmriti is a Hindu text authored by an ascetic named Manu. It has been widely criticised for its gender and caste-based codes.

The debate had been organised by news channels India TV and TV9 Bharatvarsh in December.

In the closure report, the investigating officer said that the incident had taken place in Delhi, or some other place. Therefore, no crime had been committed within Aligarh’s jurisdiction, the officer argued.

Bharat Tiwari, the organisation secretary of the Rashtriya Savarn Parishad, had filed a complaint in December alleging that Bharti had insulted Manusmriti in a premeditated manner, by tearing it on live television. The act had hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community, he alleged.

Tiwari also accused Bharti of spreading false information about the scripture with the intention of inciting unrest in the country.

Based on the complaint, the Aligarh Police had registered a first information report against Bharti under a section of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings.

The order was passed on September 6 by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Rashi Tomar on a protest petition filed by Tiwari, Live Law reported.

In his protest plea, Tiwari claimed that the closure report was filed without proper investigation and the police officer had “not applied his legal mind”, The Hindu reported.

Tiwari also alleged that the officer had acted under Bharti’s influence.

The Aligarh court directed the station house officer of Rorawar police station to conduct further investigation in the matter and submit a fresh report, Live Law reported.

In February, the Allahabad High Court had refused to quash the FIR against Bharti.

In her petition, Bharti, who is also a PhD student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, had said that there was no intention or deliberate attempt on her part to insult any religious sentiments.

The court had declined her plea, observing that tearing a “holy book of a particular religion in a live TV debate...was nothing but prima facie, reflection of a malicious and deliberate intention of the petitioner”.

A truck helper who was allegedly abducted following a road rage incident was rescued on Sunday from the home of former Indian Administrative Service probationer Puja Khedkar in Pune, The Indian Express quoted the Navi Mumbai Police as saying.

Around 7 pm on September 13, a man named Prahlad Kumar was driving a concrete mixer truck in Navi Mumbai’s Airoli area, when the truck hit an SUV. Two persons from the SUV got into a fight with Kumar, after which they allegedly forced him into their vehicle and fled.

The SUV is in the name of Puja Automobiles, which is registered at the address of Khedkar’s bungalow in Pune, The Times of India quoted Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-1) Pankaj Dahane as saying.

On the basis of technical evidence, the police found that Kumar had been taken to Pune. A police team then went to the city and found him at Khedkar’s bungalow.

The Rabale police in Navi Mumbai filed a first information report and began an investigation.

Senior Inspector Balkrushna Sawant said that those at the bungalow did not cooperate with the police, The Times of India reported. “Khedkar’s mother and others in the house have been asked to report to the police station,” the official said.

The police have also summoned the driver of the SUV, who is said to be absconding.

In September last year, Khedkar was dismissed from the Indian Administrative Service after the Union Public Service Commission cancelled her selection. She was found to have wrongly availed of benefits meant for the Other Backward Classes and for persons with disabilities.

The Pune City police on Monday filed a first information report against Manorama Khedkar, the mother of former Indian Administrative Service probationer Puja Khedkar, for allegedly obstructing the investigation into the abduction of a truck helper, The Indian Express reported.

The helper, Prahlad Kumar, was abducted from Navi Mumbai following a road rage incident on Saturday and was rescued from Puja Khedkar’s Pune home on Sunday.

The police alleged that Manorama Khedkar helped the suspects escape, prevented the police from entering the house and even unleashed an aggressive dog to stop them from carrying out a search, The Indian Express reported.

The police have invoked sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to obstructing a public servant in the discharge of duty, causing the disappearance of evidence and obstructing the lawful apprehension of another person.

The road rage incident occurred around 7 pm on September 13, when a concrete mixer truck in Navi Mumbai’s Airoli area hit an SUV. After an argument broke out, the driver of the SUV told Kumar to accompany him to the Rabale police station in Navi Mumbai. Kumar subsequently went missing.

The complaint about the abduction was filed by Vilas Dhengre, who owns the concrete mixer, The Times of India reported. He said that around 8.30 pm on September 13, the driver of the truck, Chandrakumar Chavan, told him that Kumar was not answering his calls.

Dhengre and Chavan subsequently met in Kharghar near Navi Mumbai and began searching for Kumar.

On the basis of technical evidence, the police found that the truck helper had been taken to Pune. A police team then went to the city and found him at Puja Khedkar’s bungalow.

Senior Inspector Balkrushna Sawant said that those at the bungalow did not cooperate with the police, and that Manorama Khedkar had been asked to report to the police station.

Further, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-1) Pankaj Dahane told The Times of India that the SUV is in the name of Puja Automobiles, which is registered at the address of Khedkar’s bungalow in Pune.

The police are now trying to identify the two suspects and their link with the Khedkar family.

On April 13, 1994, while speaking at a ministerial meeting at Marrakesh before the signing of the World Trade Organization Agreement, Pranab Mukherjee representing India, as its commerce minister concluded by saying that India “negotiated in good faith” and that while it “preferred” that the results were different, it was looking forward to “the promise of the integration of the textiles and clothing sector into the General Agreement”.

The “price” paid by India to get broader access to the textile markets of the West was the signing of the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights – TRIPS. Back in the 1990s, the idea of linking trade in intellectual property, or IP, to trade in goods was alien to international commerce.

For example, the Berne Convention on the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which dates back to 1886, only applied to the protection of copyrights for member states. It was never tethered to the trade in international goods between the member states. The WTO Agreement changed this equation by linking the trade in goods to the protection of intellectual property.

Starting with the Ronald Reagen administration, in the mid-80s, successive American administrations across political lines decided to pursue a strategy of linking trade in goods to IP since the latter accounted for an increasingly large percentage of American exports. A key target at the time were countries like India which did not recognise patents for a large number of products at the times, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, metals etc. The Americans decided to use their economic might to force countries like India to amend their national laws to recognise American IP.

The “carrot” and “stick” approach of the American government, involved the promise of greater access to the American textile market, along with the threat of trade sanctions and withdrawal of trading privileges like the “Generalised System of Preferences”.

This sabre-rattling by the American administration back then drew widespread condemnation from many American economists who described it as the “economic equivalent of civilian bombing”.

Economist Jagdish Bhagwati petitioned George Bush Senior, then the US president, warning him that the economic threats being made against countries like India would revive the “image of the ugly American” in foreign countries. Nevertheless, India in 1994 eventually signed the TRIPs Agreement as part of the WTO Agreement and eventually amended its domestic intellectual protection laws so as to comply with TRIPs. The benefits of greater textiles exports to the western world, it was hoped, would outweigh the costs of reintroducing a patent law to protect foreign inventions in the country.

A lot has changed since Mukherjee’s speech at Marrakesh in 1994. Many of the “carrots” from 1994 have been withdrawn. In 2019, under the first Trump administration, the Generalised System of Preferences benefits offered to India were withdrawn on the grounds that India was not allowing American companies equal access to its dairy market.

Many sectors were already hurting due to this withdrawal, since many of India’s competitors in the developing countries continued to benefit for the Generalised System of Preferences privileges. The more recent decision by the Trump administration to impose an astounding 50% tariff on Indian exports, including on textiles and apparel threatens millions of jobs especially in the small and medium sector.

Further, Trump’s tariffs are also going to chill plans for future investment in Indian manufacturing by foreign investors. While the Generalised System of Preferences were a trading privilege that the Americans were not compelled to offer India, the targeted and discriminatory tariffs imposed on Indian exports to the United States, goes to the heart of the WTO Agreement, which requires parity of treatment amongst trading partners.

If the Americans are going to destroy the WTO consensus, any new trade negotiations should begin with reminding the Americans that the protection of their IP in India is a privilege extended by India in exchange for access to the American market. TRIPs was political dynamite for the Indian government back in the 90s. Some, like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch have already recommended, in April, that India walk out of TRIPs, way before the 50% tariffs were announced by the Trump administration.

The problem with that recommendation is that it risks drawing the ire of the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan and possibly South Korea, all of whom count on India protecting and enforcing their IP rights. India cannot afford creating more enemies while embroiled in a trade war with the United States. The free trade deal currently being negotiated with the European Union will most certainly fall apart if India were to walk out of the TRIPs Agreement.

An alternative strategy for India is to target the IP of specific American companies, with the aim of creating domestic pressure on the Trump administration. The first and obvious target should be pharmaceutical patents held by the largest American pharmaceutical and biotech companies that make up the membership of influential industry lobbies like PhRMA and BIO.

The Indian government could threaten to invoke its powers under Section 66 (can be invoked in public interest) or Section 157A (a national security provision which can be invoked in the case of international emergencies) of the Patents Act, 1970 to revoke pharmaceutical patents granted to influential American companies.

A second target could be American technology companies like Qualcomm which holds thousands of patents in the telecom space and uses them to extort royalties from smartphone manufacturers investing in India as part of the “Make in India” mission.

A third option is to block all American entities from patenting in India, by issuing a notification under Section 134 of the Patent Act to block citizens of the United States from seeking patents in India.

A fourth, informal, option is to whisper into the Patent Office’s ears that they must reject all patent applications filed by American companies and also allow for all oppositions filed against patent applications of American companies.

These threats to American patents should be accompanied with threats to the American creative industries which rely on copyright protection in India to earn their revenues. These include American companies marketing software (like Microsoft), movies, music, books and periodicals in India. A notification deleting the United States from the International Copyright Order, 1999, would put an end to copyright protection for American companies seeking to enforce their copyrights in India.

There is little for India to lose at this point by making these threats to American IP, since most Indian exporters were priced out of the American market, the moment Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Indian exports. What remains are India’s generic drug exports, which are currently exempted from tariffs, but it is well known that the Americans have few alternatives to Indian drugs.

In fact, reporting in the American media outlets like Pro Publica indicates that the Americans are so dependent on Indian generics drugs that they have continued to import drugs from even those facilities which were found to be in violation of good manufacturing practices by the USFDA because the Americans cannot find alternatives, in the short term, to Indian drugs in several therapeutic categories.

The only other industry exempted from American tariffs are electronics manufactured in India but it is only a matter of time before manufacturing, for the American market, shifts back to the United States. Trump has made it clear that this is one of his goals. The writing is clear on the wall.

For Indian trade negotiators, who are facing the impossible demands of the American to open up access to Indian agricultural and dairy market, the threat of rewriting Indian law on continued protection of American IP, offers some leverage, to push back and create domestic pressure on Washington by American companies who have profited handsomely in India due to the TRIPs Agreement.

Even if this gambit fails, India still benefits from saving domestic business from the expense of licensing American IP, be it patents or copyright in music or software, which in turn will result in fewer IP royalties exiting the country.

The writer is the author of Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas, (Oxford University Press, 2017).

The police in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur have registered a case against 150 to 200 unidentified persons following a protest outside the Sadar Bazar police station against an allegedly derogatory social media post about Prophet Muhammad and the Quran.

A 45-year-old man posted the allegedly derogatory remarks on Facebook on Friday, The Indian Express reported. He was arrested on the same day, and the post has since been deleted.

The man was booked under section of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to acts intended to outrage religious feelings.

Following his arrest, a crowd gathered outside the police station around 9 pm, shouting slogans and demanding strict action against the man.

The situation escalated when some protesters tried to enter the station and set two bikes on fire, PTI reported. The police baton-charged the protestors to force them to disperse.

A first information report has been filed against the protestors for rioting and obstructing public servants on duty, Superintendent of Police Rajesh Dwiwedi said.

“We have appealed to the people not to make comments against any caste, religion or anyone on social media,” the superintendent of police said, according to PTI. “No such posts should be made that may spoil communal harmony. However, our social media monitoring team has made a list of those who have posted or forwarded the derogatory post.”

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Sunday said that India was willing to hold negotiations with the United States on tariffs, CNBC reported.

“India is coming to the table,” Navarro said in an interview with the American news network. “Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi sent out a very conciliatory, nice, constructive tweet…and President [Donald] Trump responded to that. We’ll see how this works.”

On September 9, Trump said he was looking forward to speaking with Modi about trade in the coming weeks. Hours later, the Indian prime minister expressed confidence that the trade negotiations would “pave the way for unlocking the limitless potential” of the partnership between the two countries.

The two leaders made the statements in the backdrop of strained ties between New Delhi and Washington, mainly because of Trump having imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods and punitive levies for purchasing Russian oil amid the Ukraine war.

On Tuesday, a trade team from the United States, led by Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch, is expected to hold talks with Indian commerce ministry officials for a trade deal, The Indian Express reported.

Negotiators from India and the US had completed a fifth round of trade talks in Washington in July. However, talks between the two countries had subsequently been stalled after the United States’ 25% “reciprocal” tariffs took effect on August 7, and an additional punitive levy of 25% took effect on August 27.

Navarro, in the interview with CNBC on Sunday, reiterated the US administration’s claim that India has the highest tariffs on American goods among major countries. “They have very high non-tariff barriers,” the White House adviser said. “We had to deal with that, like we’re dealing with every other country that does that.”

The White House adviser also repeated his claim that India significantly increased its oil imports from Russia after the war in Ukraine began.

Navarro also referred to Modi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on August 31 and September 1.

“Watching Modi on a stage with China, which has been its long-time existential threat… and Putin [Russian President Vladimir Putin], that was an interesting stretch,” he told CNBC. “I don’t think he felt comfortable doing it.”

The Supreme Court on Monday said that the acquisition of animals by Vantara, the wildlife rescue centre run by Reliance Foundation in Gujarat’s Jamnagar, was prima facie within the regulatory mechanism, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and PB Varale said that the Special Investigation Team found no foul play.

The team was constituted by the court on August 25 to look into whether the centre complied with the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act and zoo rules, and statutes governing the acquisition of animals from India and abroad, particularly elephants.

The action had come while the court was hearing two petitions filed following the controversy over shifting an ailing elephant from a temple in Kolhapur to Vantara in July. The team had been directed to submit its report by September 12.

The investigating team, headed by retired Justice J Chelameswar, submitted the report to the court last week, the Hindustan Times reported. According to the report, the team was satisfied with the compliance and regulatory measures followed by Vantara.

During the hearing on Monday, the bench said: “We have gone through the summary of the report. It notes erudite regulatory compliance. It notes that stakeholders also presented views. Authorities have expressed satisfaction with the regulatory compliance.”

The court also said that the report will be made part of the order.

However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and advocate Harish Salve, representing Vantara, objected to this, saying that a “certain narrative” was being circulated and publishing the report would allow more speculation than necessary, Live Law reported.

Salve said that everything at Vantara was made available for the investigating team to look through.

“There are certain propriety concerns as to how the animals are being looked after, how do you keep these animals,” Live Law quoted the advocate as saying. “Large moneys have been spent with experts to develop these, there is some degree of commercial confidentiality.”

He added: “…this is something which is the rival of the world, this kind of facility. There is narrative which is trying to bring this down. If the whole record is put, we do not want the rest of the world to know because if tomorrow, in [The] New York Times there is another article or you will see in Time Magazine another article.”

In response, the bench said that the report would not be made part of the order.

“We will not permit anyone to raise such objections,” Live Law quoted Mithal as saying. “We are satisfied we the report of the committee...Whatever they have submitted, we will go by that. And all authorities will be free to take actions based on recommendations and suggestions. You are also bound, we will not permit anyone to raise questions again and again.”

Referring to the transfer of the ailing elephant from the temple in Kolhapur to Vantara in July, the bench said it will not go into it. No unnecessary allegation must be made now that an independent body has found no foul play, the court added.

“We should not unnecessarily rake up all these matters and raise hue and cry for the sake of that,” Live Law quoted Mithal as saying. “Allow certain good things to happen to the country. We should be happy about all these good things.”

He asked what the issue was if the acquisition of an elephant was done according to the law.

“See, if somebody wants to acquire an elephant and he takes care of the provisions of law and acquires, what is wrong in it?” the judge said. “You maintain your elephants in the temple and use is for procession, use for [Hindu festival] Dussehra. In Mysore, you do it.”

Allegations against Vantara

The first petition filed against Vantara had demanded that a monitoring committee be set up to look into alleged irregularities at the rescue centre, all captive elephants be returned to their owners and all wild animals at the facility be released back to the wild.

The second petition had challenged the transfer of the ailing elephant named Madhuri or Madhavi to Vantara.

For more than 30 years, the elephant had been at a Jain monastery, named the Swastishri Jinsen Bhattarak Pattacharya Mahaswami Sansthan Mutt, in Kolhapur’s Nandani village.

In July, the Bombay High Court ordered Madhuri’s rehabilitation to Vantara, and the Supreme Court subsequently upheld the order. The elephant was moved to the Reliance Foundation-run centre in Gujarat on July 30, sparking protests in Kolhapur.

On August 5, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that the state government will file a review petition in the Supreme Court seeking Madhuri’s return to Kolhapur. The chief minister added that Vantara had agreed to join the plea before the Supreme Court.

During the hearing on August 25, the Supreme Court directed the SIT to examine if Vantara complied with the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna, import and export laws for live animals, animal husbandry and veterinary standards, among others.

It had also ordered the SIT to conduct a “physical verification and inspection” of Vantara, making the secretary of the Gujarat forest department responsible for ensuring full cooperation.

In a statement responding to the formation of the SIT, Vantara had said that it was committed to “transparency, compassion and full compliance with the law”.

Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Basanagouda Patil Yatnal has been booked in two cases in less than a week for making allegedly provocative speeches about the Muslim community in the state, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

On September 10, the Maddur town police registered a case against Yatnal for remarks made during a Ganesha idol immersion in Mandya district. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including MP Pratap Sinha and MLC C T Ravi, were also present at the event.

During his speech, Yatnal, who was expelled from the BJP in March for six years over “anti-party” remarks, announced that he planned to launch a new political outfit called the “Karnataka Hindu Party,” with a bulldozer as its election symbol, The Indian Express reported.

The September 10 event was organised after communal clashes broke out on September 7 during a Ganesha procession, when stones were allegedly thrown.

On September 13, Tumakuru town police filed a suo motu case against Yatnal for another speech at a Ganesha immersion event, the newspaper reported.

Yatnal, the MLA from Bijapur City, allegedly said the “Karnataka government means Tipu Sultan government,” referring to the 18th-century Mysuru ruler. He claimed that only members of a minority community were receiving contracts, reservations and development benefits.

The first information report in Tumakuru was filed under sections related to promoting enmity between religious groups and delivering provocative speeches, The New Indian Express reported.

In recent years, while the Congress and several other parties have celebrated Tipu Sultan as a freedom fighter who resisted the British and modernised Mysore’s administration, several BJP leaders and Hindutva groups have claimed that he was “anti-Hindu” and accused him of religious persecution.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the University Grants Commission to consider suggestions received from stakeholders while finalising new regulations to curb harassment and discrimination in higher educational institutions, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi directed the University Grants Commission to finalise the regulations within eight weeks.

The order came while hearing a public interest litigation filed in 2019 by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, two students from marginalised communities who died by suicide after facing caste-based harassment.

Citing data accessed through a Right to Information reply, the petitioners – Radhika Vemula and Abeda Salim Tadvi – said the University Grants Commission had failed to take action against universities that did not comply with “equity regulations” notified in 2012.

“Even in the universities that have provided the data, the majority of the universities have claimed that they did not receive any complaints of caste discrimination,” the petitioners said. “Many universities also did not provide any details of the mechanism adopted by them to look into these complaints.”

In March, the Union government told the court that the University Grants Commission had prepared draft regulations addressing some of these concerns.

The Supreme Court in April said that the commission could finalise the draft rules and notify them, Live Law reported. It had also allowed the petitioners and other stakeholders to give suggestions that could be incorporated in the draft regulations.

On Monday, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymala Bagchi asked the University Grants Commission to consider suggestions such as a clear ban on discriminatory practices and disciplinary consequences for violations, and forming a grievance redressal committee in which at least 50% of the members are from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The court also asked the commission to consider a recommendation to not segregate hostels or classrooms based on entrance exam ranks or academic performance, and to digitise the scholarship process so that complaints could be tracked, Live Law reported.

Vemula, a PhD scholar at Hyderabad Central University, died in 2016 after allegedly facing discrimination on account of his caste. Tadvi, a medical student working at Mumbai’s Topiwala National Medical College, died in 2019 after allegedly facing casteist abuse from three colleagues.

Radhika Vemula and Abeda Salim Tadvi, in their petition, argued that existing “equity regulations” that the University Grants Commission notified in 2012 to address complaints of caste discrimination on campuses were inadequate.

Several Opposition parties on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court’s order staying several provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act, saying that the judgement goes a long way towards undoing the “mischievous intentions” underlying the original statute.

Earlier in the day, the court said that no case had been made to stay the entire amendment. However, several provisions, including one that requires a person creating a waqf to have been a practising Muslim for at least five years, were put on hold.

In its interim order, the court said that the five-year requirement would be suspended until state governments frame rules to determine how such a condition can be verified. Without such a mechanism, the provision could lead to arbitrariness, it added.

A waqf is an endowment under Islamic law dedicated to a religious, educational or charitable cause. Each state has a waqf board led by a legal entity vested with the power to acquire, hold and transfer property.

The court has been hearing a set of petitions challenging the Waqf Amendment Act, which critics say discriminates against Muslims and interferes with waqf property management. The Centre has defended the law, saying it aims to prevent misuse of waqf provisions to encroach on public and private land.

The Congress and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, among others, had challenged the
constitutionality of the Act in the court.

Following the court’s intervention on Monday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the interim order was a win for the constitutional values of justice, equality and fraternity.

The Rajya Sabha MP said that the order represented a “substantial victory not just for the parties that opposed this arbitrary law in Parliament but all those members of the joint parliamentary committee who submitted detailed dissent notes which were then ignored but now stand vindicated”.

The 2024 Waqf Amendment Bill proposed amendments to 44 sections of the 1995 Waqf Act, including allowing non-Muslims on waqf boards, restricting property donations and changing how waqf tribunals function. The bill was cleared by Parliament on April 4.

Ahead of its clearance in Parliament, the draft legislation was referred to the joint parliamentary committee in August 2024 after objections from the Opposition.

In January, the committee had cleared the bill after accepting proposals by members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance. Amendments proposed by Opposition MPs were rejected.

The committee then adopted the revised 2024 Waqf Amendment Bill after a vote, with 15 votes in favour of its draft report and 11 against.

In a social media post, Ramesh said that Monday’s order was an important one because it goes a long way towards “undoing the mischievous intentions” underlying the original statute.

Pawan Khera, the Congress’ media and publicity unit head, accused the Union government of making laws without any discussion, adding that the court had to intervene to give relief, PTI reported.

“This is not happening for the first time, in the last 10-11 years, many such cases have come up where relief was given due to the judiciary,” the news agency quoted Khera as saying. “Any government, elected government, elected by the votes of the people, when makes a law without any discussion, without consultation, then this happens.”

The Supreme Court’s order today on the Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025 represents a substantial victory not just for the parties that opposed this arbitrary law in Parliament but all those members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee who submitted detailed dissent notes which were then…

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 15, 2025

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin said the interim order was a major step towards “undoing the unconstitutional and illegal amendments” made by the Union government.

“The DMK has consistently opposed these amendments from the time the bill was introduced in Parliament,” Stalin said on social media. “After it became an Act, the DMK challenged it in the Supreme Court and succeeded, alongside others.”

The DMK was one of the petitioners challenging the Act.

The chief minister added that his government had also passed an Assembly resolution urging the Union government to withdraw the Waqf Amendment Bill, countering the “BJP’s attempt to misuse governmental power”.

“Today’s order strengthens the hope and trust that people place in the Hon’ble Supreme Court to safeguard the religious rights of the Muslim minority community and to uphold the Constitution,” Stalin added.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that his party’s opinion was that the Union government should not interfere in matters related to waqf, ANI reported.

“We hope the Supreme Court will do further justice,” he added.

#WATCH | Srinagar | On SC's order in the Waqf Amendment Act, Jammu & Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah says, "We have been saying that people of one religion are being targeted through this bill. It is good that the Supreme Court has also understood this. It will be good if other… pic.twitter.com/T6uVDXYagh

— ANI (@ANI) September 15, 2025

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah said that his party had maintained that persons belonging to one religion were being targeted through the Waqf Amendment Act, ANI reported.

“It is good that the Supreme Court has also understood this,” Abdullah said. “It will be good if other objectionable parts in this Act are also highlighted...”

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi said the interim order was “a positive step” but insufficient, the Hindustan Times reported.

“The five-year condition and the ban on the arbitrary power of the collector brought relief to the Muslim community,” Owaisi said. “But the appointment of non-Muslim members is still a matter of concern. Our fight will continue, as this law violates religious freedom.”

In its order on Monday, the court halted provisions that gave collectors powers to determine whether waqf properties encroached on government land and to alter revenue records, observing that executive officers could not be given judicial functions.

It also said that the number of non-Muslim members in the Central Waqf Council cannot exceed four. State waqf boards cannot have more than three non-Muslim members, the court added.

The Central Waqf Council has 22 members, while state waqf boards have 11 members.

The court further stayed a provision that allows the government to derecognise waqf land while a decision on encroachment is pending. It said that the disputed land cannot be affected until a court or tribunal decides on its title.

Meanwhile, the bench did not stay a provision of the law that allows a non-Muslim to be the chief executive officer of a state waqf board. However, it said that as far as possible, a Muslim should hold the post.

‘Expect 100% relief after final verdict’: Muslim board

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, also a petitioner in the case, welcomed the interim order while expressing hope that “100% relief” would be provided in the matter when the final verdict is delivered, ANI reported.

Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali, a member of the board, noted that their demand for a stay on the entire Act remained unfulfilled.

“The court has not given such an order,” the news agency quoted Mahali as saying. “However, the court has stayed many provisions, and we welcome the stay on certain provisions…We expect that whenever the final decision comes, we will be given 100% relief.”

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The Supreme Court has stayed several provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act, which had gone into effect from April 8. Among the provisions put on hold is one that required a person creating a waqf, or Muslim charitable endowment, to have been a practicing Muslim for at least five years.

The amendments brought in April allowed non-Muslims on waqf boards, restricted property donations and changed how waqf tribunals function.

On Monday, the Supreme Court said that the number of non-Muslim members cannot exceed four in the Central Waqf Council and three in state waqf boards. It also stayed a provision that allowed the government to derecognise waqf land while a decision on encroachment is pending. Read more.

With the Waqf Bill, the state brings a legal bulldozer to minority rights

The Supreme Court has said that the acquisition of animals by the wildlife rescue centre Vantara was prima facie within the rules. It cited a report by a Special Investigation Team it had appointed.

The centre is run by Reliance Foundation in Gujarat’s Jamnagar.

The court had formed the team on August 25 after an ailing elephant was shifted from a temple in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur to Vantara, sparking a row. In its report submitted last week, the team said it was satisfied with the compliance and regulatory measures followed by the centre.

While the Supreme Court initially said that the report would be made part of the order, Vantara objected to it, saying that a “certain narrative” was being circulated. It claimed that publishing the report would allow more speculation than necessary. The bench then held that the report would not be made public and that “it will not permit anyone to raise questions again and again”. Read on.

A Maoist leader carrying a reward of Rs 1 crore on his head has been killed in a gunfight with security forces in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district. With the death of Sahadev Soren, Union Home Minister Amit Shah claimed that “Naxalism has been completely eradicated” from the Bokaro region in northern Jharkhand.

Two other suspected members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), Raghunath Hembram alias Chanchal and Birsen Ganjhu alias Ramkhelawan, were killed along with Soren. Read more.

A dead body in the forest, injured children, and other unanswered questions about Bastar encounter

The Karnataka High Court has dismissed petitions against the state government’s decision to invite writer and activist Banu Mushtaq to inaugurate the Mysuru Dasara celebrations. The bench said that it was “not persuaded to accept that a person from a different faith inaugurating a function organised by the state would violate a legal or constitutional right of the petitioners”.

Mushtaq was the winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize. Mysuru Dasara is a 10-day state festival that begins with the Hindu festival of Navratri and ends on Vijayadashami, or Dussehra. This year, the festivities start on September 22 and conclude on October 2. Read on.

The Karnataka High Court on Monday dismissed petitions against the state government’s decision to invite writer and activist Banu Mushtaq, winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize, to inaugurate the Mysuru Dasara celebrations, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice CM Joshi said that it was “not persuaded to accept that a person from a different faith inaugurating a function organised by the state would violate a legal or constitutional right of the petitioners” or constitutional values.

Mysuru Dasara is a 10-day state festival that begins with the Hindu festival of Navratri and ends on Vijayadashami, or Dussehra. This year, the festivities start on September 22 and conclude on October 2.

A row had erupted in the state in August after Mushtaq was invited to inaugurate the celebrations.

Bharatiya Janata Party leaders had claimed that the Congress government in the state had chosen a woman from a community that did not believe in Hinduism, referring to Mushtaq being a Muslim.

Three petitions were also filed in the court, including one by BJP leader and former MP Prathap Simha, challenging the invitation to the writer, Live Law reported.

During the hearing on Monday, advocate S Sudharshan, representing one of the petitioners, referred to comments made by Mushtaq in a speech in 2023 that he claimed were anti-Kannada.

However, the court said that the comments were Mushtaq’s opinions. “Are you saying in this country people cannot voice their opinion?” Live Law quoted the bench as saying. “You tell us what is your constitutional right?”

Sudharshan also alleged that Dasara was predominantly a Hindu celebration. Only a person “having Hindu faith” could be invited to the inauguration, he claimed, adding that “per se public opinion is how could a person of other faith be invited”.

In response, the court said: “This is a decision by public representatives, and it will be addressed.”

The advocate also said that prominence was given to images and idols in the Hindu culture. Mushtaq has “no faith with vermilion and turmeric”, Sudharshan added.

“This is a secular state,” the court said in response.

Meanwhile, Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty, representing the state government, told the court that Mushtaq was an International Booker Prize winner. “People of all religions participate in this [Mysuru Dasara] function,” he said. “This is a festival of the state.”

In May, Heart Lamp, Mushtaq’s collection of Kannada short stories translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, became the first Kannada book and the second from India and South Asia to win the International Booker Prize. It was also the first collection of short stories to receive the award.

The advocate general said that the committee to invite a chief guest for the event comprised 62 persons of high standing, including MPs and MLAs belonging to all parties.

“It is quite hurting to say that she [Mushtaq] is anti-Hindu,” Live Law quoted Shetty as saying. “Such statements cannot be made. Ultimately, this kind of feelings about/against Hindu-Muslim such fears should be nipped in the bud.”

The advocate general also told the court that Simha had earlier shared a stage with a Muslim invitee.

“In 2017, [poet and writer] Dr Nisar Ahmed was invited and petitioner Simha had participated in the celebration then as MP,” Live Law quoted Shetty as telling the bench. “It is a state function and reducing it to religious function cannot be allowed.”

Sudharsan, however, said that Ahmed had written poems for the Hindu deity Krishna and had also not made any anti-Kannada statements.

The Delhi Police on Monday arrested a woman who was allegedly driving a BMW car that collided with a motorbike, killing a Finance Ministry official a day earlier, PTI reported.

Navjot Singh, deputy secretary in the ministry’s Department of Economic Affairs, and his wife were returning home on Sunday when the BMW allegedly driven by the woman, Gaganpreet, crashed into their motorbike, The Indian Express reported.

Singh was killed in the accident that took place near the Delhi Cantonment metro station. His wife was seriously injured.

Gaganpreet’s husband, Parikshit Makkar, and their two children were in the car when the crash took place.

VIDEO | A senior official of the Union Ministry of Finance died and three people, including his wife, were injured after a BMW allegedly hit his motorcycle near Delhi Cantonment metro station on Ring Road earlier today. Visuals from the spot.

(Full video available on PTI Videos… pic.twitter.com/gS78rY3CmB

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 14, 2025

According to the police, Gaganpreet and her husband drove the injured couple to a hospital in GTB Nagar after the collision, which is nearly 17 km from the crash site, The Indian Express reported.

“It has been revealed that the hospital owner is known to them, as Gaganpreet’s parental home is in the same locality where the hospital is located,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

Gaganpreet and Makkar were also injured in the accident and had been admitted to the same hospital. After Gaganpreet was discharged on Monday, the police took her into custody, ANI reported.

A case was also registered at the Delhi Cantonment police station under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, acts endangering life or personal safety of others, rash or negligent driving and attempting to destroy evidence, The Indian Express reported.

A Maoist leader carrying a reward of Rs 1 crore on his head was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district on Monday morning, said Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Along with Sahadev Soren, a member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), two other suspected Maoists – Raghunath Hembram alias Chanchal and Birsen Ganjhu alias Ramkhelawan – were also killed during the gunfight.

In a social media post, Shah claimed that “Naxalism has been completely eradicated” from the Bokaro region in northern Jharkhand.

“Soon, the entire country will be free from the problem of Naxalism,” said the home minister.

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

On September 7, another Maoist commander, Amit Hansda alias Upton, was killed in a gunfight with security forces in West Singhbhum district.

Hansda, a zonal commander of the CPI (Maoist), reportedly carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head.

Till July, 21 suspected Maoists have been killed across Jharkhand in 14 gunfights with security forces, The New Indian Express reported.

In the Bastar region of neighbouring Chhattisgarh, more than 400 suspected Maoists had been killed in 2024-’25, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai had said in June.

In 2024, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces across Chhattisgarh.

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