The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the deportation of four women declared foreigners by tribunals in Assam, Live Law reported.

The bench issued notice to the Centre, the Assam government and the Election Commission, seeking their reply on the separate pleas within a month, The New Indian Express reported.

The pleas

Saleha Khatun, has been held at the Goalpara detention camp since March 2, The Indian Express reported. The 50-year-old said that a tribunal at Darrang had declared her a foreigner.

The Gauhati High Court had upheld the order by the foreigners tribunal.

The foreigners tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship based on lineage and a 1971 cut-off date. They rely primarily on documents submitted by persons to establish their family’s residency in Assam or India before 1971.

Those declared foreigners by the tribunals have the option to appeal the decision before the High Court or the Supreme Court.

Foreigners’ tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring persons foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

Saleha Khatun stated in her plea that she had submitted evidence before the tribunal showing that she is the daughter of Indian citizens who were in the pre-1971 voter list of Nagabandha village in Nagaon district, Live Law reported.

The woman also stated that she had submitted other evidence such as linkage certificates, her family’s electoral documents and the verbal testimony of her sister to establish continuity of her residence and lineage.

However, the tribunal had in December rejected her claim on the grounds of human errors, and discrepancies in the family details and age, Live Law reported. It also rejected her linkage certificates because the authority that issued the certificate had not been examined, the legal news outlet reported.

Sarbhanu Begum, another woman who is also at the detention camp, stated in her petition that her father’s name was in the pre-1971 voter roll of Barkur village in Darrang district, Live Law reported. She added that she had also submitted documents and testimonies of witnesses to establish continuity of her residence and lineage.

The tribunal had reportedly rejected her claim because of a spelling mistake in her name and a discrepancy in an electoral detail relating to her husband’s name.

Musstt Nureza Begum stated that she was illiterate and had signed a register at the tribunal upon receiving a notice, according to Live Law. She argued that she had been declared a foreigner by the tribunal in an alleged ex-parte order, or a judgement issued by a court without notifying or hearing the opposing party.

The High Court had rejected the pleas by Sarbhanu Begum and Nureza Begum seeking the quashing of the tribunals’ orders.

Basiram Nessa stated that she had submitted as evidence a voter list from 1965 that included the name of her grandfather and one from 1989 mentioning her father. Nessa said that she had also submitted documents issued by the village chief certifying that she is the daughter of Zakir Hussain and had married Osman Gani, Live Law reported.

However, the tribunal held that she had failed to prove that she was the daughter of Hussain.

She had approached the Supreme Court alleging that the tribunal had not considered the documents she had submitted. In 2020, the court allowed her to file a review petition before the High Court, where she did not get a relief.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter next on July 16.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

On Saturday, a day after the authorities demolished shops at Kolkata’s famous Mullick Ghat flower market, vendors tried to pick up the pieces.

It was part of an anti-encroachment drive that the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party government in West Bengal had started in several parts of the city.

The demolition at Mullick Ghat, situated under the Howrah Bridge and dating back to the 1850s, drew a great deal of attention. Mullick Ghat is one of Kolkata’s best-known landmarks and among the country’s largest wholesale flower markets.

Every day, about 4,000 flower vendors and wholesalers do business here. On Friday, more than 200 makeshift shops built on government land were demolished, reported The Times of India.

“The objective of the drive was to reclaim public space and ensure free movement in the area,” a police officer who was part of the exercise told the newspaper. “We had informed the occupants of the illegal structures beforehand about the demolition drive and many of them had cleared out their belongings.”

Several shopkeepers said that they had been informed about the demolition drive a week before.

On Saturday, many flower sellers told Scroll about their long association with the market. One claimed that his family has been selling flowers at Mullick Ghat for over a century. “My forefathers used to come here to sell flowers,” he said.

He added that many of the vendors travel from places such as Chengail, Mecheda and Kolaghat, located roughly 40 km to 70 km from Kolkata, to sell flowers at the market.

Another vendor claimed that some of the demolished structures were being used not only for business but also as residential spaces. “People were cooking, sleeping and running shops from the same place,” he said.

The owner of a shop selling miscellaneous said that traders had appealed to the government through their market committee not to carry out the demolition drive. He mentioned that they had sought formal permission to operate in the area in 2014 and also before the 2026 Lok Sabha election.

“We are scared because of the demolition that was carried out yesterday,” he said. However, he added that traders had been assured that the ruling government would hear their concerns and that necessary relocation arrangements would be considered.

He said representatives had met BJP leaders yesterday, including West Bengal Cabinet Minister Tapas Roy, regarding the issue.

Not everyone is opposing the action. One customer who has been sourcing flowers from Mullick Ghat for around 30 years for his small business said overcrowding had become a problem. “Before, export and import used to happen directly from this market, but due to excessive congestion, it stopped,” he said. “It affects the packing and quality.”

Another customer said, “These things are needed for development.”

The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as a satirical political campaign, launched a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Saturday to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged mismanagement in the conduct of competitive exams.

The protest began after the campaign’s founder Abhijeet Dipke arrived in the national capital from the United States.

Dipke said that the only objective of the protest was to demand Pradhan’s resignation.

“It has been a month since we started demanding Pradhan’s resignation on social media,” PTI quoted Dipke as saying. “But these individuals are so shameless that instead of taking action, they have been focused on other distractions, like hacking our accounts and getting our posts deleted.”

He said: “You may be able to delete our posts, but you cannot erase us from this space.”

Dipke said that protests will be held across the country if Pradhan did not resign by 5 pm on Saturday, The Indian Express reported. “The cockroach will return next Saturday,” he added.

“For the past 10 to 12 years, these people have kept us trapped in Hindu-Muslim politics,” The Quint quoted Dipke as having told the protesters, asking who had benefited from it.

“Did Hindu-Muslim politics get jobs for anyone in the country?” he asked.

Dipke accused the government of focusing on the organisation’s social media activity instead of responding to its demands.

The campaign was “not a planned party”, he said, adding that it was “students’ outrage”.

“My mother was very scared that this government would throw me in jail,” he said. “In this country, every mother feels this fear when their child raises their voice against this government.”

Earlier in the day, the police had stepped up security at Dipke’s home in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city, PTI quoted a police officer as saying.

Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk also participated in the protest.

The Delhi Police on Saturday granted permission for the Cockroach Janta Party to protest at the site till 5 pm. Officials had earlier said that no request had been received from the group and that more than 1,000 personnel had been deployed in the national capital.

Some persons were detained for shouting slogans against the Cockroach Janta Party, The Hindu reported.

“लोग कहते हैं आंदोलन, धरना प्रदर्शन और जुलूस निकालने से क्या होता है ?
इससे यह सिद्ध होता है कि हम जीवित हैं !”

सरकार के लिए हम हो सकते हैं कीड़े मकौड़े, लेकिन हम जीवित है और अपने हकों की लड़ाई लड़ने के लिए सक्षम है #cjpprotest pic.twitter.com/pDfenVCHFy

— Cockroach is Back (@Cockroachisback) June 6, 2026

देश का युवा अब डरेगा नहीं लड़ेगा

कॉकरोच डरते भी नहीं, कभी मरते भी नहीं #cjpprotest pic.twitter.com/BxUMDJv6Sl

— Cockroach is Back (@Cockroachisback) June 6, 2026

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Nachiket Deuskar.

Also Read:

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

• Interview: ‘Good chance that BJP will co-opt Cockroach Janta Party’s demands’

India went through great trouble to internationally adopt the official rupee symbol – ₹. One would imagine that a publication of Scroll’s standing would be able to use it correctly. It is not even a BJP-era invention, so it need not trigger Scroll’s usual fear of “all BJP action bad”.

Before taking up the burden of correcting everyone and yelling about the sky falling in each article, perhaps the editors could begin their actual job – editing properly. – Sachi Poudyal

‘Propaganda’ on Bangladesh barrage

The writer took the example of India suspending the water treaty with Pakistan (“As Bangladesh approves Padma Barrage, India must confront failure of its Neighbourhood First policy”). But some things should have been included, like multiple wars raged by Pakistan, thousands of terrorist attack on Indian civilians by Pakistan and how the country is still taking a bigger share of water flowing from Indian territory.

By assuming that India will do the same to Bangladesh, it means that Bangladesh might also make same the mistake like Pakistan did of terrorist attacks and waging war. If this is the case, then Bangladesh will face the consequences.

Why doesn’t the article give the full picture. The dam will be good for Bangladesh so they are building it. But India has in fact shown a lot of patience and still was backstabbed. This not journalism but bolstering your propaganda and agenda on readers. – Vishu, not your member and never will be

Detention of children going to madrasas

This report is heart-wrenching (“How false trafficking charges led to detention of hundreds of Bihar children going to madrasas”). Since the BJP government came to power, there has been an increase in the double standards against the Muslims of the country.

The treatment of the innocent madrasa children should make anyone worry. How can the police ask if innocent children are becoming “terrorists”? This environment is a warning bell for the future of the country and the survival of its secularism and integrity. – S Mujahid Husain

Bengal seats and vote counting

These allegations are not founded on the truth but on some presumptions (“How slow counting of votes in Bengal helped BJP win a lost seat from Trinamool”). Nowhere in the report have I read that the vanquished candidate is contemplating an election petition. We should remember that the nature of all candidates is the same. The defeated candidate should file an election petition challenging the counting process and election result. – SK Paul

***

Interesting assessment but not what I would call a deep dive (“In half the seats BJP won in Bengal, total SIR deletions outnumber victory margin”). The SIR deletions were in two categories: 1) Absent shifted, Dead, Double, which formed almost 60 lakh, and 2) 27 lakh voters whose appeals could not be heard on time.

I would like to see how many of these voters are there across constituencies, the Hindu-Muslim ratio among them and what would have been the outcome and in how many seats if they all had been allowed to vote, and we assume they would have voted for the Trinamool Congress. – Manoj Mohanka

The hard ‘na’

It is obvious that both forms of “na” are part of the barakhadi and I have observed that the “hard” na is more prevalent in the south compared to the north (“Rejoinder: The retroflex, like the Marathi ‘na’, has little do with caste”).

I grew up in Mumbai and the hard na was used quite commonly – and we did not live in a brahmin-only community. As for the name Pranav, I have never heard it pronounced with the soft na.

I remember there used to be a television serial called Amchi Maati Amchi Manse where people from different regions of Maharashtra would sit together and talk in their own dialects.

I do admit dialects that can and are used as indicators of caste and class, which was the entire premise of the famous movie, My Fair Lady. – Gururaj A Rao

***

In our house, we have different pronunciations – I was brought up in Chennai and speak tamil but my wife and relatives have not studied Tamil properly, so their pronunciation is bad. Where does caste come into all this? – Vishwanath Giriraj
***

I am very happy to read the rejoinder. ln Kannada, mahaprana sounds are now regarded as obsolete and elitist. The phonemic element is disregarded.Why lndians mispronounce Ganesha is a mystery. – Vimala Rao

***
Thank you for addressing this. – Vibhor Deshmukh

Praise for books, poems

What an honest, touching chapter. I enjoyed reading it whilst stuck waiting in Bengaluru traffic. Gratitude in abundance (“‘A butterfly will still be beautiful’: Ruskin Bond, 92 today, writes about his wartime childhood”)! – Joya Lall

***

Readers of Ruskin Bond's books are accustomed to his old, smiling face. Most who love him are uncomfortable to come across the frail, tired face of Bond at 92. It would be appreciated if readers find his face at a younger age with this beautiful article. – Prabhas Lahiri

***

I am speechless (“‘I’m fine, because that’s what the world wants to hear’: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s lament for Gaza”. The poems show poet Nongkynrih's capacity as a poet who is “too full of the milk of human kindness." His dissenting voice speaks for itself. He is one of the best poets writing in English in India right now. – Somnath Barui

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said that 1,174 Indians have been deported from the United States so far in 2026.

The figures were shared by ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal during the weekly media briefing. He said that 3,576 Indians were deported from the US in 2025.

“In matters of migration and mobility, discussions are ongoing between both sides.” he said. “Both sides are working on how to curb illegal migration and try to stop it.”

He added: “At the same time, they are also ensuring that legal migration is not adversely affected.”

Since US President Donald Trump came to power for a second term in early 2025, his administration has launched a crackdown on immigration, and has carried out mass deportations.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The High Commission of India in London on Friday described as “unacceptable” an audience member’s question about dissent in India at an event addressed by Chief Justice Surya Kant during his visit to the United Kingdom

Kant delivered a lecture titled Artificial Intelligence and International Law at Birkbeck, University of London, on Thursday, followed by an interaction with the audience.

Videos shared on social media showed an audience member attempting to ask a question about the “growing hostility to dissent with India”. The moderator interrupted the audience member, saying that the question was not related to the event’s theme.

In a statement, the High Commission said: “Such indecorous audience behaviour is unacceptable and inconsistent with respectful engagement that should govern public discourse.”

It added that “differences of opinion are a natural part of a democratic society…however, they must be expressed in a manner that is civil and respectful”.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Penguin Random House India has decided not to distribute graphic novelist Joe Sacco’s nonfiction book on the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, The Indian Express quoted the head of the publishing house as saying.

The Once and Future Riot, first published in October 2025, is based on Sacco’s visit to Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh a year after the riots.

Communal violence had erupted in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013 after Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including state minister Suresh Rana, former party MLA Sangeet Som and former MP Bharatendra Singh allegedly made inflammatory speeches.

At least 60 persons were killed and thousands of Muslim families were displaced in the riots that followed. There were also several reports of sexual assault and abuse in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts.

Sacco’s book was expected to be distributed in India starting August.

Chief Executive Officer of Penguin Random House India Gaurav Shrinagesh told The Indian Express that the title was red-flagged during a pre-check and legal scrutiny process.

“We had highlighted certain things on the Joe Sacco title but [Penguin United Kingdom] did not get back to us,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “One problem was a map in the book showing inaccurate boundaries of India. Besides that, we had raised some content questions and asked for citations which never came.”

He added: “We are very clear about this: if we know there is an inaccurate map and no changes are forthcoming, we will not do it. We have decided there will be no distribution of the book due to these red flags not being attended to.”

Sacco is the award-winning author of Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also Read: The Joe Sacco interview: ‘If my work is going to be journalist, it needs to be representational’

On Tuesday evening, 50-year-old B Anandababu stood outside the Chief Minister’s Mini Stadium in Kolathur, watching his teenage son play badminton. Dressed in a red t-shirt and jeans, Anandababu said his family had voted for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam for decades. The stadium, which offers badminton and swimming facilities, is one of several development projects sanctioned by former Chief Minister MK Stalin during his tenure as Kolathur’s MLA.

For Anandababu, Stalin’s defeat in the state elections in April from Kolathur was deeply upsetting. When the former chief minister visited the constituency the day after the results were announced, Anandababu deliberately stayed away. “I could have waited to see him before going to work, but I didn’t,” he said. “I felt like crying that day.”

Stalin lost the seat to VS Babu, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam candidate, by a margin of just over 8,000 votes. His visit was meant to thank constituents he had represented for three consecutive terms. Until the TVK won the elections, party leader Vijay was best known as a movie superstar.

A month after the results, the public projects that Stalin left behind in brick-and-mortar continue to draw crowds. Behind the badminton courts, the swimming pool was packed with children learning to swim, churning the water as instructors guided them through their lessons.

Many projects bear Stalin's smiling portrait alongside the slogan, “Engal Mudhalvar, Engal Perumai” (Our Chief Minister, Our Pride). Residents say these initiatives have helped transform their ooru or neighbourhood into what many describe as a model constituency.

“My son plays badminton here, my wife walks in the park near the temple, and I use the marriage hall for some events,” Anandababu said, listing how much his neighbourhood has become public friendly. “Have you seen the marriage hall? It is as big as the Taj Mahal. It’s a real ‘wow’ moment.”

Scroll visited the Perarignar Anna Marriage Hall, named after the DMK founder CN Annadurai, where preparations were underway for the wedding of two Kolathur residents, Jagan and Mahalakshmi. The building was every bit as imposing as Anandababu had described.

The election results delivered a stunning upset for the DMK and ushered in a change of government in Tamil Nadu after a decades-long Dravidian duopoly. Since 1977, power in the state had alternated between the DMK and AIADMK.

More than a month later, the outcome continues to dominate everyday conversations. “My son has a black dot on his forehead because his grandmother insists he wear one like Vijay, whom she sees on television every day,” Anandababu said. Since taking office, Chief Minister Vijay has frequently appeared in a black suit with a black dot on his forehead, a distinctive look that has begun to catch on among some of his admirers.

Across the road, outside Sampath Hairstylist, R Elappan, 71, a resident of GKM Colony, insisted that Stalin had transformed his “ooru” from a forgotten corner of the city into a thriving neighbourhood.

“We shouldn’t say Stalin lost. That’s the wrong word,” he said. “Tamil people have a tendency to give political parties a chance for only five years. We like going back and forth between parties. Think about the Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa days. Just as Stalin got only five years, Vijay will also only get five years.”

Elappan, who said his admiration for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had made him a Bharatiya Janata Party supporter, nevertheless voted for the DMK in state elections. When he was young, he had once seen Stalin as a college lad and had taken a liking to the then young politician. He even found a similarity, both him and Stalin, he said, moved around with a group of friends.

“Stalin has worked hard for this constituency and that’s why I respected him and voted for him,” he said. “He has done a lot specifically for Butmedu,” he said, referring to the neighbourhood by its old name.

Like many Kolathur residents, Elappan pointed in different directions to describe what once stood there – usually a swamp, a vacant plot or an overgrown field – and what has replaced it: swanky public facilities. “That mini stadium over there used to be swampy land where water would stagnate. Look at it now!”

Around Elappan, his friends chipped in about playgrounds, study centres, a market complex, bus stands, hospitals, schools, colleges and even a gym exclusively for women.

But Elappan, after listing Stalin’s accomplishments, grew reflective about the DMK’s defeat in this constituency. “The DMK is responsible for its own loss,” he said. “They didn’t do enough fieldwork during the elections. After winning here three times, they became careless and complacent. They assumed they would win again.”

He said he recalled seeing Stalin when he had visited Kolathur the day after the results. “He looked sad,” Elappan said. “But what’s the point? It is like the saying, ‘kan ketta piragu Surya Namaskaram’” – offering prayers to the sun after losing one’s eyesight.

On Kolathur’s streets, reactions to the election results and the new government varied. Visalakshmi, 62, a flower seller, was annoyed that officials threw her flower cart aside each time Stalin visited the constituency over the past five years.

In protest, she voted for Vijay.

Babu, a bicycle repairman, took the opposite view. In his opinion, Stalin had done enough to deserve another term.

Others offered various theories for the upset. Some argued that the DMK had not spent enough money to secure voter loyalty, or that the BJP had propped up Vijay in order to split the Dravidian vote base. A few blamed social media and the internet, saying children influenced their parents’ vote.

R Sridhar, who rents out chairs and tables for functions, loudly declared that he had voted for “Thalapathy”. “Not Thalapathy Vijay,” he clarified with a laugh. “I mean Stalin. Vijay is a good actor but that is different from politics!”

Outside a sleek co-working space called “Mudhalvar Padaippagam”, Ramesh*, appreciated the public projects but questioned their timing. He pointed out that most had been inaugurated a year ago eyeing the elections.

“People say most of these projects came up only in the last year but I’d say that is fine given the time it took to build them,” he said. “But the condition of the roads were truly pathetic and that could have been addressed much earlier. Fixing roads is a three-month long job, but the roads were only fixed last year too.”

At the public park on Amman Koil Street, Jasmine* sat watching a group of women exercise at the outdoor gym. Nearby, two children set themselves a finish line. “Let’s race till that DMK leader’s photo!” one shouted, as they sprinted towards Stalin’s smiling face. In the park’s pond, swans preened themselves, plucking mites from their feathers as instrumental music drifted from overhead speakers. Jasmine was a member of the Ladies Gym that was closed for the day and had come to join several of Kolathur’s walkers around the park.

“Are cinema and politics the same thing? Sometimes I feel like we are living in a movie these days,” Jasmine said. “People who know nothing about politics have voted for TVK. I was heartbroken when Stalin lost and Vijay became chief minister.”

As a friend joined her on the park bench, Jasmine gestured around at the landscaped grounds. “People keep saying they want change,” she said. “Look around you. This place used to belong to pei, pisasu, palli and pambu [ghosts, lizards and snakes] but now it has beautiful swans and birds.”

She recalled avoiding the road beside the park on her way to church because it was so deserted and poorly maintained. “What does maatram [change] mean?” she asked. “Apart from everything you see around you, what more do people want?”

Later that evening, the signs of the maatram were visible on the streets of Kolathur. On the 70 Feet Road, TVK’s winning candidate, Babu waved to people drinking lemon tea, from an open car. He was on a roadshow to say thanks.

Next to him was a man dressed in a black suit and beard, exactly like Chief Minister Vijay, who also enthusiastically waved at passersby. Amidst the din of a road show, the TVK campaign song rang out: “Unga Vijay Unga Vijay Unga Vijay, Uyirena Varen Naan…” Your Vijay, Your Vijay, I am coming as your life.

Except that here on the streets of Kolathur, it was a lookalike of Vijay saying thanks.

*Names changed at the request of the interview subjects.

Sowmiya Ashok is a journalist in Chennai. She is the author of The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past.

Bihar educator and YouTuber Faizal Khan, popularly known as Khan Sir, has been booked for attempted murder after two of his security guards allegedly told police that he had ordered them to open fire during violence outside his coaching institute in Patna on June 2, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The first information report was registered under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to attempt to murder and the Arms Act against Khan, the two guards and unidentified associates.

The case came days after Khan claimed that “eight to 10 rounds of gunfire” were fired outside his coaching institute, Khan Global Studies, after a group allegedly vandalised the premises in Patna’s Musallahpur area. Following the incident, he alleged that persons had attacked the institute and that business rivals were behind the violence, The Indian Express reported.

The complaint filed by Sub-Inspector Anil Kumar of the Kadamkuan police station stated that the investigation had begun after videos purportedly showing firing outside the coaching centre were shared on social media.

Witnesses allegedly identified the men seen in the footage as Khan Global Studies’ security staff and claimed that they fired “two rounds each”, the newspaper reported.

The police said that Khan confirmed that the men were his coaching institute’s security guards and that the rifles used were licensed weapons. The guards were subsequently arrested.

The development came a day after police had said that CCTV footage and local inquiries had found no evidence of firing during the June 2 incident.

Earlier, based on Khan’s complaint, the police had arrested three persons linked to the rival Gyan Bindu Coaching Institute, including its director, Raushan Anand, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Bangladesh has claimed that it thwarted attempts by India’s Border Security Force to force at least 30 persons into its territory through four border points from Thursday night to Friday morning, Prothom Alo reported.

The BSF’s attempts were foiled by personnel from the Border Guards Bangladesh, who were assisted by residents of the area, the newspaper reported. The 30 individuals were later seen waiting on the zero line between the two countries with their luggage.

The Indian government is yet to respond to the allegations.

The Border Guards Bangladesh claimed that the BSF tried to force persons, including women and children, through border points in the Aditmari, Hatibandha and Patgram upazilas in the Lalmonirhat district in northern Bangladesh, Prothom Alo reported. They also claimed that BSF personnel were confronted by Border Guards Bangladesh members, leading to a standoff along the border.

In the Aditmari upazila, Border Guards Bangladesh personnel reportedly identified 12 “suspected individuals” near two border pillars. They retreated to the Indian side after they were issued warnings through hand-held microphones, according to the newspaper.

The Bangladeshi security force sought a flag meeting with the BSF’s Raniganj-3 battalion, but did not receive a response, according to Prothom Alo.

On Thursday as well, Bangladesh claimed that it foiled ten attempts within 24 hours by India to force persons across the border into its territory.

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

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

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

Dhaka has repeatedly said that anyone identified as a Bangladeshi national should be returned through formal legal and diplomatic channels rather than being driven across ⁠the border.

On May 7, the Ministry of External Affairs said that it had asked Bangladesh to verify the nationality of 2,862 suspected Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in India.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said New Delhi expects Dhaka expedite the process of verifying the nationality of the undocumented Bangladeshi migrants so that they could be repatriated “in a smooth manner”.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• ‘Let me die at home’: Back from Bangladesh, an Assam woman struggles to recover from ‘pushback’
• An ‘indigenous’ Assamese woman was pushed into Bangladesh. A year later, she is still stuck there

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India’s “growth momentum remains strong”, even as the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee downgraded the real gross domestic growth for the financial year 2026-’27 to 6.6%. This is 0.3% lower than the 6.9% projection made in April.

According to the central bank, prolonged disruptions of global supply chains, heightened volatility in financial markets and problems created by the weather pose risks to domestic growth.

However, in a social media post, the prime minister stated: “GDP growth rate of 7.7% in FY 2025-26 and 7.8% in Q4 of FY 2025-26 reflect the inherent strength of our economy, the success of reforms and the hard work of 140 crore Indians.” Read on.

Modi is asking Indians to make sacrifices for an economic crisis he oversaw, writes Anand Teltumbde

The new BJP government in West Bengal has begun verifying the eligibility of beneficiaries under the public distribution system based on the outcome of the special intensive revision of the state’s electoral rolls. The food and supplies department said that it would mark as inactive the ration cards of persons deleted from the voter list.

This means that beneficiaries who were marked as absent, shifted, duplicate or dead in the draft list published in December would become ineligible for their food entitlements under the public distribution system. Those who were removed from electoral rolls in the subsequent supplementary lists would also become ineligible. Read on.

Former chief of the Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party K Annamalai quit the organisation. The party has formally accepted his resignation from its primary membership.

Annamalai said that he had quit the party after coming “to the conclusion that our views don’t align regarding Tamil Nadu”.

In a video message after his resignation, he said that he would launch a new political party that would contest the next Assembly elections expected to be held in 2031. “Today, we are going to start a movement,” he said. Read on.

Two days after Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar’s new Cabinet took office, Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy submitted his resignation as a minister. Reddy said he had taken the decision due to displeasure about the portfolio allocated to him.

Reddy was made the irrigation minister on Thursday. In a press conference, the MLA claimed that he had twice been promised the Bengaluru development department by the party, adding that he had “never asked anyone for any portfolio”. Read on.

The Delhi High Court declines to urgently hear a petition seeking preventive directions to the authorities in connection with a protest by satirical political campaign Cockroach Janta Party. The demonstration is scheduled to be held on Saturday.

The petition was filed by Delhi-based activist group Save India Foundation, which contended before the court that such a protest, if left unregulated, could hamper public safety, traffic and security in the national capital. Read on.

Interview: ‘Good chance that BJP will co-opt Cockroach Janta Party’s demands’

Three Kuki civilians were killed in an attack in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. Additionally, at least seven houses in the Loibol Khullen village were burnt in the suspected militant attack at about 4 am, said Kuki Inpi Manipur, an apex body representing Kuki tribes in the state.

The residents were forced to flee after the houses were set on fire. The deaths reportedly took place during an exchange of fire between rival groups that lasted several minutes.

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

‘We thought peace was coming’: Manipur’s buffer zones are back in grip of violence, reports Rokibuz Zaman

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The Delhi Police on Friday registered a case under the Information Technology Act after a complaint filed by the Central Board of Secondary Education alleging that its revaluation portal had been hit by a series of coordinated attacks earlier this week, ANI reported.

The case has been filed under provisions pertaining to computer-related offences and denial of authorised access to a computer.

Earlier in the day, the board said that it had filed a complaint with the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations unit of the police “regarding coordinated cyber attacks on its Post-Result Services Portal”. However, it claimed that there had been no data breach or compromise of systems.

CBSE PRESS RELEASE:
CBSE lodges complaint with Delhi Police regarding coordinated cyber attacks on its Post-Result Services Portal. All attacks were successfully mitigated through 24×7 monitoring, with no data breach or compromise of systems.
Details here…

— CBSE HQ (@cbseindia29) June 5, 2026

“As the portal caters to lakhs of students across the country for availing post-result services, any disruption to its functioning has the potential to adversely impact a large number of stakeholders, cause significant public inconvenience, and affect public order and create dissatisfaction amongst students against the Board,” the CBSE said in a press release.

The board said that the apparent objective of the attackers was “to destabilise the platform, deny access to legitimate users, and attempt unauthorized extraction of information by the elements inimical to national interest”.

In the last two weeks, several discrepancies were flagged in the CBSE’s On-Screen Marking evaluation process for Class 12 answer sheets.

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

The chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education, Rahul Singh, and its Secretary Himanshu Gupta were on Tuesday transferred in the wake of allegations of mismanagement.

A one-member inquiry committee chaired by S Radha Chauhan, the head of the Capacity Building Commission, was also set up to look into the procurement of On-Screen Marking Services by the board.

The West Bengal government on Thursday began verifying the eligibility of beneficiaries under the public distribution system based on the outcome of the special intensive revision of the state’s electoral rolls.

The food and supplies department said that it would mark as inactive the ration cards of persons deleted from the voter list.

This means that beneficiaries who were marked as absent, shifted, duplicate or dead in the draft list published in December would become ineligible under the public distribution system. Those who were removed from electoral rolls in the subsequent supplementary lists would also become ineligible.

Unmapped voters identified during the revision exercise who were excluded after the hearing process and persons removed from the electoral roll after adjudication will also be ineligible under the public distribution system.

However, persons who have filed appeals before the appellate tribunals or submitted their applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act will continue to receive the benefits until the process concludes, the department said in an order.

The verification exercise will conclude by June 15, it said.

On May 27, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that about 30 lakh beneficiaries of a cash transfer scheme for women would also become ineligible for it after being removed from the voter list.

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

However, the court said that the poll panel’s inquiries for the purpose of including a person in the voter list do not mean that it can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

“Such an inquiry does not amount to a determination of citizenship in the strict sense and any action taken pursuant thereto is confined to electoral consequences alone,” Chief Justice Surya Kant had said.

By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls.

Ahead of the Assembly elections in April, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals. Of these, seven lakh were against names being included in the rolls and 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded. Appellate tribunals set up as part of the special intensive revision process had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Union Ministry of Education on Friday denied reports that data of those who appeared for the Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced) had been breached.

The claims were misleading and factually incorrect, said the ministry.

The results of the JEE (Advanced), which is conducted for admissions to Indian Institutes of Technology, were declared on June 1 by IIT-Roorkee, which was the organising institute for this year’s examination.

On the next day, a social media user who claims to be a cybersecurity researcher posted that a public cloud storage linked to the result system had been configured in a way that allowed access to data without authentication.

The social media user claimed that this had exposed around 1,79,600 result records and around 1,87,300 admit card PDF files, which included the names of candidates, their dates of birth and their mobile numbers. The user also attached screenshots that purportedly showed admit cards and results-related documents.

In response, IIT-Roorkee thanked the social media user and acknowledged that the exposure of the data was linked to a configuration problem with the cloud storage device. “The same is being plugged on priority,” the institute said. “The data stored was read-only and so there was no possibility of any alteration.”

Thank you @DarthKermy72747 for pointing out the configuration issue in the *cloud storage device*. The same is being plugged on priority. The data stored was read-only and so there was no possibility of any alteration. We applaud your responsible and ethical behaviour.

— IIT Roorkee (@iitroorkee) June 2, 2026

In a separate post, the institute denied a data breach and maintained that claims made on social media did not reflect what had actually happened.

“On 2nd June 2026, certain technical interventions were undertaken on an expedited basis to assist candidates experiencing difficulties in accessing admit card data and to ensure the smooth functioning of the registration process,” IIT-Roorkee said. “These interventions resulted in a minimal, temporary misconfiguration in a cloud storage component.”

After the cybersecurity researcher pointed out the misconfiguration, the matter was immediately rectified and access to the data was restricted, it said.

“The affected storage was read only, meaning no data could be edited or deleted,” IIT-Roorkee added. “An analysis of cloud access logs confirmed that no bulk download occurred (the read-only access was limited to less than 0.05% of the data).”

The institute said that the incident had no impact on examination outcomes, such as marks, ranks and category of the candidates.

The education ministry also claimed that “no sensitive information was compromised, and the examination outcomes, marks, and candidate information remain completely secure, intact, and safe”.

Claims of a data breach and privacy violation affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants are misleading and factually incorrect.

The information circulating on social media is misleading and does not accurately reflect what happened. There is an attempt at spreading…

— IIT Roorkee (@iitroorkee) June 5, 2026

However, the development came amid allegations of widespread mismanagement of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical college admissions, and the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate for admissions into undergraduate programmes in central universities.

The National Testing Agency on May 12 cancelled the NEET-UG test following allegations of a paper leak.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

The Allahabad High Court has stayed the arrest of News24 journalist Shahnawaz for reposting a video on social media platform X that allegedly promoted enmity and defamed the Moradabad Municipal Corporation.

The bench on Tuesday directed that no coercive action be taken against the journalist until the next hearing on July 10, provided he cooperates with the investigating officer.

The court granted the additional government advocate two weeks to receive instructions in the matter.

Shahnawaz has sought that the first information report against him be quashed.

On February 17, a case was filed against him in Moradabad district for intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace.

The FIR was filed against him for reposting security camera footage that had been widely shared online. The video showed a worker emptying a dustbin and scattering garbage in front of a shop reportedly owned by a Muslim man, Live Law reported.

The complainant, another municipal sanitation worker, alleged that in the post, Shahnawaz had made allegedly misleading comments with the intent to tarnish the civic body’s reputation and disrupt peace in society, the legal news outlet added.

The FIR had named two other X users who had commented on the post, accusing them of attempting to communalise the incident, Live Law reported.

The counsel representing Shahnawaz told the court that his client had only shared the post that was in the public domain and was “not the originator” of the content as per the Information Technology Rules.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to urgently hear a petition seeking preventive directions to the authorities in connection with a protest by satirical political campaign Cockroach Janta Party scheduled to be held on Saturday, Live Law reported.

The petition was filed by Delhi-based activist group Save India Foundation, which has demanded that the Union government, the police and the other authorities should be directed to take preventive and regulatory measures to ensure law and order during the protest.

The founder of the campaign, Abhijit Dipke, called for the protest to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the wake of the cancellation of the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical college admissions following an alleged paper leak.

The Save India Foundation contended before the court that such a protest, if left unregulated, could hamper public safety, traffic and security in the national capital, Live Law reported.

The organisation alleged that some online content linked with the mobilisation features inflammatory messaging, warnings about disrupting law enforcement actions and calls for disrupting public infrastructure.

The case was mentioned on Friday before a vacation bench of Justices Saurabh Banerjee and Amit Sharma, Live Law reported. However, the bench declined to hear the petition urgently.

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

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

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Interview: ‘Good chance that BJP will co-opt Cockroach Janta Party’s demands’
• Why INDIA bloc is welcoming the Cockroach Janta Party – but Congress is not

Three Kuki civilians were killed in an attack in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district on Friday, a senior police officer confirmed to Scroll.

At least seven houses in the Loibol Khullen village were burnt in the suspected militant attack at about 4 am, said Kuki Inpi Manipur, an apex body representing Kuki tribes in the state.

Those who died were identified as Letkhongam Haokip, Tinmary Haokip and Jangminlal Haokip, all residents of the village.

Heavy firing was reported in the area, India Today NE reported. The residents were forced to flee after the houses were set on fire.

The deaths took place during an exchange of fire between rival groups that lasted several minutes, an unidentified official told PTI.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur condemned the violence. “The deliberate killing of innocent persons and the destruction of homes and livelihoods constitute a serious violation of human dignity and fundamental human rights,” the group said.

It alleged that heavily armed cadres of two Naga groups were responsible for the attack. The two armed Naga groups have not yet commented on the allegations.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur urged the Union government and security agencies to investigate the incident, identify those responsible and ensure they are held accountable. It also called for enhanced security measures in vulnerable villages to prevent further attacks.

The developments came amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted in February after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes.

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

Written by Sara Varghese. Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: ‘We thought peace was coming’: Manipur’s buffer zones are back in grip of violence

A member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council has said that concerns about the possibility of the rupee weakening to 100 against the United States dollar are misplaced, arguing that the currency should be allowed to “discover its own true value”.

Speaking to journalist Smita Prakash on an episode of the ANI podcast on Wednesday, Shamika Ravi said: “So what if the rupee touches 100 to a dollar? It’s just a number.”

Comparing the exchange rate to the valve on a pressure cooker, she said the currency was “settling” and that “something has to give” when pressure builds in the economy.

“The value of the rupee vis-a-vis the dollar, therefore, the exchange rate becomes that valve through which this pressure is going to be taken care of,” she said. “Which is what it means when you say let it discover its own true value.”

Rupee is going to hit 100.

So what if the rupee touches 100 to a dollar? It's just a number: Modi Economic Advisor pic.twitter.com/VKpfJYNN0K

— MBR (@BharathMBNR) June 4, 2026

She added: “At the end of the day, what you do not want is to jump into this, try to keep the value at a certain level, which leads to inflationary pressures, which is going to have all kinds of other chaotic impacts.”

Ravi said that “you do not want to intervene in a market which is working fine right now”.

“Which is why the austerity measures and the other kind of exhortations from the prime minister and now increasingly from different arms of the government,” she said. “What we do not want is wasteful consumption.”

On May 10, Modi called for “nationally responsible” lifestyle choices and urged citizens to place “the country above all else” amid the supply crunch triggered by the conflict in West Asia. Among the measures he proposed were reviving work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, avoiding non-essential foreign travel for a year and reducing edible oil consumption.

In the podcast, Ravi also said that rising costs were the result of a supply shock and that the factors driving those pressures were largely external.

“Our prices will rise because that is the best way to affect demand because this is a supply shock. You’re not going to be able to do very much,” Ravi said, noting that India was already drawing down its foreign exchange reserves.

“These are difficult times,” she said. “I think we must acknowledge the fact that these are trying times not on account of anything we have done domestically.”

She also rejected suggestions that India’s growth was slowing, saying the economy was in a “phase of sustained high growth” and added that this trajectory would continue.

In mid-May the rupee fell to a record low of 96.96 against the United States dollar amid elevated global oil prices and economic headwinds caused by the conflict in West Asia.

The rupee has been the worst-performing Asian currency in 2026, declining by about 5.5% since the conflict began on February ​28.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively blocked due to the conflict in West Asia.

At 9.30 am on Friday, the rupee was trading at 95.6 against the US dollar.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Trinamool Congress leader Krishna Chakraborty on Thursday resigned as mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, a day after Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim submitted his resignation, The Hindu reported.

Chakraborty cited “personal reasons” in her resignation letter to the municipal commissioner.

A long-time associate of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Chakraborty said she would continue to serve as a councillor.

She, however, claimed that it had become difficult for the civic board to function since the change of government in West Bengal, The Telegraph reported.

Her resignation came amid a period of upheaval within the Trinamool Congress after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections ended the party’s 15-year rule in the state.

The party is facing internal divisions with expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claiming that a group of 58 of the TMC’s 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly. The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

Separately, on Wednesday, the TMC dissolved all its committees and organisational units in the state, saying it would undertake a “comprehensive” review of its performance and organisational structure.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article (“The Mughal emperor who tried to merge Vedanta with Islam”). In the fourth paragraph, the author writes “Jahangir was attempting something intellectually audacious: to prove that Vedanta and Sufism were essentially the same, expressed in different languages”, but this would be politically audacious in today’s era of political and communal intolerance and fanaticism.

Jahangir, a man although not without faults, was a great admirer and promoter of art and wildlife. I had the good fortune of reading the Sahitya Akademi Award winner Bengali novel Shahzada Dara Shukoh by Shyamal Gangopadhyay, in which I had traced Jahangir's pursuits in art, wildlife, ornithology etc. His ideas on Vedanta are equally commendable and represent the true essence of our pluralist nation.

It is interesting to note how the idea of worldly affairs to be “Maya” can terrify and fill a ruler with joy of turning his guilt into a dream at the same time. The author’s restraint in romanticising the episode is extremely appreciable. – Prayash Majumdar

Sabarimala restriction not the same as hijab

The article seemed to draw a number of false equivalences by bundling Sabarimala, the hijab and the ghoonghat under a single umbrella of “controlling women”, based on a superficial understanding of autonomy (“Why the Sabarimala verdict allowing women into the temple differs from the hijab ‘ban’”).

Sabarimala restricts a specific age group based on the unique celibate – Nisthika Brahmachari – nature of the deity. It has little to do with a universal “menstrual taboo” or stigma. This tradition coexists with women-only temples where men are excluded.

The hijab is scripturally rooted. It is tied to concepts like ghayrah (male honor/guardianship; ghairat in Urdu), making the enforcement of a woman's “decency” a male obligation.

The ghoonghat is a social custom rather than a scriptural mandate. It is practiced as a sign of deference and respect – even in front of older women – rather than as a tool for strict gender segregation. The ghoonghat carries auspicious connotations, like warding off the evil eye, and is often worn as a symbol of grace, celebrating the status of women, representing the polar opposite of the guilt and concealment associated with the Islamic veil. – Shivananda

FIR on poem

What audacity and ignorance to file an FIR against a poem on patriarchy (“Madhya Pradesh HC quashes FIR against teacher who shared Urdu poem as WhatsApp status”). Can’t someone post what they like on social media? – Roopa Sharma

Scrap Maharashtra project

The project must be scrapped and people should go to court (“Maharashtra: Centre clears 237 hectares forest land for port road, allows felling of 29,923 trees”). In the name of development, people don’t think about how trees and animals and locals will be affected. Every one has a right to live on the earth. – Atul Nikam

Indians and public spaces

I think another factor contributing to this problem is the inability of the service staff to intervene (“Why don’t Indians respect other users of public space?”).

In Western countries, the staff in restaurants, grocery stores, hotel lobbies, and airport lounges make the disruptive person aware of the effects of their behaviour, and, in extreme cases, escort them out. This ensures that respect and consideration in public remain normalised.

In our rigidly-hierarchical caste society, it will be very risky for service employees to be assertive with a socially-dominant person. As a result, most people in India are almost never called out for bad behaviour and remain blissfully unaware. – Surabhi Agarwal

Bangladesh on Thursday claimed that it had foiled ten attempts by India to force persons across the border into its territory in the past 24 hours, Prothom Alo reported.

The Indian government is yet to respond to the allegations.

In a statement, Border Guard Bangladesh said that it had intensified intelligence surveillance and patrolling along frontier areas to prevent any further attempts of illegal “push-ins”, the newspaper reported.

“No individual or group will be allowed to enter Bangladesh illegally through the border,” Reuters quoted the Border Guard Bangladesh as saying. It added that any attempt to violate international border management norms and bilateral understandings ​would be “strictly resisted”.

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

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

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

Also Read: ‘Let me die at home’: Back from Bangladesh, an Assam woman struggles to recover from ‘pushback’

Dhaka has repeatedly said that anyone identified as a Bangladeshi national should be returned through formal legal and diplomatic channels rather than being driven across ⁠the border.

On May 7, the Ministry of External Affairs said that it had asked Bangladesh to verify the nationality of 2,862 suspected Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in India.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said New Delhi expects Dhaka expedite the process of verifying the nationality of the undocumented Bangladesh migrants so that they could be repatriated “in a smooth manner”.

On Thursday, the Border Guard Bangladesh also claimed that in one incident in the past 24 hours, personnel from India’s Border Security Force attempted to move around 30 to 35 persons towards Bangladeshi territory in a prison van after ​opening a border ⁠gate in the southwestern district of Jhenaidah. The border force claimed that it forced the vehicle to retreat.

Incidents of alleged “push-in” attempts were also reported in Jashore, Joypurhat and Panchagarh districts, among other areas, Prothom Alo quoted the Border Guard Bangladesh as saying.

The matter of “push-ins” is expected to be taken up at director-general-level ​talks between the two sides’ border forces in New Delhi from June 8 to June 11, Reuters quoted government officials in Dhaka as saying.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• An ‘indigenous’ Assamese woman was pushed into Bangladesh. A year later, she is still stuck there

The United States and India would soon reach a trade agreement, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday, while claiming that New Delhi had for years “taken advantage” of Washington but the relationship had been reversed.

“[India] charged us tremendous tariffs and paid nothing,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “...Now it is the exact reverse and we are making a lot of money with India.”

He added: “But we will get to a deal because I like your prime minister a lot…he is a good friend of mine…we have a very good relationship.”

#WATCH | President Donald Trump says, "For years, India took advantage of the United States... They charged us tremendous tariffs and paid nothing... Now it is the exact reverse and we are making a lot of money with India. But we will get to a deal because I like your Prime… pic.twitter.com/IR2x2MqUV5

— ANI (@ANI) June 4, 2026

After an interim bilateral trade deal was agreed on February 2, US tariffs on India goods would have been reduced to 18% from a combined rate of 50%. The earlier rate of 50% had included a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

However, negotiations on the final deal were postponed after the US Supreme Court on February 20 struck down Trump’s global tariffs, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.

The judges said that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act that Trump had invoked “does not authorise the president to impose tariffs”.

Hours after the court struck down his levies, Trump imposed a temporary 10% tariff on goods imported into the US, citing his authority under the 1974 Trade Act. The new tariff rate is for a maximum of 150 days, unless the US Congress approves an extension.

On February 21, the US president said that he was increasing the tariffs to the “fully allowed, and legally tested” level of 15% from 10% with immediate effect. However, it is unclear as to when the increased tariff rate would take effect.

This has left the status of US’ trade deals with countries, including India, unclear.

On Thursday, a US delegation concluded four-day negotiations on an interim bilateral agreement.

India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry said that the “engagements were marked by a spirit of cooperation and pragmatism, with both sides reaffirming their commitment to concluding a mutually beneficial agreement that strengthens bilateral trade and economic ties”.

Trump’s remark also came two days after the US Trade Representative proposed an additional tariff of 12.5% on India, citing alleged failure by New Delhi to effectively prohibit the trade of goods produced with forced labour.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as an online satirical campaign on May 16, has kept up the pressure on the Modi government. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, announced plans to return from the United States to India on Saturday to lead a protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The online popularity of the campaign has sparked speculation that India, too, could see dramatic political changes driven by youth protests like the upheavels in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. But Amit Ahuja, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was sceptical of this possibility.

Ahuja has written extensively about protests, social movements and political parties in India. He told Scroll that even if the cockroach campaign manages to bring some of its social media followers out on the streets, the Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to eventually co-opt its demands.

However, this does not take away from the fact that India is witnessing a crisis of employment, Ahuja argued. All political parties, particularly the ruling BJP, would do well to be more sensitive towards the “desperation” among the youth that the Cockroach Janta Party represents.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

A lot of commentators in India are calling this the start of a movement and saying that it could lead to Nepal or Bangladesh-like street protests in India. Do you think that's possible?

I can see why people would draw those kinds of conclusions. Not just in Nepal and Bangladesh, but even in Sri Lanka, we've seen street movements bring about regime change. I would not draw those conclusions about the Cockroach Janta Party for one simple reason: so far, it's just been online.

A street movement and online collective action are two very different things. It remains to be seen what kind of ground activities it [the Cockroach Janta Party] organises. And most importantly, I have not seen anywhere a desire to change the government as a major goal of this movement. Its demands are very traditional.

There is something else which we need to remind ourselves of when we make these comparisons. Delhi has seen multiple movements at different points such as the 1988 farmers’ movement or the farmers’ movement that came later [in 2020]. Governments have noticed and responded to them by protecting Delhi and government machinery.

So, those are broad lessons that governments in Delhi have learnt. There are procedures in place. There are security processes in place which will not allow something like what happened in Nepal, for example, to occur in Delhi.

The Cockroach Janta Party is articulating what many young people in India are feeling today, which is that our examination system seems to be riddled with corruption. Have similar anti-corruption movements in the past been good for Indian democracy in your view?

When you see demands ending up on the street, that's almost like a canary in the coal mine. There is something that's not working. That's why people are on the streets. Protests represent demands which the formal system of democracy doesn't seem to be doing a good job of representing.

Corruption is a perennial issue. Whether what is happening with the cancellation of exams is corruption or just plain bureaucratic incompetence, that the government will have to establish. But clearly, because it's a crisis, there will be an administrative response to this and there will be efforts made to correct it.

In the meanwhile, what these kinds of protests will do is put pressure on the government, but also highlight this issue and then force political parties and the media to run with it.

Protests of this nature, which are peaceful, represent popular demands. When demands go unmet by the political process, there are still mechanisms available through these freedoms to protest to put pressure on the government of the day to respond to them. That's what keeps the wheels of democracy running.

In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power campaigning on an anti-corruption plank. To this date, it draws a lot of support on this issue. Do you think the Cockroach Janta Party campaign could change that?

[That] Remains to be seen. Think about where the BJP is and where it is coming from. It's won the last three national elections. It has a very popular prime minister. It is just coming off major victories in state elections.

And then think about the scale at which you need to mobilise to be able to attain these victories. So, this is still a popular party. It has a handle on some of the issues that are in play here.

I go back to 2014. The BJP at that moment was running on the corruption plank. [But] It was not the only plank they were running on — their broader plank was good governance.

Modi, who was rising as a national star at that time and making a pitch for being the next prime minister, was saying, ‘Look, I will run the country how I ran Gujarat.’ So, it was a good governance plank and corruption became a part of that plank.

On the other side, you had a Congress-led coalition government. There were internal differences in that government. The Prime Minister served at the pleasure of the party leadership. The kind of pressure that Manmohan Singh had to take was of a very different nature.

The BJP will worry about the kind of support this movement has been able to mobilise, especially on corruption. And then it will respond.

Parties take note of popular demands that can bring people out on the street. When public opinion begins to back certain demands, they will respond because they are in the business of building large coalitions. Taking popular demands on board actually helps them in this.

There's a very good chance that the BJP will actually co-opt this demand and turn it around by correcting some of the problems that are being highlighted.

One thing that makes this Cockroach Janta Party campaign stand out is that it began as a response to something that the Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kant, had said in court. What does that tell us about the perception of the judiciary in India right now?

I don't think this has anything to do with the perception of the judiciary. This is more a clash of different age groups. People who have a particular way of thinking about things and who are looking at these problems, especially with the youth, are scoffing at it.

As somebody who teaches a younger age cohort, I think it's important to appreciate that when people in this age group protest, their contexts are different. Life experiences of every age cohort are unique. And their politics is influenced by them. That's why politics shifts with age cohorts.

The important thing to remind ourselves here is that we are looking at a demographic bulge where there are very serious employment needs that are not being met. There is a crisis of employment. Whether the government is able to respond to this crisis remains to be seen. We have to be more sensitive to where this age cohort is, their experiences, and the sense of desperation that this movement is representing.

This campaign also comes at a time when it has become incredibly complicated to hold protests in India. So many activists are still in jail merely because they participated in the anti-CAA protests in 2019 and 2020. Do you think that might also be driving the popularity of this online campaign?

The anti-CAA protests were followed by the farmers’ protests that were around for the longest time. The government tried all manner of ways to respond to it. And eventually, they had to withdraw the policy. So, protests as a grammar of politics have survived even when there has been state repression.

In fact, we see more frequent street protests because the cost of bringing people together has fallen with technology and online digital networks. But these digital networks don’t always have an on-the-ground operation. As long as you don't have that, you are not going to be able to sustain this kind of protest over a period of time.

Yes, protests can be criminalised. But if you have an on-the-ground operation, an organisational structure, then your ability to sustain protests, despite repression, will still be there. Does the Cockroach Janta Party have that? Remains to be seen.

The Cockroach Janta Party has amassed millions of online followers so quickly. What does that tell us about our opposition parties? They are also doing a lot of things on social media. But nothing seems to have galvanised anger against the Modi government like this.

It should not surprise us because political parties are in the game of fighting elections. You can build a huge network online, but ultimately what matters is how many people you can bring to the polling station on election day. And that scale is very different from a Jantar Mantar protest.

These are two very different forms of collective action. Yes, parties do take on online activities because they will do everything that's required to grab the attention of the voter. But parties also understand that this alone does not produce the results in terms of turnout on election day.

But let me go back to the question that you were asking. Why does this movement suddenly galvanise so many people, whereas parties cannot? Think about how much money is required in our elections and the allegations of corruption that all governments of all parties face in India. That tells you that on this particular issue, parties just don't have the credibility. That is why movements have been the vehicle for highlighting this issue.

You've written a book about Dalit politics in different parts of India. What do you think Dalits would be making of the Cockroach Janta party right now? We don't know what the campaign thinks of social justice and caste discrimination. But the founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has publicly owned his Dalit identity.

You have to remember that this is not a movement which started on a caste issue. There are strong feelings across caste groups about corruption. So it's not unique to a particular caste or regional or religious identity. That said, there are a few things which are worth noting here.

One is the backlash to the disclosure of that identity [by Dipke], which tells us that whether we like it or not, even when we have casteless issues which impact everybody, caste does manage to come in.

The second aspect which is also worth noting is that Abhijeet Dipke started an anti-corruption movement and people followed it online. That he's a Dalit doesn't matter. You can actually have a Dalit who can be a leader of a movement which people from different castes join.

I am a Dalit myself. I hope that will answer all your questions. https://t.co/4gbkR1kTMU

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) May 21, 2026

We've had this notion because of what our political experience teaches us that when it came to Dalit leadership, it was prominent only when it was leading Dalit movements. But that's not the case. Even in the anti-CAA protests, the role that Chandrashekhar Azad played to mobilise support beyond just Dalits tells us that we have leadership coming out from among Dalits that will lead big umbrella movements.

We can point to even the BJP today. The BJP of 2026 has a prime minister who is from an OBC [Other Backward Classes] caste. And this is his third tenure. He remains popular. When you go back to the BJP's history, it was seen as a predominantly upper-caste party. Its own complexion, its own profile has changed. Its leadership is different.

How caste captivates Indian politics and how we think about caste boundaries is changing. The backlash reminds us that caste still matters. Caste discrimination and caste prejudice still matter. But none of this is static.

Is this what makes the Cockroach Janta Party campaign different from the last major anti-corruption protest that we had in India, the India Against Corruption protest? That was largely led by retired upper-caste bureaucrats and public figures.

Yes and no. It depends on how the issue of corruption is framed. If the kind of corruption that's being talked about is about middle-class concerns, then it still is an interest-based movement.

Where I think the two movements are different is that the previous one started with actual on-the-ground protests. This movement starts online. If it translates into sustained, on-the-ground protests which will remain peaceful but still have a disruptive effect, then they'll be more similar.

An 18-year-old student preparing for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical college admissions has died by suicide, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

The student, Akansha Chaturvedi, died on May 20 in Nagpur. More than two weeks after her death, her relatives reportedly found a handwritten note in which she had said that she did not have the “courage to take the NEET exam again”.

Chaturvedi’s death sparked sharp criticism of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan by Opposition leaders, who accused the Narendra Modi-led Centre of large-scale mismanagement of the entrance examination.

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the NEET-UG exam that was conducted on May 3. However, the National Testing Agency on May 12 cancelled the test following allegations of a paper leak.

Similar allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks had emerged during the 2024 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

Chaturvedi hailed from Madhya Pradesh’s Mauganj district, and had been preparing for medical entrance exams at a coaching centre in Nagpur. After she died, the Nagpur Police had registered a case of accidental death, The Indian Express reported.

The police had said at the time that they did not find any suicide note.

Chaturvedi’s handwritten note reportedly found by her relatives said that while she would have scored well in her first attempt at the NEET undergraduate exam, there was no guarantee that she would perform well in the retest, according to the newspaper.

“Mom and Dad, you had faith that your daughter would study hard and become a doctor, but I no longer have the courage to take the NEET exam again,” The Indian Express quoted the note as saying.

Reacting to a report about Chaturvedi’s death, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi remarked: “Akansha's death was not a suicide – it was the consequence of a corrupt, broken system under Modi ji.”

Gandhi questioned why Pradhan was still the education minister despite allegations of mismanagement of several examinations.

“The same committee,” he remarked. “The same transfers. The same investigations. No reforms, no justice.”

Gandhi noted that Chaturvedi’s father had reportedly taken a loan of Rs 3 lakh on a Kisan Credit Card and a job as a cook in Nagpur to pay for his daughter to attend coaching there.

“Then the NEET paper leaked,” he noted. “The exam was cancelled. In that uncertainty, Akanksha left us forever.”

आकांक्षा डॉक्टर बनकर देश और समाज की सेवा करना चाहती थी। आकांक्षा के पिता किसान हैं। बेटी के डॉक्टर बनने के सपने के लिए किसान क्रेडिट कार्ड पर ₹3 लाख का कर्ज़ लिया। और नागपुर में खुद कुक की नौकरी कर ली, ताकि बेटी वहाँ coaching कर सके।

एक पिता ने जो कर सकता था, सब किया।
फिर NEET… https://t.co/yaIHayXfrG

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 4, 2026

In a similar vein, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal said that conducting a retest for the NEET-UG examination was not justice. “The education mafia that has captured the government must be eradicated,” he asserted.

Kejriwal said that several students have died by suicide amid the uncertainty surrounding entrance exams. “When will there be justice for their deaths?” he asked.

बेटी को पढ़ाने के लिए परिवार ने 3 लाख का क़र्ज़ लिया था। NEET पेपर लीक से टूटकर बेटी ने आत्महत्या कर ली। उसने सुसाइड नोट में लिखा, 'मम्मी-पापा, मुझमें दोबारा परीक्षा देने की हिम्मत नहीं है।'

दोबारा परीक्षा कराना न्याय नहीं। सरकार पर काबिज़ शिक्षा माफ़िया का ख़ात्मा करना होगा।… https://t.co/LfmC4gK1hY

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) June 4, 2026

Edited by Sneha.

Shambhu Yadav travelled far from his home in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, to Pune, Maharashtra, in search of work. With no formal training to speak of, he was left with an option that employs millions of the country’s population: waste collection.

Yadav works for a kabadiwala – an informal scrap dealer – collecting all kinds of trash which is segregated and ultimately sold to bigger dealers. Even though he earns just Rs 100-Rs 500 a day, Yadav is part of a lucrative industry valued at approximately Rs 1.3 trillion.

Since the early 2000s, electronic waste has entered the very same stream in hordes – landing in the laps of informal waste collectors who dismantle devices at grave personal risk.

Around 845 km away from where Yadav is, in Padarayanpura in Bengaluru, Karnataka, another waste collector Sharvan, held up copper shards he had manually stripped from discarded wires. “This is like gold to us. The copper sells for Rs 1,000- Rs 1,200 per kilogram,” he said.

Despite playing an outsized role in India’s waste management, workers like Yadav and Sharvan lie outside the country’s formal recycling governance framework. A big reason why e-waste collection and processing stays with the informal sector is because formal facilities lack the capacity to process the sheer volume of e-waste generated in the country.

Some NGOs and civil society organisations are attempting to bridge the gap by fostering collaborations between informal workers and formal recyclers. Scaling up, however, could require more state support.

“For the waste picker or a kabadiwala, which is usually generational family practice, buying and selling waste is the only source of livelihood. Incentives like state backed identity, schemes, development programs as entrepreneurs or minimum wages schemes can bring these informal waste collectors and recyclers into the formal system,” says Rohan Massey, Associate Director, Saahas Zero Waste, a private limited company working with waste pickers and training them in e-waste collection and management.

Moving waste through the system

India is the world’s third largest producer of e-waste, generating approximately 1.4 million tonnes of e-waste annually, though some estimates suggest it could be as high as 3.2 million tonnes.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board, India has 7,226 e-waste producers, who manufacture, sell or import electrical and electronic equipment under their own brand name. Extended Producer Responsibility under the E-Waste Management Rules makes it mandatory for producers to register themselves on a central portal, fulfil specific e-waste collection and recycling targets, and file compliance returns.

For these 7,000-odd registered producers, there are 295 official recyclers, who dismantle and extract metals and minerals from e-waste, and 53 refurbishers who repair and renovate the used item for reuse. Together, they process just 5%-10% of the total e-waste produced by the country.

Since the informal sector has a much higher reach and a larger functioning network of cheap labour, the formal sector depends on actors like kabadiwalas for the collection and segregation of e-waste. But the Extended Producer Responsibility process excludes them.

With no direct benefit from the formal system, kabadiwalas prefer to sell to informal recyclers and find working outside the system to be more lucrative, as they aren’t required to keep a paper trail. “Grassroot waste collectors generally avoid digital transactions as their day-to-day procurement is in cash and there is no GST trail for collection of waste,” explained Pranshu Singhal, founder of Karo Sambhav, a Gurugram based PRO (Producer Responsibility Organisation), which works with informal sector e-waste aggregators to procure waste for safe and formal recycling.

Working outside the system gives them operational anonymity while avoiding banking costs. Cash transactions also give them immediate liquidity while buying or selling.

Formalising the e-sector

NGOs like Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group of Delhi and SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling) of Pune have been working with waste collectors and kabadiwalas to divert e-waste to a formal recycling chain.

Typically, waste collectors pick up solid waste and segregate it into categories of paper, plastic, metal, and electronic waste. It is then sold to various scrap aggregators, dealing in each specific waste.

‘Of the 400-wastepicker strong cohort that Chintan works with for e-waste, some enterprising ones were trained to become aggregators who bought waste from other waste pickers. The aggregators are further enabled to sell to the formal e-waste recyclers,” said Bharati Chaturvedi, Chintan’s founder and director. “This enables a formal chain, safe recycling and an additional source of income for the waste pickers. The incomes of these waste pickers increased by 7%,” she added.

Rahim Mandal, a waste collector associated with Chintan for three years, attested to higher earnings through engaging with the formal recycling system. “Earlier I used to sell a mix of e-waste like chargers, LED bulbs, keyboards etc for Rs 40 per kilogram. Now I earn better with Chintan where I get Rs 65 per kilogram.”

In Pune, more than 4,000 waste pickers work in partnership with the municipal corporation through SWaCH, a social enterprise and co-operative. Through this collaboration, waste pickers are recognised as formal affiliates of the city’s waste management system, and given the formal right to sell dry solid waste to recyclers for an extra income.

“We organise e-waste collection drives at various locations throughout the city and in housing societies. The e-waste thus collected is diverted to the formal recyclers authorised by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board,” says Amogh Bhongale, Outreach and Communications Lead at SwaCH.

However, such initiatives are few and far between in the country. The lack of legal recognition of the role informal waste collectors play is a hurdle.

“The EPR rules should recognise the contribution of informal e-waste collectors as collection agents, which will strengthen the system,” said Singhal, adding, “There should also be direct collection systems for offices and individuals, with full traceability and accountability for e-waste.”

Critical minerals

Besides being a health and environmental hazard, dismantling e-waste without proper equipment and tools could lead to the wastage of minerals and metals that are gaining increasing importance in the circular economy.

E-waste is a ready source of critical and rare earth minerals, like lithium and cobalt, which are used in EV batteries, renewable energy systems and other electronic items. According to some estimates, India’s e-waste contains precious metals and critical minerals worth $4.9 billion (Rs 470 billion).

The Indian government launched a critical mineral mission incentivising extraction from e-waste recycling, providing an outlay of Rs 650 crore. Skilling informal sector workers and integrating them into the process could not only help build the country’s formal recycling capacity, but also unlock the value in e-waste.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said it will not participate in a meeting of the Opposition INDIA bloc on June 8. The decision was made as party workers were “deeply hurt by what they consider the betrayal committed by the Congress”, stated the DMK.

The Congress, a long-time ally of the MK Stalin-led party, extended support to the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in forming the government in the state after elections results were announced in May. This led DMK leader TR Baalu to accuse the Congress of betraying the people who voted for it.

The DMK said that while it will not attend the June 8 meet, it will continue “to raise its voice on issues affecting the welfare of the nation that may be brought forward by the other parties participating in the meeting”. Read on.

The southwest monsoon has set in over Kerala, said the India Meteorological Department. This marks the beginning of the four-month rainy season in the country.

The IMD has said that conditions are favourable for the monsoon to advance further into Goa, parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, more areas of Karnataka and the remaining parts of Tamil Nadu over the next two to three days.

This year, the monsoon reached Kerala three days later than its usual onset date of June 1. The weather agency has said that the country is expected to receive rainfall at 90% of the long-period average. Read on.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that Narendra Modi would not be the prime minister a year from now as the “system that he once controlled is now shaken and collapsing internally”. He also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government could attempt to suppress growing public anger by imposing “something like an Emergency”.

Gandhi further said that an “economic tsunami” will hit the country because the Modi government had removed the economic safeguards that existed earlier.

Reacting to the remarks, BJP’s publicity chief Amit Malviya said that Gandhi was unveiling “a new conspiracy theory” every few months. “The country has heard these predictions before,” said Malviya. “The problem is that none of them ever come true.” Read on.

Four persons died after a fire broke out in the Intensive Care Unit of a private hospital in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur. Fifteen patients were admitted to the ICU at Prasad Hospital when the fire broke out.

“At first glance, the incident appears to have been caused by a short circuit,” said District Magistrate Subrata Kumar Sen. “The exact cause can only be determined after a detailed investigation.” Read on.

The Delhi government announced that the family members of those killed in the fire that broke out in the city’s Malviya Nagar area a day earlier will be given an ex gratia payment of Rs 10 lakh. Those who were seriously injured will be given assistance of Rs 5 lakh.

Twenty-one persons were killed in the fire, of whom 10 were Indians, nine were from African countries and two from Turkmenistan. Malviya Nagar MLA Satish Upadhyay said 17 injured persons have been admitted to the Max Hospital, out of whom seven are on ventilators. Read on.

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The horrific fire that ripped through the Flourish Stay B&B in New Delhi’s Hauz Rani on Wednesday, claiming more than 21 lives, is being framed as a story of administrative failure and regulatory neglect in the national capital.

But the deaths are a stark indictment of how poorly Indian cities accommodate medical travellers and health seekers. Of the 21 victims, 12 were foreign nationals from other South Asian nations and from Africa, most of whom were in Delhi to seek medical treatment or were accompanying people undergoing treatment in Max Super Speciality Hospital nearby.

While figures of the rising numbers of “medical tourists” and Delhi’s emergence as a global medical and wellness tourism destination is frequently celebrated in the media, the everyday existence of such health-seekers gets lost in the discussions of both healthcare and urbanisation.

Hauz Rani, for instance, is a congested lal dora village (an urban enclave historically exempt from standard building bylaws) that neatly abuts the gleaming, multi-storeyed glass facade of the Max Super Speciality Hospital.

Every year, Hauz Rani becomes the temporary home for thousands of medical travellers from countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Mozambique, and an even larger number of Indian patients and their families as they seek medical care in the private hospital.

The high cost of medical treatment and patchy insurance coverage compels patients and their caregivers to find cheap accommodation in this urban village.

A few kilometres away, the urban village of Yusuf Sarai – right by the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences – is also a well-established hub for thousands of patients from around India and their families. In the bylanes of Yusuf Sarai, towering, claustrophobic concrete blocks offer kamras (rooms) on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, starting as low as Rs 300 per day.

For families journeying from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Madhya Pradesh to seek uncertain, protracted care at AIIMS for cancer, heart, or liver failures, these unsafe structures, often designed to maximise intake are the only option their meagre life savings allow.

Those who cannot afford even this take to sleeping on the pavements outside the hospital. The few dharamshalas or guesthouses run under the aegis of AIIMS can only accommodate a few hundred patients, and for not more than one to three weeks.

In Southeast Delhi’s Madanpur Khadar, yet another urban village has been radically transformed, with entire housing complexes built to cash in on the short- and long-term rental needs of health-seekers, primarily from Central Asian countries, seeking treatment at the Apollo Hospital in Jasola, and other smaller medical providers.

Whether categorised as medical migrants, tourists, or health refugees, these thousands of people find themselves tucked away on the margins of the formal, planned city.

Ironically, this constant trickle of patients for decades has given rise to flourishing, hyper-local economies, which like the housing facilities in these areas, remain largely under-regulated.

The alleys of Hauz Rani, Yusuf Sarai and Madanpur Khadar are lined with chemists, diagnostic labs and travel agents alongside makeshift stalls renting out basic utensils and stoves for temporary use. Restaurants serving Ethiopian, Syrian, Turkish and Armenian food pop up organically, serving authentic cuisine from an entirely different part of the world and are often frequented by locals.

Despite these flourishing local economies, the patients themselves are in the shadows, crammed into suffocating basements or upper floors only accessible by stairs, trapped behind heavy metal shutters like those that sealed the fates of the victims at Flourish Stay.

This reality shatters the conventional imagination of medical tourists as wealthy people from Europe or the US traveling to India for cheap procedures, seeking “sun, sand and surgery”. The vast majority of Delhi’s foreign patients who arrive on medical visas are from some of the poorest regions of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. They are fleeing broken healthcare systems back home, and sometimes war-torn lives as well.

In 2025, the records show that 507,244 foreign nationals arrived in India explicitly for medical treatment. Only a tiny, elite sliver could afford the luxury suites of corporate super-specialty hospitals covered entirely by hefty international medical insurance packages. The overwhelming majority worked to save every dollar and rupee, surviving in substandard rentals such as those in Hauz Rani while undergoing chemotherapy or awaiting a life-saving organ transplant.

The haunting image of low-income, outstation patients sleeping on the footpaths outside AIIMS, clutching medical files, sometimes with feeding tubes still taped to their faces, is the most visible end of this spectrum of urban precarity. These images surface, only once in a while, in the extreme winters of Delhi, when the makeshift shelters that house patients and their families are reported to be inadequate, poorly maintained or are dismantled overnight to conceal the phenomenon for a global event in the capital.

To seek medical care away from home is to be systematically marginalised, made increasingly precarious, in a city with little care to offer. Stripped of their familiar surroundings, cut off from traditional family safety nets and facing terrifying diagnoses, these patients endure a debilitating existence. Despite paying exorbitant rates, their ad-hoc urban living arrangements, such as Flourish Stay B&B, ofer no solace, minimal dignity in disease and suffering, and no space for recovery and recuperation.

Ultimately, the Hauz Rani fire holds a mirror up to the national capital, revealing how a city that prides itself as a global medical hub and a major domestic destination for healthcare knows little about medical travellers beyond the numbers.

It does not care about the mother and daughter from rural Bihar, seeking medical treatment at AIIMS over several months, holding onto all of their families’ savings and a flicker of hope. It blocks out the “medical tourist” from Ethiopia stuck in a smoky basement in a building down a bylane.

Witnesses to a hotel fire in the Indian capital say several guests jumped out of windows to escape the flames. Authorities in New Delhi are investigating the cause of the blaze that killed 22 people, including 18 foreign nationals.

Al Jazeera’s Caley Callahan reports. pic.twitter.com/Vyoxc3KdbD

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 3, 2026

Their invisibilisation is not merely spatial. It represents a total absence from the city’s imagination, memory, public life and conscience. Urban governments, planners, corporate and government hospitals, and citizens, rarely give a thought to how these “healthseekers” survive in the city: where they live, what they eat, how they pay their medical bills, and what forms of care they are offered in this “ global medical tourism destination”.

The tragedy that unfolded at Flourish Stay B&B has already spurred a series of actions from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. It has sealed some unauthorised commercial buildings and may check others for compliance violations. A few demolitions may follow.

However, little will change for medical travellers with limited resources, compelled by circumstances to seek temporary shelter in one of Delhi’s urban villages, which are systematically denied visibility in policy, planning and practice.

Deeksha is a public health, migration and urban researcher. Her PhD thesis explores the everyday lives of domestic “medical migrants” seeking treatment at Delhi’s government hospitals.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Thursday said it will not take part in a meeting of the opposition INDIA bloc on June 8.

The decision was taken keeping in mind the sentiments of party workers, who were “deeply hurt by what they consider the betrayal committed by the Congress party”, ANI quoted the DMK as stating.

The party was referring to the Congress supporting the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu.

The Congress, a long-time ally of the DMK, was the first party to support the outfit led by actor Vijay after the Assembly election results. This had led DMK leader TR Baalu to accuse the Congress of betraying the people who voted for it, according to PTI.

On May 21, two Congress MLAs, S Rajesh Kumar and P Viswanathan, were inducted into the state Cabinet. This was the first time in 59 years that the Congress became part of the Cabinet in Tamil Nadu.

Against this backdrop, the DMK said on Thursday that it will not take part in the meeting of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance on June 8, as the Congress is slated to participate in it.

ஜூன் 8-ஆம் தேதி டெல்லியில் நடைபெறும் "இந்தியா” கூட்டணிக் கூட்டத்தில், காங்கிரஸ் பங்கேற்கும் கூட்டத்தில் திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம் பங்கேற்காது!

அதே நேரத்தில் – இந்தக் கூட்டத்தில் இடம்பெற்றுள்ள மற்ற கட்சிகள் முன்வைக்கும் நாட்டு நலனைப் பாதிக்கும் பிரச்சினைகளில், திராவிட முன்னேற்றக்… pic.twitter.com/JrEF2ibKsG

— DMK (@arivalayam) June 4, 2026

“While the DMK will not attend this meeting, it will continue, as always, to raise its voice on issues affecting the welfare of the nation that may be brought forward by the other parties participating in the meeting,” it added, according to ANI.

While the Vijay-led TVK emerged as the single-largest party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, it had fallen short of the majority mark by 10 seats. It formed the government with the support of the Congress, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

The Delhi government on Thursday announced that the family members of those killed in the fire that broke out in the city’s Malviya Nagar area a day earlier will be given an ex gratia payment of Rs 10 lakh.

Those who were seriously injured will be given assistance of Rs 5 lakh, stated the office of Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.

Gupta on Thursday met the persons injured in the fire at the Max Hospital in Delhi’s Saket and directed officials to ensure all necessary assistance to them. The chief minister’s office said that the medical expenses of the injured “will be facilitated in coordination with the hospital authorities, ensuring that every patient receives the best possible care”.

आज माननीय मुख्यमंत्री श्रीमती @gupta_rekha जी के साथ साकेत स्थित MAX Hospital जाकर मालवीय नगर में हुई भीषण आग की घटना में घायल नागरिकों से दोबारा मुलाकात की।

इस दौरान मुख्यमंत्री जी ने खुद डॉक्टरों से घायल हुए लोगों के उपचार की जानकारी ली। हॉस्पिटल में लाइबेरिया, केनिया एवं… pic.twitter.com/va4qjNakNq

— Satish Upadhyay (@upadhyaysbjp) June 4, 2026

The fire broke out on Wednesday at Flourish Stays, a ground-plus-five-storey bed-and-breakfast establishment located in a narrow lane opposite Max Hospital in Saket. Twenty-one persons were killed, of whom 10 were Indians, nine were from African countries and two from Turkmenistan.

Malviya Nagar MLA Satish Upadhyay, who accompanied Gupta on Thursday, said that the condition of the injured persons has “markedly improved” in the last 24 hours, PTI reported. He said that 17 persons have been admitted to the Max Hospital, out of whom seven are on ventilators.

On Wednesday, the Delhi Police arrested Lovkesh Bajaj, the owner of the building where the fire took place.

In the wake of the blaze, Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood directed that all bed-and-breakfast establishments violating building plans and guidelines be sealed.

“No need to issue any showcause notice or give time to such owners for explanation,” he said. “Just seal all the BnBs.”

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with a Madras High Court order that dismissed a petition filed by the Hindu Dharma Parishad seeking to light a lamp atop the Thiruparankundram hills, Live Law reported.

The Hindu association had challenged the High Court’s April 9 order that criticised it for filing a plea allegedly for political benefits and imposed a cost of Rs 50,000.

While the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the High Court’s order on Tuesday, it reduced the cost to Rs 5,000, saying that a penalty of Rs 50,000 was “on the excessive side”, Live Law reported.

On December 1, High Court judge GR Swaminathan ruled that the stone pillar on Thiruparankundram hill near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, was a deepathoon, or a structure designed to hold lamps, and that the temple should restore the tradition of lighting the lamp at the site. This came after some temple devotees had sought permission to light a lamp at the stone pillar.

Swaminathan had also held that the practice would not infringe upon the religious rights of the nearby Muslim shrine.

The hillock has the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple and the Sikkandar Badhusha dargah.

The Tamil Nadu government, the temple authorities and the dargah management, among others, had challenged the order of the single judge, raising concerns about law and order, ownership of the site and the nature of the ritual that had been allowed.

On January 6, another bench of the High Court upheld Swaminathan’s order, observing that the stone pillar is located on the land that belongs to the Subramania Swamy temple.

However, the court said that the lamp should be lit only by members of the temple management and that the public would not be allowed to accompany them.

The Hindu Dharma Parishad had argued that as per the 2010 Ancient Monuments, Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, whoever destroys, removes, defaces, alters, endangers or misuses a monument shall be liable to punishment, Live Law reported.

The association alleged that some Muslim organisations were working with foreign powers to spark communal riots. It had also claimed that the organisations were killing animals there and violating the sanctity of the hill, the legal news outlet reported.

Edited by Sneha.

The Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested Lovkesh Bajaj, owner of the multi-storey building in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar where a fire killed 21 persons earlier in the day, PTI reported.

The fire broke out at Flourish Stays, a ground-plus-five-storey bed-and-breakfast establishment located in a narrow lane opposite Max Hospital in Saket.

Those who died included 10 Indians, nine persons from African countries and two from Turkmenistan, PTI quoted officials as saying. Most of the foreign nationals were medical tourists who had come to India for treatment, or were accompanying patients.

More than 20 people died this week in two separate tragedies in South Delhi.

"Authorities act only after such unfortunate events have taken place." @raghavKakkar30 reports on how the two incidents point to rampant violations in the national capital's infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/MUSsowz4Ok

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) June 3, 2026

Senior police officers said that the establishment had 26 rooms, more than four times the maximum permissible limit of six, The Indian Express reported. Most rooms in the building are believed to have been occupied at the time of the fire. The building had only one entry and exit. It allegedly did not have a No-Objection Certificate from the Fire Department, the newspaper reported.

On Wednesday, the police filed a first information report in the case and invoked charges of culpable homicide, among others.

Following the incident, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu ordered a month-long inspection drive of hotels, nursing homes, coaching centres, restaurants and other vulnerable commercial establishments.

Sandhu also announced that a magisterial inquiry has been ordered to “thoroughly investigate the incident and ascertain responsibility”.

#WATCH | Delhi: Visuals from inside the Hotel Flourish Stays, in the Malviya Nagar area, where a massive fire broke out, claiming the lives of 21 people. pic.twitter.com/O00Rq6LkGC

— ANI (@ANI) June 4, 2026

Home Minister Ashish Sood directed that all bed-and-breakfast establishments violating building plans and guidelines to be sealed

“No need to issue any showcause notice or give time to such owners for explanation,” he said. “Just seal all the BnBs.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The southwest monsoon set in over Kerala on Thursday, said the India Meteorological Department. This marks the beginning of the four-month rainy season in the country.

This year, the monsoon has reached Kerala three days later than its usual onset date of June 1.

The weather agency had earlier predicted that the monsoon would arrive in Kerala by May 26. However, it acknowledged on May 29 that the monsoon was unlikely to set in over the state within the four-day window around that date.

Revising its forecast on Tuesday, the IMD said that the monsoon was expected to arrive in Kerala by June 4.

On Thursday, the agency stated that the monsoon had advanced into the remaining parts of the southwest and southeast Arabian Sea, the entire Lakshadweep region, Kerala and Mahe, parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the remaining parts of the Comorin area, the southeast Bay of Bengal and additional parts of the west-central, east-central and northeast Bay of Bengal.

Conditions were favourable for the monsoon to advance further into Goa, parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, more areas of Karnataka and the remaining parts of Tamil Nadu over the next two to three days, it added.

The southwest monsoon season generally begins in June and starts to retreat by September. The India Meteorological Department declares the onset of the season when it hits Kerala.

On May 29, the India Meteorological Department said that the country is expected to receive rainfall at 90% of the long-period average.

This figure is lower than the 92% projection made in its first long-range forecast issued in April.

This marks the first time in 11 years that a shortfall in rainfall has been predicted for the June to September period.

The long-period average is the measure of the mean rainfall during the four-month monsoon season over the last 50 years.

Orange alert in Kerala, Yellow alert in Delhi

Meanwhile, heavy rain continued in parts of Kerala on Thursday, prompting the weather agency to issue an orange alert for Thrissur, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Ernakulam.

The IMD warned of thunderstorms and very heavy rainfall in the districts.

The weather agency also issued a yellow alert for rain and thunderstorms in Delhi on Thursday, PTI reported.
Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Barkatullah University in Bhopal will be renamed Vagdevi Bhojpal University, the Navbharat Times reported on Thursday.

Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopali was a freedom fighter from the city. Born in 1854, he served as the prime minister of India’s first provisional government-in-exile, established in Afghanistan between 1915 and 1919.

The institute’s executive council has accepted the long-standing proposal to rename it and the decision will need to be approved by the Madhya Pradesh governor, who is the university’s chancellor.

The university was named after Bhopali in 1988.

“Vagdevi” is another name for the Hindu goddess of knowledge, Saraswati, and “Bhojpal” is a reference to King Bhoj.

King Bhoj was an 11th-century Paramara dynasty king who ruled the Malwa region of central India. He is said to have founded the city of Bhopal.

The new name is aimed at reflecting the historical and cultural heritage of Bhopal, NDTV quoted the proposal as having stated.

The proposal accepted by the university’s executive council said that as compared to King Bhoj, “no significant contribution” to the region made by Bhopali was evident other than him having been a resident of the city, NDTV reported.

In August, the Bhopal Municipal Corporation passed a proposal to rename three institutions in the city named after Hamidullah Khan, the last nawab of Bhopal.

Several landmarks in Bhopal have been renamed in the last few years. In 2021, the city’s Habibganj railway station was renamed after Kamlapati, a Gond princess who ruled the region in the 18th century.

In January 2025, 11 villages in the Bhopal district were renamed by the state government.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that Narendra Modi would not be the prime minister a year from now as the “system that he once controlled is now shaken and collapsing internally”.

Speaking at an Adivasi Congress event in New Delhi, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government could attempt to suppress growing public anger by imposing “something like an Emergency”.

He also said that an “economic tsunami” will hit the country because the Modi government had removed the economic safeguards that existed earlier.

“India’s protection system…a shock absorber from the international system…has been removed by the BJP,” Gandhi said. “Prices are increasing…India will undergo such an economic crisis that you have never ever witnessed in your lives.”

Gandhi also alleged that an “institutional revolt” was underway in India.

“The Election Commission is fully controlled…it has been fully controlled for the last three years,” he said. “Chief election commissioner is messaging me, head of intelligence system, senior judiciary…all are revolting [against the BJP government]...they are providing us information.”

He also said that the “system of control is collapsing internally”. He added that this was happening because the officials can see that “public pressure will be so severe that if we continue on this path, it will be a risk for us”.

“If the public can see that the election system is rigged...if the public gets angry, do you think the Election Commission will not be scared?” Gandhi said.

However, he added that the government “may try to suppress the public pressure and impose something like an Emergency”.

“But, we are now entering the second stage, as they were earlier in full control but are now losing control,” he said.

भयंकर आर्थिक सुनामी आ रही है और नरेंद्र मोदी इसके बारे में न कुछ कर रहे हैं, न कर सकते हैं।

समझिए क्यों? pic.twitter.com/h2HKeh7Jp0

— Congress (@INCIndia) June 3, 2026

Gandhi unveiling new conspiracy theories, says BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party’s publicity chief Amit Malviya said that Gandhi was unveiling “a new conspiracy theory” every few months.

“First, democracy was over,” Malviya said on social media. “Then institutions were captured. Then election rigging. Now we are told that an Emergency is coming and an economic tsunami is around the corner.”

Malviya added: “At some point, one has to ask: is Rahul Gandhi interested in facts, or is he simply manufacturing fear and chaos because he cannot explain his party’s repeated electoral failures? The country has heard these predictions before. The problem is that none of them ever come true.”

The BJP leader claimed that Gandhi had said the chief election commissioner, intelligence chiefs, judges and institutions “have been secretly working for him for the last three years, constantly feeding him information”.

“Yet, despite having this extraordinary network, his party keeps losing elections and shrinking politically,” Malviya said. “Not a single allegation of election rigging has been proven in court. Not one.”

Malviya asked why Gandhi was “vehemently opposing” the special intensive revision of electoral rolls “if everyone has been working for [him] all this time”.

The video of Gandhi’s speech posted by the Congress and shared by Malviya did not show the Opposition leader as having claimed that officials and institutions had been working for him for three years.

Written by Sara Varghese and Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Sneha.

In June last year, Jakia Begum found an elderly woman sitting by a road in a neighbourhood in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

She was drenched in the rain, and weeping. She appeared to have injured her hand.

Jakia Begum’s daughter Klanti Akhtar told Scroll: “She could not tell us how she had ended up here. When we asked her about her home, she said she was from Nalbari.”

Akhtar, a 28-year-old woman from Dhaka’s Mirpur locality, had never heard of Nalbari before. “We thought it was a place in Dhaka or somewhere in Bangladesh.”

Moved by her plight, Jakia and her daughter brought the woman home. It was only later that Akhtar googled Nalbari and realised that the woman they had rescued was from Assam, India.

Sakina Begum, the 69-year-old woman from Nalbari, does not remember how she ended up in the Dhaka neighbourhood of Mirpur.

All she remembers is being taken from a police station in Assam to India’s largest detention centre in Matia – and then pushed across the border near Dhubri district into Bangladesh.

The days after are blurry in her memory. She boarded a bus and asked the conductor to take her to Nalbari – and somehow made it to Dhaka, over 500 km away.

“I told them [Jakia and her daughter] that I don’t know where I am,” Sakina Begum told Scroll over a video call. “Before they took me in, I had been outside in the rain for many days. I was hungry and cold. They said I could live in their home. They fed me, gave me space to offer namaz. They even helped me have a bath when my arm was broken. ”

Akhtar added: “She is a helpless, old woman. So we felt sympathy for her. She is an Indian, not a thief or dacoit. We had to help her.”

Sakina Begum, who speaks only Assamese, now lives with Akhtar’s family, even though she was briefly jailed in Bangladesh.

A year after she was forced out of India, she is desperately waiting to return to Barkura village, Nalbari. Her family back home, say, they have no means to get her back.

“I am an Assamese person, I am not from Bangladesh,” Begum said. “I don’t even know how to speak Bangla. The [Assam] police put me in danger by pushing me here. They should not have. I have not committed any crime.”

An ‘indigenous’ Muslim

In May last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Assam launched a crackdown on “declared foreigners” like Sakina Begum, picking them up from their home across the state and dumping them in Bangladesh in the dead of night.

“Declared foreigners” are not people caught while trying to illegally enter India’s borders. They are typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, who assert that they are Indian citizens – but who have failed to prove their citizenship in Assam’s foreigner tribunals.

These tribunals are unique to Assam, and they decide on citizenship cases on the basis of documentary evidence. They have declared 1.6 lakh residents as foreigners, as of March 2025, through a process criticised for being arbitrary and biased.

Those who lose their cases at the foreigners tribunals have the right to challenge the orders in the higher courts. Sometimes, they have been sent to the state’s detention or holding centres. But, until May last year, they were rarely deported to Bangladesh, as a tribunal order is not proof that they are citizens of another country.

As Scroll has reported, Assam’s “pushback” regime has separated families like Sakina Begum’s and left them devastated.

While the government has not put out a list of those expelled, nearly all forced out in this fashion last year were Muslims of Bengali origin.

The community is often vilified in Assam as “Bangladeshis” and “illegal immigrants” even though they are descendants of peasants settled in the region by the British four decades before India became independent.

Sakina Begum was the exception among those “pushed back”.

She is a Goria Muslim – a community that has been designated by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government as “indigenous” to the state and is considered native to Upper Assam. But her family members say that no Goria Muslim or Assamese Muslim leaders have spoken up for Sakina Begum.

Begum was declared a foreigner in 2012 by a foreigners tribunal in an ex parte order – the judgment was pronounced in her absence or without hearing her claim. Close to 64,000 people in Assam have been adjudged as foreigners in ex parte orders, according to the Union home ministry.

Begum’s appeal against the order was rejected by the Gauhati High Court and she spent five years in the Kokrajhar jail from 2014.

“My mother is not a Bangladeshi,” her eldest daughter Rasia Begum, who lives in Darrang district, told Scroll. “If she were a foreigner, how are her three siblings Indian? The police did not check any documents.”

Scroll has seen Sakina Begum’s name on the state’s 2005 and 2018 voter lists, as well as the name of her father Mokbil Ali on the 1965 and 1970 voter lists.

Jailed in Bangladesh

For four months after she was picked up from Nalbari by the state police, Sakina Begum’s family had no news of her.

“We went to the Matia detention centre three times, but they said my mother was not there,” her eldest daughter Rasia Begum told Scroll.

In Dhaka, Klanti Akhtar and her mother had little idea about how to contact her family in India.

“She repeatedly told us that she is not Bangladeshi. She said she is Axomiya,” Akhtar told Scroll. “My mother and I took her to the local police station so that we could send her back to her family. But the police told us to keep her in our home. They said they will find a way.”

In September, a BBC Bangla crew got wind of Begum’s presence in Mirpur and contacted her family.

“We broke down as soon as we saw her on video call,” Rasia said. “We never imagined that my mother would be in another country. It was a relief to finally see her after four months but we were shocked to see her in Bangladesh.”

The news report of her presence in Bangladesh had grim consequences for Sakina Begum.

The local police station took her into their custody. She was produced in court and charged for entering Bangladesh without a passport or visa and jailed for two months. “I suffered a lot in jail,” she said.

Two months later, Akhtar’s family pooled together money to secure her bail.

“Onar proti maya hoiya gesilo,” she said. We had grown attached to her.

Akhtar added: “We collected about Rs 7,000 from our locality and my mother and I spent Rs 3,000 more to release her from the jail.”

The bail condition mandated that Sakina Begum must report to the police station once a week. Two local guarantors stood surety, including Jakia, Akhtar’s mother.

Since the news of her expulsion, Sakina Begum’s story has been covered by several news channels in Assam.

“So many stories were done asking why they sent an Assamese woman to Bangladesh,” she told Scroll. “I was born there. Everything that I have is there.”

“I am from Assam and I will go to Assam. I am not from Bangladesh,” Sakina Begum told @scroll_in. “The [Assam] police put me in danger by pushing me here. They should not have. I have not committed any crime.”

Read here:https://t.co/Ml0aiquad6 pic.twitter.com/iAQNL0ztQC

— Rokibuz Zaman (@ZamanRokibuz_) June 4, 2026

Years ago, Sakina Begun had married a Bengali-origin Muslim man from Barpeta district. She was arrested and sent to Kokrajhar jail while her husband was still alive.

However, Sakina has found little support from ethnic Assemese groups and organisations.

“Some leaders of Goria organisations have come to our home and talked with us,” her daughter Rasia said. “However, apart from that, nobody has protested or created pressure on the government to bring her back. The leaders did not even check on us whether she had returned home or not.”

Hafijul Ahmed, the BJP-government appointed chairman of the Goria Development Council, refused to speak on the matter, saying it was a legal issue.

“It has become an international matter and the foreign ministry has to take a call,” said Moinul Islam, who heads the Sadou Asom Goria Jatiya Parishad, a group which represents Assamese Muslims in the state.

Islam said that Sakina Begum had not submitted documents stating that she was a Goria Muslim to the foreigners tribunal, which is why she was declared a non-citizen. “Her lawyer told us that they had not turned up at the foreigners tribunal and said the family did not cooperate,” he said.

Since Sakina Begum was reported by Assam’s border police in 2006, the family has spent their savings in fighting the citizenship case.

“We have already sold our ancestral land and home to fight the case in the tribunals and high court,” Rasia Begum said.

As she waits for news of her mother, Rasia Begum said she is in an “impossible situation.”

“We can’t go there to bring her,” she said.

She added: “Our lawyers have told us that we will move the Supreme Court soon. We don’t even have money to fight the case.”

The All Bodoland Territorial Council Minority Students Union has been helping the family in their legal battle, she said.

‘Why this punishment?’

In Dhaka, Akhtar’s family rued that there have been no efforts by the Indian government to take Sakina Begum back.

“She cries every day,” Akhtar said. “She cries whenever her son and daughters call her. How long can she wait? It has been a year.”

Akhtar’s husband is a driver, with a large family to care for. “We are a poor family, we are helping her as much as we can,” she said. “We are providing her with whatever we eat.”

Sakina Begum said she was thankful to her hosts, who came to her aid when she was lost. “I did not have anyone to protect me other than Allah,” she said. “But they found me and not only gave me shelter but also food, respect and love.”

But, she added, she wanted to return home. “I can’t stay here, I can’t tolerate this. Only Allah knows how I am staying here,” she said, breaking down. “Why are people of Assam being punished like this? They brought me here today. Tomorrow, they will bring another one.”

She pleaded with the Assam government to allow her back home. “We are poor people. We have already sold our home and land. We should not be given such punishment.”

At least four persons died after a fire broke out in the Intensive Care Unit of a private hospital in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur on Thursday, Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said.

Fifteen patients were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at Prasad Hospital when the fire broke out, PTI quoted District Magistrate Subrata Kumar Sen as saying.

“At first glance, the incident appears to have been caused by a short circuit,” Sen was quoted as saying. “The exact cause can only be determined after a detailed investigation.”

The fire started on the fifth floor of the hospital. Firefighters received an alert at 3.55 am and pressed 12 fire tenders into service.

VIDEO | Muzaffarpur, Bihar: DM Subrata Kumar Sen on fire at ICU of a private hospital, says, "A total of 15 patients were admitted at the facility, and we have so far obtained records for 13 of them. Some patients were also being treated in the CCU. They have now been shifted and… pic.twitter.com/I0c8HYOsMO

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) June 4, 2026

Choudhary announced compensation of Rs 4 lakh for the families of those killed.

“The local administration is fully alert and appropriate arrangements have been made at the district hospitals for the treatment of the injured,” the chief minister said on social media.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as new details are available.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Sara Varghese.

This summer, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation implemented a 10% water cut from May 15 as levels in the seven lakes, which the city depends on, plummeted. The city had water for 45 days as of June 3, amid concerns over a weak monsoon season.

Mumbai’s water problems overshadow the situation in other cities in the Mumbai Metropolitan region. As Mumbai continues to draw heavily from shared regional resources, tankers and water shortages have become routine in neighbouring Vasai-Virar, Bhiwandi-Nizampur and Mira-Bhayandar.

Despite being located next to the dams that supply Mumbai city with water, many villages within the metropolitan region also continue to face routine shortages.

Ironically, Mumbai receives the highest per capita water supply in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region – well over 200 litres per capita per day. By contrast, Vasai-Virar gets 70 lpcd, Bhiwandi-Nizampur 100 lpcd, and Mira-Bhayandar 105 lpcd – well below the prescribed standard of 135 lpcd.

The continued scarcity is part of a larger story: how Mumbai city, without expanding its borders, redrew the map of water control around in ways that continue to shape who gets water – and who does not – for decades to come.

Where does Mumbai’s water come from?

Most of the water that Mumbai consumes comes from sources far beyond the city’s limits, some from over 100 km away. Every day, millions of litres travel through long-distance pipelines from mainland reservoirs to Mumbai’s taps, much of it from dams the city has built and controls.

How does the island city claim water from outside its own jurisdiction? The answer lies not just in dams, pipelines, engineering, or even Mumbai’s economic and political power as the state capital. It is in something less visible: how the region was mapped and imagined.

About five decades ago, planners redrew the geography of water around Mumbai. River basins on the mainland, including the Vaitarna and Ulhas, were brought together into a single planning unit – the Mumbai Hydrometric Area.

Managing water along natural hydrological boundaries was seen as scientific, efficient and modern, promising coordinated planning and better use of scarce resources.

But this seemingly neutral idea had far-reaching consequences.

The Mumbai Hydrometric Area spans a vast stretch of the mainland, far beyond the city’s municipal limits. Mumbai is not part of this hydrological region. Yet the area was named after the city, granting it a right to water resources located outside its jurisdiction.

By defining and organising this space in Mumbai’s name, planners created a means for the city to extend its influence over these sources.

Growing water needs

In the 1960s and 1970s, as Mumbai’s population grew, so did its demand for water. New towns and industrial centres emerging in the surrounding region were also beginning to plan their own water supplies.

Various agencies were competing for limited resources. The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation was planning dams for industry, the Irrigation Department was developing projects such as Bhatsa, and the City and Industrial Development Corporation was seeking water for Navi Mumbai.

For Mumbai’s planners, this piecemeal and uncoordinated development posed a clear threat: what if these competing demands reduced the city’s access to water from the mainland?

Experts and international agencies, including the World Bank, stepped in. They argued that the region’s water resources needed to be planned better, treating the entire hydrological region as a single unit.

This approach was taken forward through regional institutions such as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, established in 1975. Within it, a Water Resources Management Board was set up in the same year, alongside the formal adoption of the Mumbai Hydrometric Area as the basis for water resource planning.

The board assessed water demand and resources across the region through expert-led studies. In 1983, it presented a Perspective Plan to develop the metropolitan region’s water resources, allocating them among users, including Mumbai.

But this plan to build an integrated regional water system did not last. The MMRDA Act was amended in 1983, and the Board meant to coordinate this vision was eventually dissolved.

The promise of shared planning faded. But the allocations made during that process remained.

Mumbai’s dams

In this process, Mumbai legitimately secured permission to develop three large dams on the mainland – Middle Vaitarna, Kalu and Gargai. Backed by its financial capacity, the city could move ahead independently, without coordinating with other corporations and councils, and on its own timeline.

When Mumbai’s master plan for water supply was being prepared in 1999, its administrators decided against building the Kalu dam and instead focused on the Pinjal dam.

But the Pinjal dam had been allotted to the Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation and the surrounding villages in the northern part of the metropolitan region, according to the 1983 Perspective Plan.

Water from the Pinjal dam in the Vaitarna basin can be brought to Mumbai by gravity unlike the Kalu dam, which would require pumping. The Vaitarna basin was also less populated and less prone to pollution than the Ulhas basin, where the Kalu dam is located.

Mumbai strategically chose to prioritise the Pinjal over the Kalu dam to access better-quality water, save on pumping costs and ensure a more reliable supply not dependent on electricity.

The Kalu dam was allocated to the urban local bodies in the eastern sub-region, including the municipal corporations of Thane, Bhiwandi, Kalyan-Dombivli, and Ulhasnagar, as well as the municipal councils of Ambernath and Kulgaon-Badlapur.

While other city corporations and councils struggled to develop their own supplies, Mumbai went on to build the Middle Vaitarna dam in 2014. In April, the civic body’s standing committee approved the construction of the Gargai dam at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore.

By adopting a river basin approach and defining the Mumbai Hydrometric Area, planners created a system that made Mumbai’s expanding control over water appear natural and necessary. The language of efficiency and integration helped depoliticise what were, in effect, deeply political choices.

The city’s boundaries were unchanged but its reach expanded.

Rather than scarcity, Mumbai’s water supply reflects how decisions that appear technical – focused on maps, boundaries and planning – shape who gets water and who gets better-quality water.

It raises difficult questions of power and access to water. Who decides how water is allocated across regions? Whose needs are prioritised and what happens to communities that lie within these “resource zones” but outside centres of power?

This article is based on research published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, Political Geography, under the title “Technopolitics of water appropriation: How Mumbai claims hydrological dominance in its metropolitan region”.

Sachin Tiwale is Fellow, Water and Society Programme, Centre for Environment and Development, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. His email ID is: sachin.tiwale@atree.org.

Expelled Trinamool Congress MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claimed on Wednesday that West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose has accepted the claim of the rebel group led by him to be the main opposition in the state, ANI reported.

Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that the speaker had accepted a proposal by 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs to be recognised as TMC’s legislature wing.

Earlier in the day, the 58 MLAs submitted to the speaker, without the party’s letterhead, a list mentioning Mamata Banerjee as the party’s leader, Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition, and Sheuli Saha, Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha and Sabina Yasmin as the deputy leaders in the House.

Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that the speaker has accepted these demands.

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

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

This came amid a probe into allegations by Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha that signatures were forged in documents submitted to the speaker in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment.

Saha, who represents the constituency of Entally, was also expelled by the TMC on Monday.

On Wednesday, Ritabrata Banerjee said that the 58 MLAs had told the speaker they want Mamata Banerjee to be the chief advisor of the legislature party despite the ongoing rebellion, reported ANI.

“I have already categorically stated that we will write to Mamata Banerjee to be the chief advisor of the Trinamool Congress legislative party in the 18th West Bengal Legislative Assembly,” he said at a press conference.

He also claimed that two more legislators currently outside the state have conveyed their support to the group, according to PTI.

“Once they formally extend their support, our strength will rise further,” Ritabrata Banerjee was quoted as saying.

He further said that Abhishek Banerjee “has no relation with this legislative Assembly”.

“As a member of Parliament, he has sent a letter earlier with forged documents,” claimed Ritabrata Banerjee.

He added: “If such a thing has happened and it is proved, then the speaker of this legislative Assembly can write to cancel the membership of Abhishek Banerjee from the Lok Sabha of India.”

Meanwhile, TMC MLA Reyat Hossain Sarkar, who was part of the group of 58 legislators, said that the party will not split, reported ANI.

“We were elected as representatives of the TMC,” said Sarkar. “We were elected under the TMC’s party symbol. We contested the election using didi’s [Mamata Banerjee’s] photo. The party selected us as its candidates. We continue to acknowledge the party’s authority, and we continue to recognise didi as our leader.”

TMC leader resigns as Kolkata mayor

Amid the political turmoil, TMC leader Firhad Hakim resigned as the mayor of Kolkata on Wednesday, party MLA Kunal Ghosh was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Mamata Banerjee had accepted Hakim’s request, added Ghosh.

He said that Hakim had asked to step down from his post earlier as well, citing difficulties in functioning after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state.

“At that time, he was asked not to resign,” Ghosh was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “However, he again requested Mamata Banerjee today to allow him to step down, following which she agreed.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

An Indian citizen was killed in an attack on the airport in Kuwait on Wednesday, the Indian embassy in the West Asian country said.

Several Indians were also injured in the attack, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

Iranian drones and missiles attacked the airport in Kuwait city on Wednesday, damaging several facilities and forcing operations to be suspended. The attack took place despite a ceasefire between the United States and Iran that began on April 8.

The Indian embassy said that it was in contact with the family of the person who had died in the attack. It also said that it was coordinating with the Kuwaiti authorities to provide assistance to the family and those injured in the incident.

KUWAIT: Horrible scenes from Kuwait International Airport after #Iran drone and missile attack hit terminal. At least one killed, 8 injured, flights suspended pic.twitter.com/zwQ1sTQ0OM

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) June 3, 2026

Kuwait’s health ministry said that 63 persons were injured in the attack on the airport. Their citizenship was unclear.

The death of the Indian citizen on Wednesday was the ninth fatality since the war in West Asia began on February 28.

India’s external affairs ministry said on Wednesday that since the war began, it has strongly urged that civilian people and civilian infrastructure must not be targeted. “We again call upon parties to cease such attacks,” the ministry said.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Maharashtra Cabinet on Tuesday approved a farm debt relief scheme to provide loan waivers of up to Rs 2 lakh to farmers in the state.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had announced the scheme, named Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Shetkari Karjamukti Yojana, while presenting the state Budget in March. The Rs 36,585-crore scheme is expected to benefit around 55.72 lakh farmers.

It has three components: loan waiver, one-time settlement and incentive benefits for the farmers who have repaid their loans on time.

पुण्यश्लोक अहिल्यादेवी होळकर शेतकरी कर्जमुक्ती योजनेस मंत्रिमंडळाची मंजुरी.
दोन लाखांपर्यंतचे कर्जमाफ; कर्जमुक्ती, ‘वन टाईम सेटलमेंट’ आणि प्रोत्साहनपर अनुदान असे घटक.. शासन निर्णय निर्गमित...१/२#पुण्यश्लोकअहिल्यादेवीहोळकरशेतकरीकर्जमुक्तीयोजना pic.twitter.com/7ggxIFuBrB

— DISTRICT INFORMATION OFFICE, PUNE (@Info_Pune) June 2, 2026

Under the first component, farmers with outstanding crop loans of up to Rs 2 lakh that remained overdue on September 30, 2025, and unpaid by March 31 this year will get a complete waiver.

This would apply to one or more loan accounts and farmers can avail the scheme irrespective of their landholding size.

The one-time settlement component will cover farmers with crop debts above Rs 2 lakh. They will be given a grace period till March 31, 2027, to pay the amount exceeding Rs 2 lakh. Once that is done, the government will waive up to Rs 2 lakh in debt.

Under the last component, the government will incentivise farmers who have repaid their loans on time by giving them a grant of Rs 50,000.

Farmers who have taken crop loans in any two of the three financial years – 2022-’23, 2023-’24 and 2024-’25 – and repaid them within the prescribed timelines will be eligible for this.

They will also be required to repay any crop loan taken during the current financial year on schedule.

Farmers who had benefited from the 2019 Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Farmer Debt Waiver Scheme and subsequently defaulted on fresh crop loans will also be eligible for a waiver of up to Rs 50,000, if their dues remain outstanding as of September 30, 2025, and unpaid by March 31, 2026.

Elected representatives, government employees, persons paying income tax, and officers and employees of cooperative societies with a salary of more than Rs 25,000 have been kept out of the scheme.

‘Ladki Bahin scheme to continue’

Meanwhile, Fadnavis also announced on Tuesday that the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin scheme will continue.

“Women who fulfill the eligibility criteria of the scheme will continue to receive the benefits of the scheme on a regular basis,” he told reporters.

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

Fadnavis’ statement came in the wake of criticism from Opposition parties after reports emerged that about 80 lakh women were found to be ineligible for the scheme after a state-wide verification exercise.

The number of beneficiaries of the scheme dropped from 2.4 crore to nearly 1.7 crore at the end of the April 30 deadline for them to complete an e-KYC, or Know Your Customer, process.

Opposition leaders had alleged that the state government was reducing the number of beneficiaries owing to a financial crisis.

However, the state government said on Monday that the reduction in the number of beneficiaries is due to the mandatory e-KYC verification and eligibility scrutiny process, “and the government has no proposal to discontinue the scheme”.

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

However, the scheme has sparked controversies due to the strain it has placed on the state’s finances.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Scroll’s occasional diarist chronicles some of the events in the second half of May.

May 15

“Adani settles SEC case, criminal charges set to be dropped — a 17-month legal battle winds down” – The Economic Times

Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar agreed to pay a total of $18 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations they made false and misleading representations about Adani Green Energy Ltd.

Gautam Adani would pay $6 million and Sagar would pay $12 million to end the SEC’s November 2024 lawsuit, under the proposed agreement filed in federal court Thursday, which still needs a judge’s approval.

If finalized, the deal could be a significant boon to the Adani Group, the multinational conglomerate whose interests range from renewable energy to airports. The Justice Department is also moving to drop fraud charges against Gautum Adani in a parallel criminal case, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

May 14

“US Set to Drop Charges Against Indian Billionaire Accused of Fraud” – The New York Times

The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.

Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.

May 16

“Bhoishala-Kamal Maula complex declared as temple by Madhya Pradesh High Court” – The Hindu

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday (May 15, 2026) declared that the long-disputed site of Bhojshala complex and Kamal Maula Mosque in Dhar is a temple of goddess Vagdevi (Saraswati), therefore allowing the Hindu community to worship at the site, while dismissing the Muslim community’s claim.

In a 242-page order, a Division Bench of Justices Vinay Kumar Shukla and Alok Awasthi in Indore dismissed the petitions of the Muslim and Jain communities, filed recently, while saying that the Muslim representatives can seek an alternate piece of land in Dhar district from the Madhya Pradesh Government.

The court quashed a 2003 order of the Archaeology Survey of India (ASI) that allowed the Muslim community to offer Friday prayers at the site, while restricting the right of Hindus to worship within the Bhojshala complex on Tuesday and Basant Panchami. The court took inspiration from the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri mosque verdict from the Ayodhya dispute in 10 principles.

May 16

“Chief Justice’s ‘Youngsters Like Cockroaches’ Remark On ‘Fake Degree’ Lawyers” – NDTV

Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Friday made sharp remarks against lawyers and activists allegedly targeting the judiciary, saying there are “parasites” attacking the system and warning against attempts to misuse the legal profession.

The remarks came during a hearing related to senior advocate designations in the Delhi High Court. "There are already parasites of society who attack the system, and you want to join hands with them?" the CJI observed.

Referring to certain individuals active on social media, Justice Kant said, “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment and don't have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists, some of them become other activists, and they start attacking everyone.”

The CJI also said the court was closely monitoring social media activity targeting the judiciary.

Later

“CJI Surya Kant says media misquoted ‘cockroaches’ remark; criticism was against fake degree holders, not unemployed youth” – Bar and Bench

Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday issued a clarification regarding his controversial “cockroach” remark, stating that the media misquoted his oral observations which were made during the hearing of a frivolous case.

In the clarification, he said that his criticism was directed at persons entering the legal profession using fake and bogus degrees, not at unemployed youth.

May 18

“RSS leader Hosabale’s Pakistan remarks spark row” – The Indian Express

Recent remarks by RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale that India should not shut the doors on dialogue with Pakistan have attracted considerable attention, given the BJP’s foregrounding, in recent years, of the position that “terror and talks cannot go together”.

Asked how Pakistan should be dealt with, Hosabale, in a recent interview to PTI, pointed to the efforts made by PMs Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi to normalise the ties.

“If the Pakistanis (are) trying to give pinpricks like in Pulwama etc., we have to answer wholesomely according to the situation because the security and self-respect of the nation has to be protected, and the government of the day should take note of it and take care of it. But, at the same time, we need not close the doors. We should always be ready to engage them in a dialogue. That’s why diplomatic relations are maintained, trade and commerce go on, (and) visas are being given. That we should not stop … there should always be a window for dialogue.”

“This (dialogue) can happen (if) more and more Pakistan citizens understand and non-government actors in Pakistan raise these things … like academicians, sportsmen, scientists, community leaders … The political leadership and the military leadership have developed some aversion to Indian politics. This (civil society) is one hope,” Hosabale further said.

May 19

“Bail is the rule is not an empty slogan, even in UAPA and ‘terror’ cases: Supreme Court” – The Hindu

The Supreme Court on Monday (May 18, 2026) voiced “serious reservations” about “various aspects” of its January 2026 judgment refusing bail to former JNU student leader Umar Khalid and co-accused Sharjeel Imam in the Delhi riots ‘larger conspiracy’ case, including the foreclosing of their right to seek bail for a year.

The rare act of self-reproach came over a year after the apex court condemned Mr. Khalid and Mr. Imam as the “alleged masterminds” who hatched the conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots.

Justice Bhuyan, who authored the judgment, said the catchphrase ‘bail is the rule and jail is the exception’ was not just an empty slogan, but a constitutional principle flowing from the fundamental rights to life, speedy trial and freedom from arbitrary arrests and detentions. The court’s observations on Monday (May 18, 2026) came in a judgment allowing bail to a Jammu and Kashmir man accused in a narco-terrorism case in which he had been incarcerated as an undertrial under the UAPA for five years.

Justice Bhuyan said the right to personal liberty and speedy trial cannot become “subordinate” to the draconian bail provision, Section 43-D(5), of the UAPA.

The apex court expressed deep concern about certain of its verdicts “hollowing out” larger Bench verdicts like in the K.A. Najeeb case, which championed personal liberty against state abuse.

May 21

“Cockroach Janta Party’s X Handle Withheld in India” – Vibes of India

Barely days after emerging as India’s most viral political satire movement, the X account of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has been withheld in India following what the platform described as a “legal demand.” The move comes as the internet-born collective — created after remarks by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant comparing sections of unemployed youth to “cockroaches” — rapidly transforms from meme culture into a full-fledged Gen Z political phenomenon.

Even as its X account disappeared for Indian users, the movement’s Instagram presence continued to surge. The Cockroach Janta Party crossed nearly 12.6 million followers on Instagram at the time of reporting, overtaking Bharatiya Janata Party, which has roughly 8.7 million followers despite being considered the world’s largest political party by physical membership. The movement also claims more than six lakh registrations within days of launch.

What began as satire now appears to be evolving into something far larger — and far more politically sensitive.

May 22

“Are cartoons in NCERT textbooks proper? Supreme Court asks retired judge panel to review” – The Hindu

The Supreme Court on Friday (May 22, 2026) asked a former apex court judge-led committee to review cartoons published in National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta pointed out that “textbook is not a space where you use cartoons”.

Mr. Mehta’s objection raised the point whether children should be exposed to satire or lampoon through their study books.

May 23

“Now, Cockroach Janta Party website taken down; founder slams ‘dictatorial behaviour” – Hindustan Times

The official website of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has been taken down in the recent crackdown against the youth and Gen Z-led online movement after the party’s official X handle was withheld, and its backup Instagram account was taken down, its founder Abhijeet Dipke said on Saturday.

The founder said 10 lakh cockroaches had registered as members through the website, while 6 lakh cockroaches had signed a petition seeking the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged failures in the education system, particularly due to the NEET-UG 2026 ‘paper leak’ controversy.

“Why is the government so scared of cockroaches? But this dictatorial behaviour is opening the eyes of India's youth. Our only crime is we were demanding a better future for ourselves. But you can't get rid of us that easily. We’re working on a new home right now. Cockroaches never die,” he wrote in a post on X.

May 24

“Cockroach Janta Party: BJP sees bid to ‘destabilise’; voices within, allies, call for listening to young” – The Indian Express

The ruling BJP has moved swiftly to criticise the viral Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) handle with senior leaders alleging foreign backing behind the social media phenomenon in a bid to “destabilise” India. But even as the party’s official line holds firm, a section of voices within and among the party’s allies are also urging the need to tread carefully acknowledging that youth discontent – over economic distress and the NEET leak, for example – can’t be banned into silence.

Senior BJP MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Nishikant Dubey alleged that the movement could be a threat to national security and former Union Minister and BJP Kerala chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar saw it as a “coordinated influence operation.”

“This has many of the hallmarks of something that is coordinated and planned rather than something like spontaneous anger against the Chief Justice of India’s statement.

May 24

“Bengal govt orders ‘holding centres’ for illegal ‘foreigners’ ahead of deportation drive” – The Telegraph

The Bengal government has ordered all district administrations to set up ‘holding centres’ for apprehended foreigners and foreign prisoners awaiting deportation or repatriation, according to news agencies.

In a letter issued on Saturday, by the home and hill affairs department to district magistrates, officials were asked to initiate the process in line with Union home ministry guidelines concerning the deportation of “Bangladeshi/Rohingyas apprehended for staying illegally in this country”.

May 25

“India can count on me 100%… anything India wants, they get: Donald Trump” – The Indian Express

Joining an event hosted by the US Embassy here to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s Independence Day, US President Donald Trump, in a live phone call on Sunday, assured his “100 per cent” support to India.

“I love India… I love the Prime Minister. (Narendra) Modi is great. He’s my friend, and I just want to say a very, very good evening to everybody this morning here, and this evening there. And I just want to say, you’re great. We’ve never been closer to India, and India can count on me 100 per cent and our country,” Trump said.

“We have a record economy, a record stock market. And anything India wants, they get. And I’m a big, big fan of Prime Minister Modi,” he said.

May 27

“Centre constitutes committee to study demographic changes, recommend population stabilisation measures” – The Hindu

In a post on X, Mr. Shah said, “Illegal infiltration and other reasons leading to unnatural demographic change are a very big challenge for the present and future of any nation. To deal with this challenge, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had announced the ‘High-Level Committee on Demographic Change’ on 15 August 2025. I am delighted to inform that the government has constituted this Committee.”

He stated that demographic change is a serious problem linked not only to sovereignty but also to national security, law and order, major changes in social structure, and the protection of tribal societies. “This committee will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the demographic changes occurring across India due to illegal immigration and other abnormal reasons. It will analyse patterns of abnormal population changes at the level of religious and social communities and will present a well-planned and time-bound solution to address the issue,” the Minister said.

May 28

“Varanasi’s decades-old goat market sealed before Bakrid” – The Indian Express

Right before Bakrid, the Varanasi Municipal Corporation has shut down the decades-old Benia Bagh goat market, citing complaints of overcrowding and poor sanitation. The move sparked protests by traders, who accused officials of acting without prior notice during the peak festive trading season.

Popularly known as ‘Bakra Market’, it is one of eastern Uttar Pradesh’s largest and best-known seasonal livestock bazaars that has been functioning for nearly four decades. Situated about a kilometre from the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, it usually operates for nearly a week ahead of the festival, drawing traders from districts, including Gorakhpur, Ghazipur, Mau, and Jaunpur.

According to civic authorities, permission was initially granted for the market to operate, but was later revoked. “The Municipal Corporation revoked permission for the Benia Bagh market after receiving complaints related to sanitation and hygiene,” said Varanasi Municipal Commissioner Himanshu Nagpal.

May 29

“NEET Re-Exam Papers May Be Kept Under Defence Custody To Prevent Leaks” – TimesNowNews

The Ministry of Education is reportedly considering handing over NEET UG re-exam papers to defence services for secure custody as the NTA adopts a ‘zero-trust, always inspect’ policy ahead of the June 21 re-test.

May 30

“Fair electoral rolls lead to fair polls: CEC” – The Hindu

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Saturday (May 30, 2026) said that fair electoral rolls lead to fair elections and India was “in that moment” at present.

May 31

“It was never a fair fight, but I am proud of myself: Vinesh after Asian Games selection trials defeat” – The Hindu

Vinesh fell short but the drama began much before her semifinal bout late in the evening. She was first handed a copy of the WFI circular that permitted her entry in the 50kg in the early hours of Saturday (May 30, 2026), followed by more than an hour of waiting and protests before finally being allowed to weigh in.

“It was never a fair fight. I had to wait for more than an hour for weigh-in and was allowed only after our lawyers spoke of going to the court again. They put all the strong competitors in my half of the draw. But one loss doesn’t define anyone’s future. I am back after giving birth 10 months ago. I still have the courage and strength and I will work hard and return to the mat,” Vinesh said after her loss to Meenakshi in the semifinals.

Twenty-one persons were killed in a fire that broke out in a building in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area. Several of those killed were foreign citizens from African countries, the police said.

Forty-seven persons were rescued from the multi-story building, said Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Satish Upadhyay. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.

Based on preliminary inquiries, the building did not appear to be a residential structure, said Fire Officer AK Malik. Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood has directed that all bed-and-breakfast establishments that violate building plans and guidelines be sealed. Read on.

An Indian citizen was killed in an attack on the airport in Kuwait, said the Indian embassy in the West Asian country. This was the ninth Indian fatality due to the conflict in West Asia that began in February.

Iranian drones and missiles attacked the airport in Kuwait city on Wednesday, damaging several facilities and forcing operations to be suspended. The attack took place despite a ceasefire between the United States and Iran that began on April 8.

Kuwait’s health ministry said that 63 persons were injured in the attack. Their citizenship was unclear. Read on.

The Union government denied a report by ‘Bloomberg’ claiming that the Reserve Bank of India may have sold gold worth $12 billion in May to protect foreign exchange reserves. Bloomberg Economics’ analysis of publicly available data had shown that RBI bullion reserves may have fallen in the two weeks till May 22 even as foreign currency assets increased by about $7.5 billion.

The government cited the central bank’s data showing that the share of gold in India’s foreign exchange reserves had risen to 16.7% on March 31 from 13.9% at the end of September.

The Reserve Bank of India also said that its latest monthly bulletin showed that the physical stock of gold was unchanged at 880.5 tonnes. However, the data was till April 24, while the Bloomberg report had said that the gold reserves may have fallen in the two weeks till May 22. Read on.

The Trinamool Congress dissolved all its committees and organisations in West Bengal and said that it will conduct a “comprehensive exercise of introspection” and performance review after its electoral defeat in the state. The structure of the party and its units will be reconstituted based on the findings of the review, it said.

The development came as divisions within the party came to the fore, with expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee arriving at the Assembly with 59 of the party’s 80 MLAs, who are supporting his attempt to become the leader of the Opposition in the House.

Ritabrata Banerjee’s decision is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay to be the Opposition leader in the Assembly. Read on.

Congress leader DK Shivakumar took oath as the chief minister of Karnataka, replacing fellow party leader Siddaramaiah. State Home Minister G Parameshwara was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.

Shivakumar was elected as the leader of the Congress’ legislature party on Saturday, two days after Siddaramaiah resigned as the chief minister. Shivakumar had served as deputy chief minister in the Siddaramaiah government since May 2023. Read on.

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The Allahabad High Court has said that the police not supplying persons accused of crimes the grounds of their arrest had become a “routine practice”.

This violated directives issued by the Supreme Court, said Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal in a judgement issued on May 22. The judge granted bail to a man accused of murder.

The man, Sandeep Baisoya, had been in jail since January 13. He told the court in his petition that neither were the grounds of his arrest supplied to him, nor was a disclosure memo prepared before he was taken to a spot to recover a country-made pistol.

In November, the Supreme Court ruled that the requirement to furnish grounds of arrest when taking a person into custody applies to all offences, including those under the Indian Penal Code and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

This was “not a mere formality but a mandatory binding constitutional safeguard”, a bench of BR Gavai, the chief justice at the time, and Justice AG Masih had said.

In its affidavit filed in response to Baisoya’s plea, the Uttar Pradesh government’s counsel did not deny in court that the man had not been provided the grounds of his arrest, reported Live Law.

The state also did not mention if a disclosure memo had been prepared, as required by the Supreme Court’s directions.

Taking note of this, the court pointed out that the judicial magistrate, before granting remand of an accused, is required to ascertain whether an arrest has violated Article 22(1) of the Constitution.

Article 22(1) safeguards against arbitrary arrests and detentions by guaranteeing that persons accused of crimes are informed of the grounds for their arrest as soon as possible, and that they are defended by a legal practitioner of their choice.

Against this backdrop, the court said: “This is not only non-application of judicial mind by the judicial magistrate of Ghaziabad, but also a clear violation of the direction of the Hon’ble Apex Court.”

The judge told the judicial magistrate to be “more careful in future” and directed the Ghaziabad commissioner of police to issue “appropriate directions to his subordinate police officers”.

Baisoya was granted bail after the judge took note of the merits of the case, the procedural lapses in the matter and the fact that a co-accused had been released on bail.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Twenty-one persons died in a fire that broke out in a building in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area on Wednesday, ANI reported.

Forty-seven persons were rescued from the multi-story building, Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Satish Upadhyay told the news agency.

Several of those killed were foreign citizens from African countries, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

The fire was brought under control quickly, ANI quoted Fire Officer AK Malik as saying. The cause of the fire was unclear.

Based on preliminary inquiries the building did not appear to be a residential structure, Malik said.

“Rather, it appears that most of the occupants were individuals whose known people were being treated in the MAX Hospital located directly across the street,” he was quoted as saying. “Therefore, it is likely that these individuals were staying here for that specific purpose...”

Some persons were rescued from the basement of a restaurant in the building, PTI quoted a Delhi Fire Service official as saying.

VIDEO | Delhi: At least 18 dead, several others injured in fire at a hotel in Malviya Nagar. Visuals of the hotel building.#DelhiNews #MalviyaNagarFire

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/n147TvrpG7) pic.twitter.com/azJzBbcfEP

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) June 3, 2026

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that the teams of Delhi Fire Service, police the Delhi Disaster Management Authority had been mobilised and a rescue operation was undertaken. “Their swift response helped in rescuing and evacuating several persons from the affected premises,” Gupta said on social media.

The Delhi government was monitoring the situation, she said.

The police have filed a first information report and have invoked charges of culpable homicide, among others, ANI reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh from the PM National Relief Fund for the families of those who had died. The injured would be given Rs 50,000, the prime minister’s office said.

Lodging establishments violating building plans to be sealed

Following the fire, Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood directed all bed-and-breakfast establishments violating building plans and guidelines to be sealed, The Indian Express reported.

“No need to issue any showcause notice or give time to such owners for explanation,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “Just seal all the BnBs.”

The minister also directed the setting up of a high-level committee to be headed by the district magistrate. The panel will comprise officials from the fire department, municipal corporation, and power, health and tourism departments, to inspect all lodging establishment in Delhi.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar and Tanya Shrivastava.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Odisha government on Tuesday issued a notification implementing enhanced reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and introducing a quota for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, in medical, engineering and other professional courses from the academic year 2026-’27.

The decision, approved by the state Cabinet on April 4, increases reservation for students from the Scheduled Tribes to 22.5% from 12% and for students from the Scheduled Castes to 16.25% from 8%.

An 11.25% quota has also been introduced for students from the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes.

Seats under the all-India quota will not be included while calculating the total approved seats. The horizontal reservation system and quota for the Economically Weaker Section will be implemented in accordance with the prevailing norms, PTI reported.

Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said that reservation in engineering, medical and other professional courses “will now be aligned with existing provisions in general higher education, ensuring greater access, equity and opportunity for all”.

Scheduled Tribes account for 22.8% of Odisha’s population, while Scheduled Castes make up 17.13%.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Reserve Bank of India may have sold gold worth about $12 billion in May to protect foreign exchange reserves, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The Union government denied the claims.

RBI bullion reserves may have fallen in the two weeks till May 22 even as foreign currency assets increased by about $7.5 billion, according to Bloomberg Economics’ analysis of publicly available data.

The pattern pointed to possible gold sales by the central bank, the news outlet claimed.

The decline in reported gold values came despite an increase in import duties on the metal, which would have normally raised the valuation of the central bank’s gold holdings.

On May 13, India raised import tariffs on gold and silver to 15% from 6% to reduce imports of the precious metals and ease pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

The move had come after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to avoid buying gold and adopt “nationally responsible” lifestyle choices to help the country withstand global economic uncertainty caused by the war in West Asia.

The divergence points to the possibility of gold having been sold by the central bank during the period, the Bloomberg report claimed.

Such a move, if confirmed, would reflect policymakers’ concerns about the pressure on foreign exchange reserves amid higher oil prices linked to the war, the report added.

The analysis also noted that India, as a major oil importer, has faced pressure on its currency. It suggested that the central bank may be prioritising more liquid foreign currency assets as part of its reserve management strategy amid pressure on the Indian rupee.

On Wednesday, the value of the Indian rupee was 95.7 against the United States dollar. It was valued at 91 against the dollar when the conflict began on February 28.

According to official data cited in the Bloomberg analysis, the RBI held 880.5 metric tonnes of gold by the end of March, with 77% now stored domestically, up from 66% six months ago.

On Wednesday, the government’s Press Information Bureau rejected the Bloomberg report, describing the claim as “fake”.

The agency said that the claim was false and cited central bank’s data showing that the share of gold in India’s foreign exchange reserves had risen to 16.7% on March 31 from 13.9% at the end of September. It had risen further to 16.8% as of May 22.

The government said that the physical stock of gold is disclosed by the Reserve Bank in its monthly bulletin and that the latest numbers were unchanged.

The Reserve Bank said on Wednesday that the report was not correct. The bank said that it had stated in its latest monthly bulletin that the physical stock of gold was unchanged at 880.5 tonnes.

However, the data was till April 24, while the Bloomberg report had said that the gold reserves may have fallen in the two weeks till May 22.

A news report published by @Bloomberg states that RBI may have sold gold amounting to approximately USD 12 billion.#PIBFactCheck

❌ This claim is FAKE

✔️ According to @RBI, the share of gold in India's foreign exchange reserves rose from 13.92% at end-September 2025 to 16.70%… pic.twitter.com/eVjxPxEv1i

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) June 3, 2026

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Ahmedabad Police on Wednesday said that they had detained more than 290 alleged undocumented Bangladeshi migrants for interrogation, Gujarat Samachar reported.

While 131 persons were apprehended, 160 others were being interrogated by the police, ANI reported.

The police carried out searches and verifications in Chandola, Gulabnagar and Khodiyarnagar areas of Ahmedabad on Tuesday night, the news agency quoted the Joint Commissioner of Police Sharad Singhal as saying. The searches were conducted following intelligence inputs.

The police teams checked the documents of the persons, verified their identity and conducted preliminary inquiries to determine whether they had documents permitting them to be in India, Gujarat Samachar reported.

The authorities were also examining whether the documents such as Aadhaar cards and voter identity cards have been forged, the newspaper reported.

#WATCH | Gujarat | Visuals from Ahmedabad Crime Branch.

In a late-night crackdown last night, Ahmedabad Police and the Crime Branch took over 290 suspected illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators into police custody.

According to crime branch officials, a total of 131 individuals… pic.twitter.com/enID9UkG6q

— ANI (@ANI) June 3, 2026

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’
• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

The Hind Rajab Foundation on Tuesday urged the authorities in India to arrest an Israeli reservist for his alleged role in the crimes committed by the military in Gaza.

In a complaint with the police, the Union home ministry and India’s immigration bureau, the Belgium-based nonprofit organisation demanded that Eitan Gilboa be arrested immediately. He is vacationing in Himachal Pradesh, the foundation said in a statement.

The organisation pursues legal action against persons responsible for atrocities against Palestinians.

The Hind Rajab Foundation said that it has submitted a detailed investigative report proving that Gilboa “personally carried out and celebrated the systematic demolition of entire residential blocks” in the besieged Palestinian territory as alleged acts of revenge constituting war crimes under the 1960 Geneva Conventions Act.

The Geneva Conventions are a set of international treaties that form the core of global humanitarian law by establishing legal and ethical standards for the treatment of civilians and prisoners during wartime. India is a signatory to the conventions.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on Gaza since then, leaving more than 75,000 persons dead.

In September, a commission of inquiry set up by the United Nations said that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s foreign ministry had rejected the report, describing it as “distorted and false”.

The International Criminal Court had in November 2024 issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of committing war crimes in Gaza.

On Tuesday, the Hind Rajab Foundation said that Gilboa was born in Gaza but had left the territory along with his family when Israel withdrew its settlements there. This was an apparent reference to Israel having dismantled all its settlements in Gaza in 2005.

After Israel’s attacks on Gaza began in October 2023, Gilboa and several of his siblings returned to the territory with the Israeli Army, according to the foundation.

“Gilboa documented the destruction of civilian buildings that he carried out, filming himself ordering, executing and celebrating the demolition of civilian homes in Khan Younis and Rafah,” the foundation alleged. “These videos were later published by his mother on Instagram and Facebook.”

The posts suggest that the demolitions were carried out as “acts of retribution” and dedicated to Israeli soldiers who had been killed, the foundation alleged.

The organisation said that in its complaint, it cited several “specific incidents” where Gilboa allegedly participated in the destruction of civilian structures. The acts violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, it alleged.

The foundation said that India, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, is obligated under the treaties to search for and prosecute persons alleged to have committed grave breaches, regardless of their citizenship.

The presence of Gilboa in India contradicts Article 51(c) of the Indian Constitution, which directs the state to foster respect for international law, the foundation said. “India now holds both the suspect and the obligation to act,” it added.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Opinion: Could India be considered complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
• India’s discernible shift away from Palestine
• ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ to be released in India on June 19 with ‘A’ certificate

Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab is set to be released in Indian theatres on June 19 after receiving a certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification, PTI reported. The film has been granted an “A” certificate, restricting its viewing to adults aged 18 years and above.

This came months after media reports said that the film’s release had been blocked.

The film, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and was later found dead.

The incident, which took place in 2024, occurred during Israel’s unprecedented air and ground strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The strikes, which began in October 2023, have left more than 75,000 persons dead.

On March 19, Variety quoted the film’s local distributor as saying that the Central Board of Film Certification had blocked the theatrical release of the film in the country owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel.

The film was acquired for distribution in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Afghanistan and Bangladesh by Manoj Nandwana of Jai Viratra Entertainment Limited, PTI reported.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Nandwana thanked the film certification board for granting certification to the film without any cuts, the news agency reported.

Hania wrote on social media that she was grateful for the “wonderful news” and for the support from Indian journalists, filmmakers, activists and citizens who “defended its right to be seen”.

She added: “Hind was a little girl whose voice should never have been silenced. Today, that voice will travel across South Asia and be heard by millions of people.”

On March 24, several Opposition MPs had urged the Union government to direct the film certification board to examine the film “strictly in accordance with constitutional principles governing freedom of expression” and grant it certification.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also Read: ‘Please don’t leave me,’ Hind Rajab pleaded. Why her voice needs to be heard

Trinamool Congress National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday sent a fresh letter to West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of the Opposition, PTI reported.

This amid a probe into an alleged signature forgery case and speculation about divisions within the Trinamool Congress legislative party following the expulsion of MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha on Monday. The two legislators had alleged that signatures were forged in documents submitted to the Speaker in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment, the news agency reported.

On Tuesday, TMC MLAs Kunal Ghosh and Ashima Patra attempted to hand-deliver the letter to the Speaker. They alleged that the Speaker’s office secretary refused to accept it in Bose’s absence, saying he had been verbally instructed not to receive any letters from the party, PTI reported.

“Till yesterday, the Speaker was receiving our letters,” the news agency quoted Ghosh as saying. “For unknown reasons, the office has stopped accepting them from today. How can he not receive an official communication from two elected MLAs?”

The fresh letter, signed by Abhishek Banerjee, also endorsed Ashima Patra and Nayana Bandyopadhyay as deputy Leaders of the Opposition and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip.

requested the Speaker to recognise the posts “on the basis of the precedent or practice of Legislative Assembly, which is in vogue for decades together”, PTI reported.

The row

Ritabrata Banerjee and Saha were suspended from the Trinamool Congress on Monday, after West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari claimed at a press conference that they had complained about forged signatures on the party’s letter. Adhikari said that the two MLAs have claimed that no such resolution had been passed and that the document had been fabricated.

The Crime Investigation Department is probing the allegations.

On Monday evening, officers of the Crime Investigation Department went to Abhishek Banerjee’s home in Kolkata for the second time in 48 hours and served him with a fresh notice directing him to appear at the agency’s headquarters on June 8, PTI reported.

The notice was issued after he did not appear before investigators on Monday and instead sought two weeks’ time, citing health reasons.

Investigators have so far questioned 13 TMC MLAs. Three of them – Baharul Islam, Arup Roy and Subhasis Das – have stated that the signatures attributed to them in the meeting resolution book are not theirs, the agency alleged.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.